Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
You've landed a new leadership role. Now what? Let me walk you through what you need to know. First, we'll cover a few common traps that new leaders often fall into so that you can steer clear of them. Then I'll share my top tips to help you set yourself up for success in your first 90 days. And finally we'll talk about the key moves to make once you hit the three month mark so you keep on building momentum. I'm Carla Miller, Leadership Coach and host of Influence and Impact for Leaders, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Ready to be more impactful in your new role? Let's get started.

Carla Miller [00:00:55]:
I've been a new senior leader in many organizations organizations thanks to the years that I spent doing interim work as a director. I also used to run a charity recruitment company and placed a lot of senior leaders in my role there. And as a coach, I've supported many coaching clients to help them secure and start in a new role. So this is one of my favourite topics and one that I hope I bring quite a lot of expertise to. So let's start by talking about the things to avoid doing as you start as a new leader. So depending on your personality, some of these will be more relevant than others. But it's a good idea to have them all in your head ahead of time. So it's easy to over promise to yes I can do that or yes no problem or Yes I can't see why that would be an issue and then to later discover you can't do it, there is a problem or there might well be some issues with it.

Carla Miller [00:01:58]:
So try not to just agree blindly to things and try not to over promise. Don't promise to sort things out when you don't know yet if they can be sorted out. And a great way to avoid over promising and then later disappointing people or having to change your mind is is to focus on listening, thanking and reflecting. So listen, people don't get listened to enough so it will feel good to them to have someone's full attention and to know that you are truly listening to them. Thank them for their honesty, for their input, for their ideas and then say that you will go away and reflect on them. You don't have to come back with an immediate response. Another thing to avoid doing is to avoid jumping in and making decisions before you've got all the information. So in order to secure this job, you probably had to come up with some kind of ideas or strategy or way forward.

Carla Miller [00:02:59]:
You will have identified some things that could be done better, but there may be really good reasons why those things aren't being done in that organisation. And so what we don't want to do is to assume that we know best with our new ideas. It's really, really easy to come in and see the flaws in an organization, and once you've been there a year, it's much harder to see those flaws, and not just because you've habituated to the environment, but also because you understand the reasons why things are done in those ways. And some of those reasons can be quite entrenched. So try to avoid thinking that you know best without having all the information. You might have those thoughts, but don't go around sharing them with everybody at this point in time. And I'm going to talk later about how to do that in terms of how to pace yourself when it comes to your planning and decision making. And then there's two more emotional things that it's important to avoid when you're in your first 90 days or so in your new role.

Carla Miller [00:04:05]:
The first is thinking that you have imposter syndrome or imposter feelings, because you're sat there going, they really shouldn't have given me this job. I don't know what I'm doing. Thinking that you don't know what you're doing is not some flaw in your mind. That means you have no confidence whatsoever. It's an accurate assessment of the situation in that you don't know exactly what you're doing. You have a lot of relevant experience, but there's a huge knowledge gap. And so, yes, you can make suggestions. Yes, you might be able to see ways forward.

Carla Miller [00:04:39]:
However, you don't have the information that you had in your last job. When you felt like you had it all under control, you knew what you were doing and that's why you were ready for a new job. So that's not necessarily imposter feelings. That's just sitting in that uncomfortable place of being responsible for something without feeling like you've got it all under control. And a good podcast episode for you to listen back to will be a couple of episodes before this one where I talked about a leader doesn't have to have all the answers. What a leader needs to be great at doing is asking great questions. And that applies here. If you think that you have to have all the answers, then, yes, you are going to potentially experience some imposter syndrome.

Carla Miller [00:05:24]:
And then the final mistake to avoid making is thinking that the Valley of Doom lasts forever. So the Valley of Doom, if you've been a listener for a while, you will have heard me talk about this before. Is this idea that when you are in a new senior role, at some point you have a period of time where you think, what on earth have I done? Can I really do this? Have they made a mistake giving me this role? This is a nightmare. I really wish I hadn't accepted this role. I think I've made the wrong decision here. That's probably familiar to some of you who've been in that situation and what's happened is you've started a new role with your rose coloured glasses on. It's all about the possibilities and potential. It's all very exciting.

