📍Don’t leave the house without your mandate

Welcome to The Thinker, a monthly newsletter where I provide thought-provoking questions to help you cultivate a fulfilling and high-performing career.

Hi there!

Last week, in my leadership coaching program, one of my clients shared an absolutely brilliant strategy. For context, she recently started in a new executive role, and she’s been focused on getting cross-functional buy-in on her scope and mandate (E, you’re a superstar! 🫶). 

She shared something too good to keep to myself because it addressed a common mistake that high performers often make throughout their tenure: i) they wait for others to tell them what their scope is, and ii) they don’t feel a sense of agency to mold that scope in a way that prioritizes helping others win.

So, the strategy? Spend the first few months doing a series of meet-and-greets and use each meeting to deliver a highly strategic pitch that gets buy-in, sets expectations, and educates the stakeholders on how exactly you’re going to add value. 

I’ve broken the conversation flow down for you here. ⬇️ If you’re currently onboarding, try it out ASAP to accelerate your first 90 days. If you’re further in your tenure, keep this in your back pocket for the next time you have a meet-and-greet with someone new. Enjoy!

This issue is brought to you by Volv! 👇️ 

Smart people are done with social media. They’re on Volv.

Volv is a Snapchat-backed social news app built for high-performing individuals. It consolidates the most important, viral, and interesting content from around the web into 9-second stories. Get breaking news, viral debates, hottest stories & newsletter highlights, all in a few swipes. Users call it “TikTok for smart people” because it helps them discover quality content they would’ve never come across otherwise.

1. Explain how you want others to work with you and share…

→ Your mandate for the role

→ How you’re uniquely positioned to drive value

At the Director+ level, you likely have only a high-level idea of what’s expected of you in this role. So, your first 90 days is a balance between drinking from the fire hose, asking dumb questions, building a working decision of your vision for the role, and getting alignment on that mandate.

Be bold and take the time to develop your own vision for how you see your role evolving throughout your tenure. Think through how you’re going to drive company, team, and cross-functional goals. Then, think about how others need to leverage you and your team to bring their goals to life. Share that working hypothesis as you meet new key stakeholders.

2. Align on their expectations for you and ask…

→ What went well when collaborating with the prior owner of this role?

→ What are your expectations for me?

You’re the new sheriff in town! If you’re backfilling a role, you want to understand what that person did really well and what should be changed. No matter if that person was beloved or disliked, you also want to take a moment to position yourself and make it clear what you’ll bring to the table that might be different.

If you’re building the role from scratch, it’s likely that a bunch of people across the company have been doing little pieces of the work. You’ll want to understand who has been doing what, what their opinions are on what should be done going forward, and how willing they are to give that work to you to drive forward.

3. Do a live demo of how you can help them solve their problems and ask…

→ What’s keeping you up at night?

→ How can I help you with that?

Help them solve a key problem in that first meeting. By asking what their biggest pain points are, you’ll be able to piece together overarching company challenges, and you’ll position yourself to help solve them.

When you provide real-time insights on how you can help them, you’re creating future opportunities for collaboration and cultivating alignment and buy-in on your role in general.

It’s never too late to position yourself for success in your current role. Try out the tactics above and let me know how they work!

Cheering for you, 

McKay