What advice do you wish you had when you pursued your first leadership role?
Steffan, you will now go from the guy making recommendations to the guy making decisions. You go from being an individual contributor to delivering through others. You now lead a team of people doing what you used to be good at, that got you promoted in the first place.
That's a big change. How to make good decisions, facilitate a meeting, craft a strategy or delegate work is not something that everyone naturally just know how to do. If you think they are natural abilities, then you might feel there's something wrong with you if you don't have them. Please don't. It's a skill you can learn. You will do mistakes, but over time you will nail it. Leadership is an education.
People is your work now. Invest time in them, be present, be available. Listen. Ask how you can help all the time. Then comes communication, communication, communication, setting budgets, performance reviews, 1:1 meetings, meetings with stakeholders, recruitment, setting goals, prioritize, help finding solutions on complex problems, solving conflicts.
Don't forget to take care of yourself. What gives you energy? What drains you for energy? What do you need to do yourself, and what can you delegate to others? Do one thing at a time. Use your team. Create a support system around you, and use it. Block time in your calendar to think and reflect.
Never create a bunch of tasks that you assign to your team for execution. Provide context, intent. Let your brilliant team and problem solvers define and own their tasks and actions. A good plan developed and understood by the team is better than a "brilliant" plan by you.
Don't stress if you don't have a vision on the first day. You are not Steve Jobs. Visions can be found. Find it together with your team and let it be the compass in everything you do. What would you like to achieve together? What's the future we are trying to create? How do we plan to accomplish that? Let it become theirs, not only yours.
Watch out for compromises in this process. If you try to come up with something that pleases everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
Steffan, you are not a super human and don't pretend to be one. You have your strengths, but also your weaknesses and gaps. Your job is to build a team and surround yourself with people closing those gaps. Your job is not to know everything.
There will be periods where you doubt yourself and question everything, but suddenly you will see someone on your team achieve more than they thought they were capable of.
You will see your team come together to solve impossible problems. You will see a team that would do anything to help each other out. Impact. That's the joy of leadership. That's your reward. That's the reason why you became a leader.
Good luck my friend!
Best Regards,
Steffan Sørenes, a year older and (somewhat) wiser
