“About 40% of executives who change jobs or get promoted fail in the first 18 months.” As Anne Fisher points out in a recent Fortune article, this has been true for about 15 years
A big reason for the ongoing failure rate is the inability of executives to determine the right time to pivot from converging (becoming part of the team) to evolving (initiating change) when they are onboarding, changing jobs or getting promoted – and the inability of others to help them get this timing right.
Let’s unpack that into three musts for executives:
- Must adopt a converge and evolve approach to onboarding
- Must make a conscious choice about pivoting from converging to evolving
- Must time that pivot right
Understand that while there are certainly some situations where it’s right to shock a system or simply assimilate in, in the vast majority of cases, converging and evolving is the right approach. New leaders cannot lead until they have established a working relationship with their followers. Hence, converge and evolve.
Follow this link for the full article on Forbes.com
