Leadership Tea

Repost of S1 EP11: Create Your 90-Day Plan

• Shelby Smith-Wilson and Belinda Jackson Farrier • Season 3 • Episode 14

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Belinda and Shelby introduce this oldie-but-goodie by catching you up on what we're doing this summer. And in the episode, we talk about how to master the first 90 days in your new role, as you transition from colleague to commander. 

How can you build trust and credibility when transitioning to a new leadership position?  discuss strategies that have worked for us as we've navigated change management, tough conversations, financial restraints, and the dynamics of managing former peers. 

We're taking a break for August to rest and refresh. We hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer and that you re-listen to some of our other past episodes. See you in September!

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Belinda:

Welcome to the Leadership Tea podcast, where we talk about not only what it takes to reach the executive level, but also how to thrive once you get there. I'm Belinda and I'm Shelby, and today we are here to introduce an oldie but goodie from our archive, something that we thought felt really timely in this period of transition. I mean, summer is a time of transition. People are going to new roles, moving around. We have pulled up something special that we think would be helpful.

Shelby:

We dug through the archives and looked at feedback, looked at some of the comments that you all have made and we thought we would do a rerun of episode 11 from our first season, which is called Create your 90 Day Plan. As Belinda said, summer is a period of transition, especially for a lot of our listeners that we know are getting ready to move from one location to the next or are taking on new responsibilities as a result of various reorganization processes that are taking place. So we thought it was timely to re-air this episode, and you know we need a break. It's summertime, we've been working hard and it's time to restore ourselves so that we can come back refreshed for the next season. What are you up to these days, belinda?

Belinda:

I have two things happening at once A lot of great business opportunities that I need to focus on and take advantage of and lean into, but also some time to rest. And so we have like family vacation planned and I've got like a girl's trip planned and it's just time to relax and refocus so that I can go into the fall strong.

Shelby:

Yeah, same. Our main focus right now is getting ready to launch Viola into college. She heads to Virginia Tech next month and so the first one to leave the nest from feeling all the feels. I also want to make sure that she is not just logistically ready but emotionally ready. So we're also going to take a little girl's trip, probably with her godmother, to Bond before she leaves home, and I'm getting ready to take my son to a collegiate soccer camp. My husband and I also want to take a little time to ourselves before we kick into the next gear for fall. So it feels like a good moment to pause to take care of the home front. Can?

Shelby:

and it doesn't have to be a big fancy trip.

Belinda:

I know we've also got a camping trip planned, so we might need thoughts and prayers.

Shelby:

Prayers especially for me, because I am not a camper, I'm a glamper, but I don't do just regular camping, we do not know what we're doing.

Belinda:

It's going to be an experience, but we'll be back soon with new episodes. As always, we ask that if you are listening to us on Spotify or Apple. We thank you for your listenership. We appreciate that. Please leave us a review. We'd really love it if you would come over to YouTube and you can find us at Leadership Tea Podcast and if you could subscribe and leave us a little feedback or comment on our episodes. We'd appreciate that and we take those comments seriously and really integrate them into our planning. They're an important data point for us.

Shelby:

Thanks again. Enjoy the rest of your summer and enjoy this episode.

Belinda:

Hey everyone, hey everyone. Today we just wanted to think about what it means when you are at the beginning of your tenure in a particular position, in a leadership role. What does the first 90 days in that role look like and what?

Shelby:

does it mean to lead a team for the first 90 days and take it from there? We were thinking about how to give some tips and elaborate on our experience in starting new roles. As a boss You're a boss. What are you doing to set the tone? What are you doing in those first 90 days in a new leadership role where people are looking to you for guidance, looking to you to get a sense of who you are as a person? How are you making your mark? How are you establishing a first impression on the people who are looking up to you to lead them? And so I will start by reflecting on the first time that I had a sizable team to lead.

Shelby:

I was nervous. I was nervous because I wanted to do a good job and I wanted to gain the trust of the people that I was responsible for. So one of the first things that I did I'm a nerd when it comes to leadership and management in terms of reading books and doing research and looking at blog posts, listening to podcasts on leadership and tips for running effective teams, and so I remember one of the first things that I did was to read a book. I can't remember the exact name of it, but it was something to the effect of on becoming a boss, like how do you want to set the stage for people to believe in what you're saying, to demonstrate credibility and to make sure that you're being a boss without necessarily being bossy? So, again, one of the first things I did was to do research and read books on management and leadership. The other thing that I did was to research the office in terms of the substance that we were expected to master and carry out.

Shelby:

What is the mission of this office? And I think that's really important for any leadership role. You don't want to start by saying, okay, I'm going to come in, I'm going to change this, I'm going to change that, when you're clueless as to how the office has been functioning without you before you arrived. And so one of the things that I prioritized was really getting to know who are the people that I'm responsible for. What have they been working on? Because the worst thing that you can do as a leader is to go in and immediately start changing things without having a sense of what is the current landscape, what is working well, what might need to be tweaked, what is the foundation upon which I'm building.

