STRATEGIC MOVES

Impressions form quickly. Others in the organization inevitably mull over the same questions that any newcomer puzzles through when deciding to take on a new assignment. They ask themselves : Why this person? Why now? What does this change portend ”for me and for the organization? How serious is management? They test to see whether the newcomer is up to the task. They push back to find out the influence she can bring to bear and the resources she can command. And in all this testing they take their cue from key members of the organization. It is incumbent on anyone taking on a new assignment to make sure that those cues are on the mark ”vocal and unequivocal.

The "seal of approval" takes multiple forms, but without it the start of any strategic assignment can be rocky indeed. As a senior woman in an accounting firm put it: "I need to know that leadership has my back and that I have their continued confidence. It is important to me and to the people on my team." That support must be clear organizationally and worked out personally . Key players can begin to entertain reservations when they sense disgruntlement. By engaging them, you deepen relationships that can be a bulwark when things get rough; you also have in place communication channels to divert negative energy in more positive directions.

In drilling deep, you engage key stakeholders to probe their commitment to the task at hand and their confidence in your ability to handle it. You build on that commitment and that confidence through four strategic moves.

• Work out expectations: At times the expectations surrounding what can be accomplished do not dovetail with the realities on the ground. Other times, a new role comes with no established expectations, and they must be created. The objective is not only to negotiate the backing you need from key people in the organization but also to reach mutual agreement on how you will work together.

• Secure strategic responsibilities: A new leader's list of strategic responsibilities provides a snapshot of priorities. In turn those responsibilities can shape perceptions of your performance and affect your visibility throughout the organization. You secure those responsibilities by negotiating with the key players involved.

• Have key leaders make the case: Only top leadership or the board can tie an appointment to an organization's strategic vision. They have a built-in platform to articulate what needs to be done to get the department, division, or company moving forward and why you are the best person to accomplish that task. Their agreement to make the case must be negotiated. Otherwise they might opt for a laissez-faire approach.

• Seed storytelling opportunities: People in organizations talk. As they tell each other stories, those narratives become embedded in their perceptions. Strategically placed allies can help spread the good news, framing the newcomer's story in positive terms.

A lot of people have a lot riding on major appointments. As one of the senior women in technology pointed out: "If you take on a big job, you are taking a chance and the people who put you there are taking a chance. You don't have much time to make mistakes." Researchers Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins estimate that 64 percent of executives hired from the outside won't make it in their new jobs. And those promoted from within can expect to encounter rough sledding ahead. ^{[ 9]} The first six months of an assignment, they contend, are a make-or-break period.

Just as we followed Alice Lind's steps as she put together an intelligence campaign, we are going to track Susan Vega's strategic moves to mobilize key backing behind a difficult new assignment.

Susan's firm had carved out a niche in the competitive consulting world with its focus on implementation. Susan thoroughly enjoyed the client contact and during her five - year tenure as head of the financial services practice had grown revenues from $20 million to $110 million.

The leadership at the firm, a partnership, periodically rotated and typically these rotations produced a shakeup of the top consultants . Susan co-chaired the nominating committee for two years and participated in the selection of the new team, a stint that gave her considerable visibility. "When the new leadership came in, a lot of changes were made. I won't call it a housecleaning, but . ..."

Susan had gotten to know the future chairman during the firm's courtship of a big credit-card account. "In those meetings I brought diversity to a white male enclave and hit it off with the bankers." The future chairman, at first active in the negotiations, eventually watched from the sidelines. Susan's immediate grasp of what the client needed and her decisiveness impressed him. Two months later he asked her to take over the Southwest region.

Susan was skeptical. Her forte and passion were in client services, not administration. Other partners were less charitable. The more polite intimated that the region, with the heavy concentration of oil and gas clients , was too hard a nut for her to crack. But much of the commentary was considerably more blunt.

"I got picked because I'm a woman. The job was a payback for voting right on the nominating committee. I was too young ."

Susan says that there is always that different perspective on when a woman is ready. She is forty-two. The previous chairman ran the firm at forty. She only looks young. She has dealt successfully with tough-minded bankers and negotiated fees with shrewd investment advisers for five years. But instead of dismissing the commentary as unpleasant noise and "a lot of grousing," Susan admitted its corrosive potential and set out to prove the backbiters wrong. She started by mobilizing key support within the firm.

Work Out Expectations

Backers come in many guises. They can be sponsors who recommended you for the position. They can be an immediate boss or leaders who are not involved with your work on a day-to-day basis. They can be board members or influential consultants. Newcomers to a position leave relationships with these key players unattended at their peril. Faulty expectations among key players can derail a new assignment. Too optimistic and they lead to disappointment. Left ambiguous, they give rise to discord. By managing these expectations actively, anyone taking on a new role increases her chances of getting off to a good start ”and, with feedback mechanisms in place, of staying on track.

Just because people selected you does not necessarily guarantee you will have a good working relationship with them or that you can count on their backing when the going gets rough. These relationships need to be developed and then renewed at each stage of their evolution. Managing them in a 24/7 world is an ongoing process. Effectiveness on the assignment often hinges on the success of that process. Key leaders, by their actions and words, can buffer your transition to a high-profile assignment. Or they can leave you on your own to sink or swim.

In working out expectations, the first hurdle is bringing key players to the understanding that not only can they have a productive relationship with you, the task ahead requires it. The next hurdle is developing the outlines of that relationship ”how you will interact with each other and work together. Tacit ground rules need to be established for your interactions ”simple things like how often you talk and not-so-simple things like how you treat each other. Finally, a good working relationship is one built on mutuality, where each can learn from the other and you can both grow.

Build Mutual Respect. Sponsors, bosses, and board members can be pivotal players as you try to claim authority in a new role. Since you need their backing, your first challenge is to negotiate relationships with them that are based on mutual regard. These kinds of relationships are not happy accidents. Nor can they be assumed. Someone may have been instrumental in tapping you for a leadership position without knowing you well or without knowing you at all. The new role may be the product of a reorganization, and you came with the package.

