I love the title of Rich Wellins’ post at DDIWorld: “Stepping Up or Falling Off: First-Time Leadership Transitions.” Here’s the opening paragraph.
“In our new book, Your First Leadership Job, we devote an entire chapter to a single topic: Transitions. Why? Stepping up from one level of leadership to the next turns out not to be so easy. In fact, our past research puts a leadership transition on the top of the stress scale—over moving, or even raising teenagers.”
Leadership development’s big transition
That may be understating the problem. I’ve seen many a fine leadership prospect go down in flames because he or she was left to their own devices to survive the treacherous transition crosswinds.
The transition from individual contributor to effective leader may be the hardest transition in the entire leadership development pipeline. For too many new leaders it involves learning a whole new skill set on the fly, often without any training or organizational support. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Leadership development in times of transition
Make the transition easier by picking people who are more likely to succeed. Look for people who like helping others succeed and who are willing to confront poor performance and make decisions.
Let people try on the role before they have to decide if they want to lead. Leadership always looks easy until you have to do it.
Provide training in the skills the new leader will have to master. Give some training before the assignment and some soon after.
Provide support during the transition. Assign more experienced leaders who are also good mentors to the job of “shepherd,” helping the new leader make a successful transition. Make peer support easy to obtain.