Shelby:

I think that's really important. And then, what is your vision? What is it that you want people to know about you? And so one of the things that I did was to send a message to the team just introducing myself. This is who I am, these are my leadership values, this is how you can manage me Some of my quirks, not going into a whole lot of detail, but I wanted to make sure that I communicated to the team what they could expect from me and where my head was, because it's important for people to hear directly from the leader in terms of where their heads are and what their expectations are and what their objectives are for the team. Belinda, wondering how you have approached like the first 90 days of leadership roles that you've had.

Belinda:

My approach has been very similar to yours. The first time I had a team that I was going to manage, I actually wrote out a 90-day plan. I spent a great deal of time before assuming that role and similarly like researching, reading, learning about best practices, taking everything I knew about the role and about the place and the space and thinking out what did I want to do in each week of those 90 days and who did I want to talk to and I understood that I was going to tweak it, but it just gave me a roadmap. I can't say I've done that every time I've changed roles, but there have been a few really big milestone moments when I have. It was interesting to hear you say that you would normally send out a message. I'm more comfortable with verbal communication and just that message, that same message that you sent, I use for a staff meeting or a big town hall or just a kind of a big environment to communicate that.

Belinda:

What I like to work on in those first 90 days is understanding my leadership chain's expectations for the role in the team. I find that often leadership's expectations and what they set down for you in those initial days is like, hey, this is what I need you to do with that team. It's usually very different than where the team is and so that's an immediate, difficult place to manage and make work and then building trust. I like to lead by walking around, to go to people's desks, go to where they are, see where people are in the cafeteria or the cafe or whatever, and just be where the people are so that I can sit down with you and look you in the eye and just humanize myself a little bit, understand where you're coming from and just try to build a little bit of rapport. I've had to over the years learn in that first 90 days that as people in those initial first few weeks begin to trust a little bit or see you as a sign of hope.

Shelby:

Yeah.

Belinda:

Because it's like a new boss. Maybe things can change. Whatever it is that needs to change, that 90-day marker is really important because people will come to you with issues that sound very urgent but you don't have full context and you only have their side of the story, and so I've had to teach myself over the years to say noted, I'll take note of that. That does sound serious. Let's revisit that In a few days, weeks, months. I'll look into it and not to immediately react. I've mistakenly done that sometimes.

Belinda:

I've worked on really understanding the key roles that I'm now managing or, if possible, all the roles, so really sitting down, observing people, sitting with them, talking with them about the obstacles in their job or what's working well in their job.

Belinda:

I, like you, avoid making changes immediately and I also need to understand the politics and the dynamics that this space is operating within right and who can I build alliances with.

Belinda:

Just beginning to feel that out and understand that All of those things put together help me to think about what it should look like after that 90 days and in a perfect world. What I've done with teams in at least three or four places is use that 90-day marker to hold a retreat, some kind of like off-site to say here's what I observed, right In a perfect world where the flow of work is allowing me to think and to communicate those thoughts in a very deliberate way to people, to organize a retreat. But to take a day and say here's what I've observed and here's what I think we should do as a result of those observations, what do you all think? Fill in the blanks. Where am I getting this wrong? What am I missing? And those conversations have been really useful. So it's not necessarily that we decide the strategic plan right then, but it's where people get to see where my gaps in learning are and help contextualize and fill them in a way that's very transparent for everyone.

Shelby:

Yeah, that makes sense. I like what you said about having that personal contact and walking around. That's also something that I've done. I think it's really important for people to be able to reach out and touch you right and not feel like, oh, you're over there in your ivory tower, you're not really connected to me. I have to come to you each time I want to meet with you. That's not the impression that I want to give to the people who are following me. I definitely want to make sure that they understand that I'm accessible and, at the same time, like not too accessible. I don't want to have 10 pals with everyone who is within my chain of command but at the same time, I don't want them to have this perception of me of being so distant and aloof and not engaged. As you were talking about having that personal connection, I had a funny thought about making the shift to being a boss and what your presence means, whether it's in a meeting, whether it's at a party, a reception, whatever.

Shelby:

One of the things that I have done in my current role in terms of getting to know the people on my team is to make guest appearances at their staff meetings. This has caused a little bit of consternation with some folks who are like, wait, whoa, why is the boss coming to my staff meeting? And it's been a good reminder to me to over-communicate, making sure that I'm telling my staff what is the why behind what I'm doing, even something as simple as going to a staff meeting, and I've had to explain to them. I don't need you to prepare specific talking points or a special agenda for me. I'm just here to learn, like I only want to hear from you all what it is that you talk about on a regular basis when I'm not around, because this will help me acclimate myself to the mission. This will help me learn the day-to-day substance of what you all are working on.

