Page 53 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

38 Just Promoted!

First Impressions: A Personal Introduction to Your New Staff
First impressions powerfully affect attitudes your new staff and stakeholders will
form toward you. People believe what they want to believe, not necessarily what
is factual. Therefore, you want to make a personable, effective first impression.
Your influence and power base within the department or function may ini-
tially be fragile. You will need to build your organization’s support quickly. To
do this, on the continuum of work orientation to people orientation, concen-
trate your initial energies on the people side. As you move ahead, your peo-
ple skills—interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence—will greatly
complement your functional and technical skills. It is the style with which you
do things and the impact you have on people that form early impressions.
Remember that initial impressions are made very quickly, often in minutes.
Positive impressions need to be sustained because they can be short-lived. In
contrast, neutral or negative impressions can be long-lived. Here are six ways
in which you can make a positive impression on your team and colleagues:

1. Quickly assess the style of the other person and match his style. Deter-
mine whether the person is results oriented (Give me the bottom line,
not the details); detail oriented (Tell me all of the details so I understand
how you reach conclusions); or socially oriented (Before you tell me
about work, tell me about yourself and ask about me).
2. Be persuasive, and work on influencing others. Understand your own
influencing style, and learn what influences your key stakeholders. If you
are not sure how to influence a stakeholder, using reasoning is the best
alternative. Reasoning as an influencing technique includes explaining
why you are asking someone to do something or presenting evidence
that supports your position.
3. Act like a high achiever. High achievers have upbeat and positive atti-
tudes. They are confident and recognize the contributions of others.
4. Conduct or facilitate highly productive meetings. Be clear about your
agenda and the result you want to achieve by having the meeting. Get
meeting information and the agenda out early so participants can pre-
pare. Understand your audience and how you will engage others. Com-
municate the high expectations you have of your team members’
preparation and participation for the meetings they will participate in.
Hold premeetings with important stakeholders to gain understanding of
their positions on issues prior to the larger meetings, if possible.