This is the story of Chris. A couple of years ago Chris had a wonderful idea for a business. It originated from some work he was doing for his Phd at university. Fast forward a couple of years and Chris has now successfully secured funding for the idea and now, for the first time in his career, he is responsible for leading staff. The problem is, whilst Chris is very good at the science behind the business he isn’t as confident about managing and leading teams.
Over the past few years, we have worked with numerous leaders like Chris. Our advice to them has always been to keep calm and carry on. Some management and leadership traits will come naturally, others may feel a little harder to grasp. These are the ones to seek support with. If you would like to identify your own strengths and weaknesses, why not try our FREE leadership assessment. What would we advise to you if you were in the same position?
- Get clear on your mission
- What do you want to achieve as a leader and achieve as a business?
- Understand the business and its competitive environment, organisational history and recent results.
- Align around an interpretation of the situational assessment.
- Make clear choices around where to play and where not to play within your role
- Align yourself and your team to the organisation’s values, mission and vision
- Clarify what matters and why – the value you and your team create and the drivers and principles you follow.
- Aligned on this shared purpose, vision, mission and values as the foundations for all that follows.
- Make crucial choices around your team’s strategy and culture
- Decide how you and your team are going to fulfil the mission you have been given – how are you going to win?
- Make choices around strategy and be sure your culture us in sync with those choices.
- Relationships
- Build an ADEPT team by Acquiring, Developing, Encouraging, Planning and Transitioning talent over time.
- MAP your communication – Message, Amplifiers and Perseverance.
- Behaviours – getting things done through other people
- Focus the team on what creates the most value for your team’s internal and external customers across the value chain.
If Chris’s concerns sound a lot like yours, please contact us and we can arrange a convenient time to have a chat about the specific challenges you are facing.
“I had the pleasure of working with Stuart as a leadership coach for a programme of six sessions. As a first time leader his range of experience and insights in all aspects of building and running an organisation helped me to look at things in a new way. Stuart is great at teasing out the core problem and guiding the thought process. He effectively empowered me to be a better, more effective leader.”
Peter Schrammel
Founder and CTO
Diffblue