Shelby:

I don't need you to put on a special performance. I really just want to be here and get to know you. That is something that I've done in the first 90 days of my current position and in my last position to really put myself at eye level with my team, to get into the substance of what they work on and to also observe firsthand what are the team dynamics. Are there things that I should be aware of that aren't spoken Like? What does the office, climate and environment look like. Are there things that I need to be picking up? Subtle cues that are not necessarily conveyed in a briefing paper or a memo that you can only I think the walking around piece.

Belinda:

It's never led me astray. I also always want to get a pulse on things that are obstacles for people, or small annoyances, before they become blowups and before they become like an issue that's impacting the culture of the organization. Like I'm a rebel, like I always start if there's going to be a protest, like I'm starting it, and so I know me and I know there are more me's out there, but when you're the boss, you don't want me starting stuff, so you want to find those folks who are going to help you stay informed about the pulse of the team in a way that's too biased or trying to take advantage of their access to share that right, but yeah, like walking around.

Belinda:

Once I ran into someone who walked through the front door as I was walking out and they were like sweating and they were like panting. I was like, oh, are you out exercising? Like no, I had to park really far because not enough parking spots and I had to park blocks away and it's hot. And I I was like, oh, there aren't enough. I get here early. I didn't know that was an issue. Oh, is there a parking issue? It turns out there's a major parking issue. Oh, okay, can we fix it? Actually, no, okay, but now I can at least communicate that to people.

Belinda:

Hey, I'm aware, here's what I've done. Here's who I've spoken to. Here are the constraints, here's what we can do to alleviate things, but here's what we can't do. Facts, and here are some solutions. You may not like all of them, but just so we're clear, here's all the options on the table, what works best for us as a community. There it is. There it is the other piece. I think I would say generally, but also in that first 90 days, that it's just really important to speak to the elephants in the room.

Shelby:

Yeah.

Belinda:

There are going to be issues that just seem untouchable and that we can't talk about and nobody ever mentions. And so when you're new, you have this opportunity to break that, and if you just completely step in it, you can say I was new, I didn't know, I tried but to be able to say, hey, I know, this XYZ is a problem. Say something like pay raises. Right, I've walked into spaces and people are like when are we getting a raise? Yeah, and then I check and it's you ain't getting a raise, no time soon. No time soon because of the following reasons, and you and I both know that. But you know what? Here I'll just speak to it. Hey, and several of you have mentioned the desire for pay raises. I believe in pay raises. I would love one too.

Shelby:

Yeah right.

Belinda:

Here's the reality. We're not. I understand if that's upsetting. I understand that makes you want to look for employment elsewhere. I can't stop you from doing that, but I do want to give you honest information to work with.

Shelby:

Yeah, and that builds trust. That builds trust Like people don't have to like what you say, but if they can trust that you are going to be honest and upfront with them, it goes a long way.

Belinda:

It really does go a long way.

Shelby:

So I have a question for you how have you dealt with managing people who were previously your peers?

Belinda:

Yeah, there are times when I've done it well and there are times where I've been blinded by things and didn't do it well. When it's worked out well, it's when I've spoken to the elephant in the room and I've pulled the person aside and said, hey look, we're good, we're cool, but at work, now I'm doing this and you're doing this and this is how it's got to be. Nothing but love. But also know that I won't bring the personal into work. I would appreciate if you do the same.

Shelby:

Yeah.

Belinda:

Let's go and people, especially if they're friends already right, they get that. I think where I have missed the mark is when I have had friends who weren't performing well under me and I think in other scenarios I would have seen the red flags. I want to say this happened a lot. This is like one instance that I'm really thinking of where I missed red flags. Those red flags were really impacting the team and the team felt like they couldn't come to me because they knew this person to the team is in an effort to be transparent, right, and this is so, and we go way back. That's going to be obvious, it's what it is and so it made people feel, I think, that they couldn't be honest with me about that person's performance, when I feel like in all other respects the team was honest with me, but the person was in a role where their lack of performance was really impacting the team.

Shelby:

Oh, okay.

Belinda:

Yeah, I still feel shocked that I missed that, yeah, but now I know that's something I need to look out for in the future. What about you?

Shelby:

It's a fine line to walk and it goes back to communication, having that conversation on the side with the individual to say, okay, these are the parameters that we're working in, we're in an office setting, these are my expectations. When we're not in the office, that's different. But I think it's important to have that conversation just to level set with whoever the individual is, so that no one gets caught in the crosshairs. No one gets caught in the crosshairs and I've been fortunate that some of the people that I've had personal relationships with, who I've ended up supervising, have actually gone above and beyond to show me the respect for the position that I hold in ways that actually made me feel uncomfortable and I had to shift myself in terms of people previously calling me by my first name, but now they call me by my title and it's ooh, I don't know how I feel about that. Or people suddenly calling me ma'am and I'm like I'm not ma'am, I'm still Shelby, like why you don't have to be all formal with me.

