CHAPTER 3
Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader
Introduction
Any person can improve his or her leadership effectiveness in part because leadership involves skills, and
skills can be practiced and developed. Another advantage of looking at leadership skills is that most people
are less defensive about deficits in skills (which can be improved) than they are about suggested deficits in,
say, personality. At the end of each of the four parts of this book, we present a chapter about leadership skills
that seem particularly relevant to various facets of our interactional framework. Because these skills chapters
are quite different in purpose than the other chapters in the text, their format is correspondingly different.
Specifically, they do not include the same closing sections found in the other chapters.
Not surprisingly, this first segment deals with some of the most fundamental, immediate, and yet in other
ways most enduring challenges you will face as a leader. Key among these challenges is continuing to learn as
a leader what you need to know now to be successful, and how to keep learning and developing throughout
your life and career. The skills in this chapter will help in that effort. By the way, it might be useful to say more
here about development planning, the last skill addressed in this chapter. Generally speaking, development
planning would be considered an advanced leadership skill because it typically involves a leader developing
her or his subordinates or followers. It is included with other skills in this introductory section so that you
might think about how to apply some of the ideas about development planning to yourself.
These are the leadership skills covered in this chapter:
• Your First 90 Days as a Leader
• Learning from Experience
• Building Technical Competence
• Building Effective Relationships with Superiors
• Building Effective Relationships with Peers
• Development Planning
Your First 90 Days as a Leader
People often find moving into a new leadership position to be a highly stressful work experience. Often these
promotions involve relocations, working for new organizations and bosses, leading new teams, and being
responsible for products or services that may be outside their immediate areas of expertise. Whether the
move is from individual contributor to first-line supervisor or into senior executive positions, the stresses and
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader 79
strains of the first 90 days are both real and acute. Although the first three months give leaders unique oppor-
tunities to make smooth transitions, paint compelling pictures of the future, and drive organizational change,
far too many new leaders stumble during this critical time period. This is unfortunate—these early activities
often are instrumental to a leader’s future success or failure. Many of these early mistakes are avoidable, and
what follows is a road map for helping people make successful transitions into new leadership positions. It
is important to note that the onboarding road map developed by Roellig and Curphy is focused on exter-
nal hires—those outside an organization who have been brought in to leadership positions.1 (See Figure 3.1.)
Some of the steps in the onboarding road map can be ignored or need to be modified for individuals who
have been promoted from within.
Before You Start: Do Your Homework
In all likelihood, people wanting to move into a leadership role with another organization have already done
a considerable amount of preparation for the interview process. Candidates should have read as much as they
can about the organization by reviewing its website, annual reports, press releases, and marketing literature.
They should also use Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and other social networking sites to set up informational
interviews with people inside the organization. These informational interviews will help candidates learn
more about the organization’s history and culture and provide additional insight about the vacant position.
Sometime during the interview process candidates should also seek answers to the following questions:
• Why is the organization looking for an outside hire for the position?
• What can make the function or team to be led more effective?
• What is currently working in the function or team to be led?
• What is currently not working in the function or team to be led?
• What about the function or team is keeping interviewers awake at night?
Once candidates have landed new positions, they should seek additional information about their new jobs as
well as set up some of the activities that need to take place during their first two weeks at work. New hires
FIGURE 3.1 New Leader Onboarding Road Map
-30 0 90
Before You The First The First Two The First Two The Third
Start Day Weeks Months Month
Prehire data Meet your boss Meet team Obtain Establish
gathering members external culture
Meet your perspectives Team off-site:
Posthire entire team Meet peers Strategy, Values
activities structure, Strategy
Meet stars and staffing Operating rhythm
Socialize Improvement
Other meetings decisions areas
Get feedback Subteam
analyses
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, 80 CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader
should check with their bosses to see if they can get copies of the results or metrics pertaining to the group
to be led, any presentations predecessors made about the group or department, budget information, contact
information for their direct reports, and so forth. They should also ask their new bosses what they need to
do to set up access cards and e-mail, office, and cell phone accounts, as being able to get into the facility and
having functional computers and phones at the start is crucial to a smooth beginning. Prior to arrival, a new
hire should also set up one-hour meetings with the boss and with the entire team on the first day and follow-
up two- to three-hour one-on-one meetings with each team member during the first two weeks on the job.
The First Day: You Get Only One Chance to Make a First
Impression
New leaders have two critical tasks the first day on the job: to meet their new boss and their new team. The
first meeting should happen in the boss’s office and be about an hour long. Here are some key topics to dis-
cuss in this meeting:
• Identifying the team’s key objectives, metrics, and important projects.