Carla Miller [00:06:10]:
And then in senior roles, you're looking into things, you're responsible for things all of a sudden. So it's not your. You don't get to sit there comfortably and complain that things that need to be in place aren't in place. It's your responsibility to make things happen even when the ideal situation is not in place. So I describe it as you lift up rocks, you look underneath them and you very quickly drop them and wish that you had not turned over that rock. So you basically slide quite quickly into the Valley of Doom. And it doesn't feel very happy in the Valley of Doom. And a mistake would be to think that this is going to last forever, that you are never going to feel positive about your job, that you definitely made the wrong decision.

Carla Miller [00:06:53]:
Instead, it's recognizing that as quickly as you fell into that Valley of Doom, you will actually come out again as well. As soon as you start seeing some things that you can take action on, some impact that you can make, some ways in which you can improve things, you will start to rebuild your confidence in your role and in your decision of taking that job and you will actually quite quickly come out of that Valley of Doom. How do you know if you're in the Valley of Doom or you just chose the wrong job? If you stay there a really long time and if you think, do you know what? Culturally this place doesn't feel aligned with me, or there really is a complete nightmare of a boss or chief exec and I just don't think long term I can do that, then you might have chosen the wrong role potentially. Although let's just remember we make the best decision we can at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we did not have that knowledge at the time when we made that decision. Okay, so to recap things to avoid over promising or agreeing with things that you don't know enough about yet, thinking that you know best without having all the information, thinking you have imposter syndrome and there's something wrong with you, if you're doubting yourself and thinking that that valley of doom is going to last forever, let's move on to the more positive stuff, which is things that you can do to make sure you're really acing your new leadership. The first thing you can do, and this is something I do with all my coaching clients, is to think about what kind of leader do you want to be in that organization? So what's important to you as a leader? What inspires you as a leader? How do you want to show up? And how would you like others to describe you? So how would you like your new team, your peers, your line manager, your chief exec, if that's not your line manager to describe you when you're not in the room, to think about you? We want to be intentional about that because then we will show up in that way. And this is something I've talked about a lot on the podcast.

Carla Miller [00:08:55]:
So think about what kind of leader do you want to be? And just doing that before you start gives you some sense of agency as well. Some sense of, yeah, I'm going into this with a little bit of more control because there's a lot of uncertainty there when you go into a new job. Because I've thought about how I want to show up, what kind of leader I want to be. The second thing that you want to do is to get aligned with your new line manager on your objectives. So what I see happening quite often in senior roles is there are no objectives. The gist of it is, well, you're senior now, you should be able to create your own objectives, look at the strategic plan, you'll be fine. Actually, it's really important to have objectives in those first three to six months, at least the first year, because what it does is make sure that you and your line manager are on the same page when it comes to what success looks like and what the priorities are within the things that you're responsible for. I had a friend who thought she was doing really well in her new job until she had her three month review.

Carla Miller [00:10:04]:
And it turns out what she thought success looked like was very different to what her line manager thought success looked like. And she was really shocked and surprised at that point to discover that he thought she was underperforming. She was doing her best with what she'd been given, but no one had actually sat down and said, look, this is what success looks like in this role. So if your line manager does not give you objectives, come up with your own objectives and then sit down with your line manager, say, look, this is what I think I should be focusing on in the next three to six months. What do you think? What do you feel are the priorities within this? Is there anything I've missed? Is there anything you think shouldn't be in there? And then you can have that discussion. Now a quick note. If you are a perfectionist who always sets yourself super high standards, be gentle to yourself with your objectives. You do not need to change the world in the company in the first three to six months.