Shelby:

But one thing that my husband told me, one thing he reminded me of, was like no, that's a good thing.

Shelby:

Like that's a good thing, like it's actually a good thing that they are making the shift, because you need to make the shift and it's not that you're full of yourself, it's not that you're bossy now that you've become a boss, but when you become a boss, you are elevating yourself and you're elevating the aura around you, and it's important for people to make the distinction and to give you the respect that the position or the title that you hold commands.

Shelby:

And that has been an adjustment for me, because I'm used to being informal and cool with people and I can still be informal, I can still be cool, I can still show humanity in leading a team and managing a team. But there is this line where you have to not be overly familiar with the people that you're leading, so that when things get rough or you have to deliver tough messages or have hard conversations, there are no feelings or emotions that are tied up into. Hey, I thought we were cool. No, we're still in an office setting. I am still the boss, I am still expected to carry out the objectives, the mission of whoever my boss is, and those dynamics can be a little tricky.

Belinda:

You are in this leadership role because you have a number of skills, but one of the primary ones is judgment and to be able to navigate these worlds and find that middle ground. There's often a middle space, a nuance that is correct, and either the extremely formal or the extremely informal is correct. Being able to help guide people to that is part of your skill set. But it's just like I said, it's's hard when it comes to managing these peer relationships while you're in a leadership role. Actually, one of the most difficult positions I've been in is when friends want you to hire them, when friends want you to hire them and you know they're not the right person for the role. Sometimes you're like, yeah, I need my homie, like they're going to be great for this.

Shelby:

Yes.

Belinda:

But there have been a few times where I've had to have really difficult conversations with friends where they just knew they were going to get a job because I was the decision maker.

Shelby:

Yes.

Belinda:

But I knew that they just weren't the right fit for the role Right, and not just because I was their friend.

Shelby:

Right.

Belinda:

Right, but they just weren't competitive with the other people applying. And, yeah, there are a couple people that I really had broken relationships for a while with because I had to make a difficult decision. But I still stand by the decision. But it's tough.

Shelby:

It is tough. It is and I think you got me thinking about a different episode no-transcript it.

Belinda:

Yeah, you have to deliver on the mission, it's just critical. So are there any other tips you would offer, as we get ready to close, on how people can think about making these transitions to leadership and changing that mindset over?

Shelby:

communicate, adjust the elephant in the room, make sure you're walking around and connecting with people. Have a plan, whether it's a written 90-day plan or something that you want to convey in your initial message if it's a written message, or a town hall, a big staff meeting and do your research, do your homework, know the mission of the office, know the personalities of the people that you're leading.

Belinda:

It's funny as you read that list. Honestly, it's just the stuff you should be doing anyway. The only thing I would add is whenever I have to do something really difficult, particularly when I have to say something really difficult to people, I will often think of the phrase the truth will set you free If you're just honest and you just deliver the truth as you know it because I don't know about everybody else, but I'm busy, I can't keep up with lies I got too many things, a lot harder to keep up with the lies and the just.

Belinda:

Keep up with the lies, so I need to just give it to you straight in a way that's sensitive. So all those things that you listed covered in an umbrella of just truth.

Shelby:

Yes.

Belinda:

And truth can be delivered with sensitivity.

Shelby:

Yeah.

Belinda:

And it can be delivered diplomatically. But if you just you're honest self with people you bring, you are authentic, you are fair, you are reasonable, you are dependable and you are the steady hand that's what people are looking to for leadership A humanized, steady hand. Yes, bring your humanity. It's not perfect. You're human. You might make mistakes. I will let people know. I am not an expert in X, but ultimately X, y and Z is my decision. I have reviewed the facts, I've heard everybody's case and here's what I've decided and if it's wrong I stand behind it.

Shelby:

And we'll adjust Right.

Belinda:

I think all of those points that you summarized really speak to this moment. That concludes our episode. In our show notes they will see a new feature called Send Us a Text Message.

Shelby:

Oh yeah, that's right.

Belinda:

And since we love feedback, I just wanted to draw people's attention to that and say send us a text message, tell us what you think about the show, tell us what you think about the show, tell us what you think about this episode and, more importantly, tell us what you want to hear more of.

Shelby:

Yes, please. We take your feedback seriously. Belinda and I are in constant communication, thinking about how to reach our audience and how to make sure that we are bringing relevant content, and if you like what you're hearing, please leave us a rating, a review, wherever you get your podcasts. Share our podcast with at least three friends and hopefully those three friends will share with their three friends. We really appreciate hearing directly from all of you and we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you again soon.

People on this episode

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Belinda Jackson Farrier

Co-host
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Shelby Smith-Wilson

Co-host