First-Time Leader: Foundational Tools for Inspiring and Enabling Your New Team

CHAPTER 8

BEHAVIORS: HOW YOU GET THINGS DONE THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE

Environment, values, attitude, and relationships all inform behaviors and what impact you and your team make. Ultimately, you lead with your feet, with what you do, more than with what you say. So focus everything and everyone on those few behaviors with the greatest impact.

Depending upon which part of the value chain you’re focused on, different behaviors will have greater impacts.

• Design—If your focus is design, innovation is the key to your success. If you’re not innovating, you’re falling behind. And in a world of rapid change, that fall can happen very, very fast.
• Build—If your focus is building, supply chain negotiating has to be your bailiwick. You need to get clear on what core competencies you’re going to keep in house to be best in the world and which you can outsource because being good enough is good enough.
• Sell—Everybody has to sell and market. As Drucker says, the purpose of business is to create customers. Pay attention to strategic selling and creative briefs here.
• Distribute—Distributing is like building, in that supply chain negotiating is key.
• Support—If your focus is support, make sure everyone in your organization is committed to the customer as boss and is prepared to react and respond as required by that boss.

DELEGATING, INNOVATING, AND NEGOTIATING

Learning to delegate is a nonoptional exercise. The core of leadership is inspiring and enabling others. This means giving them things to do ...