DAY 41 - LEARNING TO LEAD SERIES – PART VI
I hope you’re following along as we countdown the final 100 days of 2022 - you can join us anytime. Learn more about the program HERE.
In part Vl of our Learning to Lead series, we’re going to talk about two important areas – confidentiality and boundaries. Most of the time these things are not taught or discussed, and they really should be. So, let’s talk about them!
As people get promoted into positions of leadership, it’s not uncommon to suddenly become a supervisor to people who were once your colleagues and peers. With the promotion comes more responsibility and most often, access to confidential information about the company, employee compensation, human resource issues, etc. While it goes without saying that it is necessary for information to keep confidential, what I have found working with people is that it’s the challenges the new leader struggles with is in the interactions with the team.
For example, envision a team member (Sally) who everyone complains about. Sally was once your peer, now she is your employee. While you may not have been as vocal as others in complaining about her before your promotion, you did occasionally chime into the banter. After your promotion. you still attend the Friday night happy hours. During the conversation, someone brings up Sally, and the complaining begins. You are now their boss. Now what? It would be totally inappropriate to add to the complaining conversation – that’s fairly obvious. So, do you just stay silent and not add your opinion? Do you leave so you’re not put in a bad position? How do you handle it?
Stepping into leadership brings on great responsibility. Our actions and opinions take on a great deal more weight and speak to what we will and won’t tolerate.
In our example, while it might be hard and even uncomfortable, the expectation would be to put a stop to the conversation. Walking away from it in order to avoid speaking up is the same as allowing it to continue. Chances are that when you do speak up, you’ll get criticism from people who were previously your peers. They might call you out in front of others because you had previously been “one of them.” These are the necessary steps to growing into a better leader and growth isn’t always easy. Leading means facing issues knowing that we will probably take a few hits from others and accepting that that is just the way it needs to be.
