Conquer New Job Anxiety: Your Path to Success with the SET Approach

Updated 4/6/2025

You landed the job! Congratulations! The initial euphoria, however, often gives way to a wave of self-doubt and anxiety as you face the reality of a new role. You're not alone. According to Forbes, a staggering 87% of people experience anxiety when starting a new job. This is a normal, albeit challenging, transition. At Your Path Coaching and Consulting, we understand these feelings and believe in empowering you to navigate this change. Instead of letting anxiety dictate your experience, take control by developing a strategic plan for success. This blog will introduce you to the SET approach, a simple yet effective framework for excelling in your new role.

Introducing the SET Approach: Your Blueprint for Success

The SET approach is designed to help you proactively manage your transition, build strong foundations, and make a lasting positive impression. It's about slowing down, being intentional, and understanding the nuances of your new environment. To truly excel, you need to grasp the organizational culture, decision-making processes, resource allocation, and the definition of success. The SET approach guides you through this process with three key actions:

• Study Your Work Environment

• Engage with Stakeholders

• Tell Your Story

1. Study Your Work Environment: Knowledge is Power

The initial challenge in any new role is the knowledge gap. You're entering uncharted territory, and acclimating takes time. To bridge this gap, actively study your environment. Focus on understanding:

• Organizational Culture: What are the unspoken rules and values? How do people interact?

• Key Processes: How are decisions made? What are the workflows?

• Performance Expectations: How is success measured? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)?

• Available Resources: What tools and support systems are available to you?

Remember, the first 30 days are crucial for information gathering. Leverage different learning styles, as suggested by Walter Burk Barbe, Ph.D.:

• Visual: Observe meetings, review documents, and study organizational charts.

• Auditory: Attend meetings, listen to conversations, and ask questions.

• Kinesthetic: Participate in hands-on activities, shadow colleagues, and learn by doing.

2. Engage with Stakeholders: Building Relationships for Success

Effective leadership and teamwork are built on trust, as Patrick Lencioni emphasizes. To build trust, you must understand and serve the needs of your stakeholders. Engage with:

• Your Manager: Understand their expectations and priorities.

• Team Members: Learn their roles, responsibilities, and challenges.

• Cross-Functional Colleagues: Build relationships and understand interdependencies.

• Clients/Customers: Understand their needs and expectations.

• Senior Leadership: Gain insights into the organization's strategic direction.

Schedule one-on-one and group meetings to actively listen, ask insightful questions, and identify opportunities to contribute.

3. Tell Your Story: Connect and Build Rapport

As you engage with stakeholders, be prepared to share your story. This helps build rapport and creates connections. Develop:

• A 30-Second Introduction: Clearly and concisely communicate who you are and your role.

• Relevant Anecdotes: Share experiences from your previous roles and your journey to this new position.

• Personal Interests: Share appropriate personal details to build connections.

Remember to engage in two-way conversations, actively listening and responding to questions. Aim for concise, two-minute or less speaking segments to encourage dialogue.

Your Path Coaching and Consulting: Your Partner in Transition

At Your Path Coaching and Consulting, we guide individuals through career transitions. Our executive coaching and business consulting services are tailored to help you:

• Develop a personalized transition plan.

• Enhance your leadership and communication skills.

• Build strong relationships and navigate organizational dynamics.

• Overcome self-doubt and achieve your professional goals.

Don't let anxiety hold you back. Schedule a free consultation with Your Path Coaching and Consulting today to discuss how we can help you excel in your new role. Visit our website at www.yourpathexecutivesoltuions.com to learn more about our services.

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Your Partner in Career Success

I'm not just a writer; I'm also a father, husband, executive coach, and former retail executive. My 21 years of experience leading operations, sales, and marketing teams have given me firsthand knowledge of feeling stuck, undervalued, and underappreciated.

But I also know the transformative power of professional development, the strategies for climbing the corporate ladder, and the profound satisfaction of finding fulfillment in your work.Your career path is a unique journey of discovery. Each opportunity builds upon the last. At Your Path Coaching and Consulting, we're dedicated to helping you gain clarity, accelerate your professional growth, and unlock your full potential.

We offer personalized coaching and consulting services to empower you at every career stage. Our expertise includes:

Executive Coaching: Guiding leaders to enhance their leadership skills, communication abilities, and team dynamics.

Business Consulting: Helping organizations optimize strategies, foster growth, and build high-performing teams.

Career Coaching: Assisting individuals in defining a career path and building the skills, network, and competencies needed to maximize their potential.

Our holistic approach combines proven techniques with a deep understanding of your needs and aspirations.

Connect with us:

Website: www.yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/your-path-coaching-and-consulting

Testimonial:

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How to determine your leadership style.

