Your First Leadership Job

How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others

Tacy M. Byham, Richard S. Wellins

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781118911952
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118911969
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Becoming the Very Best First-Time Leader

Congratulations! You're now in charge. Perhaps it's your first time as a leader, or maybe you want to fine-tune your skills. Either way, you've begun one of the most rewarding chapters of your career. But, like many beginnings, the first few years can be challenging. Fortunately, you don't have to tackle this challenge on your own. Your First Leadership Job gives you practical advice straight from others who have walked in your shoes. Not only does it include dozens of tools to ensure your success, but it's also based on the authors' and DDI's extensive experience and research, which ultimately has led to the development of millions of leaders around the world. In fact, a quarter-million leaders will be developed this year alone via DDI training.

Your First Leadership Job is divided into two sections. Part 1 introduces the concept of catalyst leader—one who sparks energy, passion, and commitment in others. Your transition to catalyst leader is a major step in your leadership journey. This book provides essential tips to put you on the catalyst path. Ultimately, leadership is about the many conversations—frequent, clear, authentic, and occasionally difficult—that you will have daily.  Your First Leadership Job builds awareness of the fundamental skills you'll come to rely on to make every one of these interactions successful. 

Part 2 devotes 13 chapters to critical core leadership competencies, including coaching for success, hiring the best employees, turning dreaded appraisals into discussions that propel performance, and handling difficult employees. It also includes a chapter for first-time female leaders.

Look at Your First Leadership Job as an indispensable companion to becoming an awesome leader—one who will make a positive, lasting impact on your team, family, and career. Visit www.yourfirstleadershipjob.com to learn more.

Part 1: Project Initiation

Whether you are new to the role or have some experience with it, the road to being an effective leader is rife with challenges and joys. Catalyst leaders represent the gold standard—energetic, supportive, forward-thinking mentors who spark action in others. The first part of this book presents a clear picture of what catalyst leadership is really about. There are dozens of tips to make your journey as smooth as possible.

We also introduce the concept of leadership brand. Just like a company's brand makes it a distinct entity, your brand can cement your standing as an effective leader. And, there are clearly identifiable practices associated with your leadership brand that separate truly effective leaders from average or poor ones. So, in this section of the book we'll help you create a new leadership mind-set and get results for you and your team. Additionally, we provide guidance on how you can flawlessly execute in the face of competing priorities.

Finally, we share some secrets for making every interaction a successful one. As a leader, you have dozens of conversations with others every single day. Your ability to connect with them—by making people feel valued, heard, motivated, trusted, and involved—will go a long way toward making you a perfect leader!

Great leadership takes place
every day, in the smallest of ways.

1
Now You're a Leader
The Journey Begins

So, now you're in charge.

When you accepted your first leadership job—or even seriously considered putting your hat in the ring—you took one of the most important and courageous steps in your career. You're a boss! You're going places.

How's it going? Are you sure? How do you know?

Chances are, you're perched precariously on an emotional range from “awkward excitement” to “abject terror” and back again, with a constant baseline of “stressed.” This shouldn't come as a surprise; you have a lot to prove. (Or, if you've been in the position for a while, you might have a lot to repair.) For over 45 years, our firm, DDI, has been an innovator in the field of talent management, which is a fancy way of saying that we help companies transform the way they hire, promote, and develop leaders. This book is based on what we've learned from developing more than eight million frontline leaders over four decades, in virtually every country and industry around the world. First-time leaders who transition well are more able to make a positive, lasting impact on their teams, families, and careers. Our approach helps people become engaged and more productive more quickly.

Speaking of stress, our research shows that a transition to a leadership position is among life's most challenging adjustments, ranking somewhere between personal illness and managing teenagers. In fact, only one in three leaders in our first transitional study felt they were effective in handling transitional challenges.¹ For first-timers, the stress can be particularly acute. You are taking on not only a new type of role, but also one that exists in a business environment defined by fast-moving challenges: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And you're in a unique position where your performance—or lack thereof—will determine whether your team will thrive or stall (along with your career). Are you as good as you need to be? Do you know what it means to get the best work from the people on your team? Will they hate you on sight? How will you determine if you're on track before it's too late?

The transition you're experiencing is profound enough for us to make a bold claim: Nobody comes to his first leadership position knowing everything he needs to know to succeed. When you get into truly unfamiliar emotional territory, your instinct might be to throw up your hands and try to do everything yourself. Perhaps you'll micromanage your team, take critical assignments away from direct reports as deadlines loom, or fail to give the kind of feedback that will help your team members do their jobs.

But let us make another bold claim: You'll find few greater rewards in your career than on the leadership journey you're about to begin. What you learn will transform the rest of your life in many wonderful ways. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is what you'll discover about your own ability to grow and be effective in the world. We believe that over time, the skills you'll learn can help you communicate more clearly with the people you love, become a more active member of your community, and make a difference for the causes you care about. This is a journey that leads to a happier life.

When I first got the job, there was a lot of pressure, Karen told us. She became a leader by surprise and default when her own supervisor took ill and needed an extended leave. Karen was an expert telecommunications engineer, but she suddenly had 30 more-senior people to manage and a big project to finish. I could tell that there was a lot of skepticism about me. And there already had been many failures in the project, like when a contractor failed to deliver. But Karen was able to find effective ways to get the work done—on time!—through the people around her, and has earned the respect of her peers. It ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part 1: Project Initiation
• Part 2: Mastery and Leadership Skills
• Part 3: Bonus Chapters and Tools
• Acknowledgments
• About DDI
• About the Author
• Index
• End User License Agreement