Your leadership positioning defines what you stand for in your role and what customers, employees and business partners can measure you against. When you take over a new area of leadership, you need that clarity early. It comes from a clear role, a confident presence and a focus on the right topics.
The video above is about exactly this situation. You take over a new area: new tasks, a wider leadership circle, new challenges. A client took this step in a new company, and for him three things mattered.
Leadership positioning is the deliberately chosen and visibly lived stance a leader takes towards the people around them: what they stand for and what they put first. Over time, it turns into a visible reputation.
Every leader gets positioned anyway, with or without their own input. People form a picture in the first few weeks, and that picture tends to stick. The only open question is who draws it.
Role and standing: First comes a clear role with a competent standing. Agree with your own manager what’s expected of you in the first months and how your success will be measured.
Confident presence: You come across as confident once you become effective in the role. It shows in meetings where you make decisions and explain them, and in conversations where you listen before you judge.
Focus on your own goals: A new area floods you with topics. Point your thinking and your actions at the goals you’ve set yourself, and say a deliberate no to whatever pulls you away from them.
Employees need a good leader who sets an example and clear guardrails. That means clear priorities and rules people can follow on who decides what.
Right after a change at the top, teams look for orientation. They read every gesture of the new boss, often more closely than the new boss would like.
That’s why the goal is clear leadership positioning towards customers, employees and business partners. All three groups should sense what you stand for, and at its core they should hear the same message.
Clarity about your own situation shows you the next steps towards your goal. Two questions help me most here.
What should your people say about your area a year from now? And what do you want to change visibly in the next 90 days to get there?
The answers belong in a few sentences that you represent the same way to every group. Tell the team one thing and the customer another, and your reputation suffers fast.
Check your leadership positioning after a few weeks. Ask two or three people you trust what they’ve heard about your priorities, and compare it with what you meant to say.
How to prepare for a new role before you start is the subject of Developmental role: 12 ways to prepare to stretch in it. This article picks up from there, with how you show up once you’re in the role.
I see two mistakes particularly often when leaders start in a new area. The first is trying to change everything at once to show drive. People experience it as activism and wait for the storm to pass.
The second is waiting too long so as not to step on anyone’s toes. After a few months, the people around you have filled the gap, and your leadership positioning reads “nice, but unclear”.
You avoid both by naming a few priorities early and deliberately leaving the rest open.
Leadership positioning is easiest to shape in the first weeks and hardest to correct later. In coaching, clients gain clarity about their current situation and their personal development, and they leave knowing their next steps.
One doubt remains. Too much positioning too early can come across as arrogant, especially in a company whose culture you’re still getting to know. So I recommend a clear stance on a few topics and plenty of curiosity about everything else.
And every position needs evidence. A clear statement without matching decisions in daily business wears thin quickly.
It’s the conscious decision about what you stand for in your role and which topics you put first. You represent this position the same way to employees, customers and business partners. Over time, it builds a visible reputation.
Early, ideally in the first few weeks, because people form their picture quickly. A first, deliberately brief position can be refined later. A wrong first impression takes far more effort to correct.
Say early on what matters to you and how you make decisions. Listen more than you talk in the first conversations. And stick to what you’ve announced, because that’s what the team will measure you by.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: 14 lessons for new leaders from executive coaches · About Cristian Hofmann, executive coach · C-level confidence: Between self-doubt and arrogance · Leadership mindset: Staying effective when the pressure rises
Note: This article was first published on 04.07.2023 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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