"The best leaders are those who have the self-awareness to know their own strengths and weaknesses and the ability to adapt their leadership style to fit the situation." - Dr. Ronald Heifetz, Harvard University. Leadership is not a one-size-fits-all concept. The most effective leaders know how to adapt their style to fit the situation and the needs of their team. In this blog post, we will discuss nine different leadership styles to help you identify the best approach for your development as a leader.

Styles of Leadership:

1. Management by Wandering Around (MBWA): This style is about being accessible and approachable. Leaders who use this style often spend time interacting with their team members and getting to know them personally.

   1. Benefits: These leaders are often seen as involved and hands-on.

   2. Risks: Being too accessible may reduce self-accountability and undermine hierarchy.https://youtu.be/2UlY0Vykc_Y?si=wwWylTeRDBEVLkHx

   3. Example: The CEO of a small company makes it a point to walk around the office and talk to employees at all levels. She takes an interest in their work and personal lives. Being accessible helps her to build rapport with her employees and create a more positive and productive work environment.

      
      
      
      

2. Lead from the Front: This style best suits highly directive leaders who take personal responsibility for the team's results.

   1. Benefits: These leaders are often seen as directive and engaged.

   2. Risks: Being too present may prevent other leaders from reaching their full potential.

   3. Example: A small business owner who works shoulder to shoulder on the sales floor with employees. He models customer service and encourages excellence in their actions.

      
      
      
      

3. Lead from the Back: This style allows your team to develop plans, make mistakes, and learn from their experiences.

   1. Benefits: These leaders are often seen as empowering.

   2. Risks: The organization must communicate effectively to ensure alignment between vision and execution. 

   3. Example: A manager of research scientists who allows her team to experiment and learn from experience. She provides them with the needed resources but does not micromanage them, allowing the team to be creative and innovative.

      
      
      
      
      
      

4. Situational Leader: This style involves adapting your approach to fit the situation and your team's needs.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style are flexible and responsive to their employees' capabilities and motivation.

   2. Risks: This approach relies on the leader accurately accessing employees' needs, capabilities, and motivation.

   3. Example: A marketing manager who is very directive with interns but delegates tasks to experienced employees once they are aligned on key responsibilities and deliverables.

      
      
      
      

5. Command and Control: This style is best suited for situations where strict adherence to rules and procedures is critical.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style can often drive consistent results.

   2. Risks: An organization may become limited by the leader's knowledge, skills, and personality.

   3. Example: The Front of House manager of a high-end restaurant who sets precise expectations around customer experience and does not accept variations in how customer service is provided.

      
      
      
      

6. Collectivist: This style emphasizes group decision-making and shared accountability.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style can tap into the knowledge, wisdom, and skills of those they work with. 

   2. Risks: Gaining consensus among multiple stakeholders can be slow, and groupthink does not always lead to the best decisions.

   3. Example: A non-profit executive with a board of volunteers who relies on consensus building to determine organizational goals and objectives.  

      
      

7. Transformational Leadership: This style inspires and motivates followers to achieve extraordinary results by helping employees find self-actualization through their work.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style are often seen as visionary and charismatic.

   2. Risks: The organization can become dependent on the leader, stagnating independent thinking.

   3. Example: A regional director who takes over an underperforming territory and compels employees to find personal fulfillment in exceeding customer expectations.

8. Servant Leadership: This style prioritizes the needs of followers and empowers them to achieve their full potential.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style are often seen as supportive and compassionate.

   2. Risks: Prioritizing who's needs should come first when stakeholders have competing needs. 

   3. Example: A Vice President of Franchising who meets one-on-one with direct and indirect reports to understand their obstacles and organizational bottlenecks and then uses that information to prioritize organizational solutions that make it easier for employees to do their jobs.

      
      
      
      

9. Authentic Leadership: This style involves leading with integrity and genuineness.

   1. Benefits: Leaders who use this style are often seen as trustworthy and credible.

   2. Risks: Values-based leadership can potentially alienate some stakeholders in the short term and puts a lot of pressure on the leader to be consistent. 

   3. Example: A Salon owner who is grounded in her strengths and values and allows them to be her guide for interacting with employees, setting policies, and leading the organization.

   
   
   
   

Choosing the Right Style

The best leadership style for you will depend on several factors, including your personality, team dynamics, organizational culture, and the maturity of your organization. It is essential to experiment with different styles to find the one that works best for you.

Here are some questions to consider when choosing a leadership style:

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?

• What are the needs of your team?

• What is the organizational culture?

• What are your goals for your team?

Developing Your Leadership Style

Once you have identified the leadership style you want to develop, you can improve your skills in several ways.

• Read books and articles about leadership.

• Attend leadership workshops and seminars.

• Shadow or mentor other leaders.

• Get feedback from your team and your peers.

