If your organization is like most, you’re leaving money on the table in terms of team productivity and performance. Social and interpersonal factors, motivation issues, lack of group cohesion and the general up-front churn that teams display as they form, are just a few of the areas where you can pick up immediate productivity improvements with a little bit of smart leadership.
The first five questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical. If you've made it through the investigation of questions 1-5, it's time for you to consider your new world of accountability.
One of the reasons that I love working with early career professionals is that many of them still believe that they are going to change the world in their own small or very large way. If only we could bottle some of these early dreams and tap into them later in life.
I regularly use the label “Senior Contributor” (SC) to reference a state of management maturity that tends to exist somewhere between upper mid-level management or senior knowledge worker and the executive layer. The SC is a professional (manager or individual contributor) on the brink of executive qualifications and someone that has displayed effective formal and informal leadership skills, value-creating critical and strategic thinking abilities, credible executive presence and a strong operating and quality orientation.
The first four questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical: Why do you want to lead? Do you understand the true role of a leader? Do you understand that the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward? Are you prepared to give up your domain expertise as your foundation for results? If you've made it through the investigation of questions 1-4, it's time for you to focus in on what it takes to be successful as a leader.
Groupthink is one of the nefarious decision-making missteps of teams, and a trap that many smart people and groups have fallen victim to throughout history. From the classic example cited in nearly every discussion on decision-making, the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, to Ford’s launch of the Edsel, to Neviille Chamberlin’s inner circle that believed peace with Hitler was at hand, Groupthink has earned a prominent place in our culture. And while you might not be planning an invasion or negotiation with evil dictators or planning on launching an ugly automobile, chances are that Groupthink has show up from time to time in your professional world.
In his classic article, "Managing Oneself," (HBR, 1999), the late, great management thinker, Peter Drucker, offered the following: "We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: if you've got ambition, drive and smarts, you can rise to the top of your profession-regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't managing their knowledge workers' careers. Rather, we must each be our own chief executive officer." Have you declared yourself CEO of your own career?
Someone asked me the other day, whether there was one quality above all others that stuck out as essential for success as a leader? Without hesitating, I responded, “intestinal fortitude.” And while the question is not dissimilar to one of those impossible to answer but fun to speculate about debates that run endlessly on sports talk shows (e.g. Who was better, Aaron or Ruth?), I’m taking sides on this one.
Happy Independence Day!
The first three questions in this series challenged you to think through issues that are both philosophical and powerfully practical. Why do you want to lead? Do you understand the true role of a leader? Do you understand that the the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward? The next question in the series builds on #3 by asking you to consider whether you are truly willing to let go of some of that expertise as part of your transformation as a leader.
