What would you focus on? - Leadership Questions #5

Apr 21, 2024

If you were me, what would you focus attention on?

Answers

Examples from my career

I joined a new company and one designer mentioned: “Promote our team! We’re mostly working on solutions, but we should already be involved when investigating a problem!” This team needed me to advocate and push to get them involved earlier when problems and opportunities were on the agenda.
I went through the onboarding at another company and one peer from another department shared: “The team members have been through turbulent times. I’d focus on building trust with all of them slowly but surely.” This wasn’t my first time hearing this, so I consciously moved along with extra care and patience.
I joined a group of leaders within the company receiving intriguing responses from a senior leader and one of my new leadership team peers. “Create 1:1s with everyone. Review team rituals and how structured they are.” versus “Hold everyone accountable for keeping deadlines, respect the meeting schedule, and stick to our plans.“ The senior leader encouraged me to challenge our way of working, while the existing team member advised me to get behind whatever’s been going on previously.

What would you do in these situations? 😉

Examples from the community

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Prioritize patterns: Point this question at your direct reports, peers, and manager during your first initial chats with them. This will result in a first list of priorities to discuss further with your manager. Base your priorities on emerging patterns, rather than one-off comments.
Discreteness vs. Directness: Your manager might ask “Who said that?”, and I suggest not answering this question due to the risk of retaliation. You don’t want to throw individuals under the bus, and it’s also irrelevant for consistent patterns.
Note the depth of each answer: Evaluating each response can give you countless insights into a person’s seniority, priorities, understanding of your role and team, and history. Consider returning to your notes and analyzing them later to uncover additional insights.

Watkins, Michael D., The First 90 Days, 2013, page 59