Are you a new leader in your firm? Recently promoted but struggling with how to behave or what to focus on?

Here are some guidelines to help you make the transition more successful.

1️⃣  You have to get pretty good at a lot of things. You need to understand how your organisation is structured, governed and operated. What your executive team do and what you are expected to do. You’ll need to understand the financials as well as being sufficiently aware of talent, workforce, and client management functions. And it all needs to be balanced.

2️⃣ You need a team of people who are better at things than you. Get used to not being the expert. Find and develop your client and people managers and encourage them to challenge you. Encourage creative conflict. That will build trust. From trust comes all kinds of positive outcomes.

3️⃣  You haven’t made it. You have to keep learning. This includes all the unwritten rules of how leaders are expected to perform in your consultancy. That needs to be observed, as no-one will tell you.

4️⃣  You’ll have to get used to ambiguity. There’s no one way to run a consultancy or a division. What works for Bob or Janine leading their team, won’t necessarily work for you. Your client needs, your team needs are all different. Look to see what might work but don’t follow is slavishly. On the other hand…..

5️⃣  Don’t try to disrupt everything. Bide you time. You haven’t yet gained the credibility that comes from delivering against your key objectives in your new position.

6️⃣   You can’t tell people what to do. Consultants are independent minded experts. Influence is your key skill to develop to get your team moving in the right direction. So, micromanagement is out (you wouldn’t do this anyway, would you?)

7️⃣   You’ll need to find ways of influencing peers. You’ll be in a team of equally senior (and more) individuals. Being right won’t cut it. You’ll be the junior partner for a while, so collaborative and humble behaviour is a must to begin with.

8️⃣   You’ll need to unlearn some behaviours. Your expertise is less important than how you enable others to succeed, you need to unlearn the behaviour of relying on yourself to do everything. What got you here won’t get you there.

9️⃣    How you behave is obvious to everyone. Your values and character become crystal clear through your behaviour, which is magnified because of your new position. Your internal reputation can be easily broken by early mistakes. If your team don’t trust you then any kind of success will be out of your reach.

1️⃣ 0️⃣ You haven’t made it. You have to keep learning. Did I repeat that? Well its worth saying twice……