You have promoted a person into a leadership role. The company invested a reasonable sum of money into a program. People from different departments have invested time in building training agendas to deliver knowledge and skills. The person has impressed you and other leaders that they can have a diverse leadership layer role within the organization.
After some time in the role, you see that the person you have promoted needs to feel better in the new position. So they make mistakes, and the results could be better. So you gave them everything they needed, but after the promotion, they still needed to cover the minimum requirements for the new role. Your reaction?
Some leaders may consider downgrading the person again and sending them to their old role. Others may react as if the person is a low performer and start searching for opportunities to eliminate them. What an intelligent leader does is start coaching the person.
With the power of coaching and believing in the person, things can turn in a different direction. So, what may look like a discrepancy can be turned into a positive?
However, what leaders intend to support the person in the new role further may have a positive or negative impact.
Coaching first-level leaders is an essential aspect of leadership development. According to Franklin Covey, first-level leaders have a tremendous impact on your business. They execute key company strategies, keep frontline employees engaged, and often serve as escalation points for unhappy customers1.
If you’re a manager or leader looking to bring a coaching mentality to your leadership, here are some tips backed by research to help get you started:
Favor specific praise over group motivational speeches
New leaders want to show their contribution and grow over the group. The best way to value their contribution is to create individual praise for them. While making such praise, the new leader will see that personal assistance is valued and appreciated. The more focused on unique contributions, the better the new leader feels.
Focus on celebrating individuals’ hard work and accomplishments
Praise is something with real celebration. The new leader sees celebration as a genuine appreciation and award for their efforts in the role. Setting clear rules on how success will be celebrated and what success means for the new leadership role creates expectations. In addition, it boosts internal motivation and engagement toward the challenges at work. By encouraging those two elements, the new leader grows themselves and grows team capacity, engagement at work, and internal motivation in parallel.
Encourage self-reflection
No matter the experience or the learning paths created, teaching panels and mentors often make the same mistake. First, time leaders receive plenty of feedback – from subordinates, peers, and line managers – but most never learn to look at themselves. This creates a discrepancy in the development path and blind spots for the person. I don’t say that feedback is terrible, but according to Korn Ferry’s global survey from 2021, only twenty-nine percent of new leaders accept feedback directly. Most of them listen and understand it but never buy it. To make input acceptable, the person needs to go through this feedback in their own way. This is where the skill of self-reflection goes in the game. With developed self-reflection skills, the new leader can turn what is said into what and how they feel it internally. Closing those two points – external feedback and internal self-reflection – creates space for acceptance and opens the door for improvements.
Ask open-ended questions
New leaders often need help from their direct manager or senior decision-making leader. While looking inexperienced, they are often “offered” advice or a way of how things “should be done.” At the same time, this may look like a good thing, but in most cases, it doesn’t lead to anything positive. The new leader doesn’t need allowance or direct mentoring; these things have happened in the past for them. Instead, they need someone to hear their thoughts and arguments and support them in delivering the best results in the way they say that delivery will happen. Open-ended questions may look challenging and time-consuming for those who ask them. Still, in the long run, they lower discrepancies and create self-esteem in the person by showing respect for their way of thinking and doing things and appreciating the differences they bring to the team and the organization.
Listen actively
Everyone needs to be heard. And many of those promoted to a new role have much to say. Having a first-time leader in their new role is like having a toddler in your organization. They want to talk; they want to be heard, and they want the leader to listen to them and only support their ideas and work progress. What best leaders do is practice the art of active listening. By active listening, I do not mean listening with the intent to answer but listening with the intent to understand and, in some cases, quietly support what the newly promoted person wants to achieve. No matter the situation and the circumstances, the level of heartiness and support for their ideas and plans makes or breaks the first-time leader. To be sure that a first-time leader will succeed, the senior leader or mentor of the person should be ready to analyze, understand, and empower instead of preparing to change the situation the way they see it.
Provide constructive feedback
Often, first-time leaders are “punished” with the “gift of feedback.” This is not because they are bad at all but because they are responsible for their leader’s mistakes and the type of feedback they give. The easiest ways to provide input are positive and negative. And they are not easy because of the giving but because of the structure and the type of message they share. Different from them is constructive feedback. It shows appreciation and, at the same time, creates opportunities for development and upgrade. Learning the art of giving constructive feedback is needed if the first-time leader is meant to grow. Balancing between what is going well and planning how to upgrade, based on it, is essential in building the first-time leader mindset. The better the constructive feedback model is executed and the more accepted by the first-time leader, the more it boosts personal development, organizational and team growth, and change.
Set clear expectations
“In this new role, I expect to see first results in less than one month.” Have you heard that? If YES, then you are not alone. According to a Gartner survey from 2021, some thirty-nine percent of first-time leaders experience stress while being pushed to deliver results within shorter timeframes than they can learn the basics of their new role. Feedback from these first-time leaders shows that they cannot manage expectations, are stressed mainly by the deadlines, and ninety percent need to adapt to the new position. While being promoted to a first-time leader, the person needs to build a comfortable learning path for a constant upgrade in the steps and areas of the role. The senior leader responsible for promotion is accountable for helping the first-time leader to find the balance and put the right amount of energy and commitment into the process so that they can turn with less stress from an excellent individual contributor to a winning leader able to inspire others for more significant results. Lacking clear expectations for the new first-time leader can break the development process and the person. This often leads to burnout and more negative outputs than adding value to the organization.
Create a safe space for learning and growth
No matter the organization’s needs, the first-time leader needs time to grow. Ensuring there is enough space for them and defending the timeframe for learning and upgrading skills and knowledge is in the hands of the promoting leader. As we said before, not giving time and space for the person to grow from their old role can lead to negative consequences and even make the person leave the organization. That is why it is essential for the new first-time leader to feel that there is a safe space in the time where they will face understanding and acceptance for being slower than expected and learning new ways of behavior and execution in their most preferred style. The safer from negativity this space and time frame is, the better and faster the person can adapt to the newly formed environment, expectations, and demands toward them.
IN CONCLUSION:
Most of us have raised children. Building a first-time leader is similar to raising a child. Finding the most balanced way to help the person turn from their old role into the new one and learn the basics is crucial for the person, the organization, and its growth plans, including that first-time leader. The more tolerant, flexible, and human-centered the process becomes, the faster and better results it will generate as an output in shorter periods.
The Human place 