How to Boost Your Confidence and Self-Esteem Daily
June 19, 2024
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Getting a promotion is intoxicating. It’s a high filled with joy, accomplishment, and personal pride. While all those feelings are good, they do nothing to properly prepare you for what’s coming next.
Whether you got promoted because of previous performance, out of necessity, as a retention tool, or because you exemplified excellent leadership skills, the responsibility of leading other people is your new reality. Unfortunately, the odds of success aren’t in your favor.
Research shows:
The deck is stacked against you, so what do you do next? Before you have your first team meeting or one-on-one, it’s essential to come to terms with a critical leadership principle:
If you aren't committed to acquiring wisdom, you shouldn't lead others.
Wayne Dyer said that when you squeeze an orange, what comes out is orange juice. When you get squeezed, whatever comes out is what is inside of you. No one, including your new team members, will ask you to be perfect or to have all the answers. However, they should expect you to be a student of leadership. To actively acquire knowledge, then comprehend it so it becomes applicable (wisdom).
After interviewing hundreds of the best leaders on the planet and studying and coaching them for the last ten years, I unequivocally see that the best leaders are students of leadership.
The best leaders are students of leadership
It doesn’t matter their age, experience, or the success they have had; the best leaders don’t believe they have arrived, but they are arriving. They don’t think they are finished learning but are constantly finishing. In maybe ways, the longer you lead, the more you realize, the less you know.
Getting on the correct path from individual contributor to leader isn’t easy. If anyone tells you it is, they are lying. Being responsible for the actions, behaviors, and outcomes of other people isn’t for the faint of heart.
Effective leadership requires casting vision, building relationships based on trust, coaching, and massive amounts of accountability. If that sounds easy, it isn’t. However, just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not unbelievably rewarding and worth it.
Just because leadership is hard doesn't mean it's not unbelievably rewarding and worth it.
If you are looking for some practical steps or ideas to help you, here are three ideas to consider:
Remember, the best leaders are students of leadership. However, growth doesn’t happen by accident. Being intentional about your development will be a significant reason for your success. Leadership is a journey, not a destination, so building a leadership growth plan for yourself will hold you accountable and keep you focused.
Leadership is a journey, not a destination
A growth plan should include the following:
At the end of the day, leadership is a one-on-one game, not a one-on-many game. You are indeed leading a group of people to achieve a common goal, but starting with building bonds of mutual trust is the name of the game to deliver sustainable results. A helpful mindset for a new leader is to look at each team member and think of a trust gauge instead of seeing their face.
Is the gauge empty, medium, or full? The more individual relationships that have a full trust gauge, the easier it will be to coach, have difficult conversations, and challenge them to higher performance levels.
It’s essential to remember that your job is not to be friends with your team members; your job is to lead them to higher levels of excellence. If a friendship happens, great. But it cannot be a primary goal. Being respected is much more important than being liked.
High levels of accountability are the center of every successful leader and team. However, it’s impossible to have accountability without clear standards. Imagine you were driving down the highway and got pulled over by a police officer for speeding, yet there was no posted speed limit. You would be outraged.
Unfortunately, too many managers make assumptions about the clarity of standards and get frustrated when people do live up to them. In a virtual workshop for the Accelerate Leadership program, I taught an incredible principle:
Leaders get what they emphasize, and what they tolerate, they encourage.
Part of your job as a leader is establishing clear behavior standards that drive performance. These are things like core values, processes, and procedures.
There are many other ideas to consider, such as having a communication cadence, organization, and elite time management. All of those are essential but not as important as a growth plan, building trust, and setting performance standards.
If you recently got a promotion, there is nothing wrong with celebrating your accomplishment. However, now the real work begins. The first year or two will be challenging. But like any skill, through deliberate practice, you will improve. And remember, always be a student of leadership.
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About the Author John Eades is the CEO of LearnLoft, and creator of the Accelerate Leadership Program. He was named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices. John is also the author of Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success. You can follow him on Instagram @johngeades.
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