What kind of motivation and goals leaders come with to the 'First 100 Days of Leadership' mentoring and what are their most common challenges?
I've always been aware of the importance of the first 100 days. I've experienced some of the difficulties myself, and saw it with the leaders I've worked with as an HR leader. This is why I developed a specific programme for this years ago.
It is a hot topic these days, more and more people are recognising the need to support managers in their first 100 days in a new position, and more and more articles, research and interviews are being published on this subject.
Leaders come to the consultancy with a wide range of motivations and goals. Most of them ask for help for themselves, they don't get it from their company or don't want/dare to ask:
◼ some felt it was their responsibility,
◼ some felt they would look weak or incompetent if they asked for support,
◼ and there were some who asked for support but did not receive it.
In my experience 8 out of 10 leaders seek support privately in general, and 2 have their company provide an advisor or mentor they can work with.
What is the motivation leaders come with?
🎯 They don't want to go through the first 100 days alone - the burden of being a leader alone puts additional pressure on them, adds stress, which has an impact on their performance.
🎯 They want to be successful, achieve visible performance and results quickly, pick low hanging fruits, and have a strategy and a tangible plan for the first 100 days.
🎯 They had bad experience in a new leadership position and know the pitfalls they can get into - they want to avoid them and want support.
🎯 Some fear that they are not good enough, that they are not up to it despite being selected for the role, they don't trust themselves or other beliefs limit them and they want to overcome these, they want to create security for themselves, confidence in themselves.
🎯 They have reached a new level as leaders - they want to learn.
🎯 Leaders experience one or more of the many challenges they can face in their first 100 days, they want to deal with these challenges with the right strategy or even avoid trap situations. (For the 12 most common leadership challenge, click on the picture.)
What is the outcome of such a supported programme?
✅ A concrete, tangible plan and strategy - mastering the planning aspects and methodology
✅ A sense of self-awareness, self-confidence, self-reliance, greater self-empowerment
✅ Awareness, ability to learn and act in a focused way
✅ Mastery and practice of stakeholder analysis and management
✅ Ability to limit the expectations placed on the leader, to protect their own boundaries
✅ Strategy for their own challenges, techniques for dealing with them
And you cannot stop after the first 100 days.
You need to plan and act again and again (more and more often, almost constantly), strategise, fine-tune, and keep learning and maintaining habits.
There is constant pressure on leaders. No predictability, no stability. We live in constant change, the leaders feel constantly in a hurdle race, always new challenges coming up. They have to get used to it, adapt to it. And they have to have the right leadership tools.
Now, with so much being said about leadership challenges, the need to retain good leaders, leadership burnout, or even leadership benefits in the current inflationary, economic climate, providing leadership mentoring and advice can be an important and valuable tool and reward in retaining leaders, keeping their mental and physical health.
Not only for the first 100 days.
❗ And do not forget: it is much less effective without the superiors' collaboration an invested time.
