74. Elevated Leadership: Leading a New Team

Julianna Yau Yorgan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Uncommon Career or Daring to Succeed podcast, depending on where you're joining us.

Patricia Ortega: I'm Patricia.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: And I'm Julianna.

Patricia Ortega: And we're here for another co hosted episode of Elevated Leadership, Balancing Emotional Intelligence and Strategic Execution.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: In these episodes, Patricia and I look at two sides of a career move or situation where I'll look more at the strategic execution.

Patricia Ortega: And I'll focus on emotional intelligence strategies.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: For today's episode, we're going to be talking about gaining trust from your team in a new role. And Patricia and I are so excited about this one because there's so many different angles we can take both from a leadership perspective and as an individual joining a new team.

So let's get to it. I know, Patricia, you wanted to dive into some maybe what not to do first, and I had some of those stories as well. So why don't you [00:01:00] kick things off for us?

Patricia Ortega: Yeah, probably one of the biggest things that, as we were talking five minutes before we hit record, was putting a parameter on things and saying, okay, what is the way to put our best foot forward?

When we join a new team, when we're leading a new team, and one of the things, of course, our minds so quickly go to, Oh, I remember this one time it was not done correctly, right? And from that we can learn so much on how we would like to do things. Um, and then there's also positive models where we're like, ah, this person did such a great job of coming on board and helping us to trust them and to work with them and not for them, right?

But one of the situations that I remembered when I was young and unexperienced, is that you go in and you go for that short term win, right? And the short term win typically means I'm going to clean house or I'm going to change things up and implement what I think is best, right?

As opposed to taking a long term strategy where we can look [00:02:00] at, okay, let's find out who the people are on this team. What is already in motion? What are the strengths present here? And then where do we go from here in terms of elevating that? And just that one mindset of short term versus long term seemed to kind of resonate when we had that conversation a few minutes ago.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, for sure. And I think it's such a common misstep for because they think, okay I'm getting into this new role. I want to show that I can make impact. I can make change. I can improve things. Maybe even while we're being recruited into this role, they were telling you specifically, we need you to improve things and make an impact in these specific things.

But I so agree with you on this, Patricia, where. If you're taking too much of a short term approach to it, you run the risk of smashing into this new team that may or may not think that they're actually performing well? And changing [00:03:00] things up before you've actually gotten to know them and before they've gotten to know you.

So, already you're running the risk of starting things from the wrong foot. You're just going in there and saying everything you've done is wrong and I'm your savior and I'm gonna fix everything for you and maybe they've been waiting for somebody to come in and help improve things but maybe they're like hey things are fine. What's this person doing out of nowhere?

Patricia Ortega: Yeah. And you bring up a great point because maybe they're waiting for someone to come and help them. But the way most of us are, no matter how dire a situation, we actually are worried about the changes that are going to take place. And yeah, some of us have this outlook of, I love change.

You know, I remember when I was younger, I would always be like, I'm ready to leave, pick up. Grab a backpack and go to New York or go to Europe or, you know what I mean? Go to someplace new and start fresh, right? But I remember in my conversations with people, most of the time that [00:04:00] is not the case. And in a situation where you're a team member, there's a new leader coming in, you are not in control of this great adventure that's going to happen. And because you're not in control, in comes this worry about what is going to change. And so that's another piece, right? So the first part is. short term, long term. Which stance are you going to take?

But the second part is, do you go from, walk in from your perspective, or do you walk in from the perspective of the people you're going to lead, who, in a sense, feel that they stand to lose more, or they stand to have either a sense of loss or a sense of change that doesn't go in the direction they want.

And so there's already this fear and this worry. So how do you help to settle and mitigate that from the time that you walk in the door?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, there's so many different approaches and I think even the execution of the approach makes a really big difference. The sort of the standard approach is to go [00:05:00] in and kind of interview everyone and find out what do you think is working, what don't you find is working, and depending on the team and your natural leadership style that could work really well for you, but I've also seen it go just absolutely terribly. Where I remember there was one team I was on where this new person came in and they did exactly that they sat everyone down and said, I want to know all about you and your background and what you think is working and what isn't, but just somehow because it was maybe too scripted and formulaic... everybody stepped away from that conversation thinking, Oh my God, they're trying to replace all of us. So I think, yes, there's a way to find out what everybody brings to the team, what their strengths are and what they think needs to change and get their input. But maybe not necessarily in this very scripted, like, I've just got three days.

