Marc's Blog

 How to move beyond the leadership strengths

that prevent you from moving forward in your career

 

 

 

The first question in your mind right now is probably: “How can a leadership strength hold me back?”  

 

Let’s look at a few a examples to answer your question.  

 

Think of a top sales person who was promoted to sales manager, and ended-up having mitigated success at best, or at worst, completely failed.  The reason behind this is the top sales person, over the years, had developed strategies for success that made her successful as a sales person.  These could be being self-motivated, driven, resourceful, etc.  

 

Now, imagine that you are this new sales manager.  The qualities that made you successful are extremely useful as a sales person, but have a good chance to cause your failure as a sales manager.  This is because as a self-motivated, self-driven, and resourceful person, you will  tend to expect the same from your employees.  This means that you will NOT find it necessary to put formal systems and tools in place to support your sales force in keeping their motivation, generating new opportunities, understanding and fulfilling their development needs, etc.  You may even see this need for formal systems and tools as a weakness.  For you, being motivated, driven, and resourceful is second nature.  You never needed these external resources to be successful.  The thing is, this is NOT the case for 90% of your workforce.  If as a sales manager you don’t supply these systems, your workforce will fail, which, as a result, will make you fail as sales manager.  

 

As another example, think of a middle manager that is promoted to senior manager.  The role of this middle manager led him to be a hands-on person.  This type of middle manager tends to do a lot with and for the employees. This means that this middle manager will tend to take the lead on projects, and manage people working for him on the project.  

 

Now, imagine that you are this newly promoted senior manager.  Your role as a senior manager is to be strategic, which means that you cannot DO anymore.  You have to delegate.  You have to give the lead to others, and teach them how to lead.  The problem here is that you have the habit of taking the lead.  It’s natural for you.  You know how to lead projects, you don’t know how to coach others to be leaders.  You probably will get impatient when your new middle manager asks you how to do things and you may even find it easier to “just do it.”  If you end up doing that, you will spend your time being a middle manager with a senior manager title.  There is a good chance that your superior will see you in action, and then will pigeon-hole you as a middle manager.

 

 

Leadership strengths are your winning strategies, your success measures and your identity

Leadership strengths are strategies that, so far, have led you to successfully make things happen.  They are based on your past, and have taken place through a process of natural selection.  Over the years, the winning strategies survived, while the losing strategies were eliminated. 

 

This means that you will be successful using your current leadership strengths until your circumstances change, and new leadership strengths are needed.  This change in circumstance could be a change of position, a promotion, a change in the leadership of your organization, a company reorganization, a business model change, etc.  

 

 

How do you make sure that this will not happen to you  (... or how to get out of it if you are there now).

There are two factors that you have to take into consideration and work with to make a successful transition, or unlock yourself from the position you are in.  These two factors are of crucial importance because they create the “bond” you have with your leadership strengths. These two factors are:

• The outward requirements
• Your inner reward

 

The outward requirements are what you need to do in your current job and/or what you would need to do in the next job that you want.  If we take the example of the middle manager, the outward requirements for the middle manager position, is the ability to be hands-on and take the lead on projects.  It’s related to the ability to DO things.  On the other hand, the outward requirements as a senior manager are to be able to BE STRATEGIC, to ENABLE others to take the lead, and teach them and mentor them to do what needs to be done.

 

The inner reward is what makes you feel valuable in your role.  In the case of the middle manager, there is a good chance that what makes him valuable (... and thus makes him feel secure that he will keep his job) is making things happen by taking charge, by DOING.  This action of DOING is directly connected to feeling valuable, feeling secure, and feeling good about himself.   On the other hand, for the successful senior manager, what makes him feel valuable will tend to be to ENABLE others to make things happen.  The actions of ENABLING, COACHING and PLANNING, are directly connected to feeling valuable, feeling secure, and feeling good about himself.

 

As you can see, the outward requirements and your inner rewards are intimately connected.  The outward requirements are what you need to demonstrate and master in order to move on to the next level in your career and be successful at it, while your inner reward is what will keep you consistently meeting the outward requirements.  It’s what makes your new behaviors sustainable and fulfilling to you.

 

In our case, we have:

 

What can you do about it?

In order to move on to your next level in an easier way, or to get out of the level you feel you are stuck in, you need to do six (6) things:

1. Identify and understand your current outward requirements—and their ultimate objectives
2. Identify and understand your current inner rewards
3. Identify and understand the outward requirements of the position you desire—and their ultimate objectives
4. Identify and understand the inner rewards that you need to develop

Once you have these, you have to:

1. Start fulfilling parts of your current role (meeting your role’s objectives), using the outward requirements of your new desired position — start building the people that will replace you in your role 
2. Start shifting and developing your inner rewards (inner measures of success) to include the inner rewards of the new position you are after

 

In the case of our example, the middle manager would:

• Identify the specific results his current role requires him to generate, and the way he makes things happen is by DOING things, by being hands-on and by taking the lead on projects
• Look “inside himself” to understand what he feels when performing these actions (or NOT performing these actions)
  • Feels valuable when doing things
  • Feels useless and fears loosing his job when NOT doing, or when being a coach
• Identify that his desired role would require him to be a COACH and an ENABLER

 

Let’s review what we have:

 

 

In this case, for the middle manager to become a successful senior manager, he must “switch” his inner rewards to becoming: 

 

The middle manager has to set some “practices” in place where he will reinforce this new way of being, thinking and working.

 

 

How do you discover your Leadership Focus?

Your Leadership Focus is the coming together of your most important Leadership Strengths—the 4 or 5  leadership strengths that you use day-in and day-out to get what you want and make things happen.  Your Leadership Focus also defines what you look at to judge the performance and potential of others, and the type of support system you need and believe in.  

 

Take a moment now to find some of your leadership strengths that form your Leadership Focus in your current role.  The first thing to do is to observe yourself in action:

• What are the means that you use to make things happen?
  • Think of times when you are under pressure, or under tight deadlines. What are the ways of working you revert to?
• What are the traits of character that you believe are essential in your role?
• What do you believe you have in common with your role models or people you admire?
• What are you looking for in people that are working for you, to know that they will be as successful as you are?

 

Once you have some answers, rate them in order of importance

 

This will give you a good idea of some of your most predominant leadership strengths forming your leadership focus.

 

If you are interested to dig deeper, there are some tools available on the market, such as the LeadershipFocus-Matrix that can help you define your Leadership Focus with precision (see www.strategy-driven.com) 

 

 

Conclusion

As a conclusion, if your career is moving the way you want and you are getting the rewards you are expecting, it means that your Leadership Focus is currently supporting your career.  If however, you feel that you are stagnating in your current role, that your career is NOT going the way you want, or that you are not getting the rewards that you would like to get, there is a good chance that some or all of your Leadership Strengths are holding you back.  If it’s the case, identify your outer requirements and inner rewards, and start making some changes.  I’ve seen some of my clients’ careers change completely for the better in a matter of just a few months, by readjusting their Leadership Focus.

 

Please send me your questions or comments at efactor@strategy-driven.com  or see my profile => Marc Chouinard