Don’t Shortcut The Process Of Onboarding A New Leader

The Consequences Of Failing To Onboard Leaders

Consider these real-world examples of executives who didn’t have the benefit of a structured, strategic onboarding process and the costly consequences they faced.

• A new VP was brought in by the CEO with a mandate to transform the organization by making wholesale changes. However, the new leader moved straight to action, without assimilating into the company, understanding the culture or learning about the potential land mines. Without this crucial foundation, he unknowingly upset the apple cart. As a result, he was unable to build trust with his key stakeholders and was unsuccessful in achieving his objectives. Within six months, he left for a new company.
• A new CEO was hired from among a pool of candidates that included an internal team member. While the employee who didn’t get the job was crucial to the CEO’s success, she didn’t see it that way. By failing to build a bridge with this stakeholder, the CEO missed an opportunity to turn a liability and a blocker into a strength and an asset. Instead, she faced significant resistance that prevented her from meeting her targets. Within a year, she left the company.

Scenarios like these are common. And while at first glance they might not seem to represent onboarding problems, effective integration and assimilation would have greatly reduced the odds of these unfortunate leadership failures.

Why Organizations Don’t Onboard Leaders Properly

Onboarding isn’t just about making sure you have a laptop, know how to log onto the network and understand the rules and policies in the company handbook. Successful onboarding is about understanding the organization’s culture as well as the needs and pain points of your new stakeholders.

When you’re hired for a leadership role, whether from the outside or through promotion, your stakeholders can include your peers (such as other functional leaders or executive team members) and the direct reports you have inherited as your new team. For external hires, a structured onboarding process also provides an opportunity to truly assimilate into the organization before you begin to effect change, which leaders are often hired to do.

Unfortunately, it’s common for companies to shortchange the leadership onboarding process for several reasons.

• Newly hired leaders are often eager to score quick wins, and those who hire them are equally interested in seeing an immediate impact. Many new leaders move straight to action in an effort to prove that the hiring manager or the board made the right decision.
• Approaching the onboarding process effectively requires an investment that some organizations aren’t willing to make. They don’t realize that an effective onboarding process is less costly than the turnover or poor performance that often occurs in its absence.
• Some new leaders perceive that if they go through an onboarding program, it means they don’t have the capabilities or confidence to do the job well from day one. In their quest to appear strong, they avoid the very support that can help them succeed.
• Some organizations believe it’s presumptuous to assume a highly experienced professional at the leadership level needs onboarding, especially if they’ve held a similar position elsewhere.

Key Components Of Leadership Onboarding

An effective leadership onboarding program provides a structured, methodical way to support the transition to a new role, helping the leader acclimate to the organization and gain valuable insights about each of their stakeholders. Though every organization should tailor its approach to this process, the most successful leadership onboarding programs tend to have a few components in common.

• Individual Insights Survey: A best practices approach includes having every member of the leader’s new team complete a survey that helps the new hire understand each individual as a whole person, at a deeper level than they could on their own. For example, is this individual big picture-focused or detail-oriented? How does their leadership approach change under stress? What is their conflict management style? How do they make decisions? The leader also takes the survey to better understand their own leadership style and how it could impact the team.
• Team Insights Survey: A second survey should focus on how the team operates as a group, providing the new leader with valuable insights into team dynamics. How do they make decisions? How do they deal with conflict? How do they collaborate? Are there well-entrenched operating norms the leader needs to be aware of and adjust to?
• Personalized Coaching: With the help of a coach, the new leader delves into all the survey results and develops a customized onboarding action plan. The plan includes steps the new leader should take to accelerate the process of developing productive relationships and building trust with their team members and other stakeholders. The plan also identifies ways the leader can adjust their own approach in response to individual and team attributes and styles of working. For example, if the team includes some cautious decision-makers, the leader will need to prepare them well before debating major changes.

While a leader hired from the outside will clearly benefit from assimilating into the new culture, even a newly promoted leader stands to gain a great deal from proper “in-boarding.” That’s especially true when there are vast differences between the employee’s previous and current role or when the newly promoted leader is tasked with managing their former peers.

By focusing proper attention on leadership onboarding, organizations can improve the return on their talent investment and position the individual and the company to thrive.