I'm [00:06:00] going to meet with everybody on the team and get this over with kind of methodology.

Patricia Ortega: Oh, okay. This is great. That last thought you said, I'm just going to get this over with, right? And I, I'm always going back to this. So if you're listening, you may have heard this before. Sorry, not sorry, but we judge others by the impact.

So how we are impacted by their communication and we judge ourselves by our intent. Now our intent is invisible. Nobody can see it. So what we're doing is we're kind of judging in a way that in some ways can, uh, be a little unfair, right? I didn't mean anything by it, so it doesn't matter how I say it. The point is I didn't mean anything by it.

But you, you hurt my feelings or you made me feel a certain way. It doesn't matter what you intended. This is how you made me feel. And so this is where miscommunication happens. And you brought up such a great point, that you want to, as a leader, not only take responsibility for your side of it, but also have [00:07:00] empathy for their side and say, okay, how would going through meetings with everybody in the first three days appear, right?

Or is this a process that I should take my time on and have a conversation, let people process what's going on. And at the same time, our presence matters. So how we present ourselves, you know, is it that you have a checklist of 10 questions and you ask the same 10 questions of every single person.

 That's the fastest way to become a meme in some way. So people are like, I know they're going to ask this question. I know they're going to say it in this way. And so I'm the first person to get into a systematic way of doing things. But I've learned over the years that when it comes to people, you just have to have a really nice balance of, yeah, being efficient, but also having empathy for the person that you're talking to.

Patricia Ortega: And I agree with you having a ton of meetings in the first three days might be [00:08:00] really hard to keep things straight and to remember the details and the connection with each individual person.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah. And going off of what you said about the other person's experience, your team's experience, if you're going in like that...

it's probably going to set off alarms because then they're like, Oh my God, what is this? Why are they doing this? Because most leaders kind of ease themselves in. Some may take too much time and others may, like we've been saying, try to smash through everything really quickly. But with such a sudden introduction into the team, they, like you said, don't know what your intentions are and their imaginations are just going to go wild. And they're just going to be off to the side comparing notes and saying, Oh, did they ask you this?

Oh, why didn't, why did they ask those three people, but not me? What does that mean? Like they'll start reading into the situation if you're so systematic about it, [00:09:00] where I find just trying to get to know their jobs, get to know them as individuals and taking at least a few weeks to go through that process and ease things off a little bit. Like I'm thinking back to one time where I took over a team that was performing well enough. But there was so much room for improvement and honestly, I didn't even know where to start with them because there was so much that needed to be done. But I also wanted to be careful that I wasn't going in and saying everything you've done is wrong.

You're doing everything terribly. None of you have any value. Like, I didn't want that to be the feeling they got from whatever improvements I introduced. So, what I did was went in and spent a lot of time with them understanding, okay, how does your process work? How did you come to this process? What are the different tools that you're using and why did you adopt them?[00:10:00]

And very systematically picked out the pieces where they're like, Oh, I don't know. We've just kind of always done it that way. So things that weren't attached to a specific person, where if it was something that they said, Oh, yeah, Mike just spent like months introducing this new process. Even though I thought it was one of the things that needed improvement, I wasn't about to say, Oh, well, let's scrap all of his work that he's been working on that everybody thinks is amazing, this new process.

Because that would be instantaneously going in there and saying, he's not of value. Even if I don't use those words, even if I praise him saying that all the work he's done was great to get us to that point, the action of going in and scrapping all of that sends a really clear message to the team that I didn't want to send.

Patricia Ortega: Yeah, absolutely. And what you're talking about is like the words and the action that you use communicate a [00:11:00] message.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Differently, mm hmm.

Patricia Ortega: Yeah, and it might be, like you said, it might be different than what you intend, but that message leads to feelings and emotions on the other side, an interpretation. And those interpretations really lead to the perception of you as a leader, your reputation as a leader, and ultimately will guide those relationships moving forward.

 I just found it really insightful how you mentioned even though you knew this process is not going to work, scrapping it was not the answer. So from a strategic standpoint, I'm so curious to know, what do you recommend? What do you think would be the right thing to do if you have this pressure from above to change this process?

