Your First 60 Days as a Leader

Chapter 6. Creating Cohesion and Coherence in Days 11–30

Exchanging self-interests builds connection. The second step is to enlarge those interests to reveal common ground.

Your early interactions lay the foundation for the perceptions of your capacity and capability to lead. Leadership authority Warren Bennis, whom you met in Chapter 1, once said that if you want to be a better leader, you should strive to be a better person. That straightforward advice has more wisdom than its simplicity may at first suggest. What comes to mind when you think of a “good person”? Likely someone who says what they mean and means what they say. Someone who treats others with respect. Someone who can be counted on. Let this be your guide along with those “great leader” attributes you noted earlier.

Arriving as a new leader is a bit like entering an arranged marriage for both you and your team. You didn’t pick each other, and many things are uncertain, yet you are destined to spend a lot of time together. The sooner people can come to know you as a person, the more quickly they can make an emotional and then rational judgment about you. Yes, it is in that order—part of our basic survival instincts. Emotions go first because emotions go fast.¹ This is how they decide how much of an investment to make in following you. You want them to offer up as much of their energy, ideas, and commitment as possible.

Only once people connect with you will they commit to your plans.

This is where the enlarged interests ...