Carla Miller [00:10:59]:
You're going to be doing a whole lot of listening in the first three, three months and you have no idea how quickly things happen in this organization. So do not over promise here, do not over commit. Those first three month objectives will probably be very much about understanding what's going on, reflecting, formulating your thinking, coming up with an initial plan or strategy. But you definitely don't want to be setting yourself these super tough objectives when you have no idea whether or not you're going to be able to deliver on them. Now in senior roles, there's also one other thing that it's important to be aligned with your manager on and this is the appetite for change in the organisation. And when I was placing senior leaders, this is where I saw lots of things fall apart. What do I mean by this? So you interviewed for a role and they really like that you bring a different approach and perspective. They were very flattering about that at interview, interview they talked about wanting to create change.

Carla Miller [00:12:06]:
So you go in thinking, great, I'm going to create change. There's appetite for that, there's alignment in that. And yet what happens is you get pushback from everywhere, including the very people that hired you to create this change, and you end up very confused. I have seen that numerous times. I have lived that more than once as well. So you want to get really explicitly from your line manager what the appetite for change is. So is this about holding the ship steady? Is this about gradual growth? Is this about tackling a lot of issues or changing the culture? You want to really listen to them and reflect back to them what you heard so that you are definitely on the same page. The other thing you want to do is to understand how realistic are they about change.

Carla Miller [00:13:03]:
So they say they want to change the culture, but to do that the senior leadership team would need to change how they show up. Are they actually willing to do that? Unfortunately, in a lot of organisations they're not. They want the change. They don't want the pain, the discomfort that comes with that change. Or at least they don't want it for them. They don't mind if everybody else has to go through culture change. But not all senior leadership teams are committed to change as much as it appeared that they were when they wrote the job advert, the job description when they did the interview. Because change is hard.

Carla Miller [00:13:40]:
It's a normal human reaction. Okay, next thing to do, work out the unspoken dynamics. So there are dynamics going on in every workplace within your team, between your team, another team, within the rest of the senior leadership team or the rest of your peers, between your line manager and the chief exec or the board or trustees. There's a lot of different relationships going on there and there will be tensions in some of those relationships. Don't blunder into those. Sit back and watch. Watch and analyse. I'm not saying never talk in meetings, but you definitely want to be doing more listening than talking at first.

Carla Miller [00:14:24]:
Just notice, read the room, notice how people talk to each other, how people talk about each other. Be a bit careful about who you trust until you really know what's going on. So you might be having some first impressions that are a bit alarming to you. Think really carefully about who you share those first impressions with because you don't know what those dynamics are, but you definitely want to spend some time reflecting on that. Don't get so busy in the doing and the day to day that you're not spending time noticing the different dynamics. You're also going to want to build trust with your team. That's a pretty obvious one. I'm sure that was already on your to do list.

Carla Miller [00:15:09]:
I recommend one to one conversations to do this where you get to know them as a person, but you also find out how they feel about working there. What's it like to work there, how open people are will tell you a little bit about the culture of the organisation. If everyone is quite short answers and doesn't tell you much, it's probably not traditionally been a psychologically safe environment where they can safely speak openly. Or you might have people that are telling you too much and it's very open and passionate about all the things that are wrong with the organisation. It can be a real mix there. But you want to listen in those conversations again, thank them for their honesty because that's really important and you could also ask them, you know, how can I bring the best out in you? How can we work best together? Now, this is an important time not to over promise because you may well have some people that say the way you can work best with me is to just let me get on with my own job. I know what I'm doing, I don't need line managing. I'm the expert on this.

Carla Miller [00:16:13]:
So if you just back off and let me have direct access to the chief exec or whoever else, then that's how we can work best together. Now, for a few people that might be true, but you are going to be held responsible for the things that they do. And so you need to have that conversation with them along the lines of, well, ultimately I am being held responsible and accountable for what happens in the team, including you and your work, so I am going to need oversight, but we can look at how I can best support you and take it from there. And then you can share how you like to work and how you like to manage. You can tell them a little bit about them, but don't promise to be hands off with someone when you have no idea how they're performing or whether they are experienced enough for you to be hands off with them. This is what you want to be spending your time doing over that first three to six months, particularly the first three months, is looking at the team as a whole and as individuals. How skilled are they? How experienced are they? Where are their strengths? Where are their gaps in terms of knowledge as a team? How aligned are they? Do they communicate well? Are strengths and differences understood and celebrated? Do they all seem to operate to the same set of values? Or are there tensions within the team, misunderstandings, all those complexities that go on? So you want to know how aligned are they? You want to think about how skilled are they and able to do their roles, but also you want to think about how is this team perceived by other teams and people within the organization and do my team have the skills that they need to do to succeed in that? When it comes to communication, influence, collaboration, do they have the confidence to speak up and have the conversations that need to be had? Now on that point, if you're thinking, gosh, that's an awful lot there, do go and check out our scorecard. The details are in the show notes and I would maybe do that initially and then do that again three months later and see what it's telling you about your team that allows you to look at how aligned is your team.