Getting to know potential backers is not something that happens overnight. But the process must be initiated by you, not left to chance encounters. Before you can get these relationships off on the right foot , however, you might have a certain amount of "correcting" to do. ^{[ 10]} Key leaders do not always start with unbiased or positive impressions. In many cases, they don't have much of an impression at all, and you may have some proving to do to establish your credibility and your credentials. That is what happened to Gail.

Gail stepped into the general counsel's role at a major metropolitan hospital after a medical emergency forced the hospital's top lawyer into early retirement. While the CEO was grateful to Gail for filling the void, he considered the move a stopgap measure. "Frankly," she says, "he thought I was a lightweight, lacking in gravitas." It never occurred to the CEO that the soft-spoken, diminutive lawyer might want the job as a permanent assignment.

Because Gail had worked in the former general counsel's shadow, her interactions with the CEO had been limited. To get any traction in her new role, Gail had to disrupt his perceptions of her. "He didn't think I was analytic enough or tough enough to make the hard decisions." Others in the organization would be quick to take their lead from him. Instead of scheduling face-to-face meetings with the CEO, however, Gail began to educate him on her abilities through a series of thoughtful e-mail messages. "That way he could evaluate my analytic abilities without being distracted by my lack of physical stature." As the CEO's confidence in her sharpness grew, his perceptions of her took a 180-degree turn. She had, he discovered , her own idiosyncratic gravitas.

At other times, mutual respect emerges from a testing process. When Joyce was promoted at a major technology company, her new role merged two jobs. The previous incumbents had been pushed out because they could not close deals.

Joyce had never worked for or with her new boss, and after a brief honeymoon, he started to test her.

He tortures you badly until you've convinced him. He's always testing your ideas. We would have arguments about run rates and go toe-to-toe, yelling and screaming. He would advocate for a change in the mix, and I would feel strongly that it would be a mistake. I'd dredge up examples of problems from my experience. He'd shout back.

That was, Joyce says, "his way." She intuited that she needed to stand up to her boss. "I didn't fold and it worked. At a meeting recently my boss started quoting me. I thought he'd lost his mind," she says. "Of course, he never came back and told me I was right." That did not matter to Joyce. She had established her standing with him, a precondition for mutual respect and a significant prelude to securing his backing.

Finally, mutual respect can germinate in a critical moment or over a pivotal issue. Some action triggers a response. Sarah created just such an impression when she pointed out a problem in her new assignment. The managing partner in her accounting firm had charged her with growing a major piece of the business. To achieve her goals, however, she would have to draft people from other areas of the firm and they were all pulling down much higher salaries than she was. Without at least parity in salary she would not have the authority she needed. There was a hitch, though, that went beyond budget constraints: "Nobody ever negotiated salary with the managing partner," she says. "He prided himself on his fairness. Any salary he set was automatically deemed equitable and off-limits."

Unless Sarah could convince the managing partner to recognize the value that she brought to the table, her reports and others in the firm would jump to false conclusions about the importance of the job she was taking on. Carefully positioning her arguments not as an attack on the managing partner's fairness, but as a plea for the tools to be effective, Sarah opened a dialogue with him. He found her argument compelling and revised his salary offer. But Sarah's move achieved more than an increase in pay. The managing partner came to see her in a different light. After witnessing firsthand her adroitness in handling a difficult situation, he became an active advocate on her behalf . But Sarah had to take the first step.

Work Out the Rules of Engagement. Building relationships with key backers is an ongoing process. However informal the discussions may be, you are always negotiating expectations just as you are constantly working out the basic guidelines for your communication. It is important to establish the when, where, and what of your interactions. It is even more important to attend to the tone of those interactions. The ground rules you negotiate must cover not just the access you have to each other and the feedback you will exchange but how you will treat each other.

To our surprise, many of our informants reported having troubled relationships with key leaders. From their perspective, these leaders were difficult and had earned their reputations for psychologically abusive behaviors. To work with them, they had to make clear ”right from the start ”the kind of treatment they expected (and would tolerate ).

Some behavior tests the limits of what is acceptable. Different people will draw that line at different places. Those limits must be set, however, as Sachiko recognized when she was promoted to managing director at an investment bank. A mathematician by training, Sachiko was expert in econometric modeling. When the bank decided to roll out a new derivatives product, Sachiko was put in charge, reporting to the head trader .

He's the most difficult person I've ever worked for. His other direct reports have trouble with him, but their relationships are not so tenuous as mine are. He has a way of laying into you that you wouldn't believe ” bad language, the whole thing. Everybody has experienced being shut out, the lack of communication, only hearing from him when you've screwed up. I knew I couldn't work like that.

Aware of his reputation, Sachiko let him know her limits. When he started to yell, she would stand up as if to leave the meeting.

I told him that I would be happy to speak with him, once he'd calmed down. I had seen too many people being walked over by him. They never got his respect.

Similarly, Joyce, whose testing we described above, let her boss know that no matter how deep their disagreements on policy issues, their often heated exchanges could not be aired in public. That would have been a costly loss of face for Joyce.

In today's busy world establishing when you will interact with key leaders can be as pivotal as defining the how of those interactions. Unforgiving schedules make it imperative to set some ground rules for access. ^{[ 11]} You want to reach at least a tacit understanding on how you are going to communicate and respect each other's time. As the head of the ethics practice at one of the nation's top accounting firms put it:

As you go higher in an organization, the people are incredibly busy. When I took on this job, my new boss was busy with a merger . He was also based in New York; I was in Boston. But we sat down and talked, upfront, about how we wanted to work together. I would be selective in my demands on his time, only pulling him in when I considered his opinion critical. But he needed to be there when I did pull him in. To me, that guarantee of feedback was essential.

