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Train managers how to give feedback.

Managers need to learn how to have candid conversations with their employees about their performance and potential.

Provide development for ALL employees.

Without trust, employees won’t level with you—at best, you’ll learn either non-truths or part truths.

The best way to start building trust to take the time and meet as many individual contributors as you can as soon as you can.

Many leaders see their role as directing and giving information, rather than gathering.  There is pressure to “come up with the answer” quickly or risk looking weak.  Too many new leaders believe they’re expected to know the answer without input or guidance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Doing this correctly takes time—but less than you might think.

Later on my first day at Intralinks, I began arranging meetings with individual contributors. That’s where my learning really began. Over the next few weeks I met with over 60 individual contributors. Not only did I learn a lot, but I convinced them that I cared what they thought and could be trusted with the truth.

Instead of just laying this out in an all-hands meeting, I began laying out the plan in one-on-one meetings in which I talked about how each individual’s feedback had helped guide my thinking.

None of this could have happened without building the trust of the team. New leaders must remember that many of the best insights on how to fix a company lie with employees further down the org chart. Creating a trusting, honest dialogue with these key personnel should be every new leader’s top priority.

Negotiating or catering to the demands of someone does nothing to change their behavior over the long-term and only works against you.

3. Set and maintain boundaries

Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, but that doesn’t mean you should be a doormat for them.

4. Seek help if needed

Don’t hesitate to ask your manager to help address the problem.

Teachers, when looking over your lesson plans, ask, “Can this lesson be executed without kids?”  I know this sounds laughable, but there are such lessons.  Take, for example, the following lesson: Teacher plans the lesson Teacher dictates expectations Teacher lectures Teacher tells students what to write down Teacher gives kids worksheets to do at home (maybe parents do them..?) Teacher grades all worksheets

We acknowledge and accept that anger when it appears.

Then we simply recognize that the anger is temporary.

The difficulty for leaders, and for us, is that many significant challenges are ambiguous.

Leadership is turning ambiguity into measurable action steps, translating what we fear into what we can do.

Leadership is turning ambiguity into measurable action steps, translating what we fear into what we can do.