From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership

Kevin Eikenberry is the Chief Potential Officer of the leadership and learning consulting company, The Kevin Eikenberry Group. He's worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies, universities, and government agencies. Guy Harris is the owner of Principle Driven Consulting, and a master trainer and coach with The Kevin Eikenberry Group. Together, they developed the Bud to Boss workshop.

This book, and its related website and workbook, provide tools, strategies and actions to make the transition less confusing and more doable. Collectively, they make up an applicable leadership toolkit that will serve you well as you settle into your new role, and as a reference guide along the path to remarkable leadership.

That said, only you can make your leadership a success. From the get-go, the authors urge readers to fully engage with the material, write in the margins, take advantage of their online resources, and put into practice the advice on offer as you turn the pages.

So keep listening to find out why remarkable leadership isn't about control, how understanding behavior traits can improve your communication skills, and why positive feedback is so valuable.

The main strength of this book is its conversational tone, which is supportive and reassuring, yet never condescending. This makes it a deceptively light read, despite its weighty content.

The book is divided into six parts. The first is an overview of the challenges you may face, and the other five are dedicated to the key responsibilities of new leadership. These are change, communication, coaching, collaboration, and commitment to success. Each section begins with a brief yet insightful self-assessment exercise that highlights your existing strengths and weaknesses. This helps identify the areas you most need to improve upon, and therefore pay attention to, as you read on.

Every chapter includes key nuggets of advice called "remarkable principles," and "bonus byte" icons that direct readers to further information on the Bud to Boss website. They all conclude with a "Your New Steps" section, which asks you to put some of what you've just learned into action.

Part One is dedicated to understanding and coming to terms with the impact of your transition. One of the biggest concerns is the change to personal relationships that occurs as you go from being part of the team to leading it. It's not uncommon to feel tension, friction and even rejection from previous peers, so this issue is considered from different angles throughout the book.

The authors advise new leaders to continue being friendly towards former peers, but to let go of the desire to make them friends. Instead, you should focus on creating a positive, supportive and friendly environment. So, do attend and host social events, and do continue to take an interest in people's hobbies and families. This will forge closer working relationships.

But what if some of the people you lead are your best friends? You may need to make some adjustments, at least during work hours, to avoid accusations of bias. And you may find some key aspects of leadership challenging with your friends, such as task assignment, conflict resolution and feedback. One of the best things you can do is arrange individual chats with each friend about the changes taking place – and whatever happens, always maintain professional boundaries.

While the transition to leader can feel isolating, remember that you now have new peers – other leaders. You can direct your energy towards getting to know this new network of support and expertise. In fact, good peer relationships at this level are also valuable to the company as a whole. Any cracks and disagreements between you will soon manifest themselves within the teams you lead.

Some people think that leadership is about control. In reality, though, it's simply not possible to control everything and everyone, and thinking that you should will quickly lead to exhaustion, frustration, and feelings of failure. Rather than control, the authors say, leadership is all about influence. The only person you can hope to control is yourself, so it's worth reflecting on how your actions and words can best influence your team.

Expectations also play a huge role in relationships, and this book recognizes two sides of the same experience. Firstly, our expectations of others – known as the Pygmalion Effect – and, secondly, their expectations of themselves – known as the Galatea Effect.

Let's consider the Pygmalion Effect. Studies have shown that individuals tend to live up to – or down to – other people's expectations of them. So what you expect from each team member will have an impact on his or her performance.

The Galatea Effect is proven to have similar results – people with high expectations of themselves tend to perform better than those with low expectations. These two effects are related, because employees are more likely to have high expectations of themselves if their boss thinks they can do well.

So how can you communicate your positive expectations? Try catching people doing the right things, then informally praise them, to encourage further achievements. Give team members tasks that progress in their level of difficulty. This demonstrates your belief in their abilities, as well as your desire not to overwhelm them, by assigning big challenges all in one go.

Another tip is to undertake one-to-one coaching focused on what people do well, and the authors explore this in detail in Part Four of the book.

They're keen to reassure readers that while it might feel new to them, coaching is actually something that most of us have done in other spheres of our life – in sports, in school, as a friend or parent. What's more, it's likely we've experienced a great coach ourselves at some point.

Eikenberry and Harris introduce a simple building-block approach to coaching success: the ABC of Accountability, Belief, and Conversation.

Coaching is about helping someone become more productive and successful. This is within your circle of influence, but it's not something you can control. Therefore, accountability for success or failure belongs to the individuals themselves.

You know when someone truly believes in you, and it makes you work harder and perform better. As a leader, coaching someone you believe in will make you work harder to help them succeed. This links back to the Pygmalion Effect discussed earlier.

Conversation is at the heart of coach communication. It shouldn't be a one-way delivery of information. Asking questions is a great way to get to know someone and build closer bonds.

