Transitioning into a Leadership Role: Tool #1 Communicate with respect and authority

Congratulations! You have just been appointed to a management role.

That means your good work as an employee or supervisor has been seen and acknowledged, something all humans long to experience.

But wait – being a good manager is not the same thing as being a good employee. A good manager knows that success involves resourcing the team to do their jobs. A successful transition into leadership requires focused attention and behaviours that communicate respect and authority, while developing the capacity of the team.

This article is the first of a series covering four managerial skill sets to master for competent management.

The four managerial skill sets are:

a) Communicate with respect and authority
b) Motive towards unity of thought
c) Inspire a culture of emotional safety
d) Coach to build team capacity

This article focuses on the first area:

A. Communicate with respect and authority:

When you first move up into a managerial role, you know you need to win the team’s trust and ensure they resect your authority. This requires making a good impression, giving clear direction and winning their affection – sometimes called the “know/like/trust” factor. But there is a trap: lack of confidence can lead to being overly directive and harsh, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, give the impression you are weak and easily influenced.

To overcome this challenge, remember that a previous manager existed before you and your team has a previous experience with that person. Your team members won’t automatically switch their allegiance to you because you have the new title. Rather, they are more likely to test your boundaries to see how you will react. To communicate effectively and win their trust, it is critical to gather information from your team about what they liked or didn’t like from the previous managerial actions and what challenges they now face now in trying to do their jobs.

This requires a humble attitude of learning; one that recognizes the knowledge and experience of your team, helping them to feel validated and listened to. At the same time, asking them individually about their experience with the previous manager will reveal strengths you can build upon, and identify past managerial gaps you can close to leverage your credibility as the new manager.

Once you have some specifics from these one-to-one conversations, you can move to confident action, since confidence is a must-have for competent management. Ben Brearly explains this dynamic in his article “How a lack of confidence shows in your Leadership”. According to Ben Brearly, slight changes to how you speak can make a big difference in how your confidence is perceived. He suggests taking out “downplay” words that cause others to doubt your leadership. Instead, practice using clear, and respectful phrases and directives that communicate strength and confidence.

Here are some examples:

In the above table, the strong responses demonstrate authority and communicate a clear direction while identifying a desired outcome. Using this type of confidence speech will certainly show you as confident and clear. But take care not to swing into acting too directive or making all your comments strong. If you come across as arrogant, rude, dismissive or authoritarian, your credibility with the team will also suffer. The skill set shift of going from an employee to a manager, is moving from “being the authority” to “building capacity”. As you seek out and thoughtfully consider the experience of others rather than assuming you need to have all the answers, your team members know/like/trust meter for you will increase. Team members don’t want to be wowed by your intelligent answers, they want to be validated and heard by you.

Consider these examples:

From your one-on-one research with team members, you will identify one quick win problem the team could solve. This is an excellent opportunity to get a credibility boost. It works like this. You suggest team members seemed most frequently frustrated by a particular issue. Ask if they agree that this is a key frustration, then have them to come up with some potential solutions. Using a follow-up tool like R.A.C.I. to ensure there is proper workflow and follow up will strengthen your authority to lead . Team willingness to engage with this process increases when you first acknowledge and build on any known strengths/actions you learned about from the previous manager. Then identify the gap and have the team propose a solution.

The following example shows how to get the team to address a problem of rework between shifts.

Example: Rework between shifts issue

Manager: “It seems to me there is a lot of tension around rework between shifts. If shift change-over could happen without frustration over rework, what would you say is the #1 problem that needs to be solved?”

Team member: “We just keep blaming and accusing the other shift, but we haven’t tested the possible reasons why there is so much rework. Each shift could brainstorm together and come up with three possibilities to test.”

Manager: “That’s a great idea. How would you go about getting those three possibilities from the other team members?”

Team member: “I’ll just ask them. We can come up with a way to test each idea, then let you know what we discovered in the process.”

Manager: “Perfect. As you go through this process, I would like you to use the questions in the R.A.C.I. model workflow. We can go over them during our weekly meeting, but here is the overview:”

• Responsible – who will be responsible for what?
• Accountable – who is accountable for the result and how will that be communicated?
• Consulted – who needs to be consulted to get the rework issues defined and to generate possible solutions?
• Informed – who needs to be informed and when?

Recap:

Your first order of business as a new manager is to build confidence in your new managerial role by communicating with respect and authority. Look to the team to understand what worked and what didn’t with the past manager and for a quick win, identify a common frustration you could help them solve.

Use language that is neither too weak nor too directive, so your team members sense your authority while feeling free to speak and be validated.

Follow up with a tool that can help the team move to a new level of communication or productivity, such as the R.A.C.I. chart. Your use of a tool that you carefully walk through in several conversations and meetings demonstrates authority, builds the capacity of the team, and helps track decisions and progress.

The next article will focus on developing your capacity to lead your team towards unity of thought, using what if questions to imagine a desired outcome!