• Understanding the boss’s view of team strengths and weaknesses.
• Working through meeting schedules and communication styles. (How, when, and on what does the boss
want to be kept informed?)
• Sharing plans for the day and the next several weeks.
New hires should end the discussion by arranging a follow-up meeting with their bosses to review progress
and to ask whether weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings would be helpful.
New leaders should also meet with their entire teams the first day on the job. Depending on the size of the
team, this meeting could be held in a small conference room or it could be in a large auditorium with webcasts
or conference calls to remote sites. It usually takes new leaders about an hour to share their backgrounds,
the attributes and values they feel are important to success, expectations for themselves and employees, work
habits and preferred ways of interacting, family and recreational activities, and what they plan on doing over
the next few weeks. After sharing this information, new leaders should ask team members whether they have
any questions but should not expect many takers. Because team members do not know new leaders well, these
initial meetings tend to have more one-way communication than interactive dialogue.
The First Two Weeks: Lay the Foundation
New leaders should spend the first two weeks meeting with many people both inside and outside the team.
The key objectives for these meetings are to (1) learn as much as possible, (2) develop relationships, and (3)
determine future allies. New leaders need to be particularly mindful about what they say or write in these
meetings because they have no idea in whom they can confide. They also need to be aware of the fact that
some of the people they are meeting with, for whatever reason, are not happy about their arrival and may not
want them to succeed.
During the first two weeks, new leaders will want to have one-on-one meetings with key team members. If the
team has fewer than 15 people, new leaders should meet individually with everyone on the team; if the team
is larger, new leaders should meet one-on-one with direct reports during the first two weeks and have small
group or individual meetings with everyone else on the team sometime during the first 90 days. The one-on-
one meetings usually last from two to three hours, and some of the critical questions to ask include these:
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader 81
• What is the team member working on? New leaders should ask about major projects and where people are
spending their time because this will help identify the critical issues facing the team.
• What are the team member’s objectives? This is an important question that needs to be asked after the
previous question. Often team members spend their time and energy working on projects that are
completely unrelated to their work objectives, and new leaders need to understand what these gaps are
and why they are occurring.
• Who are the “stars” a level or two down in the organization? This question may be omitted if new leaders
are in charge of groups consisting of fewer than 15 people. But if groups are significantly larger, it is
important for new leaders to know who their top performers are. In all likelihood direct reports will
name many of the same people as stars, and these high-performing individuals can play critical roles
during the first 90 days of a new leader’s tenure.
• What are the people issues on the team? This can be a difficult question to ask—new leaders don’t want
team members to think they are asking them to disparage others. However, it is important for new
leaders to find out who is displaying inappropriate behavior or is difficult to work with. Once properly
identified, new team leaders will need to address these people issues within the first 60 days in order to
make clear who is in charge and to show what type of behavior will and will not be tolerated on the
team.
• What can the team do better? Team members’ answers to this question can help new leaders develop
ideas for improving team performance. These answers also indicate whether team members are capable
of thinking about, accepting, and driving change.
• What advice do team members have for the new leader, and what can the new leader do to help team
members? New team leaders should close their meetings with these two questions and pay particular
attention to what they can do to help their direct reports be successful. New leaders should avoid
making any immediate promises but commit to closing the loop on those requests they will or will not
fulfill sometime during the next two months.
Although new leaders should start building rapport during these one-on-one meetings, they should minimize
their personal interactions with direct reports during their first two months on the job. Business lunches and
team get-togethers are fine, but meeting with families and spouses during the first 60 days can make later
structure and staffing decisions more difficult. New leaders need to make personnel decisions with team per-
formance, not personal friendships, in mind.
During the first two weeks on the job, new leaders should also schedule one-on-one meetings with all their
peers. These meetings should last about an hour and take place in peers’ offices; this will give new leaders
opportunities to build rapport by observing office décor, diplomas, family pictures, awards, and so on. New
leaders should discuss the following issues with peers:
• Their peers’ objectives, challenges, team structure, and the like
• Their perspectives on what the new leader’s team does well and could do better
• Their perspectives on the new leader’s team members
• How to best communicate with the boss
• How issues get raised and decisions made on their boss’s team
New leaders should make it clear that they want and appreciate their peers’ help. Scheduling regular meetings
with their peers will build relationships and help new leaders stay ahead of potential conflicts or work issues.
Unlike more personal meetings with direct reports, it is perfectly acceptable to socialize with peers and their
families during the first 60 days. And because the boss will likely ask peers how the new leader is doing, meet-
ing with peers on a regular basis becomes even more important.
