Downsizing and Expanding Roles: Use Onboarding to Smooth the Transition

I recently posted a question on Linked In to one of the onboarding groups that I belong and got some interesting responses.

The question was "Is anyone doing onboarding of leaders whose roles have grown/changed during the recent downsizing?"

One of the first responses that I got was "No, we are not, but what a great idea!" The writer went on to say that her organization's leaders had experienced quite a bit of increase in "span of control" due to staff reductions.

Several other contributors mentioned that they too, had experienced this in their organizations. Some of these leaders had been successfully led through thier transitions, while others had struggled due to a few keys barriers.

These barriers were things like--

no role clarity
not building key relationships
not understanding or making assumptions about the culture
doing too much too fast

Other things that trip up these leaders with expanded roles are that their bosses, their peers and their teams often expect them to perform without a learning curve. Research has shown that an internal move can take the same amount of transition time, or more than an external hire. And, according to an Alexcel Group study, 21% of these internally transitioned leaders are still not performing up to expectations after 2 years!

Your current leadership onboarding process can be adapted and used effectively to assist these leaders with expanded roles. Rely on the same resources that you would to help them understand their new roles, their teams, and the organization's expectations, just as you would for an external hire.

The pay-off to the time invested is significant and it will start to take hold in your culture. All your "new" leaders will come to expect this formal support and will give the organization an opportunity to reinforce behaviors and leadership messages deep into the organization.