There are also boundaries to be worked out over where the organization's time stops and your time begins. High-pressure jobs have a way of swallowing up all waking hours, regardless of outside commitments. For women who shoulder heavy family responsibilities the challenge can be particularly daunting. First, the suspicion still lingers in the air of many organizations that women are less committed to their work and less able to manage demanding assignments. And time tends to be seen as an unlimited resource in organizations. The prevailing expectation is that people will always do what it takes to get the job done. ^{[ 12]} So negotiating about boundaries is a delicate operation. On one hand, coming into a demanding job, you do not want others in key positions to start questioning your commitment. On the other, with heavy responsibilities at the office and at home, you must reach an understanding with key players that protects your personal time. Even without that conflict, you need to carve out some downtime.

A promotion thrust Diana, a marketing executive in the fashion industry, not only into a pivotal role at her company but also into daily contact with a demanding CEO. Before their first official meeting, he sent her a list of topics he wanted to cover and told her to set aside at least two hours the next evening. He'd have dinner delivered.

Diana, a working mother, prized efficient time management ”even with her bosses. She did not want to launch her new reporting relationship with a bad precedent. She responded to the peremptory summons with a memo ”along with backup data organized by product line and market segment. The memo systematically addressed the CEO's topics. She also told him that she had to leave at six o'clock to pick up her kids .

Colleagues were surprised that Diana would push back right after a promotion. But, as it turned out, the information she had forwarded answered the CEO's questions. Their eventual meeting lasted ten minutes. This interaction, however brief, told him that Diana had information at the ready and would not hesitate to share good news and bad in accessible form. It also signaled that she had boundaries.

Learn How to Learn from One Another. The final dimension of working out expectations is negotiating the information flow ”how you keep each other informed and the feedback you each need. What, for example, does a key leader consider "being informed"? What sort of counsel do you need in order to develop in the job? The answers to these questions change over time as the relationship evolves. When a new leader first takes over, for example, anxiety over the appointment can force senior leaders to rethink previously negotiated guidelines. If they harbor last-minute doubts about the new project or their choice, they naturally tend to watch the newcomer's performance closely. This scrutiny can undermine a new leader's authority if it takes the form of micromanaging. People see top management hovering and begin to wonder if she is really in charge. The motivation behind the behavior may be perfectly well intentioned, aiming to ease the newcomer's transition. Unless it is checked, however, it can create major obstacles to a newcomer's effectiveness. Pat, a systems engineer, had to push back on a key leader's attempts at micromanaging her transition.

Pat was tapped by the head of client services to oversee the implementation of the company's signature new software platform. The move was a big step up for Pat and just as big a headache . Cuts in head counts during the slump in IT spending had taken a toll. The effort was behind schedule and the product filled with programming flaws. Her new boss was also a fanatic for detail. "He had to be," Pat: says. "This platform could restore the company to profitability." He needed timely information, but Pat could not function with someone constantly looking over her shoulder. After some marathon sessions vetting the problems, the two came to a meeting of the minds. He warned in only a half-joking manner: "Now, don't screw it up." Pat used the moment to lay out some guidelines for their communication. "I will certainly try not to. But don't expect an hourly progress report. If I run into a problem, you will be the first to hear about it."

Once on the job, Pat was scrupulous about keeping her boss in the loop. But she also filtered out the trivial day-to-day information. The guidelines Pat established produced a solid working relationship. When Pat raised a problem, he knew it was one that she considered important. And she could get on with the job, assured that he would be there as a sounding board.

The other side of learning together is the feedback you seek from key players. Not only must new leaders explicitly contract for feedback; they have to put in place mechanisms that facilitate it. Feedback performs a vital function. It helps keep everyone on the same page and flags potential problems or misunderstandings before they get out of control. It is also an easy conduit for timely advice.

Martha relied heavily on feedback from the head of marketing to get her bearings in a new and demanding role. When she left a sales position in a large consumer products company to become a vice president of marketing at a smaller firm, she estimates she had "maybe two of the twenty or so requirements for the job." But the head of marketing encouraged her; he liked her market savvy and the way she related to customers. He promised to teach her the ropes and help her establish credibility within the organization. Convinced that he was serious, Martha accepted.

That promise did not materialize quite the way Martha had anticipated. The head of marketing traveled extensively and was frequently unavailable. "I became an incredible nag ”bombarding him with questions via e-mail." Gradually they reached a mutual understanding. When he recruited her, he knew the job was a stretch; he would be there to counsel her. "He has his ear to the ground," she says, "and knows what is happening all over the company." They set up a calendar for monthly face-to-face meetings. They used that time to talk about how she was being perceived, the problems she was having (those she had identified as well as the ones he had heard about). But they also strategized on ways to improve the marketing function. It has been a learning experience for both. "He pulls me back before I fall off the abyss," she says. "He won't let me fail and everyone in the organization knows that."

Susan Vega would have been happy spending her days serving the firm's clients in the financial services sector. "I' d have a nice place to live and be working on interesting problems with interesting people, " she says. She ended up heading the Southwest region because the impact she had on the firm mattered to her. "If the executive committee thought the job was a better use of my talents at this point in time, I was willing to take it on. "

Susan's agreement confirmed some of the management committee's expectations. In other areas, however, it prefaced serious negotiation. Traditionally the job had a large public relations component. Susan set out to quash those expectations. "I wasn't going to be Queen of the United Way in Dallas. I would support the firm's community outreach and serve on committees . But I wasn't about to chair anything." Susan also wanted to build into the role more substantial contact with clients than it usually carried. "I told them that we couldn't do that right away. I would have to get in there and figure things out first . "

All the time that Susan was negotiating expectations about the role, she was simultaneously working out her relationships with members of the executive committee. She was not their only source of information about what was going on in the Southwest region. But others tended to avoid bad news and "downpedal problems." One executive in particular would "take my feedback and then water it down when he presented the data to the executive committee. " Susan negotiated a more direct feedback mechanism. "It was important to me that they hear my voice." The information was soon flowing both ways. "They would tell me what they were hearing and prop me up when I needed propping. We would bounce around ideas to make sure that I was hitting all the major constituencies . "

Susan also reached out to other key players in the organization, especially partners in the region. "Unless you deal with them directly on an issue, they don't respect you. I made myself available, giving feedback and making introductions . I never said no when someone wanted help with a client or personnel issue . "

Working out expectations is an important activity in the early period of a new assignment. If you do not move quickly to define them, they will take form anyway ” and probably not in the shape you want. Unless you push back on unfair treatment, you invite its continuation. Without reasonable boundaries with respect to availability, you can find steady encroachments on your private time. With no guidelines established for your communication, you risk being micromanaged. But most of all you can miss out on valuable counsel. Not only did the women we interviewed understand the importance of working out expectations, they realized they had a small window of time in which to negotiate them.