You know, sometimes you go into a team and literally during the hiring process, they're like, we want you to scrap this process, right? You go in, you see the problem with the process, but you also see that the team is really attached to it. What happens now?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: So, very, very common, because especially with [00:12:00] layers of leadership, you're being hired in by someone who's two layers away from what's happening day to day on that team. Typically what I would recommend is that if you're seeing something and you do agree that it needs to change but it's not something that strategically is the first thing that you should change because you lose all the trust with the team, is trying to find other small wins that the team is going to be open to, introducing those and then selling the benefit of that up to your boss.

 There's always a ton of different things that need to be fixed, and it could be something as simple as, hey, I understand the process that we have today is not optimal, and I agree with you, it needs to change. But here's some other quick wins I've already gotten for us and a few others that I'm working on that will give us whatever benefit you can quantify to that.

While I work [00:13:00] on gaining buy in from the team to change this process. And honestly, it's a nice way to package it up because then your boss has to be accountable to their boss.

Patricia Ortega: Yeah,

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Right. So if you're basically handing over a complete package of here's the improvements we've seen since this new leaders come in since this new persons come in to join the team.

Just hold on. We are working on this other thing. Here are some other things that we can give you. It makes it easier for them to both accept it for themselves and then to describe what's been going on to the person they're accountable to.

Patricia Ortega: Wow. That's so strategic. I mean, that's strategic to be able to say, I'm going to manage up with this situation.

And what I thought of as you're doing that process, right. As you're providing your leader something to provide their leader because let's be honest, part of your job is to make them look good. Like this is just the way the world works when you have a hierarchy in an organization. Let's have [00:14:00] this dual prong strategy, right?

Where you manage up and you provide the very tactical ability to move forward. But then at the same time, while you're working with your team, it might be helpful to use this time to set the tone and to model specific characteristics that you're hoping your team will embrace. Things like, change and flexibility, agility, these experimental mindsets.

And often, it's much easier to share what you think someone else should do. So for example, if you went into a meeting and said, okay, you know, we're with a new team. I'm so excited to have you all here. This is how we work now, and you're sharing with the team, we are flexible team, we're an adaptable team.

It tends to feel on the other side as if you're sharing something like you are going to change. I am not. You're going to be flexible. I am not. I'm preparing you for the change I will impose on you. But if you take some time to set the tone [00:15:00] and model, so for example, let's say you go into a meeting and you share something and you almost know that it's going to get some pushback from the team, you model it yourself and you can share something like, you know, that's not something I originally had planned, or that's not something I originally had in mind, but I highly value being flexible. I highly value experimentation. And this is how you move forward. And so you share these phrases. And of course, all of this is with a genuine heart, that you actually believe these things, you will actually walk them out. But what you can do is basically paint a hero on the wall that everyone wants to be like, and then you model that hero.

So you're not telling someone how to be, you're giving someone the inspiration to take on certain characteristics. And then you model them yourself to show that I am the leader. And so if there's going to be flexibility, I'm the first person to show you that I have some flexibility in me, even if it means that I'm not always going to say yes to everything the [00:16:00] team says, right?

There's a balance in there.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, I really love that, especially because the nature of leadership is being a person that they want to follow. So, by modeling that behavior, you're showing, hey, this is the behavior that we want to see on the team. I'm trying to think back to some real examples from corporate where it is possible to say, hey, that's not how I see things, that's not what I came in here thinking that we should do. However, it sounds like all of you agree, or most of you agree. Can we, as a group agree that we're going to try this because I'm open minded and I'm flexible or however you want to pose it and we'll see what happens. And to go into it yourself with curiosity and willing to try things and revisiting and just setting a guideline to say, okay, we'll try this for a few weeks.

We'll see if it actually makes any improvement. [00:17:00] I'm going to hold the group accountable to remembering that in a few weeks, whatever works based on the change that's going to be made to see if it actually makes the impact it does. That we intended. Because if it doesn't, we'll either roll it back or we'll try it a different way.

Maybe my way, maybe another way. But, at least that way, they're not just being told that they're being heard, but you're actually implementing the thing. I've seen that go in all sorts of different directions where sometimes, you know what, I'm pleasantly surprised that it worked.

