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Article in a nutshell: Coaching speeds up newly promoted leaders finding their place and their voice in their new peer group by working through ‘how will I be perceived?’ worries. One of five positive actions coachees have taken to speed up how comfortable they feel in the group is to meet with peers 1:1. Existing members of a leadership team need to see the newcomer as an asset who brings a fresh lens the whole group can benefit from – but only if they encourage their new peer to express dissenting views and ask challenging questions.
Calibrating your voice in team meetings
When I’m working with newly promoted senior leaders in organisations that prize cross-functional working there’s something specific they consistently bring to coaching: how to find their fit and ‘calibrate’ their voice in peer group meetings. They want to be accepted by their new peers; be respectful of their tenure and to make effective contributions, and they’re worried about how to enter the space. These coachees are acutely aware of their lack of experience in comparison to their new peer group; they know their peers know they’re newly promoted; they’re mindful that their arrival in the group will affect the group…it’s all feeling a bit awkward.
What they want is to quiet their mind, feel confident and have a plan.
I wonder if any of this is resonating with your experience or being a newcomer or being part of cross-functional leadership team? You might be familiar with holding multiple permutations in mind about how you could ‘show up’ and what the likely knock on effect would be for each. “If I say X, might Y think…” and “If I share my perspective on Z issue, could A person construe it as…” type thing. If you’ve been through it you know this sort of mental gymnastics can be exhausting and performance-inhibiting if not worked through.
Enter coaching, a performance tool which cuts through the mental noise and provides a confidential space to kindle confidence and create a plan. Ultimately this type of coaching engagement is about shrinking the time it takes for the newly promoted coachee to feel credible, comfortable and to be contributing effectively on cross-functional peer group work.
Thinking about the work I’ve done with these thoughtful coachees the sorts of conversations we’ve had have covered things such as:
Here are five actions newly promoted leaders have generated in our coaching sessions in service of ‘finding their fit’ with new peers you can use too:
Researchers who’ve explored how newcomer voice evolves have distinguished between what they call ‘voice behaviour’ and ‘employee silence’ (the deliberate withholding of input from important others in organisations[i]). They’ve also distinguished between newcomer ‘promotive voice’ (making suggestions and sharing ideas) and newcomer ‘prohibitive voice’ (highlighting issues and concerns). The researchers found that whilst people are prepared to do the former during their onboarding phase, they only gradually grow comfortable pointing out problems. This is a missed opportunity.
The takeout is this: if you want to benefit from the fresh lens your new colleague brings, you – as a peer or a line manager – need to actively encourage her to say what she notices and show appreciation for her candour even if it wasn’t what you expected or hoped to hear.
[i] Morrison, E. W. (2023). Employee voice and silence: Taking stock a decade later. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10(1), 79–107. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-054654