A lot of stakeholders have a great deal riding on key assignments. The pressures and demands of a big job can be daunting. They also open an opportunity ”the prospect of forming alliances with other members of the leadership team. The process can deepen or modulate your existing relationships, lay the groundwork for new ones, and change faulty perceptions that discourage key players from investing in your success. Not only are these relationships enriching, they are the source of much-needed support, buffering you from the skeptics and reinforcing your credibility.

Secure Strategic Responsibilities

When leaders take on new positions, they are sure to be told to delegate ”delegate as many responsibilities as possible so that they can focus on the big picture, the strategic issues. This advice can be especially pointed when a promotion is involved. Old responsibilities must be left behind to accommodate the new. Workdays and energy are not infinitely elastic. Leaders moving into new areas often find that they must jettison certain tasks to make room for others. Keeping responsibility for a function does not mean keeping all the work, but the experience of delegating may be somewhat different for a woman than it is for a man. ^{[ 13]}

Some commentators have suggested that women have a hard time delegating. According to certain stereotypes, women are afraid to delegate. Perfectionists, they do not trust others to perform up to their standards. A junior partner in a mergers and acquisitions firm typifies this attitude: "When a deal is coming together, the pressure is horrendous. It's just easier to do the work yourself. That way you know it will get done right and you don't waste any time explaining." There may be good reasons for women like this partner to be perfectionist. Under close scrutiny, they may sense that people are watching for mistakes. Sponsors who put them in the role may also feel at risk and so may be monitoring performance closely, testing them. Whatever the circumstances, there are solid reasons to be strategic as you decide what to delegate. Strategic in this context means taking care to retain any function with a direct impact on perceptions of you as a leader.

There is a saying in bridge: "Not all thirteen-point hands are equal." The same goes for the tasks that fall under a new leader's purview. Some are more equal than others, and it is essential that you identify which is which early on and fight to secure them. You want to negotiate with key players in the organization about the ways you are going to work together and for the tools that you will have in the role.

It seems obvious that a person would want to retain the functions associated with a particular role. On the face of it, you would not expect the decisions to precipitate any friction or controversy. That, however, is not always the case. Sponsors and bosses, anxious to help a newcomer settle in, may suggest shifting certain functional responsibilities elsewhere. "It will lighten your load and give you time," they say. Or they may not realize that the previous configuration omitted critical functions. The former incumbent may not have been involved in, say, pricing policy, but that function could have a strategic impact on your performance and directly affect your credibility as a new leader.

Keep Functions That Signal Your Authority. New leaders often bring new agendas . They are frequently charged with redesigning programs or refocusing projects that have gone off track. The challenge is to get people to follow them. Getting buy-in is a complicated problem, but certain important signals always need to be sent right from the start. People need to know that you will have a say in their performance review, their pay, or other incentives. Unless you have a voice in these decisions, they may calculate that doing things the old way is a low-cost option.

When Paula was appointed controller of a business unit in a large manufacturing firm, her mandate was to increase coordination between sales and operations. The problem arose because the sales organization, with incentives based solely on revenues, would oversell, making promises on delivery that the operations group could not meet. Paula knew that she could not influence the sales organization to change its practices unless she had some control over its incentive system. In negotiations with the head of the business unit, Paula led the process to realign the compensation system so that customer satisfaction was kept front and center. With this initiative in the works, Paula demonstrated that she had what it took to bring sales into line and to achieve the broader business goals.

Convincing people of your authority can be particularly challenging in a role that is newly created. Usually it is not difficult to figure out the strategic responsibilities essential to a role. Most big jobs, however complex, have clear objectives and the strategic responsibilities flow naturally from them. They are the tools that make it possible to meet the objectives. But newly created roles are often ill defined, and anyone taking them on must negotiate the boundaries and the strategic responsibilities that go with them. Even if people recognize the need to rebalance responsibilities, deep down they usually do not want to see their own influence curtailed. The rebalancing may not be a zero-sum game, but chances are good that those affected will view it that way.

Tanya confronted this dilemma when the executive director and founder of a nonprofit organization persuaded her to come on board as chief operating officer. The role was new and filled a gaping hole in the agency's organizational chart. The executive director, responsible for the agency's rapid growth, was spread thin. Program costs sometimes got out of hand, and reports to sponsors and governmental funding agencies were habitually late. Tanya first had to make the executive director comfortable with the decision to relinquish some of her authority.

Then Tanya began to negotiate responsibilities, but she framed the discussions in terms of hypothetical situations: What happens when there is a staff problem? How would we handle a failing program? Gradually the two came to a mutual understanding. The executive director would devote her efforts outward ”to fostering the agency's public image and broadening its funding base. Tanya, on the other hand, would take care of its internal health, installing cost controls and management systems.

Agreement on paper or a handshake is one thing; how it plays out in real time is another, Tanya discovered. Within a year, funding started to be a problem. "The more nervous the executive director got about the funding situation, the more she tried to micromanage . She wanted to fire people for making mistakes."