Carla Miller [00:18:24]:
Do they have the skills that they need and how much are they valued within the organisation. So there's some good pointers in there for you. Okay. Another thing you would like to do. Told you. Got loads of tips for you today, is to build strategic relationships. Regular listeners will have heard me talk about this as well. So you're going into a new role.

Carla Miller [00:18:47]:
You need to think about who do I need to have a good relationship with? Think about who are your stakeholders, where are the interdependencies? So who do you need to work well with in order to be good at your job? I used to be an interim fundraising director and it was always the Director of Finance and the director of programs or service delivery where I needed to have a good relationship with them because there were lots of interdependencies between my team and those two teams and therefore lots of tensions and it would always escalate and take up a lot of my time. And so what I would do is I would go in, identify who were these people and I would take them out for lunch or coffee separately and get to know them as a person, get to know how we could work best together, what they felt was working well with our teams, what wasn't working so well, because you can bet I was hearing it from my team about all the things that were wrong with the finance team, for example. But I hadn't heard the other perspective, building that relationship up front. Basically saying this is an important relationship to me, really helped to build the trust. That meant I could easily navigate those difficult discussions and get our teams working better together longer term. So work out who are the people you need to have relationships with and how can you start to build those relationships now? And being new is great because you can ask all sorts of questions and people are much more open to telling you things because as far as they know, you haven't picked a side yet. So you're more receptive to what they have to say. And my final suggestion, this may not come as a surprise if you can get yourself a coach.

Carla Miller [00:20:32]:
So many organizations now, even charities and universities, will provide a coach for senior new starters. You have to ask for it quite often. It's not often readily given, but it is not a sign of weakness to ask for a coach. It's actually a sign of strength, of self, awareness, of emotional intelligence. Basically, you can kind of push your way through and try and make things work, or you can have someone who can help you smoothly navigate your way through, who is a safe space for you to talk about how you're really feeling, because there's only so much of it. Your flatmate, partner, fur baby, actual baby, wants to hear about your stress at work. So getting yourself a coach allows you to have that space to talk. It allows you to hear alternative perspectives, to talk things through, to reflect.

Carla Miller [00:21:28]:
If you're someone who likes to reflect out loud, to help you identify where your skills are, to help you feel confident, because it really can impact your confidence moving to a new organization and going through that stage of not knowing quite what you're doing. So ask your line manager if you can have some coaching. They may have some internal approved coaches or obviously I work one to one as a coach as well. And you can easily pop a call in my diary, drop me a message on LinkedIn or by email to chat about working together and what that looks like. I really would advise you go to your employer to ask them to fund it. It is very much a norm for senior leaders. So even if they don't have the budget, just asking shows that you are looking to develop yourself. And then I promised that I would give you some things to think about three months in as well.

Carla Miller [00:22:20]:
So here are three things that you can do three months in. The first is to revisit your thinking on your leadership brand now that you've got a bit more context so you know what kind of leader you want to be in general, what kind of leader does your team need you to be at this point in time? What kind of leader does your organization need you to be in order to deliver what you need to deliver? So revisit that now that you've got more context. Second thing you can do is that you can push back. You can challenge assumptions, you can challenge objectives and budget that you're not happy with. So we go in and I mean, like I say, I used to be a fundraising director. There would be a lovely great big fundraising target there to meet. And I would think, yeah, that's possible. And until I looked at what was going on in the organization and then it changed to, yeah, that's possible.

