New leaders need to assume their new responsibilities and ramp up to full capacity as quickly as possible. Their success is dependent on building new relationships with managers, teams, and other key people inside and outside the company.
The Charter Oak New Leader Transition Process helps incoming or promoted leaders make a smooth transition into a new assignment. Interviews with the team leader and team members identify concerns and opportunities. Assessments identify the leader’s strengths and the needs of all team members. Team meetings are used to position the leader and get the team focused. Coaching sessions provide tips and resources for quickly establishing solid relationships with key players and offer suggestions for accelerating performance. The process helps make a new leader’s first few months maximally effective.
Typical Process
• The New Leader Transition process starts by meeting with the leader to explain the process, learn about his/her background and aspirations, identify key stakeholders for the new position, and talk about his/her organizational goals and leadership strengths and weaknesses.
• That is followed by interviewing each stakeholder about expectations for the position, organizational issues that need attention, the strengths they see this person bringing to the role, and the development needs that he/she has to be conscious of in order to succeed.
• An initial report is presented to the leader based on the stakeholder interviews.
• After the initial feedback, the leader and his/her team meet to discuss the leader’s vision for the organization, the team members’ questions and concerns as identified through the interviews, operating principles for the team, and best ways to work together which often includes the MBTI or other tools for understanding and valuing differences.
• After the team meeting, monthly coaching sessions are typically held for 4-6 months to help the leader address the issues that surfaced in the team meeting. The coaching usually focuses on recent occurrences or upcoming events with an emphasis on building the relationships that will make this person a successful leader. After that, the coaching typically tapers off to bi-monthly or quarterly sessions.
• Coaching may also focus on leading high performing teams, effective communications, organization alignment, change management, or other topics as they become relevant. As these needs surface, additional assessments such as the L4 Leadership Style Assessment, the Preferred Work Style Inventory, or the FIRO-B may be used.
• Approximately 12-18 months after that, follow-up interviews are conducted to measure progress and identify if additional work is needed.
• Sometimes the coaching doesn’t go much past the initial study and team meeting, but in many cases it has expanded into work with the leader’s team regarding:
• team members’ development,
• team effectiveness,
• or organization alignment.
On occasion it has also involved work with the leader’s manager. If these types of work make sense, a proposal will be submitted at each juncture so the client can decide how far the work will go.