Tanya pushed back. The agency had become more complex. It dealt with many grants organizations, all with different reporting requirements. Understaffing meant that things were falling through the cracks. Tanya recognized another moment in the ongoing negotiations with the executive director over their respective responsibilities. To manage the workflow, Tanya needed to retain control over staffing decisions. The discussions were difficult, but Tanya prevailed.

Tanya's negotiations helped the executive director make a tough transition. And by defining their respective responsibilities, Tanya also gained the confidence of the staff. They knew she was in charge of internal operations and would protect them from the executive director's penchant for micromanag-ing and snap decisions.

Keep Functions Directly Correlated with Results. Certain functions are more closely tied to results than others are. Which functions these are varies a great deal and depends on the specific challenges a leader needs to address. In building a new organization, for example, recruiting and hiring may be crucial. Decision-making authority may have to be rebalanced so that the final say rests with the line rather than the human resources department. By contrast, when you are introducing a change across a matrixed organization, control over implementation ”even for a short time ”often turns out to be the critical function. For Maria, a partner in a large consulting firm, it was pricing.

Maria, recently promoted to return a major practice to profitability, faced the challenge of correlating fees generated by engagements to the amount of work. The previous practice head had deferred all engagement decisions to the regional partner. "He hated to turn away business, so the economics of the engagement process were skewed to favor top-line growth." With little input from the practice, he consistently underestimated the demands certain clients made. "The practice was bedeviled with lemons," Maria says, "clients whose engagements invariably came in over budget and blotted performance records at the end of the year." Nobody wanted to work on these accounts; they could foul up a performance review.

Profitability and Maria's credibility turned on her ability to influence the pricing of the practice's services. Maria pulled together some telling data and shared her concerns with the regional partner. Although he stopped short of giving her veto power over an engagement, he agreed that they would make pricing decisions together. The arrangement brought budgets into better alignment with the scope of work and gave Maria's team tangible evidence that she recognized their problem with the lemons and was doing something to fix it.

Keep Functions That Enhance Visibility. Observers of organizational behavior have long puzzled over a curious phenomenon . Leaders and those who study leadership pepper their remarks and papers with references to teamwork, being part of the team, pulling together. Yet in many organizations, the agents that provide the glue are largely invisible. And they are often women. Their work behind the scenes ”peacekeeping or mediating conflict and facilitating communication ”can go unrewarded if not claimed. ^{[ 14]} Keeping functions that make potentially invisible work visible bolsters a new leader's position with those who may have doubted her potential effectiveness.

When Rachel moved into a position with shared responsibilities at a large government facility, she won out over some of her colleagues. Even though Rachel, an engineer with an MBA, carried the credentials for the job, strong reservations remained over her ability to lead the division.

Together she and her boss oversaw a sprawling operation, located in two buildings. The group ran the simulators and supported all the research and systems that went into experimental aircraft. About a hundred people, contractors as well as civil servants, were split between the two buildings . The branch head, whose specialty was simulators, worked out of the simulator building, while Rachel had more or less autonomous supervisory responsibility in the hangar, which housed the research aircraft. This physical separation made it imperative that Rachel and her boss integrate their responsibilities.

Rachel, in her words "a walkaround manager," maintained an open-door policy. The branch head had a very different leadership style. He wrote everything down and focused on policy. Over time, the two worked out the division of labor. Playing to her strengths, Rachel quickly became the face of the leadership team. The visibility had an immediate impact on the way she was perceived. As she went around, going "from shop to shop, talking to people," she used the interactions to take the group's pulse. She not only let people know what was happening, she also found out what was on their minds. When she detected friction between the hangar and the simulator contingents, she moved to dispel it. These intercessions, coupled with her visible presence, gave her credibility, positioning her as the go-to person when problems arose and as a full partner on the leadership team.

Susan Vega had a dual charge when she took over the Southwest region. Growth was clearly an objective for the underperforming practice. But the executive committee also wanted to see greater emphasis on the long term . The firm had built its reputation on strategic implementation. "Folks have to be comfortable before they invite you into their organizations. We can't go after every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the marketplace ," Susan says. "The commitment of time is too great." Instead, teams would focus on specific target clients. Rather than run from one product to the next or from one pitch to the next, consultants were supposed to invest in relationships. The target list represented "a chain of relationships that would generate the next revenues, although they may not show up on the ledgers for a year or so . "

"The tech consultants, in particular, sell products," Susan says. "They hit and run. They can run from one IT project to the next, but they still have a responsibility to the last one." The problem, Susan discovered, was that consultants, like other people, tend to worry about their daily bread. The scorecarding ” the rewards and compensation systems ” had to value the investment in future clients and not just current revenues generated.

Traditionally the executive committee set consultant compensation. Susan convinced top management that acceptance of the teaming initiative hinged on realigning compensation criteria. To get the region to adopt the teaming approach, she would need greater participation in the review process. "I don't make the final determination , " she says. "But I do get to say whether the balance is fair . If a consultant doesn't sell as many actual services as the guy who is running from product to product, but helps us penetrate , say, the client list in the drilling market, he should be rewarded."

Susan uses both the stick and the carrot implicit in her expanded responsibility for compensation decisions. Without tying rewards to the teaming approach, she would have engaged in an endless attempt to convince the region's consultants that the executive committee and she were serious.

The strategic importance of a given function ranges widely from one visible assignment to the next. But strategic functions share one salient characteristic ”they all shape perceptions of a newcomer's authority and credibility. They are the drivers of effectiveness. You secure the specific responsibilities you need by engaging key leaders and actively negotiating.

Have Key Leaders Make the Case

The first hint of the backing you may have from key leaders appears in the information you gather about the role. That backing then acquires definition in the ongoing negotiations over expectations and strategic responsibilities. By and large, these exploratory discussions and negotiations take place behind the scenes. Commitments are secured offline. Once you are appointed, however, your backing gets put to a public test.

Any shift in leadership ranks precipitates concerns. People worry about the impact on their careers. They question the motivations behind the decision. And they express reservations about the selection. "She's not seasoned enough to pull it off." "She's in over her head." "She's not tough enough to make the hard choices we need made."

