All Articles Leadership When you take over a new team, what is your top priority?

When you take over a new team, what is your top priority?

1 min read

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 170,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: When you take over a new team, what is your top priority?

  • Getting to know your people and building relationships: 71.22%
  • Setting a vision and strategic direction: 22.04%
  • Driving core operational performance: 4.19%
  • Building a close relationship with your new boss: 1.37%
  • Decorating your new office: 1.18%

It’s all about the people. It’s encouraging to see the vast majority of you put building strong relationships with your team as your priority. Sure, vision and operations are important, but if your team doesn’t know and trust you, it’s hard to expect they’ll reach your vision or drive the performance you expect. Build those relationships first and foremost, as that investment has the highest return. For those of you decorating your office, enjoy your decor while you can because you won’t be occupying that office for long.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”