95: First 30 Days with Greg Skirving

Charlotte Ward 0:13
Hello, and welcome to Episode 95 of the customer support leaders podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is the first 30 days in your new role. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I’d like to welcome back to the podcast today, Greg Skirving. Greg, it’s lovely to have you back. And this week we are talking about the first 30 days Oh, let’s figure out what we need to do when we step into that new role.

Greg Skirving 0:45
You bet. Thanks, Charlotte and good to be back. Yeah, first 30 days. That’s a critical point in, in in one’s tenure in a senior leadership role. You know, Through one’s research and multiple interview process, you know what a company does you you know what they’re going to do, but you don’t really know, the intricacies of virtually everything in the in the organisation. You won’t know that until you actually get there. So what I like to do, obviously is meet, meet everybody that’s significant. I make a point of all the folks that I will deal with on a regular basis. Meet with them, Go have coffee with them, go have lunch with them. I’m also big on one on ones, you know, set a monthly one on one that’s recurring. Don’t talk about work, just, you know, talk about talk about personal things. Obviously, there’s your people as well. This is where I really like to observe what, what my folks do. I’ve got a little rule of 10 I mean six, six outcomes that you want at attend People are going to do normally naturally. I mean, you don’t have to tell them, you don’t have to train them. You don’t have to teach them. One. And this is integer math. So it’s not a full 10%. But one now there’ll be some issues, but I like to kind of focus on the three where there’s inconsistent results and, and look at what what people do. Really, the only true way to do that is to observe without telling, here’s what, here’s what I need, here’s how I need you to do things. You know, you obviously need to give guidance on what they what they need to do. But how, you know, I like I like creativity. I like people, you know, trying different things and being creative.

Charlotte Ward 2:39
And it’s pretty crucial, isn’t it in the early stages that you don’t step in, in that first month and just say, right, here’s how I want things done from day one. You do actually have to spend some time understanding.

Greg Skirving 2:54
So I use the same technique when I’m onboarding people, but at least you need to say The things that we need to do in the first 30 days with a new team, you just get to observe, they know what to do. they’ve, they’ve been doing the job for a while. And again, when you observe you get that default behaviour. It’s not, you know, I mean, over time, over 30 days, you should be able to tell what you have. So it’s a great time to really sort of understand your folks who the WHO THE TRUE leaders are, who might need help, and who might need some other types of coaching. So

Charlotte Ward 3:32
you might need to do anything else other than understand in that first 30 days you aiming to foster and forge particular relationships. Do you think?

Greg Skirving 3:42
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I’m a big big proponent of weekly weekly one on ones you know, bi weekly. Sorry, bi weekly one on one to weekly team meetings. Yeah, absolutely. forging a relationship for relationship perspective. But in In terms of the performance of the role, how people attack it, you know how diligently how diligent they are, how creative they are. That’s, that’s, that’s where you observe. But yeah, absolutely always, always trying to make a connection with my folks and peers, especially in different groups.

Charlotte Ward 4:22
Actually, I think peers are equally as important. And it’s something we often forget, I think I have a 30 6090 plan that I have used forever. And it’s really generic. Because you can’t you can’t know anything before you step into a role really beyond what the company does. And the few bits you’ve gleaned from an interview interview process, but the 30 6090 that I’ve used in my own roles and with clients and everything is is really generic but right up there is forging relationships with peers as well as team because I think your peers hold the key to understanding the context of your team actually in the organisation in a way that your team probably can’t tell you.

Greg Skirving 5:10
Absolutely, you know, if each department is a black box, we have inputs and outputs, and we’d rely on on different different teams for different things, understanding the nuances of the existing systems and processes. Inevitably, I end up finding some things where, you know, I’ll ask somebody, well, why do we do it like this and get the answer? Well, we’ve always done it that way, in many ways that first 30 days serves to, you know, have a completely outside unbiased view of how things go, gives you It gives you a chance to sort of look at that and that’s where you can pull out of that some potential improvements and gain some efficiencies.

Charlotte Ward 5:55
I’ve got one final question for you. What do you think at the end of that session, Last month, you should aim to have achieved.

Unknown Speaker 6:04
Yeah, you know, in a nutshell.

Greg Skirving 6:08
Understand, understand your people are the folks that report to you. Number one, understand your peers and again, forging those relationships is critical. Understanding the current environment truly understand beyond what your research and what you glean from the interview process so that you can, you know, understand and make a positive impact to the business.

Charlotte Ward 6:36
Today, go to customersupportleaders.com/95 for the show notes and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai