Leaders are judged on their performance, and new leaders don’t
have much time to get the role right. “Just because you’ve
won the lead in a play or a leadership title at work doesn’t
mean you automatically hold any more sway over your audience,”
write Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar in Leadership Presence:
Dramatic Techniques to Reach Out, Motivate, and Inspire (Gotham
Books, 2003). “It is your ‘performance,’ in
both the theatrical and the organizational sense, that will grant
you the authority the title or role implies.”
The authors, who share a background in the performing arts, are
cofounders of the Boston-based executive coaching firm The Ariel
Group. Their advice to new leaders who want to excel in their
new role right from the start: first focus on listening to people
and building personal relationships. This means meeting the people
who will be working for you and learning what’s important
to them in their work. “Unless you’re in a turnaround
job and have to do things fast, don’t come in and give your
vision right away,” Halpern says. “Learn how to best
serve that organization before you start talking about your vision
for it.”
When it’s time to share your vision, they say, connect
it with your values through use of personal stories. One of the
most important ones you can tell is what excites and inspires
you about your new job. Expressing deep-held values in this way
helps a new leader demonstrate his authenticity and develop his
credibility. Halpern and Lubar write about another leader they
coached who thought it was crucial to let employees know he cared
about them and their families. Just saying this might have come
across as lip service, so in staff meetings and one-on-ones, he
described how he felt, early in his career, when he was treated
as if it didn’t matter that work demands caused him to miss
out on the first six months of his son’s life. “He
told them he didn’t want to be that kind of leader,”
Halpern says, “and they believed him.”
