Team Catapult

Cultivating Great Leaders and Effective Teams

  • Homepage
  • Workshops
    • Leading in High Stakes
    • Masterclass Series
    • Team Facilitation
    • Agile Team Coaching
  • About us
    • About TeamCatapult
    • Meet the Team
  • Podcast
    • Season 1
    • Season 2
  • Coaching
    • Leadership Coaching
    • Leadership Team Development
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • Articles
    • The Art and Science of Facilitation authored by Marsha Acker
    • Build Your Model for Leading Change by Marsha Acker
    • Podcast
    • Resources for your Journey
    • The Facilitation Planning Toolkit
  • Products
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

How to Deliver Results, Meet Increasing Demands, and Thrive as A Newly Promoted Senior Leader

How to Deliver Results, Meet Increasing Demands, and Thrive as A Newly Promoted Senior Leader

An Introduction to a 7-Part Series
February 6, 2024 | Marsha Acker

How to Deliver Results, Meet Increasing Demands, and Thrive as a Newly Promoted Senior Leader

Go to the Leader’s Edge Series

What got you here…won’t get you there.

Today, we’re talking about the critical factors that contribute to effective leadership, productive teams, and high-impact results for senior leaders new to their role.

You’re here because you got it! Finally! That leadership role that once felt out of reach or unattainable — it has finally landed at your feet. Congratulations! You must be thrilled. 

But, if you’re really honest with yourself, you’re likely getting a bit nervous as you start settling into what’s expected of you. There is a lot riding on this position and the results you are expected to deliver. 

Luckily, you have a clear vision for what you want to achieve, and you’re passionate about where the team and the company are headed. In fact, it’s likely this clear vision and passion have landed you in your new leadership seat! But, if it hasn’t already, the excitement may start to wear off as the magnitude of your responsibilities start to sink in. 

This is normal. After all, you’ve never done this exact thing before. You were likely handed this new responsibility because of your excellent work delivering results. But this level of leadership responsibility? It’s a whole new set of skills and expectations — and there are no playbooks. Mentors, yes, but playbooks? Nope. 

So, how do you start? You’re not going to get it all right. You will make mistakes, and there will be failures. For many new leaders who have been promoted due to their consistently high performance, this is such a terrifying prospect that they live in a perpetual state of anxiety. And, counterproductively, their fears and anxieties often show up in their leadership in detrimental ways. They exhibit behaviors that they think signal “good leadership,” without ever stopping to assess the bigger picture of what would serve them, their team, and the organization as a whole most successfully.   

Your first step, therefore, needs to be committing to a journey of self-exploration and investing the time for critical self-awareness to build amidst the challenges that organizational leadership poses.

What kind of leader will you be?

The list of challenges that organizations are facing at the moment is long. As a leader, you’re probably swamped by critical questions, without the time or guidance to know where to start — much less how.

  • Will you focus on outcomes first, or will you focus on people first? 
  • How might you combine both approaches, instead of thinking of them as separate and distinct?
  • How will you weather challenging circumstances, mistakes, and failures? Will they be tolerated by others? 
  • Which challenges and mistakes are yours to own? 
  • Where will you need help from others? 
  • How will you enroll others in your vision? Will they get to have a say in that vision, too? 

There is an age-old debate in the leadership space. Some argue that if you focus on the product or outcomes and you get them right, the other issues will go away or become less important. Others advocate that if you get the right people on board, help them communicate well, and focus on your group process (your HOW, as I like to call it), the right product will emerge in a way that is more sustainable, resilient, and repeatable. 

Team in the office, gathered around a computer

What do you believe?

Here’s what we know at TeamCatapult: there are two kinds of successful leaders. Those who recognize that investing in themselves and their development as leaders is the only pathway to being successful in their role — and those who are getting ready to learn the value of investing in themselves and their leadership development.

It’s about people

Investing in your leadership is the only and best way to navigate the high-stakes landscape of leading people through the organizational challenges we’re facing in this moment. 

Here’s what a leader said to me recently: “I thought I was starting the job that I had dreamed of. But before I could get my feet under me and start to put my vision into action, I was confronted by the challenge of all challenges — a breakdown between two senior leaders in my team who were critical to my vision. Until I could help them solve their issue, we were not moving forward. I would go home at night thinking, ‘I did not sign up for this!’ I felt like I needed to send them out for counseling or therapy. How did I get into this? I just wanted to get back to what I enjoy doing and stop navigating this interpersonal drama. Can’t people just come to work and get their job done?”

