One day you're responsible for your own work and performance. The next, you're responsible for your own work, your team's work, strategic planning, people development, and whatever else might be thrown at you.
This is one of your first challenges as a new leader - how do you ditch the work that you were responsible for as a team member to make room for the work you now have to do as leader?
It is fine if you have moved to manage a different team. There will usually be a simple handover to those in your old team. But what if you have been promoted to lead your existing team. What happens to the work you’ve always done?
Even if you can recruit somebody to backfill your position, that will take weeks, if not months. What is more, whoever comes in will need to be trained in what you do. They will also have to get familiar with the team, build relationships and understand how the team fits into the organisation. If they are an external hire, it will take them even longer to start being productive.
It will certainly be a while before they operate at the level of the last post-holder. After all, they we so good they got promoted!
So, it looks like you have to keep doing the doing, while also doing the leading. And, you need to maintain the same quality and output in both areas.
No wonder so many new leaders feel completely overwhelmed in their first year.
The Instinctive solution
Two of the things that new leaders and managers are least prepared for are delegating and managing former teammates.
So, the last thing you feel like you can do is simply offload your work on to somebody else. If you try, they are bound to resist, resent it or refuse. And that causes you even more problems.
So, instinctively, you feel like you have to shoulder the extra load and get on with it. After all, this is why you are being paid more than you were isn’t; to do more work?
Actually, no.
You are being paid more to lead, which we’ll come on to below. But if you you do take the ‘shoulder the extra load’ approach, there are some things you can do to help yourself. For example, you can:
try to establish clear boundaries between your own work and the time you spend on leading
block out specific time periods in your diary to protect time for both responsibilities
develop a transition timeline to gradually shift from doing to leading
set realistic expectations with your own manager about the transition period.
But these are just tactics, you need to think differently.
The leader’s solution
As a leader you need to think strategically.
Ask yourself: is there a way to manage this situation in a way that strengthens the team, the individuals in the team and my own position?
I think there is. Here is an approach you can try.
Re-evaluate the team’s workload
As a new leader, you are in a great position to re-evaluate what your team does, so that it is doing the things it needs to do and not doing what is unnecessary. Here is how:
Start by building an inventory of all team’s activities. Bring your team members into this discussion early and get them to list all the things they do, however small.
Make it clear that this is not about checking up on what they do, or changing everything as soon as you come in as leader. It is about making it easier for you all to do the right things.
Classify the activities in some way according to your team’s mandate. You might divide activities according to whether they are ‘core’ or ‘non-core’, or you can use a more granular approach like ‘critical’, ‘important’, ‘nice to do’, ‘unnecessary’.
Think also about whether there is work your team does that needs to be done, but which doesn’t fit naturally in your team. Again, consult the team on this.
You should also consider if there is work that you don’t currently do that you should be doing as a team. Is there work that sits better in your team than another team? Is there work that isn’t getting done at all but would be beneficial to do?
Next, based on the outputs from the steps above, list all the activities under the headings: Stop, Start, Continue - i.e. activities you should stop doing, activities you should start doing and activities you should continue doing.
This then gives you a pathway forward to ensure that the team is doing more of the right things and none of the unnecessary things.
So how does this help you? Is it not adding to your workload?
Obviously, this is a strategy that will take a while for you to implement. You will probably need to get the agreement of your boss and you will need to hone up your influencing skills to get other teams to take on work that doesn’t belong with you.
But, and this is the key point, you should be able to gain some quick wins by cutting out the work that falls into the ‘Stop’ category. And that, coupled with the approach below, will help you lift the load that has fallen on your shoulders.
Identify the strengths and aspirations of your team members
This is where you start to be a real people leader.
You’ll know from own experience that you are energised to do some kinds of work more than others. Typically this is the work that is interesting, novel or challenging, work that aligns with your strengths or work that enables you to gain experience that will help you develop in your career. This is the work that motivates you and gives you a sense of purpose.
So, now you need to find out what the energising work is for each individual in your team. Talk to them about what their career goals are, what kinds of work they prefer, what motivates them, what their strengths are, what their preferences are for collaboration or solo work.
I think of this as the motivational data. These are the core data that a people managers needs in order to be able create and lead a successful team.
And these are the factors that will enable you to allocate work in a way that gets it delivered successfully and keeps your team members motivated.
Re-align the workload
So, with this information you can now start delegating your own ‘doing’ work in a way that will hopefully not meet with resistance or resentment.
The fact is, that as a top performer who got promoted, you were probably doing some of the more important and interesting team work anyway. So the work you want to offload has ‘value’ to others.
Now, you can work out which particular activities will sit better with which team members, having regard to the motivational data you have uncovered.
There will still be a need to make some close calls and maybe tough decisions, but if you can explain to people why you think this or that is the right thing for them to do, you will find it much easier to take your first steps as a delegator.
So, with this approach, you have worked out how to eliminate the low value work and you have a solid basis for redistributing what is left in a way that, as far as possible, means people can be doing work that they find interesting and motivating.
You’re on you way to doing the real leading that you have been hired for and, perhaps more importantly you have strengthened the team’s role and built some of the foundations for the continued development of a high functioning team.
Let me know your thoughts or questions in the comments.
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