A new Team Leader making assumptions about themselves, other people, or circumstances, can create a high-risk approach to performance management.

• Division, possibly to the point of creating a toxic work culture¹
• Hard feelings, which foster discontent and complacency
• Loss of motivation, feeling there’s no point
• Team breakdown, preventing dialogue and innovation
• Decreased productivity (preventing forward movement)
• Retention issues (great employees might leave!)

Don’t hire your Team Leaders based only on their resume! Set them up for SUCCESS; include the FIREPOWER 90-day Onboarding plan in your hiring strategies.  Your team will be your BEST competitive advantage. We are your dedicated partner in creating this successful, long-term working relationship with new team leaders from day one.

Maria Forbes, Founder of FIREPOWER Teams and FIREPOWER Onboarding Concierge.

The human condition can be a great source of vulnerability and connection to those we lead. But the wrong approach can be destructive to the visions leaders cast and the strategies they seek to execute.

Consider a recent Harvard Business Review² article that identifies four personality traits of leaders and the specific impacts on strategy:

The Overconfident, Chronically Certain Leader

An overconfident, chronically certain leader tends to overpromise and develop unrealistic strategies. This creates unnecessary anxiety for the people charged with their execution

The Impulsive Leader

We’ve all seen the leader with “shiny object syndrome.” They can’t resist the titillation of a new idea or the latest fad. They crave the adrenaline rush of pioneering what’s not been done. In the process, they exhaust their organization, overcommit resources, and overpromise to customers and shareholders.

The Rigidly Controlling Leader

Some leaders create a highly controlled environment. Everything — and everyone — works in a prescribed way. They struggle to accommodate novel or nontraditional views. This silences the voices of employees, who in turn produce low-risk, barely incremental strategies in order to avoid their leader’s exacting critique. They retreat from coming forward with creative ideas, making change much slower, if not impossible.

The Insecure Leader

While every leader faces a crisis of confidence at some point, some leaders live with a paralyzing sense of self-doubt. They worry about what others think of them and anxiously expect to fall short. Many find ways of masking these deeper feelings with a confident game face and measured demeanor. Some are overly accommodating and nice. These leaders have a particularly noxious effect on strategy. They’re often taken advantage of by more aggressive leaders who cajole them into saying yes to every idea they’re offered.

Credits:
1 – Padraig Blog – July 26, 2021
2 – HBR Blog – September 21, 2021