Your First 60 Days as a Leader

Chapter 1. What It Takes to Lead Now

You’ve landed your next leadership role. It may be your first. You have a chance to step up and show your potential. It may be your tenth, and you are arriving at the apex of your impact. You are proud of your new title, excited about the bump in pay, and looking forward to new challenges. As you prepare to step into the new position, pause and consider how significant the transition into this role will be.

Often, people are promoted into leadership roles after they have succeeded at managing projects or excelled at core tasks as an individual contributor. This is particularly true in technology organizations: the best game designer is promoted to be director of game design. Their assumption is that because you are good at doing something, you will be just as good leading a team that does those things. But leading is different. It’s less about the tasks and more about the human factors of motivating, engaging, and developing people. It’s about accomplishing more together than any one person could on their own.

Of course, all of this is dependent upon context. Stepping in to take over a team or organization that is running well is quite different from a turnaround or a startup. It also depends on your span of control and the objectives for which you were hired. In my own career, I have stepped into each of these situations. My priorities, urgency, and decisions varied based on both short- and long-term needs of the organization as well as the ...