How to Effectively Transition into Leadership
Were you recently promoted into a leadership position? If so, this blog is a must read for you!
The cornerstone of a successful start in your new leadership position is your mindset and there are two concepts about your personal growth that you need to be aware of. These concepts are called THE FIXED MINDSET and THE GROWTH MINDSET.
If someone has a fixed mindset, it means that they believe (consciously or subconsciously) that they are done learning and growing. Their mantra may be that "You can't teach an old dog a new trick". Ego and their fear of failure become a barrier for them, and it prevents their personal growth and development.
Having a growth mindset on the other hand, means embracing the idea that you can continually expand your personal level of skills and knowledge. You can learn and develop and be better tomorrow than you are today, and you can do this day after day after day.
Having a growth mindset means accepting your fears and working to overcome them. Having a growth mindset means stretching outside of your comfort zone and being willing to fail and be bad at something until you're good at it — this is what is simply called PRACTICE.
The growth mindset means putting your ego aside and being open-minded to the idea that the universe of information that you don't know is a lot larger than the universe of knowledge that you do know. If you're not able to say to yourself and others that you don't know something yet but you're really eager to learn it, then you are destined to ceiling out very quickly in your career.
As a new leader, understand that leadership is a science all to itself, so don't underestimate the body of leadership knowledge that you have yet to acquire.
Learn your Blind Spots
Think about the greatest players that you know of in all of professional sports history. And then think about the greatest coaches of all time. Do you see much overlap in these lists? Do you know of many great players who became great coaches? Probably not. Being a great player doesn't automatically make someone a great coach. That's because when a world class athlete transitions to coaching, they rely on their own athletic talent and don't understand that they need to learn how to lead, train and teach others to perform at a high level. Leading a team is totally different than performing on a team and it requires a totally different skill set.
This situation applies to you if you were promoted internally. Your promotion may have been based on your superior process knowledge and your leadership potential and not on your actual leadership skills. Your company promoted you because they have confidence that you can grow into your new leadership role. So, it's critical that you develop as a leader and not hide behind your subject matter expertise.
There is a big risk that you are too comfortable with what you already know and that can stop your leadership growth dead in its tracks on day one. Some of the best and worst leaders that I know have come from this group of internally promoted supervisors and their success as a leader was totally dependent on their mindset. Did they have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset? A growth mindset leads to success in a leadership role and a fixed mindset leads to failure.
You need to be willing to admit that you don't YET know how to lead. Now is the time for you to learn. When it comes to leadership, reject the "l know" mentality and adopt the ''I don't know yet but I'm eager to learn mentality". Knowing your product and processes gives you a great head start, but start learning about leadership as an independent set of skills that you now need. Even though you may know your employees already, your relationship with them just totally changed. When you were promoted to supervisor, consider it a fresh start for you and for every employee on your team.
Internally promoted supervisors can be the greatest leaders and move to the top of organizations. |'ve seen it time and time again, but it only happens to the humble ones who adopt a growth mindset. If you are looking for leadership development tools, look no further than Tools for the Trenches leadership training.
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