Adjusting your leadership style at a new employer

After five years of running my own business, I joined a new company in January. Even as I go full throttle into this opportunity, I’m considering how to transition my leadership skills and traits to the new position and environment. I’m in no way an actor, so my natural personality and style will inevitably emerge. Given the new position — which entails new colleagues, expectations, culture, mission, team dynamics, and duties — I’ve wondered whether and how I should gradually transition my leadership style to accommodate my new surroundings. I turned to experts for advice.

When I spoke with Mike Brzozowski, he was 64 days into a new job in Frankfurt, Germany, at a large high-tech company. He had spent the previous four years as a security director for a financial services company in Canada. Did he adjust his leadership style for a new position, company, city, country, industry, and culture? In what ways?

“I’m a person who just wants to get stuff done,” Brzozowski says. “I’m working on being more patient and flexible. I have to force myself to slow down and realize that I don’t have to have an answer today.”

Rather than charging into leadership, he’s learning the culture first. While he is physically in Germany, many of his corporate peers work in other countries across Europe, with customs and mores of their own. He’s also a people person, but he can’t easily sit down for coffee with coworkers in Copenhagen or Amsterdam to get to know them better. The team is also so closely knit that he feels like an outsider.

“Everyone speaks English, but they come from different cultures. Shared ownership is huge,” he continues. “I’ve put a real focus to make a concerted effort to be more understanding of different approaches. We are all trying to row in the same direction, we are just trying to get the cadence.”

Brzozowski also likes to wield humor as a leadership tool, but he has held that in check. Germans are formal. I’m putting a toe in the water and learning how funny I’m allowed to be.”

He has turned to a book, The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins, to guide his transition. “It’s going well,” he reports. “I make a concerted effort to come to the office, where my team is. I want to be here to learn and provide guidance and build relationships across adjacent teams.” With remote staff members, he has virtual meetings once a month.

By contrast, David Nicholas recently transitioned from a mid-level role at the U.S. subsidiary of a European automaker known for precision engineering to the head of security at an NGO in Washington. Prior to the corporate roles, he spent 17 years with the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which he credits for making his leadership style flexible. He considers himself a situational leader.

“DSS conditioned me to be culturally adaptable,” Nicholas explains. “I changed posts every two to three years: new country, culture, language. We were conditioned to be ready to immerse ourselves in a new environment.”

His time in the State Department also taught him patience and observation. “Going into any new post, I first observe and understand the security culture, how the function sits in the larger organizations, does it carry clout, is it seen as a source of confidence and truth or does that have to be reestablished.”

At the automaker, the culture stressed attention to detail and precision. When he joined the nonprofit, the emphasis shifted from product to mission. “In a think tank where the product is research and ideas, it’s more reflective and deliberative,” Nicholas says. “As a security leader, one has to take that context into account when introducing changes. There will be a lot of input. Experts in different areas will weigh in on security program and the impact on their mission and funding.”

So how did he adapt?

“In my first 30 to 60 days, I tried to be in the community as much as possible,” Nicholas recalls. “I never said anything negative about past security.” Instead, he asked open-ended questions about how security could be improved and what stakeholders would like to see change. Key to his success was delivering for people who showed an interest in improving security. “Some people wanted more security training,” he says.” “I asked for budget and approval for that training, and that helped me develop credibility and relationships with those staff members.”

A few of Nicholas’s takeaways:

• We pay attention to the things we focus on. Learn what others focus on regarding security at your organization and the context for their views.
• Try to understand where people are coming from when they voice a perspective or an idea. What is the organizational history that informed that perspective?
• Strategic planning may require working backwards from a stated goal and figuring out a process and leadership style that fits the new culture.
• Expand your perspective from a security focus to a business focus. In most cases, the business of the business is something other than security.

Know thyself, advises Jonathan Kassa. That’s the first rule of leadership. Kassa recently moved from a tech startup to become the first executive director of ZeroNow, an organization devoted to eliminating school shootings. He worked for large security companies before the startup.

Since the organization is volunteer-driven, Kassa relies on influence far more than actual authority. “How do you get people from just talking to getting buy-in” and get volunteers to put in work? he asks. Kassa’s solution is to create accountability by creating KPIs for boards and committees.

Kassa, who views himself as a reflective leader aspiring to visionary leadership, says his previous corporate jobs were transactional, while his current role (and a previous leadership position at The Clery Center) were relational. In fact, his new position has unshackled some of the leadership traits he’s had to suppress.

“I had been trying to fit a visionary leadership style in companies that didn’t want to transform,” he acknowledges. “I had to check myself.”

Three leaders, three recent transitions, three sets of adaptations. These leaders thrive, however, because they adjust, they don’t metamorphose. At their core, they are their authentic selves in leadership. As Kassa might say, they know thyselves.