Veteran Transitions – Success Factors for Veterans and Their Managers

Transitions into new leadership roles are nothing less than forged in fire crucibles. They can be a tricky time for any new leader but extremely delicate for veteran leaders. Transitions test new leaders on every level from day one, with pressure to diagnose, strategize, delegate, and communicate effectively. The veteran leader must also account for the concept of “corporate culture” along with effectively understanding and navigating the organizational “norms”. The intense pressure to create change and deliver results can be untenable. Think that’s an overstatement? Just take a look at any of the myriad of survey results that show 40 to 60% departure rate for new leaders within their first three years. Most HR professionals would agree that transitions into new leadership roles can be the most challenging times in a leaders’ professional life and that success or failure during the transition period (the first 100 days) is a strong predictor of overall success or failure in the job.

While every veteran leader transition is unique – there are specific processes, procedures and best practices that a new leader can learn, adopt and implement to help avoid land mines and dreaded “rookie mistakes”. In this course veteran leaders will learn a variety of fundamental principles that will accelerate their immersion in to a new role, new company or new business situation, facilitating a more seamless transition from the military. Veteran leaders in transition reflexively and often mistakenly rely on the skills, beliefs and strategies that worked for them in the military with the assumption/presumption that these directly contributed to their previous accomplishments and are the key to future success. This is a potentially disastrous mistake that participants in this class will learn to avoid.

What You Will Learn

• Approaches, frameworks, and tools for understanding and building out a comprehensive First 100 Days Immersion Plan for new veteran leaders
• How to develop and engage critical new leader hard skills of active listening, asymmetrical learning, real time analysis and response plans
• How to develop and engage critical new leader soft skills of intellectual curiosity, emotional IQ, relationship building and 360-degree trust
• The importance of a systematic and structured learning process to accelerate your learning curve
• Best practices to analyze and understand the current business situation – internal and external, team members and customers
• Best practices to test for alignment of strategy, structure, technology and culture
• How to generate credibility, trust and momentum with early wins
• Best practices to achieve success and support with your direct supervisor
• How to create organizational respect, trust and credibility with peers, functions and other business units.
• How to avoid the new leader landmines and rooking mistakes associated with culture, style and political norms