Carla Miller [00:23:13]:
If we get X, Y and Z and stop doing A, B and C. Many people don't feel like they can do that. I coach quite a lot of clients who are like, oh, I've now got this budget or these objectives or this project and I don't think it's right. But, you know, I took the job and I didn't say anything at first and now I'm stuck with it. Well, I mean, ultimately you might be stuck with it, but you're not going to know unless you Try and you were brought in as the expert in your area to do this job and if you come in and you say that isn't possible or that needs to be done differently, or we could be pushing for more, that is part of your job, to tell people what you think based on your expertise and skills and experience. So it is okay to push back to challenge assumptions. And again, this is where having the backup of a coach can be really helpful for formulating your thinking on that and having the confidence and courage to do it. And then the final thing you want to do three months in is you want to share your personal vision.

Carla Miller [00:24:17]:
So share what have you seen, what have you heard, what do you really admire and recognize is going on that's good. And also where do you want to go next? And then. And recognizing that's your personal vision, that's not the team's vision, then you want to work with your team and get your line manager on board and come up with your team vision for the future that they can collectively co create and own, which is a whole episode in itself. But one thing that's quite important to do is to be upfront at the beginning that this is your plan. Because when a new senior person comes in, everyone is worried about change. And so you're in meetings and they're sat there thinking, is she going to say something or is he going to say something that's going to make an impact to my role. If you sit there silently and just listen and they have no idea what you're doing, they will make up in their head what you're doing and that you're negatively judging them. Our minds love a vacuum and they love to fill that vacuum with negative judgments.

Carla Miller [00:25:23]:
So you don't want to sit there silently. You also, like I said earlier, don't want to launch in day two with your complete vision and say, here we go, this is where we're going. People are nervous about change, so you want to say to them, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to come in, I'm going to spend X period of time. You probably want to negotiate that period of time with your line manager to make sure it aligns with their expectations. But I'm going to spend X periods of time listening, asking, probably having some ideas of my own. I've got experiences from other organizations, but I'm not going to assume that what I've done in the past necessarily works here. This is a different organization.

Carla Miller [00:26:02]:
I want to hear from you. I'll then come up with My personal thoughts and what I've seen and what I think the future could look like. But I'd like to, as a team, co create our vision for the future so that together we can decide what kind of team do we want to be in and how do we go about achieving our objectives. What that does is it tells them what to expect, it tells them what's coming. And people find that much more reassuring than having to guess what's going on. Okay, so covered a lot of different things there. I've already recapped the things to avoid, the things to do. Think about what kind of leader you want to be.

Carla Miller [00:26:38]:
Get aligned with your new line manager on your objectives and the priorities within them. Get aligned with your line manager on the appetite for change and what people are or aren't prepared to do in order to get that change. Take some time to work out the unspoken dynamics. Start building trust with your team. Identify and build strategic relationships across the organization that will enable you to get your job done. Reflect on your team's development. How aligned are they, how skilled are they, and how valued are they? And the scorecard that Lara and I created, the impactful team scorecard, can really help you with that. And ask for a coach.

Carla Miller [00:27:18]:
Get yourself some support on this journey. And you know where I am. If your organization does not already have coaches that you can work with. And then finally three months in, revisit that personal leadership brand, like with more context. So what do your team need from you? Push back if you need to challenge assumptions, don't get stuck with things that you don't believe are possible. And finally, share your personal vision and work with your team and your line manager to co create the vision for the future. There's a lot of different things there. I'm not saying you necessarily need to do all of them.

Carla Miller [00:27:53]:
A lot of those you would have done anyway. You're a smart cookie. However, it provides hopefully a really useful checklist for you to think things through. And also just feel like you've got a little bit more of a sense of control and you know what you're doing going into that new role. If you implement one of these tips, please do send me a message. Let me know. I'd love to know that they have helped you in some way. Okay, take care.

Carla Miller [00:28:19]:
Have a great weekend.