And that's why you have a team, right? They're there to help you figure out how all of this should work. But sometimes, maybe it doesn't work out as you expected because you are the leader. And that's a really good opportunity to say, hey, we've tried this. As a group, what do we think could work in a different way?

And honestly, even within the [00:18:00] group, as long as you're not tied to being able to say, I told you so, even if someone else says, oh, I think we were talking about doing it this way, and it was your way. If they adopted and the change happens, you still get credit for that as the leader to lead them to that solution, even if they think and probably even better if they think it was their idea in the first place.

Patricia Ortega: Mm hmm. Yeah, that's empowering. It's empowering to go through that process. Gosh, you mentioned something, and I was like, Oh, that's so good. And then it popped right back out. What were you sharing right now? That was, it was good.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, I was talking about trying the suggestions from the team and then seeing where that would go.

Patricia Ortega: Yes. Okay.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Sparking something. Yeah.

Patricia Ortega: Oh my goodness. So as you were sharing that, I thought, this is so fantastic. Your insurance in that moment, It could very well be setting the right expectation, right?

And so you're trying out what the team wants you to try out or wants to continue doing, but then setting this clear [00:19:00] expectation of, okay, we're gonna try this out, but here's what we're hoping to achieve in order to continue with this process.

And setting that clear expectation beforehand, lets people on their own accord say, you know, this didn't work, I have a better idea, or let's go back to the drawing board, or let's try what you mentioned. As opposed to not sharing that, letting the project, maybe it doesn't go well, and then you're the one who pulls the plug as opposed to them coming to their own determination that it wasn't the best move.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah. Now I do have a story of where it didn't go as well as planned, where when I was leading my team, they, I don't even remember what it was, but they all wanted to do something a certain way. And I'm like, Yeah. I'm sorry, but that's dumb. That's just not going to work. Oh, I remember what it is now, but I'm not going to share it in case anyone's listening.

But they all wanted to work a certain way. And I assess the situation very quickly. I'm like, Well, that's just not going to work, but you're [00:20:00] all, and I didn't verbalize that, but I thought they all want it so badly that, you know what, it's not going to impact me. I understand that the impact to them is it's actually going to be more difficult for them to manage their schedules and figure out how to do things.

But knowing how quickly they would realize it. And how quickly they would complain about it. I said, you know what, go for it. I personally, honestly don't think it's going to work well, but if you're all committed to making this work, if you're so bought into this, I have no problem with you doing it. But somehow they collectively forgot that they were the ones that suggested the change in the first place.

So at some point when they brought it up at a team meeting, I was like, oh, okay, well, I guess if they have collective amnesia, I'm just not going to poke the bear, and we'll just collectively decide to drop it, [00:21:00] and everybody was happy. But it was just a very strange behavior, I think, because they somehow thought it came, like it was a directive from above, where I'm like, no, you, you wanted this change, but I'm just going to keep my mouth shut, because as long as the team's performing well, I really don't care.

Patricia Ortega: Right. And that's part of that leadership piece. You have two really good insights from that. The first one being that when you are looking at some of these situations, part of your consideration is the emotional weight of it. And if someone's really bought into something, you might say, you know, this might be a short term loss.

It's going to take a couple of days to see this idea out and see it through. And of course, as a leader, you're balancing all these things. Do we have the time? Is this a worthy place to do this? Is it better with a conversation that we can lay it to rest sooner? But if not, one of the pieces that you're weighing in there, is how much emotional weight does this particular [00:22:00] thing have and why?

Is it someone's idea that they, I'm going to go exaggerate here, right? But is it someone's idea that came up and then shortly after they got cancer and now everyone's rooting for them and so there's this emotional attachment to the idea, right? So you want to weigh those pieces. And the second insight that came up is when things don't pan out as a leader, when it doesn't go well, I take the responsibility. When it does go well, the team takes the credit. That's just like leadership. I don't want to say leadership 101, but it's sort of this place that if you are the leader, that's kind of how the chips roll.