These reactions are perfectly natural. Visible appointments come with high stakes ”whether a man or a woman is appointed. Just because a clear gap appears on an organizational chart does not mean that the person chosen to fill the slot can slip in without stirring concerns in certain quarters . A new appointment may be inevitable. There is nothing inevitable about the actual selection. Working with key players, a newcomer can prepare the ground so that the concerns, when raised, lead to productive dialogue. Key leaders can position not only the assignment but also their choice positively.

Orchestrate a Persuasive Introduction. No one wants to take up a prime position without a credible and persuasive introduction. But all too often key leaders do not make this case. They welcome a new person to the fold via an impersonal e-mail message. Or, even more problematic , they leave the introductions up to her. This laissez-faire approach unnecessarily compromises the newcomer's early acceptance. The silence provides little incentive for others to be supportive. In fact, when key leaders make no attempt to explain an appointment or to blunt criticism, they give potential critics free rein.

Grace, hired by the CEO of a real estate development company as his first vice president of administration, got a chilly reception when she showed up for work. The CEO had announced the appointment in a management meeting with a quick mention. He then circulated blanket e-mail to the rest of the organization. It was abundantly clear to Grace that this minimal introduction "wasn't enough."

The rumors that were flying around were incredible. Before I got through the door, the operational heads had told their staffs that they didn't need to worry about my stuff. They didn't have to come to my training seminars or fill out any vacation or expense forms.

The firm had grown exponentially, and the infrastructure strained to keep pace. The founder-CEO created the position to bring order to the company's haphazard policies and conflicting practices. The operational heads, however, liked things just the way they were. They did not want any outsider coming in and meddling with their expense accounts or their vacation allotments. Grace knew she needed help from the CEO.

I told him that if he wanted the kinds of changes he hired me to implement, he needed to let people know why I was there. We agreed that he would take each of the operational heads aside privately and explain, again, the reasons behind the new position. In effect, he told them to get with the program.

This vocal, and repeated, support gave Grace and the new role credibility. The confidential delivery also saved face for the operational heads, even while the message increased the stakes for further sabotage . In blocking Grace the operational heads were also blocking the CEO's plans to manage the company's growth.

Insist on Strategic Linkages. Students of leadership increasingly draw a distinction between management and leadership. They suggest that managers concentrate on the present, on day-to-day problems, while leaders look to the future, setting goals and assembling the building blocks to achieve them. ^{[ 15]} If they are reading the topography right, then key leaders have a critical responsibility when they make important appointments. Only they can tie the assignment to the organization's strategic vision. They have a built-in platform to articulate what needs to be done to get things moving and why you are the best person to accomplish that task.

A strategic linkage is critical in paving the way for you and your role. When Roberta agreed to take over the customer services division of a large mutual fund company, her boss made this connection. Roberta's appointment derived, in part, from the findings of a focus group she led on the division's performance.

Customer dissatisfaction was high. The customer service network burned cash, yet investors had difficulty using it. Opinions inside the company were no better. The prevailing perception was that managers in customer service had country club jobs. They were all vice presidents , pulling down big salaries but with little accountability.

Roberta was not enthusiastic about taking on a division with such a tarnished reputation. But the CIO persuaded her. He had a vision for customer relationship management that he was pushing and wanted her help in making it happen. Once Roberta accepted, he prepared her way. He dispelled any assumptions that Roberta would be just another in a string of ineffective leaders by framing the appointment in terms of his mission. He aimed to harness cutting-edge technologies so that the fund's investors could count on premium service. Twice during Roberta's first year he met with three hundred company leaders and used those meetings to publicize the program Roberta was initiating.

Roberta could never have made this case. The CIO had to deliver the message that business as usual within the division would no longer be tolerated. His reputation and influence positioned him to link Roberta's assignment to larger corporate goals that made change imperative. His backing, expressed in plain terms, gave her the clout to get things going. Beyond that, it explicitly sanctioned the policies she would need to implement over time. Roberta was charged with transforming deeply entrenched perceptions about the division and equally entrenched behaviors within the division. Justification for that transformation had to come from the top.

Encourage Different Approaches to Different Stakeholders. Backers have choices in how they make the strategic case. Roberta's CIO used a public forum. In that situation, the deep changes contemplated in the division required a broad audience. The organization's structure and its culture also shape the decision. In large organizations, a sponsor might make the case in stages ”seeding the idea with other major players with the expectation that they would follow up with their own people. Close-knit communities may require a series of one-on-one sessions, akin to the way Grace's CEO brought his operational heads around. Cases are most successfully made when they are tailored to the specific situation rather than following a perfunctory protocol. The chairman at Jane's firm, for example, targeted multiple audiences and used multiple formats to make the case for her appointment. He gave potentially resistant players special attention.

The chairman had drafted Jane, a seasoned mutual funds veteran, to create an institutional relationship management department and professionalize the firm's control and reporting systems. Pension funds and other institutional investors were clamoring for more transparency and stricter controls within the industry, even turning to the courts to enforce their demands. So far the firm had escaped the spotlight. "Little fires were smoldering," Jane recalls. "But nothing was out of control. The firm wasn't in a crisis phase."

Before coming officially on board, Jane worked closely with the chairman. With little sense of urgency, one major player ”the head of sales ”had to be convinced not only that the change was necessary but also that Jane could pull it off.

In the investment field there's an inevitable tension between sales and the client relationship people. The people in sales want to make the sale and move on to the next one.

Jane and the chairman sat down with the head of sales. They positioned the new arrangement as a collaborative one ”a symbiotic relationship between the client side and sales. Not only would the new arrangement free up sales to do what it really liked to do ”close deals ”it would lay the foundation for expansive growth. By the time Jane came officially on board, the head of sales was solidly behind the effort. "He had real influence with his people and he brought them around." (His approach was blunt ”"Jane is here to keep us out of jail so we can make lots of money" ”but it worked.)

