Have you been promoted recently?
Are you now leading a team that you used to be part of and maybe some of your colleagues have reported to you now?
Find out four key ways that are going to help you make this easier and more of a success and the best tips to help you deal with this.
- Be clear that although not everything has to change, some things do change.
One of the key things that doesn’t change is that we’re all still the same human beings that we were before.
Your relationship has been built over a period of time that you can’t wipe out and that still exists. The trust that you had in each other, although it might be on a different footing now can still be reignited or can still exist, as long as you set new ground rules for it.
One of the key things that has changed is that your responsibilities have changed.
Now you are in many ways responsible for the team – responsible for their performance and also for their wellbeing and for their development. And this is something that is going to put you on a different footing from them. Something else that has changed is that you may now be privy to information that you can’t share with them straight away. And you might be in a situation where you have to give your team members information or even decisions that have been made outside of your control that they might not be happy with.
Instead of you being part of the team in the sense that you could all moan about it together, now you’re the one that has to pass these messages on and stand behind them too. And the people that you are going to confide in or speak to could be outside of that team.
So there are things that have changed and you need to be aware of those, and you need to be aware of how they’re affecting your people and how they’re affecting you.
Self-awareness is critical, but don’t forget that there are lots of things that don’t change. If you had friendships before, you can still have friendships. Now it’s just how you’re going to relate to each other at work that may have to shift.
2. Take time to speak one-to-one and truly listen.
In the absence of information, people will make up what it’s going to be like. They’re going to have things going through their heads that may be saying:
“ it can’t be the same”
or that
“ she’s not on our side anymore”
or all sorts of things.
So get ahead of it, take the initiative and have one-to-one conversations with your people to find out what’s going on for them, what are their questions? What are they afraid of? What are they hoping will happen? What are they hoping won’t happen? Truly listen – listen with curiosity, listen to really hear what they are saying and also hear what’s behind the words.
Then you will be well ahead of the curve because they will be speaking to someone who they know is wanting to hear from and wanting to have their input. This will not only help you build relationships individually with each person, but also as a team, because that’s going to be one of the next steps that you need to do.
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3. Get clear on your values and your team roles
Your values will be the boundaries that will help you make decisions and will help other people figure out what it is that they can do and what it is that they can’t do. Because as long as they abide by the values, they’ll be okay.
Now it’s really, really important that you do this work and that you get clear on what’s important to you and how you’re going to express those values at work.
Have a think about how your values determine your attitude and mindset when it comes to things like:
-Mistakes
-Communication – both internal and external
-Customers
and more..
Being clear on your values will allow your team to understand where they stand.
Once you’ve got clear on your own values, then you need to start doing some work on the team values. What is important for the team?
So,
4. Get the team together to discuss and agree on the ground rules, discuss and agree on the team values. Because as I’ve said, this is what’s going to make it so much easier to make decisions.
Decisions aren’t always easy, but if you can base them on your values and the values of the team, then it becomes much easier.
That means that you can spend more energy dealing with whatever the consequences are of those decisions. It makes people feel safe because they know where they stand.
This doesn’t just apply to children and boundaries with children. This applies to all of us. If we know where we stand, if we know what’s important and we know how we need to behave. Then that’s going to make it so much easier for you. Remember to use the inputs from your one-to-one in these team conversations as long as the information isn’t confidential!
You will have had lots of information in there that you can draw on to input into this team meeting.
Also try not to make any assumptions – do your best to make this a clean start, because it can be! This will help you build a solid foundation that you can then grow from.
I assure you, if you do these four things, you are going to be able to get the best new start with your team.
Just as a quick recap:
- Be clear that although lots of things have changed, not everything has changed and some things have definitely stayed the same.
- Take time, take time to listen and speak one-to-one with everybody.
- Get clear on your individual values and your team roles.
- Get clear on your team values and how these are expressed at work – this will create a contract around behaviours that will help create the psychological safety the team needs to succeed.
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Thanks and speak to you soon.
Sonia xx
