Page 90 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Entering Your Boss’s World 75

CONTRACTING WITH YOUR BOSS: CONFIRMING

YOUR APPOINTMENT CHARTER AND YOUR
12-MONTH ROAD MAP
Having a clear and specific agreement with your boss governing your transi-
tion is very important; in fact, it is vital to your success. We refer to this con-
tracting process as Confirming Your Appointment Charter, and it is Just
Promoted Leader Tool 4. During this process, you will confirm the top sev-
eral objectives that you must complete over the next 12 months as well as
numerous other elements critical to your performance and the agreements
you make with your boss or bosses. (In Chapter 1, we described these objec-
tives as so important that “forgiveness will not be granted” if you are not suc-
cessful in completing or delivering on them.) Even if it is not a written, signed
agreement between you and your boss, Your Appointment Charter is a clear
understanding of the terms of your transition into the job.
Your 12-Month Road Map is Just Promoted Leader Tool 5. This tool will
help you to plan and monitor your progress in 3-month increments to help
you stay on track in meeting the benchmarks in Your Appointment Charter.
The explicit contract or agreement between you and your boss should support
an evolving transition process.
Many leaders report to two or more bosses. These dual or multiple report-
ing relationships are common in today’s complex organizations. For example,
in matrix organizations, a leader could easily have business or product line
reporting structures as well as geographic reporting structures. We know of
many leaders who work in multiple reporting relationships. The largest num-
ber of reporting relationships that we have come across is seven.
It is vitally important that your expectations and working agreements be
agreed to by each person to whom you report. While it should be the case that
those to whom you report have all consulted with each other and are all fol-
lowing the same plan, this is often not the case. Remember that it takes many
factors and many stakeholders for you to be successful and as few as one fac-
tor or dissatisfied boss or stakeholder to fail. It may be necessary for you to
have one-on-one meetings with each of your bosses and key stakeholders to
ensure alignment in relation to your performance expectations. You might
also need to circle back and convene some or all of these individuals to ensure
that everyone agrees on what you need to deliver, in what time frames, and