From Peer To Leader

Hi ~Contact.FirstName~,

How do you transition from being a peer to being a leader?

When you say yes to a leadership role you've decided that you're going to be judged and measured on whether you can achieve results through others. Before being a leader, it was all on your work and what you produced and now it's going to be on how you can get work done through a group of other people and those people may have been your coworkers..

I've got a few tips for how you can be more effective as you make that transition from peer to leader.

My first tip is it's about being friendly, but not friends. I hate to break it to you, but it's very difficult for you to be really close friends with the people who work for you.

Inevitably, you'll be put in these conflict of interest situations where you have to deliver criticism or correction to people that you also choose to hang out with after work.

If you've been best friends or buddy buddy with some of the people on your team, it might work out if those are really, really tight friendships and relationships. If they're more superficial or shallow, what you're going to find is they're going to try to take advantage of the relationship that they have with you and you're going to find yourself holding back with them.

So, remember, friendly but not friends.

The second tip I have for you in making that transition is to keep people in the loop. The reality is, as you move into leadership role, you might think as long as you know what's going on, that's good enough. We know that one of the top motivators for people though is that their leader keeps them in the loop, and keeps them informed so they feel connected.

It actually helps contribute to a sense of teamwork in your group and you can't just keep the people you like in the loop. You need to keep everyone in your team in the loop, even the people that you find a little bit more annoying. So, keep them informed, keep communicating with them, let them know not only the things that affect your department and them directly, but some of the highlights of what's going on in the company because they do care about the organization more than you think.

My third tip is to avoid favoritism. I get a lot of pushback on this when we're talking about it in our training workshops. A lot of people say, "Hey, I play favorites, but it's based on who delivers results for me." The people that you can count on you treat a little bit better than the people that you seem to struggle in terms of counting on them to deliver on their promises.

The reality here is that, by playing favorites, you actually disenfranchise the people who are not your favorites on your team. It seems to be totally okay initially, that is you're favoring the people who deliver results, but the unfavorited people, are going to be pushing back against you. Avoid favoritism and try to treat everyone equally, give them equal airtime, responsibilities and job assignments.

My fourth tip for you, give variety and challenge. A lot of leaders tend to give the same jobs to the same people all the time and those people then get bored of that because they're looking for something new and different. Most of us don't need a large amount of variety and challenge, but we need a little bit. You, as the leader, can ask people for their input, put them on a different job assignment, cross train them, all these things and don't expect them to love you initially for all that. But in the end, you'll have a more motivated and engaged group.

The final tip on our list is to address issues quickly. One of the things when you make that transition from peer to leader is you might tend to procrastinate those difficult conversations or knowing you need to address something and then you don't. You hold back, thinking that in the end, maybe the team will just fix it on their own.

Sometimes procrastination pays off, but usually it's better to step in and say something, even if it causes a little agitation and a little bit of a negative reaction initially, your job as the leader is to address issues so they get corrected and fixed as soon as possible.

By following these tips, you will end up transitioning to be one of the most effective leaders that those people on your team have ever had.

Watch the full video here.

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