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader
Introduction
Any person can improve his or her leadership effectiveness in part because leadership involves skills, and
skills can be practiced and developed. Another advantage of looking at leadership skills is that most people
are less defensive about deficits in skills (which can be improved) than they are about suggested deficits in,
say, personality. At the end of each of the four parts of this book, we present a chapter about leadership skills
that seem particularly relevant to various facets of our interactional framework. Because these skills chapters
are quite different in purpose than the other chapters in the text, their format is correspondingly different.
Specifically, they do not include the same closing sections found in the other chapters.
Not surprisingly, this first segment deals with some of the most fundamental, immediate, and yet in other
ways most enduring challenges you will face as a leader. Key among these challenges is continuing to learn as
a leader what you need to know now to be successful, and how to keep learning and developing throughout
your life and career. The skills in this chapter will help in that effort. By the way, it might be useful to say more
here about development planning, the last skill addressed in this chapter. Generally speaking, development
planning would be considered an advanced leadership skill because it typically involves a leader developing
her or his subordinates or followers. It is included with other skills in this introductory section so that you
might think about how to apply some of the ideas about development planning to yourself.
These are the leadership skills covered in this chapter:
• Your First 90 Days as a Leader
• Learning from Experience
• Building Technical Competence
• Building Effective Relationships with Superiors
• Building Effective Relationships with Peers
• Development Planning
Your First 90 Days as a Leader
People often find moving into a new leadership position to be a highly stressful work experience. Often these
promotions involve relocations, working for new organizations and bosses, leading new teams, and being
responsible for products or services that may be outside their immediate areas of expertise. Whether the
move is from individual contributor to first-line supervisor or into senior executive positions, the stresses and
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader 79
strains of the first 90 days are both real and acute. Although the first three months give leaders unique oppor-
tunities to make smooth transitions, paint compelling pictures of the future, and drive organizational change,
far too many new leaders stumble during this critical time period. This is unfortunate—these early activities
often are instrumental to a leader’s future success or failure. Many of these early mistakes are avoidable, and
what follows is a road map for helping people make successful transitions into new leadership positions. It
is important to note that the onboarding road map developed by Roellig and Curphy is focused on exter-
nal hires—those outside an organization who have been brought in to leadership positions.1 (See Figure 3.1.)
Some of the steps in the onboarding road map can be ignored or need to be modified for individuals who
have been promoted from within.
Before You Start: Do Your Homework
In all likelihood, people wanting to move into a leadership role with another organization have already done
a considerable amount of preparation for the interview process. Candidates should have read as much as they
can about the organization by reviewing its website, annual reports, press releases, and marketing literature.
They should also use Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and other social networking sites to set up informational
interviews with people inside the organization. These informational interviews will help candidates learn
more about the organization’s history and culture and provide additional insight about the vacant position.
Sometime during the interview process candidates should also seek answers to the following questions:
• Why is the organization looking for an outside hire for the position?
• What can make the function or team to be led more effective?
• What is currently working in the function or team to be led?
• What is currently not working in the function or team to be led?
• What about the function or team is keeping interviewers awake at night?
Once candidates have landed new positions, they should seek additional information about their new jobs as
well as set up some of the activities that need to take place during their first two weeks at work. New hires
FIGURE 3.1 New Leader Onboarding Road Map
-30 0 90
Before You The First The First Two The First Two The Third
Start Day Weeks Months Month
Prehire data Meet your boss Meet team Obtain Establish
gathering members external culture
Meet your perspectives Team off-site:
Posthire entire team Meet peers Strategy, Values
activities structure, Strategy
Meet stars and staffing Operating rhythm
Socialize Improvement
Other meetings decisions areas
Get feedback Subteam
analyses
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, 80 CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader
should check with their bosses to see if they can get copies of the results or metrics pertaining to the group
to be led, any presentations predecessors made about the group or department, budget information, contact
information for their direct reports, and so forth. They should also ask their new bosses what they need to
do to set up access cards and e-mail, office, and cell phone accounts, as being able to get into the facility and
having functional computers and phones at the start is crucial to a smooth beginning. Prior to arrival, a new
hire should also set up one-hour meetings with the boss and with the entire team on the first day and follow-
up two- to three-hour one-on-one meetings with each team member during the first two weeks on the job.
The First Day: You Get Only One Chance to Make a First
Impression
New leaders have two critical tasks the first day on the job: to meet their new boss and their new team. The
first meeting should happen in the boss’s office and be about an hour long. Here are some key topics to dis-
cuss in this meeting:
• Identifying the team’s key objectives, metrics, and important projects.
• Understanding the boss’s view of team strengths and weaknesses.