It seems simple, doesn’t it? If only other people would pull themselves together, everything would go smoothly, right? But here’s the crazy thing about delivering amazing outcomes or products: unless you are a team of one, you will need to work with other humans. And working with other humans is neither straightforward nor linear. 

Four person team meeting where everyone is happy

Humans are complex. When we gather with others, there are so many dynamics at play in the room. As leaders, we will likely have deep technical expertise in our domain that our careers have been focused on — but most of us lack deep expertise in working with other humans. And that’s the real role of successful leaders. 

The ability to work with others and effectively navigate interpersonal dynamics and behaviors is table stakes for the successful leaders of today. 

We live in a world where change is a daily, hourly event. It is not going to slow down or stop. We cannot continue to be the hero — the single person who solves all the issues. We need others to join us, to fight alongside us, to be a team. And we all want to thrive. We want to do good work and live a life worth living outside of work. 

This doesn’t mean you need to become a therapist to be a leader. But it does mean you need a model that allows you to work with relationships and be able to see the visible and invisible dynamics that create ineffective conversations — as well as how to change the nature of the discourse when things are moving off track. 

At TeamCatapult, we offer programming to help you develop a leadership model for yourself, but we often hear things like “but what does that really mean?” or, “what will the outcome be?” The truth is that what it means and what the outcome will be are unique to you and can only become clear by participating in a sustained exploration. 

To help leaders get a sense of the work to come, I’ve developed a multi-part series depicting one leadership cohort’s experience in a leadership development program. I encourage you to read it!

We need skills for working with other humans. Individual and collective leadership development is the key for thriving at work and in life — no matter what obstacles show up.

reflective question

What kind of leader do you hope to be?

SHARE THIS POST
FacebookTwitterShare

Click here to sign up for our newsletter

About Marsha Acker
Marsha Acker | CPF, CPCC, PCC, ICE-AC, ICAgile Coaching Track Co-Founder, CEO of TeamCatapult, LLC
Marsha coaches leaders and teams, who want to work in a more agile manner and lead change in their organization. She is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF), Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and Certified Structural Dynamics Interventionist through the Kantor Institute and Dialogix. Her coach training is from Coaches Training Institute and Center for Right Relationships.

Search the Blog

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Why We Need to Invest in Behavior Change – Not of Another Tool
  • Why Thinking you Need to Have All the Answers is Counterproductive for your Team
  • How to Welcome Disagreement Within Your Team (and mean it)
  • How to Welcome Team Opposition from a Space of Confidence and Curiosity
  • Why a Difference of Opinion Makes Your Team Much More Effective

Recent Comments

    Archives

    • February 2024
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • September 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • April 2017
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • June 2015

    Categories

    • Agenda
    • Agile Coaching
    • Agile Principles
    • Agile Team Coaching
    • Agile Teams
    • Build Your Model for Leading Change
    • Certification
    • Cohort
    • Collaboration
    • Communication
    • Competency
    • Conferences
    • Defining Moments of Leadership
    • Dialogue Facilitation
    • Events
    • Facilitation
    • Facilitation Stance
    • Interview
    • Leadership
    • Leading Change
    • Leading in High Stakes
    • Making Behavioral Change Happen
    • Media Interview
    • Meetings
    • Mentoring
    • News
    • Read the Room
    • Team Coaching
    • Team Conflict
    • Testimonials
    • The Art & Science of Facilitation
    • The Leader's Edge
    • Training
    • Virtual Book Tour
    • Virtual Facilitation
    • Virtual Meetings
    • Workshop

    Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    • Workshops
      • Agile Coaching Part 1: Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF)
      • Agile Coaching Part 2: Team Coaching (ICP-ACC)
      • Coaching Agility from Within (ICE-AC)
      • Virtual Facilitation Masterclass
      • Facilitating Engaging Retrospectives
      • Advanced Facilitation
      • Changing Behavior in High Stakes
    • Coaching
      • Leadership Coachin
      • Leadership Team Development
    • Resources
    Book a Discovery Session
    ©2020 TEAM CATAPULT | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
    Book a Discovery Session
  • start your journey
  • workshops
  • about us
  • podcast
  • coaching
  • blog
  • products
  • contact us
  • newsletter
  • © TEAM CATAPULT | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    Copyright © 2025 · Lifestyle Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in