Onboarding: what does your Supervisor expect?

The early clarification of expectations of your assignment is a success factor in your onboarding process. That includes spoken as well as unspoken tasks.

This post is part of a series and the best starting point is Onboarding in a Leadership Role: listen first and act later. However, this pespective here is not only relevant in a leadership role.

In order to specify your supervisor´s expectations you should actively ask questions instead of wait passivly for input. This will be more a conversation over time than just one meeting, It may help to agree with your supervisor to make your onboarding progress a continuous topic in your meetings.

The following questions can help you get a deeper understanding of what you have to focus on and how you develop the direct collaboration with your manager.

• Why was I selected? This may seem awkward and you just skip it, if everything is clear for you in this regard.
• In which areas is stability needed?
• In which areas is innovation needed?
• What change do you expect short term/long term, how much time do I have?
• What are the reasons for the needed change, who is supportive, who is not and why?
• Which strengths or weaknesses do you see in my team/department?
• What major milestones do I need to achieve until when?
• What are the focus topics of your manager`s boss, the executive board or the shareholders?
• Which key stakeholders do your recommend I should talk to first/last?
• How will others measure the success of your onboarding progress?
• When and how will I receive feedback?
• How often to meet, how to report

Much trickier are the unspoken expectations, but some of the questions above will bring you closer to those as well. Try to find out:

• How is loyalty defined and expressed?
• How is (high) performance defined and acknowledged?
• What kind of support can you expect?

This and more is part of the Culture in your Organization.

As an exercise you may want to write these and more questions down in your Leadership Journal and compare your predicted answers with the ones by your direct supervisor. This exercise helps

• see your manager´s perspektive
• make the onboarding of your direct reports or even colleagues more effective when you are in the role to integrate them
• make every coming onboarding phase in the future more effective

The earlier you clarify the expectations of your assignment the better you can navigate on your route towards wanted and needed results!