Are your clear of what’s expected of you?

Let’s say you’re in a new leadership role. Do you know what’s expected of you? Have you been mentored to ease the transition or is there the potential for you to be blindsided?

Chad Todd shares that there are 5 ½ things we need to learn; excerpts are below.
(Note: We’re not in total agreement with these but they are worth pondering).

1. The higher you go, the less honest feedback you get.
Authority changes conversations. People get careful. They soften criticism, avoid disagreement, and tell you what they think you want to hear. The higher you rise, the more your information gets filtered before it reaches you.

2. The hardest conversations will be with your best people.
Most leaders brace for hard conversations with their poor performers. The surprise is how many of the hardest ones are with their best. It’s the strong ones who are tricky: the talented person with one real blind spot, the high performer.

3. You will repeat yourself more than you ever expected (and more than you want to).
What feels repetitive to you feels like reinforcement to everyone else. People are busy. Priorities compete. New problems show up every week. Don’t assume your message landed. It may take time to resonate.

4. The best leadership skills feel slow.
The skills that feel slowest in the moment create the most leverage over time. Leadership isn’t about getting the work done. It’s about building people who can. Coaching feels slower than telling. Delegating feels slower than doing it yourself. Developing someone feels slower than solving the problem. In the short term, it usually is. That’s exactly why so many leaders quit these skills too early, optimizing for efficiency today instead of capability tomorrow.

5. The team you have isn’t always the team you need.
Sometimes a good person and the role simply grow apart. The person who was perfect for the team you had isn’t always right for the new team. Honor the person by being honest early and helping them toward a role that actually fits.

½. The biggest challenge isn’t managing others. It is managing yourself. Most leadership books are about what to do with other people. The real work starts with you. Leadership effectiveness can be limited by what you know, but often it is limited more by what you do with that knowledge. (Note: This we DO agree with! We must first know and lead ourselves before we can effectively lead others).

Don’t get blindsided in your new role; make it a priority to clearly understand all expectations ranging from goals, budget management, team development, supporting the work culture, etc.