The Executive Onboarding Success Strategy: Phase I

In my last post, I shared the two master keys that vastly increase the likelihood of success for any executive transitioning into a new role. One of those master keys is having the onboarding executive deploy a proven strategy that fully leverages their first six to nine months to secure long-term success. There are four key elements or stages to a sound onboarding strategy that involves:

1. Setting the Stage for Success
2. Building Rock Solid Alignment
3. Exceeding Expectations
4. Strengthening Executive Presence

In this post, I will review the first stage – Setting the Stage for Success in your new role. This stage emphasizes shoring your confidence, achieving clarity and sharpening your focus as you step into your new position.

Confidence is Your Foundation for Success

The number one thing to bring to work your first day is your confidence. Clearly, you would not have been hired or promoted if you did not have the expertise and business acumen to succeed. You also bring years of success and experience from other executive roles. That said, as you enter this new opportunity, you will be facing many unknowns and will likely be feeding from a firehose for a number of months.

As you prepare to enter your new role, a decisive move is to develop a vision for your next leap in leadership and the quality of impact you want to have as you take your new seat. I recommend that my clients create a narrative of what it will look like and feel like to be massively successful in their new role. The vision narrative should include:

• The leadership qualities you most want to engage
• The purpose that drives your leadership
• The most important values you want to use to direct your execution
• The key measures of accomplishment you want to achieve in your new role.

This exercise is akin to writing a letter to your future self. Research from Oxford and Cambridge suggests that your ability to imagine details about a bright future dramatically vividly increases your energy and momentum, leading to constructive action in the present. To gain more insights on this exercise, read this article in Forbes.

Gain Crystal Clarity Around Your New Boss’s Expectations

Indeed, as you walk in your first day, you likely have some idea of what your boss’s and others’ expectations are of you. That said, there are levels of clarity! As I noted in my last post, your first three to six months offer a grace period to ask all the questions you need to gain clarity. So don’t lose this opportunity!   

Additionally, while your primary focus and measures of success may be clear, your boss and other senior leaders will have their private criteria for how you will achieve them. Here are a few questions that you can use to flush out those hidden expectations:

• What has to happen for you to know I am adding value to my role and the organization?
• What are the most important ways our team serves you, the organization, our clients, your team, etc.?
• What challenges have you had with my team, and what do you believe my team has to address to overcome those challenges?
• How do you most like to be kept apprised of progress?
• What are the most important things I can do to foster trust with you?

Again, you have much room to ask such questions as you start your new role. Asking these and similar questions can go a long way to generate the clarity necessary to be confident in your execution.

Sharpen Your Focus By Creating an Onboarding Dashboard

“When people know they have a process in place to handle any situation, they are more relaxed. When they’re relaxed, everything improves. More gets done, with less effort, and a host of other wonderful side effects emerge that add to the outcomes of their efforts and the quality of their life.”

David Allen, Author of “Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress Free Productivity”

Entering a new job brings many things up for us. Because we are in a new situation, it is natural to feel a bit overwhelmed at times. This potential for feeling overwhelmed is why creating an onboarding dashboard is vital when transitioning to a new role.

As the name suggests, a dashboard is a 10,000-foot view that helps you navigate expectations effectively. Once you develop your “Onboarding Dashboard,” you can then articulate the projects and project plans that will aid you in creating maximum value through your role. The dashboard will also help you to delegate some of these projects to the appropriate direct report. Finally, the dashboard can provide a way to have powerful conversations that will lead to shared commitments with senior leadership that create maximum value.  

At a minimum, your onboarding dashboard should include:

• Your new organization’s mission, values, and priorities.
• The primary focus of your role and how it aligns with the items above.
• Your goals for the first six months that integrate the expectations that the board, your boss, and other senior leaders have of you. 
• The key relationships you must develop to meet these expectations.
• The vision you have for your team and an assessment of its current state against that vision.
• Your agenda for learning the business and for deepening your impact as a leader in your new role.
• Considering how you will maintain a healthy level of self-care and ensure your new job does not infringe on other vital areas in your life.

Conclusion

You must realize that you will never have the opportunity again to take advantage of the first six to nine months in a new role. This ‘fresh start’ affords you the chance to frame your long-term impact and offers a unique opportunity to grow in your capacity to lead.  

During this phase, you can ask almost any question and get away with it, have the opportunity to start on the right foot in your most critical relationships, and work with your team to create something special! This is why the initial stage of your transition must begin by doing things that set the stage for building alignment with others. The goal of this stage is to galvanize your confidence, clarity, and focus. Once you have done that, you can move to the next step, “Building Rock Solid Alignment.”