Successful leadership transition

There comes the point in everyone’s life where he/she has to transition into a new role. If it is a role of leadership, it might be a challenging yet essential moment in your professional life. Good leadership can produce teams that meet performance goals over the next three years. It’s a sad truth that nearly half of leadership transitions fail. So how can you make this transition successful?

Here are a few tips:

Resist the urge of moving too quickly

Leaders often make the mistake of trying to change the culture and want to fix everything that isn’t working. It is crucial to be thoughtful and deliberate about the changes you want to implement. Immediate moves and new initiatives can have a negative impact. It would be best if you moved slowly to be successful in transition.

Prepare Yourself

A leader must prepare for this new transition by accepting the fact that they don’t know everything. It would help if you learned to assess to be successful. With a curious mind, they must figure out what skills or development they need and then cultivate them.

Be an effective collaborator

This can be an excellent opportunity to carve a collaborative approach. Instead of handing down edicts, help your team take the initiative. Lead them in optimizing, strategizing and working on integration with all the aspects of the business. Let them be the architects of the plan. Learn to share ownership to be successful in transition.

Praise Publicly. Discipline Privately

Offer praise publicly so that others see you acknowledge success. This also proves what you define as extraordinary and help others to model behaviour. If you have to discipline or counsel team members, do it privately to avoid embarrassing them in front of their peers.

A comprehensive view

Make sure you are aware of the five fundamental dimensions of leadership — the strategy and operation of the business or function, the corporate culture, the team, the leader themselves, and other stakeholders that need to be managed. It would be best if you had a smooth leader who can switch between the big picture and a more detailed view. You must know when to act. Transitions need to be carried out slowly and deliberately.

Shahjadi Jemim Rahman