I see my relationship with my imposter friend as ongoing. Now and then, maybe when I’m facing something new or something I’m afraid of, they’ll pop up and share the story I’m telling myself.

I see this as an insight into me – I see this as a gift, an opportunity, and sometimes a challenge.

It is then up to me how I deal with that – I can let my friend become my enemy again and let it get in the way or I can thank my friend for showing me what’s going on and then I can take action.

On average, your organisation only has 44 days to make an impression that lasts. According to research by BambooHR, 70% of new hires said they decide if a new job is the right fit for them within the first month, and 29% know within the first week. That’s not a lot of time to avoid new starters regretting their decision to join you.

By taking positive and active steps to create a brilliant onboarding experience you reduce your chances of being impacted by these stats.

Did you know that one of the most common reasons candidates reject job offers is also the reason they don't show up on day 1?

The reason: They had a poor candidate experience. Avoid that by getting the basics right and then go from there.

If you’ve explored my Guide to Brilliant Onboarding, you’ll know that for Onboarding to be brilliant, the hiring leader must be accountable for its success. From my own experiences and interacting with other People Team colleagues, I don’t feel this accountability is clear enough or acted on. These are my tips to help your Leaders be successful with Onboarding.

Only 37% of organisations say their onboarding lasts longer than 30 days, but when you consider it can take 6-12 months to get to an expected level of performance – why wouldn’t the same go for the Onboarding experience?

I share some areas for organisations to focus on to enable successful onboarding, that goes beyond 1 month!

Are they ready for the promotion?

It will be impossible for them to be 100% ready straight away to deliver the level of performance you need from them in this new Leadership role.

What are you doing to take care of these newly promoted Leaders? Here are a few ideas or tips to think about.

I’m sharing here, what’s important to get right in week 1 and how you can help the Leaders you partner do this successfully.

Long hours, pressure, priorities, politics, the demands of leading others…this isn’t easy and whilst nobody is necessarily forcing someone to do this, organisations need people successfully leading in their organisations and not considering the well-being of Leaders is harmful.

Of course, they need to be part of your strategy by being equipped to manage and lead on well-being within their team but what are you doing to focus on their specific needs?

By taking the time to review where you are and what you want to achieve with your Onboarding Experience, you can fully assess the value of it to your overall Employee Experience Strategy.

On its own, Onboarding is incredibly important and powerful for employee engagement, performance and retention, but as part of the overall experience, it can be a real star in your organisation’s Employee Experience Strategy.

We’ve all had that moment…

We’re walking away from a meeting or closing a call and this thought goes through our heads - ”why are they so difficult!!”

I share how you can handle it!

So, how are you creating the time and space for your development and how are you taking action to grow?

Here's a few ideas to help you prioritise your development and growth.

Gallup’s research found that of those who ‘strongly agreed’ they’d had an ‘exceptional onboarding experience’, 61% of them felt prepared and fully supported to excel in their new role, and 77% said they thought their new job was better than expected. Compare this to when respondents only ‘agreed’ they’d had an exceptional onboarding; the results pretty much halved on both measures.

This means that the experience overall, matters.

A way to achieve this is to recognise that effective engagement of new and promoted leaders doesn’t begin in the first weeks of the job, it starts way before that. It begins during the recruitment phase but kicks in properly from the point that an offer has been verbally accepted.

Here, I want to focus on how you can make that switch from someone who helps others (your team/peers/business partners) by giving advice and direction to having more of a coaching style.

It’s realistic to have a career in HR, where you make a difference, and you make things better. But who decides what making things better really looks like? A question we should keep asking ourselves is, "are we helping or harming" leadership confidence, capability, and effectiveness with what we do?

Whether you have Leaders joining your organisation for the first time, getting promoted, or they’ve been leading your organisation for a while, they are all facing challenges and greater complexity.

Well, this isn’t something I’m comfortable with, but since selling my house to go travelling at the same time as setting up my first business, I’ve accepted that to change things, you’ll experience discomfort. So, in the same amount as it’s excruciating, I’m also excited to share with you what I know about myself.

Getting your pre-onboarding right will kick off your onboarding experience in the right way. This is about upping your overall approach to onboarding so that your new colleague is excited to be joining you and they don’t become a stranger. Get might tips for getting this right!

How much are you risking in the first 12 months when you appoint new leaders?

In this blog, I walk through a real-life scenario to give a financial example of the risk points associated with bad onboarding for leaders.

When I started my journey to become a qualified Leadership Coach, it was initially to tick a box and demonstrate that I could coach. However, my transition from internal coach to professional and external coach has highlighted the different benefits of both.

In this blog, I’m going to take a deeper look at how personalisation is one of the best ways to unlock improved and continual leadership development.

By treating them as individuals, we create more opportunities for leaders to feel like their specific needs are being met.