Leadership enhancing the lessons of experience 8th by hughes curphy chap 03

Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

3-1


Chapter

3

Skills for Developing
Yourself as a Leader

3-2


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

3-3


Your First 90 Days as a Leader

Figure 3.1: New Leader Onboarding Road Map

3-4

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.

3-5


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
3-6


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

3-7


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?
3-8


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
3-9


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

3-10


The Third Month:
Communicate and Drive Change
• 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).

• 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

3-11


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

3-12


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.

3-13


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

3-14


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

3-15


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

3-16


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

3-17


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

3-18


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:
1. Identifying your career objectives
2. Identifying your strengths and development needs
related to your career objectives
3. Determining how your abilities, skills, and behaviors
are perceived by others based on 360-feedback or
performance reviews
4. Determining the expectations your boss or
organization has for your career objectives

3-19


Identifying and Prioritizing Development
Needs: Gaps of GAPS

3-20

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
3-21