Write a brief summary of the important concepts you learned from chapter 2 & 3. (Chapter 2 & 3 summary attached and textbook attached)

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Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader

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Introduction

• Your First 90 Days as a Leader

• Learning From Experience

• Building Technical Competence

• Building Effective Relationships with Superiors

• Building Effective Relationships with Peers

• Development Planning

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Your First 90 Days as a Leader

Figure 3.1: New Leader Onboarding Road Map

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Before You Start: Do Your Homework

• Candidates should gather as much information

about their potential company as they can.

• Some good sources of information include Web

sites, annual reports, press releases, and

marketing literature.

• Use Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and other social

networking sites to set up informational interviews

with people inside the organization.

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The First Day: You Get Only One Chance to Make a First Impression

• New leaders have two critical tasks to accomplish

the first day on the job: meeting their new boss

and meeting their new team.

• The first meeting with the boss should happen in

the boss’s office and be about an hour long. Key

topics to discuss include:

– Identifying the team’s key objectives, metrics, and

important projects

– Understanding the boss’s view of team strengths and

weaknesses

– Working through meeting schedules and communication

styles

– Sharing plans for the day and the next several weeks

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The First Two Weeks: Lay the Foundation

• The first two weeks should be filled with meeting

with many people both inside and outside the

team.

• The key objectives for these meetings are:

– Learning as much as possible

– Developing relationships

– Determining future allies

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The First Two Weeks: Lay the Foundation (continued)

• One-on-one meetings with key team members

should provide the leader with answers to critical

questions.

– What is the team member working on?

– What are the team member’s objectives?

– Who are the “stars” a level or two down in the

organization?

– What are the people issues on the team?

– What can the team do better?

– What advice do team members have for the new leader,

and what can the new leader do to help team members?

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The First Two Weeks: Lay the Foundation (continued)

• New leaders should schedule one-on-one

meetings with all their peers to build rapport.

• During these meetings, the new leader should

discuss the following:

– Their peers’ objectives, challenges, team structure, etc.

– Their perspectives on what the new leader’s team does

well and could do better

– Their perspectives on the new leader’s team members

– How to best communicate with the boss

– How issues get raised and decisions made on their

boss’s team

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The First Two Months: Strategy, Structure, and Staffing

• During this time period, the leader is gathering

more information, determining the direction, and

finalizing the appropriate structure and staffing

for the team. Tasks to be performed include:

– Gathering benchmarking information from other

organizations

– Meeting with key external customers and suppliers

– Meeting with the former team leader, if appropriate

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The Third Month: Communicate and Drive Change

• The new leader should have developed a vision of

the future. Things to do now include:

– Articulating how the team will win

– Identifying the what, why, and how of any needed

changes

– Defining a clear set of expectations for team members

• The two major events for the third month are to:

– Meet with the entire team

– Meet off-site with direct reports (if the team is large).

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Learning From Experience

• Leadership practitioners can enhance the learning

value of experiences by:

– Creating opportunities to get feedback

– Taking a “10 percent stretch”

– Learning from others

– Keeping a journal of daily leadership events

– Having a developmental plan

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Building Technical Competence

• Technical competence concerns the knowledge

and repertoire of behaviors one can utilize to

complete a task successfully.

• Followers with technical competence earn greater

rewards, exert influence in their groups, and have

greater say in decisions.

• For leaders, technical competence is related to

improved managerial promotion rates, better

training skills, lower rates of group conflict, and

higher motivation levels among followers.

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Building Technical Competence (continued)

• Both leaders and followers can improve

technical competence by:

– Determining how the job contributes to the overall

mission and success of the organization

– Becoming an expert in the job through education,

training, observation, and teaching

– Seeking opportunities to broaden experiences by

working on team projects and visiting other parts of

the organization

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Building Effective Relationships with Superiors

• Building an effective relationship with superiors

involves understanding the superior’s world by:

– Learning the superior’s personal and organizational

objectives

– Realizing that superiors do not have all the answers and

have both strengths and weaknesses

– Keeping the superior informed about various activities in

the work group or new developments or opportunities in

the field

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Building Effective Relationships with Superiors (continued)

• Building an effective relationship with superiors

requires followers to adapt to the superior’s

style by:

– Clarifying expectations about their role on the team,

committee, or work group

– Listing major responsibilities and use them to guide

discussions with the superior about other ways to

accomplish the task and relative priorities of the tasks

– Being honest and dependable

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Building Effective Relationships with Peers

• Research suggests that a key requirement of

leadership effectiveness is the ability to build

strong alliances with others, such as peers.

• Building effective relationships with peers

involves:

– Recognizing common interests and goals

– Understanding peers’ tasks, problems, and rewards

– Practicing a Theory Y attitude

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Development Planning

• Developmental planning is the systematic process

of building knowledge and experience or changing

behavior. Peterson and Hicks claim that there are

5 interrelated phases to developmental planning:

– Identifying development needs

– Analyzing data to identify and prioritize development

needs

– Using prioritized development needs to create a focused

and achievable development plan

– Periodically reviewing the plan, reflecting on learning,

and modifying or updating the plan as appropriate

– Transferring learning to new environments

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Conducting a GAPS Analysis

• The first phase in the development planning

process is to conduct a GAPS (goals, abilities,

perceptions, standards) analysis which involves

the following steps:

– Identifying your career objectives

– Identifying your strengths and development needs

related to your career objectives

– Determining how your abilities, skills, and behaviors

are perceived by others based on 360-feedback or

performance reviews

– Determining the expectations your boss or

organization has for your career objectives

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Identifying and Prioritizing Development Needs: Gaps of GAPS

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Bridging the Gaps: Building a Development Plan

• There are 7 steps to developing a high impact

development plan:

– Step 1: career and development objectives

– Step 2: criteria for success

– Step 3: action steps

– Step 4: whom to involve and reassess dates

– Step 5: stretch assignments

– Step 6: resources

– Step 7: reflect with a partner