Whether it’s your first time in a leadership role or you’re merely starting over somewhere new, transitioning into a new job is always challenging. Some challenges you expect, learning new competencies, meeting your initial performance objectives, adopting to the company culture, etc.

But other challenges, mental and emotional challenges, seem particular to being to being new and/or young: Will I fit in? Are my new employees going to like me? Did I oversell myself?

By far the most consistent question I see from these leaders is “How do I handle the employees who are older or more experienced?”

Transitioning into a department made up of older, technically experienced employees is unsettling. We’re convinced these employees that can see right through us, that they’ll directly challenge our competence, and directly rebel against our leadership. These employees exacerbate feelings of imposter syndrome, the feeling you’re undeserving of your achievements; that, deep down, you’re a fraud.

I can relate to all of these feelings. My first leadership position was in a hospital department of phone operators that was staffed by entry-level, hourly employees, many of whom had been there for years. It was a highly technical job, involving intricate and varied activities crucial to the regular operation of the hospital we were in.

This entire department was my responsibility. I had several years of hospital experience at, an undergraduate and graduate degree in management, and was well versed on overall hospital operations. But I had no experience with a department like this and I was petrified of these employees.

Reflecting back on this experience and the related lessons learned, I now stress two key things to other leaders.

You were picked for this job for a reason

There are things you can do that the people you’re managing can’t do. Instead of focusing on the elements of leadership where you aren’t confident, you should instead over-invest in the areas where you are qualified and that have allowed you to achieve your current success.

New leaders mistakenly allow the word “inexperienced” to become a synonym for “unskilled”. The development of effective skills is not linear or binary. Being inexperienced doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re under-developed and under-skilled. Your skill sets and development may be in other areas, like negotiating, delegating, long-term planning, and hiring, all areas that the employees you’re managing, regardless of their respective talents, are likely under-skilled.

In my department, no one had any experience hiring, building a schedule, or effectively mitigating conflict, so those responsibilities fell to me and fell well inside my areas of comfort and strength. In my current executive role, there are many tasks and specialties that I’m not experienced for, so I do now as I did then, focus on areas where I can contribute.

Stay out of your employees’ way

Speak to seasoned employees who’ve had less experienced leaders and they’ll give you insight into why experienced employees grow to resent less experienced managers. Too many rookie leaders meddle in tasks and areas they don’t fully understand.

I’ve written previously on the importance of building trust and social capital with your employees, and a large part is listening and deferring to those who know more about a topic than you do. New leaders often want to take command or make a splash, but instead of observing, learning, asking questions, and proceeding cautiously, they act rashly and impulsively.

Back to my old hospital department, I knew little about the day-to-day functions and intricacies involved in their processes. I knew enough to have a basic understanding of what “good enough” was and I worked out a system to allow the most experienced employees to have responsibility for the more temperamental and high-touch processes.

Let your more experienced employees focus on the things that they are best at. What you’ll find is that they will simultaneously do a better job of handling these items than you would and be more likely to solve a lot of their own minor problems without needing to pull your attention off of other more important topics.

It’s natural to be worried about being new to a job and not having the buy-in of a critical group of employees. The important thing is to not let those worries paralyze you and your leadership. Accomplish the tasks that you were put in that job to do. Be yourself, focus on the things you need to focus on, and everything else will take care of itself.

Good luck out there,

Patrick

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