How to Transition into a New Role

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Kirti Singh, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

Being a leader comes with acquiring many new skills. In this blog, I am taking a specific scenario to highlight some crucial preliminary skills required when you transition to a new role as a leader.

Let’s consider the following situation:

You have been promoted, and now you have to supervise a team. You have got this promotion because you are great at your work. You used to deliver your job flawlessly, ahead of time and almost always you used to come up with some unique solutions.

Now you are responsible for a team, you are excited, and all motivated to lead this team. You tell yourself that you will make it a successful team. You want to make sure that your team also performs the way you used to perform, i.e., with perfection, on time and always with some creative thinking.

As you continue to work with your team, you start noticing everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. When you have to meet a deadline, you can’t trust anyone else the way you could imagine yourself. You try to take up all the work yourself because you don’t want to make any mistakes. You do this for the first project, and you tell yourself that next time, you will plan it better.

However, every time, you end up taking most of the work for yourself. Since you have started making more than you can handle; It’s no surprise that you begin to feel exhausted. You begin to resent this new role. You begin to get less time for your personal life. Your work-life balance is totally skewed, but you rationalize it by saying that ‘with great power comes great responsibilities.’

I am sure, many of you might be able to relate with this. Either through your own experience or with the knowledge of your co-worker.

Now, let’s look back at the current scenario once again and notice, what’s missing.

Could you figure it out?

You might notice that even though your role transitioned from being a team member to a team lead but your approach towards your work remained the same. The expectations of your work changed, but your expectations for delivering the job remained the same. You are now expected to lead and to bring the best among others. Whereas you were very narrowly focusing on meeting the deadline.

“Being a leader is not about you. It’s about the people that are on your team and how you can help them be successful” – Susan Vobejda

Making a successful transition can come with acquiring new skills and by identifying your unique talent. Every new role offers new challenges. Either you can manage those challenges, or you can choose to grow with those challenges. For growth, you need to become aware of the current dynamics, your competencies, and have to emerge as a leader by finding the perfect balance between the strengths and weaknesses of your team members. Every such situation is unique because you are unique and so are your challenges. Hence, there is no magical solution which can be offered as a piece of advice. Instead, you need to become aware of the pattern in which you are involved and have to shape it desirably. Coaching can help you achieve that. A coach doesn’t give advice rather he/she works closely with you, with your unique situation and uses an awareness and strength-based model to help you master your situation.

If you’re going to grow with this new change and want to balance your personal and professional life better; schedule a free consultation with me today to discuss how I can support you through this transition.