 And so this is a good reminder of, hey, if you want to be in leadership .... This is, this is one of those pieces that we'll need to make our peace with and it's absolutely worth it in the long run to see your team flourish.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah. I mean, even thinking about as a leader deciding to take that risk, you've ultimately made that [00:23:00] decision, whether it's accepting that, like you said, it's going to be a short term loss to the team or even if you decide, hey, we're not going to do that. And you're going to accept the emotional hit that it gives to the team and the degrading performance that you see as a result of it. Those decisions are still yours, whether it's right or wrong, or the team agrees to it or not. And it's such a stark reminder, I think, because so many people think that as a leader, you're just the one who knows everything and telling everybody what to do.

But that's really, really not the case.

Patricia Ortega: Yeah, absolutely. The leader's sort of facilitating everyone else's genius. That's usually the way in my mind I see it. I'm like, if you're the leader, you're the facilitator of everyone else's strengths. And it's sort of like, imagine you're on a basketball team. When you bring someone on that team, yeah, you want them to be a great player, but more than anything else, you need to know the personality, the temperament, the style, the strengths and [00:24:00] the weaknesses of every other person on that team so that you can look at the big picture and say, okay, where are our gaps?

And does this person fill the gaps? And you never really put yourself as a superstar making the three pointer. You are not on per se like the team you're more big picture looking and saying what's going to be the best use of their strengths.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, no, it's such a good analogy because going back to our original topic of gaining trust from you. The team in your new role is if you don't have that, that higher level view of how everybody fits together, how their strengths work and how to get the most out of your team, you're really not performing as a strong leader.

They'll feel it. They'll know it. Where they're like, why using your basketball analogy, if somebody is always, always able to get the ball in the net. And for some crazy reason, you decide to keep them on the sidelines. That's on you, right? And then you lose the trust from the team because they won't understand why you're [00:25:00] making that decision.

Whereas if you're able to leverage the team for the strengths that they have... Instantly, well, almost instantly, you'll be gain that trust from them because they'll see, oh, they, this new person sees my value. They understand why I'm here and what I can give to the team and how I can help the entire team win.

But if you don't have that view, if you're just well, I'm in charge and I'm just going to say, nope, I don't like that person. They're not going to get their shot anymore. Well, the whole team is going to lose trust in you pretty quickly because they can't see that big picture.

Patricia Ortega: Yeah, it feels counterproductive, but it's the way to truly make a big impact.

You either want to shine and be the person that the limelight goes to, or you want to be the person that actually makes an impact. And the way to do that is to help the people above you look great and to help the people on your team look great. It's sort of putting the limelight on everyone but you, which I think is [00:26:00] often lost on some of us, especially in the beginning.

You know, I always, when I was younger, I would be like, I want to be a leader because I want to be on, in large and in charge, right? You want to do all these things. And so I really love that perspective. We've covered a lot.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: We have. I think it's a really good natural place for us to cut it off because maybe in a future episode we can talk about the difference between being in the limelight versus giving that to everyone else, but in the background showing your value. Because I know a lot of leaders struggle with, okay, if I'm making my leaders look good and I'm leading, making my team look good, where does that leave me? How do I show my impact if I'm constantly making everyone else look amazing?

So I think that's a really important thing to kind of keep separate is. Your actual impact versus how you market 

Patricia Ortega: [00:27:00] I For those who like summaries, we've covered having a short term view versus a long term view and how a long term view of the relationships, and your success, and your team's success, is going to make a bigger impact.

We talked about empathy and having the perspective of the team members, right? What are they going through in this moment? What are their fears and expectations and worries and goals and desires coming with a new leader? We also talked about having team meetings or meetings with new leaders and taking our time with those. We talked about presence and the fact that your words and your actions lead to feelings for others, and that leads to perception and eventually reputation for you.

We talked about leading and managing up and providing the progress that your leadership needs while also setting the tone for potential changes and improvements with your team. And then we also talked about, leadership and, very broadly speaking, what it means to be a leader and how that perspective is different than when we were an individual [00:28:00] contributor and wanted so much to shine.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: I love your summaries. You're always so thorough with them.

 All right. Well, I guess we will call it a wrap for now. And we'll be back soon with another conversation.

Patricia Ortega: In the meantime, be sure to connect with us and let us know what you thought about today's topic.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Or even just let us know if there's a topic that you want to hear from us in the future.

Patricia Ortega: We'll drop all of our links in the show notes, so watch out for those in the description.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Bye for now.

Patricia Ortega: Bye.

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