In making the case for the role and for Jane's ability to fill it, however, the chairman had two audiences in mind.

He had positioned me internally within the firm ”starting with the head of sales. He made sure that everyone inside knew that growth brought with it serious business risk if not handled properly. Unless the institutional infrastructure was managed well, they might not even be able to hang on to what they had.

At the same time, the chairman used the appointment to send a clear message to the firm's institutional clients. He had selected Jane, in part, for her sterling reputation. In talks with institutional clients and in interviews with the business press, he stressed the appointment's symbolic importance. The firm was committed to future growth and would draft the best talent around to manage that growth. The appointment did, in fact, go a long way toward reassuring institutional investors, and their reaction, in turn, gave Jane added leverage within the firm.

Making a strategic case is not a one-time event. A key backer cannot simply applaud your qualifications or announce your appointment's strategic importance and then disappear from the scene. The message needs to be reinforced over time. For example, the CEO at Layla's company mounted a calculated campaign to support her role. The company, headquartered in India, provided end-to-end systems to a global roster of corporate customers. He recruited Layla to ensure that Wall Street and the analyst community had timely and accurate information on the firm's growing presence in a niche market. The role was central to the firm's prospects. An IPO was planned, and the amount of money raised would determine R&D and marketing budgets moving forward.

Layla was part Indian. This heritage gained her some credit in the home office. But she was based in New York, where she had the contacts essential to her role. Without the CEO's active intervention, it would have been easy for the geographically dispersed staff to shrug off her requests for market share and sales data or to discount the critical work she was doing. Instead, she enlisted her boss to help her gain authority for her requests .

He sends out frequent reminders about the importance, to an India-centric organization, of developing good relations with Wall Street. Whenever I make a presentation at an analyst meeting, he circulates an update.

In advertising Layla's accomplishments, the CEO validated her and this vote of confidence in turn made her job easier.

Initially Susan Vega and the executive committee were not on the same page on how to introduce the teaming approach or her to the Southwest region. Usually the firm followed a time- tested protocol and conducted one-on-one interviews with each of the consultants affected. In this case, however, the executive committee wanted to make an exception.

In their view, the region was in such bad shape that the consultants wouldn't know what they needed. Whatever they asked for , we wouldn't be able to give them. More to the point, they would fight the remedies we envisioned for poor performance.

Susan resisted this call, arguing that it would generate unnecessary animosity and make her job even harder. She pressed for a more auspicious introduction, and they reached a compromise: a dinner for all the consultants assigned to the region.

Susan was scheduled to attend, but at the last minute had to back out because of a family emergency. Her absence turned out to be a good thing. Because she wasn't there, the chairman and the vice chair could explain, quite frankly, why they had picked her. "Apparently, they got the message across , " she says. And they did not hesitate to reinforce it. At timely moments, they reiterated their confidence in Susan and the necessity of the changes she was in the process of implementing.

The backing of key players cannot be left behind closed doors ”to the expectations and strategic responsibilities worked out in private. At some point, these leaders must give public voice to their support. Their influence carries weight within the organization and can mitigate opposition . But, more important, only they are positioned to connect the assignment to the organization's broader goals and make the case for why you are the best person to get the job done.

Seed Storytelling Opportunities

All the moves to mobilize backers aim to build perceptions of you as a credible leader with the authority and legitimacy to get the work ”whatever it is ”done. Those perceptions are given voice by the stories that people tell about you in the early days of your tenure. One of the participants in the informal survey we noted at the beginning of this chapter was on the right track when she said, "After three months, I want people to say Ann is okay." Of course, you want people to believe that what you are doing is okay. But situations can be confusing in the early months. Chaos, rather than order, can reign. There is a great deal of uncertainty. If stories get told that exaggerate the uncertainty or publicize the chaos, your ability to get the situation under control may be constrained. Some leaders never recover when the doubters overwhelm the supporters. Of course, key leaders can set a tone. Their backing makes outright opposition more dangerous and can convince fence-sitters to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you can add weight to the case they make. If you seed opportunities for people to sing your praises, you create a positive atmosphere even before results start to come in.

Find the Swing People. In any organization, there are opinion leaders. Maybe they are people who have been there for a long time, the people who hold the organization's history. Maybe they are people who float easily among various groups. Often, these influence- makers do not reside at the top of an organization chart, and yet they can be uniquely placed to spread the word. One of our informants talked about the need to have swing people ”individuals who are networked throughout the organization. Despite explicit and frequent explanations of the rationale behind an appointment, confusion can linger. Friendly voices at various levels of the organization and from the outside can provide a different kind of reinforcement from what the major players supply. They can tell your story for you. ^{[ 16]} That story can focus others on the appointment's positive aspects or persuade them to withhold judgment. You may even call on the storytellers to counter persistent criticism.

Andrea signed on for a leadership role in state government. She knew that the first few months would be chaotic .

You want to draw a curtain around that chaos. You don't want people to know about it. You want their first response to be: "Boy, Andrea really whipped the department into shape. "

Soon after Andrea moved into her office, she identified a few well-connected people who could be her eyes and ears. Good listeners, networked to multiple layers of the political and business communities, they reached out to Andrea's "customers." They effectively backstopped her and gave her unfiltered perspectives, which she might not have elicited in personal interviews.

People want to be associated with winners. So you need to encourage that perception. The rumor mill needs to suggest that things are going well. You want people to say it as often as possible ”you can't spread the word yourself. You need others ”those swing people.

