Executive Onboarding Success Strategy: Phase III

As an executive in transition, a world of new possibilities opens up when you walk in the door of your new organization on the first day. You sold yourself to your new organization, and they hold high expectations for what you can bring to your new role. You have most likely made such a transition before and have some sense of how you will begin.

That said, there are so many unknowns in a new job, and you realize that you have a steep learning curve ahead of you. You may also be aware of research that reveals that close to 50% of new executives fail within their first 18 months. While you know that you can do it – the stakes are high. And if you are honest, you’d admit there’s some doubt creeping in. The way to fully leverage your experience and quell such doubts is to be strategic in your onboarding process.

Taking a Strategic Approach to Executive Onboarding

In my last three posts, I have been sharing a strategic and proven approach supporting the long-term success of executives making a transition into a new role. These posts highlight:

This post will explore how you can leverage those steps to deliver value in your role. Clearly, you begin delivering value during their early time in a new position. However, you will be unable to generate significant value until you have crystal clarity on other’s expectations, build trust with others, solidify alignment and build your team.

Ramping Up Execution

If you have been strategic in the first few months of your new position, you will have created a robust onboarding dashboard that outlines:

Clear expectations that your boss and senior leadership hold for your impact.
Key projects that will assist you in generating some early wins to meet those expectations.
What needs to happen to foster high-performance on your team and for each direct report.
Your learning plan for getting to know the business and developing further as a leader.

Through numerous conversations with your boss, key stakeholders, and your team, you have learned a ton. And in those conversations, you have made commitments that, when fulfilled, promise to deliver substantial value.

Now it’s time to execute, delegate and coach so that you deliver on the commitments you have made. At this point, the path forward to fulfilling the promise the organization saw in you is becoming clear. You have more days when you feel the momentum that comes with transforming your team’s efforts to achieve meaningful results. While this stage can be an exciting time, it is also a dangerous one for a new executive.

This danger can come because most executives are action-oriented. And the first two to three months in your new role likely have been frustrating because of the time it has taken to learn, develop relationships and assess your team. Now that you are spending more and more time executing your vision and priorities, it is easy to lose touch with learning the business’s nuances and culture. Additionally, you are still shoring trust in your key relationships. This is why creating feedback loops is so essential.

Creating Feedback Loops

As you form commitments with your boss, your team, and critical stakeholders, part of those commitments must include scheduling check-in conversations. These check-ins better ensure that you will exceed expectations, strengthen trust in your relationships and work in alignment with the organization’s culture.

Such conversations must consist of:

Exploring the status of existing obligations.
Assessing you and your team’s effectiveness in producing high-quality results.
Understanding how to deepen trust and open communication within the relationship.

Activating these feedback loops and conversations demonstrates you care and helps you avoid significant misunderstandings and breakdowns that can derail your success. Others will see you are attentive to their concerns, and the feedback you receive will aid you in producing outstanding results.

Celebrating and Innovating

As you generate some early wins, make sure you take the time to celebrate with those who supported the outcomes. Also, take time to do project post-mortems with your team in service to continuous improvement. Too often, I see executives let projects fizzle out and miss the opportunity to lift their team after a success. And because we fail to debrief a project, we miss a huge opportunity to increase performance.

When you take the time to celebrate and assess what you did to achieve a result, you reinforce success and raise your team’s game. Others will appreciate your validation and inclusion in conversations that foster innovation. And because few leaders take the time to have such discussions, you will set yourself apart and be seen as a leader who cares. Because of this, you will inspire others around you to bring more of themselves forward in support of your priorities.

Conclusion

Transitioning into a new executive role can initially be very daunting. Most describe the experience as ‘feeding from a firehose.’ However, as I noted several times in this series, your first months in a role are a huge opportunity. During this time, you receive more latitude than you will ever have to understand what others expect, build strong relationships, generate alignment, and foster high-quality execution.

If you found this blog series helpful, then consider setting up an onboarding success call with me. I promise that you will walk away with several clear strategies that will support your long-term success. To learn more about this call and to schedule yours, follow this link.