• Working through meeting schedules and communication styles. (How, when, and on what does the boss
want to be kept informed?)
• Sharing plans for the day and the next several weeks.
New hires should end the discussion by arranging a follow-up meeting with their bosses to review progress
and to ask whether weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings would be helpful.
New leaders should also meet with their entire teams the first day on the job. Depending on the size of the
team, this meeting could be held in a small conference room or it could be in a large auditorium with webcasts
or conference calls to remote sites. It usually takes new leaders about an hour to share their backgrounds,
the attributes and values they feel are important to success, expectations for themselves and employees, work
habits and preferred ways of interacting, family and recreational activities, and what they plan on doing over
the next few weeks. After sharing this information, new leaders should ask team members whether they have
any questions but should not expect many takers. Because team members do not know new leaders well, these
initial meetings tend to have more one-way communication than interactive dialogue.
The First Two Weeks: Lay the Foundation
New leaders should spend the first two weeks meeting with many people both inside and outside the team.
The key objectives for these meetings are to (1) learn as much as possible, (2) develop relationships, and (3)
determine future allies. New leaders need to be particularly mindful about what they say or write in these
meetings because they have no idea in whom they can confide. They also need to be aware of the fact that
some of the people they are meeting with, for whatever reason, are not happy about their arrival and may not
want them to succeed.
During the first two weeks, new leaders will want to have one-on-one meetings with key team members. If the
team has fewer than 15 people, new leaders should meet individually with everyone on the team; if the team
is larger, new leaders should meet one-on-one with direct reports during the first two weeks and have small
group or individual meetings with everyone else on the team sometime during the first 90 days. The one-on-
one meetings usually last from two to three hours, and some of the critical questions to ask include these:
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
, CHAPTER 3: Skills for Developing Yourself as a Leader 81
• What is the team member working on? New leaders should ask about major projects and where people are
spending their time because this will help identify the critical issues facing the team.
• What are the team member’s objectives? This is an important question that needs to be asked after the
previous question. Often team members spend their time and energy working on projects that are
completely unrelated to their work objectives, and new leaders need to understand what these gaps are
and why they are occurring.
• Who are the “stars” a level or two down in the organization? This question may be omitted if new leaders
are in charge of groups consisting of fewer than 15 people. But if groups are significantly larger, it is
important for new leaders to know who their top performers are. In all likelihood direct reports will
name many of the same people as stars, and these high-performing individuals can play critical roles
during the first 90 days of a new leader’s tenure.
• What are the people issues on the team? This can be a difficult question to ask—new leaders don’t want
team members to think they are asking them to disparage others. However, it is important for new
leaders to find out who is displaying inappropriate behavior or is difficult to work with. Once properly
identified, new team leaders will need to address these people issues within the first 60 days in order to
make clear who is in charge and to show what type of behavior will and will not be tolerated on the
team.
• What can the team do better? Team members’ answers to this question can help new leaders develop
ideas for improving team performance. These answers also indicate whether team members are capable
of thinking about, accepting, and driving change.
• What advice do team members have for the new leader, and what can the new leader do to help team
members? New team leaders should close their meetings with these two questions and pay particular
attention to what they can do to help their direct reports be successful. New leaders should avoid
making any immediate promises but commit to closing the loop on those requests they will or will not
fulfill sometime during the next two months.
Although new leaders should start building rapport during these one-on-one meetings, they should minimize
their personal interactions with direct reports during their first two months on the job. Business lunches and
team get-togethers are fine, but meeting with families and spouses during the first 60 days can make later
structure and staffing decisions more difficult. New leaders need to make personnel decisions with team per-
formance, not personal friendships, in mind.
During the first two weeks on the job, new leaders should also schedule one-on-one meetings with all their
peers. These meetings should last about an hour and take place in peers’ offices; this will give new leaders
opportunities to build rapport by observing office décor, diplomas, family pictures, awards, and so on. New
leaders should discuss the following issues with peers:
• Their peers’ objectives, challenges, team structure, and the like
• Their perspectives on what the new leader’s team does well and could do better
• Their perspectives on the new leader’s team members
• How to best communicate with the boss
• How issues get raised and decisions made on their boss’s team
New leaders should make it clear that they want and appreciate their peers’ help. Scheduling regular meetings
with their peers will build relationships and help new leaders stay ahead of potential conflicts or work issues.
Unlike more personal meetings with direct reports, it is perfectly acceptable to socialize with peers and their
families during the first 60 days. And because the boss will likely ask peers how the new leader is doing, meet-
ing with peers on a regular basis becomes even more important.
hug82978_ch03_078-099.pdf November 17, 2020