• Work with an Executive Coach

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By developing your leadership style, you can become a more effective leader and achieve your team's goals. Remember, leadership is a skill. You can hone it over time through intentional practice.

Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

Have you been trying to improve your career or business on your own but are not seeing success as fast as you desire?

Book a free discovery call to discuss your goals and how I can help you accelerate.

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4 Tips for Moving from Individual Contributor Roles to Being a Leader.

As a people manager, you grew into your role as a leader by excelling at individual contributions. You know you need to be different, but change is not easy. The habits you were once praised for are now behaviors that can get in the way of your team's success. Adjusting your mindset will be essential to your success.

Effective leaders produce results through others.

In every leader's journey, a point comes when they can no longer do everything themselves and must begin to enlist others to fulfill the scope of the work. At that point, a leader's success is based on their ability to attract, retain, and develop talent. Successful leaders surround themselves with great people and effectively bring out the best in the people they work with. As you grow your leadership abilities, you must master the ability to accomplish work through others.

Tip 1: Focus on doing what no one else can do.

As the leader, your goal should be to master delegating. The reason for this is partially economic. As the leader, you likely are the highest-paid individual within your team. When you complete a task that someone else could complete, you raise the cost associated with completing that task. You also eliminate the opportunity for your employee to operate within their wheelhouse. When you delegate, you allow your employees to grow and gain much-needed experience and confidence. Over time, this growth helps produce greater competency among your employees. As employees' confidence and competence grow, they can take on increasingly complex challenges, which creates new potential for the organization.

Tip 2: Leverage individual employee strengths.

Tapping into the energy, knowledge, and strengths of others is another excellent reason to delegate. We all have different strengths, experiences, and perspectives, which influence the ideas we have and the outcomes we produce. You can leverage your team members' individual strengths by empowering them to take on more complex assignments. The key here is providing a vision of what you are asking them to do and then giving them room to do it. When delegating, you want to ensure that the person you select to work on the task has the information and capabilities necessary to execute to your expectations. You also want to be clear about the parameters of the assignment. The better you communicate your expectations upfront, the more likely you will be pleased with the outcome.

Tip 3: Be strategic when delegating.

One benefit of delegating is that it allows you to be more strategic as a leader. A leader's role is to ensure the execution of day-to-day activities, develop talent, and plan for the future. You must be able to oscillate between zooming in on minute details and zooming out to see the big picture. The act of delegating reduces the time you must spend on minute details, freeing you up to focus more holistically on the entire business.

No single project defines the long-term success of an organization. Success is delivered by building positive momentum over time. When leaders can accept imperfect progress, they position their organizations to take risks, learn from mistakes, and establish the knowledge and capabilities necessary for long-term success. The pursuit of perfection often results in inefficiencies that stagnate growth. Leaders determine the minimum acceptable level of execution needed for the organization to achieve their strategic objectives.

Tip 4: Accept things might not be perfect at first.

When you move into a leadership role, you are expected to replicate the success you delivered as an individual contributor across your team. Developing those you work with is the only sustainable way to do this. Leaders who try to be superhuman by executing their strategic roles in addition to their organization's tactical work risk burnout and stagnating their teams' growth.

Employees learn best by doing. It is a hard truth, but failure is the best teacher. Leaders willing to delegate provide employees with the trial and error needed for skill development and mastery. In employee satisfaction surveys, lack of development and career advancement opportunities are the two most cited reasons people leave organizations. When you delegate effectively, you address these concerns by increasing employee learning opportunities. This will help you be a talent magnet to people inside and outside your organization.

Summary

The skills and abilities that helped you to grow into a leadership position are not the ones that will allow you to excel as a leader. Individual contributors must demonstrate technical excellence. They must pursue perfection in everything they do because they are personally accountable for the work they produce.

Leaders maintain personal accountability but have added responsibility for the work completed by others. As a leader, it is vital to shift from micromanaging every detail of how work is completed to creating an environment where

• You focus on the things only you can do.

• Help employees develop their wheelhouse.

• Protect momentum by being strategic.

• Create teachable moments to support employee development.

When leaders can develop delegation skills, they scale their influence and position their organizations for faster and better growth. Employees' ability to reach their full potential is directly linked to your willingness to give them challenging work to master. As you stretch your employees' capabilities through delegation, you also build your ability as an executive. It is a win-win that will help you become the leader you want to be.

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As an Executive Coach and Small Business Consultant, I work with leaders who aspire to take their leadership to the next level.

If you are looking to learn frameworks and skills that make it easier for you to lead, we should talk.

I offer low-risk coaching packages that are customized to each client's needs. Whether you want to build your confidence, improve communication, or gain more comfort in delegating, I am here to help you on your path.

Get Help Building Delegation Skills.