Depending on the type of organization and your role, these swing backers can be colleagues or junior associates . They may have worked with you in the past, on volunteer projects, or as consultants. For their stories to gain any traction, however, they must be credible advocates. When, for example, Elena Kagan took over as dean of Harvard Law School, she became the school's first female dean, and the appointment occasioned more than a little comment. Harvard Law School had had its share of highly visible conflicts over ideology, race, and other matters. It would not be an easy place to lead, and Kagan had only been on the faculty a short time. Martha Minow, one of the law school's most distinguished faculty members, wasted no time in countering the doubts being expressed. In an interview with the local press, she presented an alternative interpretation, another story that described the feelings at the law school: "Many of us are just delighted to be going to work at the law school right now." ^{[ 17]}

What is revealing about Minow's story is that she told it less than two months after Kagan's appointment and before the start of the fall semester. It was credible not because Minow had had an opportunity to canvass the faculty, many of whom were on vacation, but because she had worked with Kagan and was generally acknowledged to be a person who picked her words carefully.

Win Over the Skeptics. Swing people, disposed to think positive thoughts about you and what you are doing, tell stories from a favorable slant. Equally powerful are stories that come from people who initially resisted your appointment. When Hillary was asked to take over the labor practice at a rival law firm, not all the partners were enthusiastic. One partner was particularly cool; he had expected to lead the practice. Although he had worked with Hillary on several cases, he never congratulated her, avoided her in the office, and made disparaging offhand remarks about her appointment. He repeatedly rebuffed Hillary when she broached the issue of their working relations.

Hillary, however, remained on the alert for any opportunity to engage him. An opening came when a highly skilled junior threatened to quit. Hillary knew from the trial schedule that her reluctant partner could not afford to lose this expertise. She offered to help convince the junior partner to stay with the firm (including freeing up money for a raise). Working with her on this shared problem, the reluctant partner saw Hillary's leadership in a different light. In short order, he became a vocal supporter. Just as he had not hesitated to spread disaffection, he was equally forthcoming about his "amazement that Hillary was doing such a good job." As word of his unexpected support spread, it nudged fence-sitters off their perches and gave other blockers considerable pause. Hillary must be doing something right, they thought, to garner support from such a surprising quarter.

Converted blockers or fence-sitters add a different dimension to the stories told about your accomplishment or leadership. Their accounts are all the more powerful because they come from previous skeptics. There is no way that they can be discarded as spin or glossed over as being unreliably biased toward the positive.

Create a Campaign. Individual stories can remain isolated ” scattered about. Seeding stories requires a campaign, a sense of who tells the story, who listens to whom, and who can spread the word. Bettina, the head of a corporate foundation, found that when multiple sources told the same compelling story, they generated excitement about her foundation's work.

Making the argument in nonprofit work is not easy. There is no return on investment that shows up on the income statement. There is, however, a social return on investment that comes from relationship building.

Bettina looked for stories that would link the foundation's funding with concerns of the corporate parent's customers. An opportunity came with a phone call from the head of the United Way. She wanted to bring Success by Six to the city and she wanted Bettina's parent to do the corporate underwriting .

Bettina strategized with partners, colleagues, and community leaders. The story spread by word of mouth and press releases. It resonated on all fronts and generated the momentum to get the project off the ground. Within a short period, the project had become a platform for Bettina's future work. It symbolized the foundation's commitment to the community and responded to a prime concern of the corporation's customers ”quality education.

When Susan Vega took over the Southwest region, certain people in the organization questioned the appointment. She was too young, not seasoned enough, not tough enough. Susan had strong networks within the firm, but it turned out that she did not have to tap them. They came forward without being asked. Members of the Women's Caucus talked about her accessibility and fairness. Other colleagues ” male and female ” talked about the merits of the teaming approach. Susan's experience in the financial services practice and her style, they said, made her an ideal candidate to implement the new program. They pointed to her track record in bringing in new clients and establishing long-term relationships with them.

These stories, coupled with top leadership's firm backing, got Susan off to a good start and created a positive counterbalance to the resistance she encountered during her first months on the job.

Early impressions matter when you are taking on a new role. Unless you have positive reinforcement from the top, negative perceptions can congeal into entrenched opinions and block any progress. Key players can influence the way others in the organization view you and energize them for the task ahead. As these backers demonstrate their confidence in you, that confidence spreads . When they lay out the strategic reasons for the appointment, others come to see the importance of the assignment and why you were chosen.

There is one final way in which key players help when you assume a new role. Their willingness to spend political capital on you and the role they want you to take on is a good indicator of the importance they attach to both. That in itself is a bolstering thought when faced with a challenging assignment. You know going in that the work has value and that you can have a positive impact on the organization.

^{[ 9]} Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, Right from the Start . In The First 90 Days , Watkins shortens the time frame ”by half.

^{[ 10]} New leaders can clear up faulty impressions that others may entertain about them using the correcting turns we describe in The Shadow Negotiation , Chapter 3.

^{[ 11]} In an interesting twist, Sallie Krawcheck negotiated access early in her talks with a busy boss when Sanford Weill tapped her to head Citigroup's Smith Barney unit. She became one of only nine Citigroup executives reporting directly to Weill. Access the other way, however, was left open-ended. One of the authors was surprised to see Krawcheck interrupt a speech to answer her cell phone. Weill was on the other end and expected her to pick up ” regardless of what she was doing. The message to the group of Krawcheck's fellow alums at Columbia (all women) was ambivalent to say the least.

^{[ 12]} Lotte Bailyn, Joyce Fletcher, and Deborah Kolb, "Unexpected Connections."

^{[ 13]} Joyce Fletcher, Disappearing Acts and "Castrating the Feminine Advantage."

^{[ 14]} Deborah M. Kolb, "Women's Work: Peacemaking Behind the Scenes." Jennifer Pierce describes the form the phenomenon takes in contemporary law firms in Gender Trials .

^{[ 15]} Eagly and Carli discuss this future-oriented "transformational" leadership style as it relates to women in "The Female Leadership Advantage."

^{[ 16]} This notion is based in our belief, first argued in The Shadow Negotiation , that people understand their environments through narratives. They make sense of what goes on around them through the iterative and interactive process of storytelling.

^{[ 17]} Boston Globe , September 21, 2003.