This section's "bonus byte" icon teases us to go beyond A, B and C to discover the D, E and F building blocks of coaching on the website. A quick, simple sign-up reveals they are Discovery, Expectations, and Focus on Them. As with everything else related to this book, this is well worth a read.

An important and tricky aspect of coaching is giving feedback. This is true whether you've been promoted to the role of leader from outside the company, or you're a former peer of those you coach. Some of your team members will initially make judgment calls about your expertise and motives, based on what they know or what they don't know about you.

So, what can new leaders do to enhance their team's trust? The authors present three sources of acceptable feedback. Firstly, from someone in a position of power, such as a leader; second, from an expert in the field; and third, from someone close to us.

According to the authors' experience, the last is by far the most powerful. People are more concerned with how much you care for them than how much you know. Knowing this should help next time you feel intimidated by one of your team members' superior expertise. More importantly, remember that showing care for your team is essential to good leadership. That said, a remarkable leader will be speaking from a position of all three: power, care and expertise.

The authors urge new leaders to employ more positive feedback on a regular basis, rather than waiting until the end of a project. It's something that's often resisted, perhaps in the belief it can lead to a lack of drive, complacency, or over-inflated egos. We learn that this couldn't be more wrong. Positive feedback is one of the most powerful tools in your leadership toolkit. It builds resilience, stronger relationships, and increased trust and performance.

So how much should you give? At the very minimum you must employ a ratio of three positives to one negative. In fact, studies show that you can increase this ratio to 12 to one before you reach the upper limit of the positive influence. So start noticing what your team is doing well and get praising!

To help, the authors devote a whole section to communication, another fundamental skillset of remarkable leadership. Here, they introduce the DISC model of human behavior, a simple but effective tool to help understand different people's drivers, needs, and priorities. It's based on the work of the psychologist William Moulton Marston in the 1920 and 30s.

DISC is an acronym comprised of the initial letters of four main behavior traits: Dominant, Inspiring, Supportive and Cautious. If you've come across this model elsewhere – for example on the MindTools website – you may have seen variations of these words, but the characteristics of the personality traits stay the same.

The DISC model can be viewed as a quadrant with "pace" as the vertical axis, and "priority orientation" as the horizontal axis. The four main behavior traits are attributed to each combination of pace and priority orientation.

The authors explain that pace and priority are basic drivers for human behavior. The pace drive refers to the speed at which people naturally approach life. We all know outgoing, fast-paced people who speak, move and make decisions at breakneck speed. These are the talkers – they often use verbal communication to work through decisions.

At the other end of the scale are reserved, slow-paced people, who approach decisions carefully, and consider their words before they talk. These are the thinkers – they process decisions through quiet reflection.

Now, consider your team. Isn't it helpful to pinpoint where each member lies on this scale – as well as yourself? Is there a relation between their communication style and how well you get on? Knowing this can help improve – and balance – your relations across the team.

The priority drive is concerned with the direction someone tends to think. Are they task-oriented or people-oriented? This will be reflected in their response to situations and where they prioritize their focus. Task-oriented people will first think about practical actions, facts and figures, before moving on to how it might affect people. Someone who is people-oriented will view situations from the perspective of how they affect people, and then consider the practical necessities.

Our DISC quadrant shows how personality traits interact with drivers to indicate a behavior style. This helps leaders understand how each person likes to work – and how they like to be led. It's important to understand that these traits are tendencies, and not absolutes – they should never be used to label someone or restrict their career opportunities. In reality, most people will have a blend of behavior styles, usually one primary trait and two secondary.

Reflecting on this, it's easy to see why clashes happen when people with different styles work together on a project. A lack of understanding and appreciation for what drives and motivates other people can prevent individuals from valuing one another. For example, a dominant person can seem rude, an inspiring person too superficial, a cautious person lazy, and a supportive person weak.

Leaders need to be aware of, and sensitive to, these differences in how their team members might approach work, and prevent themselves and others from jumping to negative conclusions. This will help you communicate effectively with everyone on your team, boosting your influence and their cooperation.

So what's our last word on "From Bud To Boss"? This excellent guide is packed with practical insights and observations that will resonate with all new leaders. This isn't a book of theoretical discussions, it's crammed with sensible and achievable advice. It provides a wealth of support for new leaders and should remain a reliable guide throughout their careers.

The "My Journey From Bud to Boss" workbook is designed as a companion to this book. It's divided into separate topics so you can pick and choose the ones that are most relevant to your current situation. In addition to the activities, questions and exercises in the workbook itself, you also gain special access to online templates and tools. These are equally helpful.

"From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership" by Kevin Eikenberry and Guy Harris is published by Jossey-Bass.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.