Turning Point 1: Individual Contributors and Emerging Leaders

The first time you even consider being a leader is a critical moment. As I described in my own personal leadership story in Chapter 1, when Zinta told me, “You need to be in management,” that was the first time anyone said those words to me. What surprised me was how something immediately changed in me. Those words forced me to see myself differently. And that's what happens when you are tapped on the shoulder and told you are seen as an emerging leader. All of a sudden, you start a personal discovery process of understanding what leadership is and what it will mean to you.

Take the experience of Tariq. He was a leader in a transportation company specializing in distribution and warehousing. He was taking part in a leadership development program for emerging leaders. He told us that after attending the program he gained a whole new appreciation for how he would need to behave as a leader. He quickly realized he couldn't be seen as a complainer or whiner any longer. He had to evolve from being an employee to becoming a leader. He realized that he had to set the bar higher for himself. It would no longer be appropriate for him to behave as one of the gang on the construction crew.

This insight troubled Tariq because he had already started to feel the separation building between him and those he worked with as peers. All emerging leaders face this challenge. The good news for Tariq was that he was open to understanding the realities of his future role, and the four terms of the leadership contract helped him.

As I described in Chapter 4, many individuals in important individual contributor roles are also being tapped on the shoulder and asked by their organizations to step up as leaders. The individual contributor is often confused. “I'm not a leader,” they think to themselves. “I don't manage a team, or run a department. I'm just doing my job.” Yes, you may not be managing a team or running a department, but you do have an important leadership role for your company. Chances are you bring a high level of expertise. Or you possess a set of critical stakeholder relationships important to your company's success. Or perhaps you have an important market-facing role that helps build the brand of your company. Whatever it may be for you, when you're asked to step up, you need to start thinking of yourself as a leader. Like all emerging leaders, individual contributors in key roles must redefine themselves as leaders.

Take the example of Beth. She worked in the health care industry with a local community agency. Her role was to put health promotion programs in place within the city in which she lived and worked. She didn't have a team to manage. But she brought years of expertise in health care and a host of important relationships with all levels of government, nonprofit agencies, and companies in the private sector. When her manager first talked to her about needing to step up as a leader, Beth was confused. But her manager helped her see how important her role was to the organization and the community. She had a really unique role within the organization, and her success was ultimately based on her well-developed leadership capabilities. Over time, Beth began to see herself as a leader. As she did, she realized she needed to step up in even more significant ways to drive the health promotion mandate she led.

As an emerging leader or individual contributor, it's often your organization that makes the first leadership decision. Someone in the company will see you as a potential leader and will let you know it. This recognition becomes an invitation for you to start learning about what leadership is really about and whether you are suited for it.

Don't fall into the trap that many emerging leaders and individual contributors do: Don't refuse the invitation because you think leadership will just be about more work. Yes, there is a lot of extra work and effort required when you are a leader. But there is also greater opportunity to affect your organization and your team. So your goal at this point should be to remain open and learn as much as you can about what being a leader is going to be like. It's also important to be honest with yourself. If you don't feel you are up to being a leader, then wait until you are ready.

It's also a good time to start paying attention to your core obligation as a leader at this level: getting yourself ready to be a leader. This readiness starts with shifting your mindset from thinking like an employee to thinking like a leader. Start looking for ways to show up and demonstrate your ability to lead. Don't limit yourself with traditional definitions of leadership like the idea that you are only a leader if you have direct reports. You still must step up to your leadership obligations.

One of the critical obligations you will have is to ensure you develop strong soft skills. This was reinforced to me recently when I worked with a client. The CEO of a mid-size technology company was addressing a group of high-potential leaders in her company.

She said to them: “Your technical skills generally get you your first management or leadership role, but a large part of your success after that will be based on the strength of your soft skills.”

Her comments struck a chord with me. The best leaders are often those who demonstrate a capacity to work closely with people and build teams, all while demonstrating a healthy capacity for self-awareness.

It's hardly a new idea. After working with thousands of leaders over the years, I've come to the undeniable conclusion that it's the strength of your soft skills that will make or break you as a leader.

However, soft skills are proving to be even more critical today and certainly will be into the future. The Adecco Group recently released a white paper entitled “The Soft Skills Imperative.” They argue that although technology is quickly taking over all aspects of the world of work, the ability to understand people—largely through soft skills—is a huge competitive advantage.

The Adecco Group report includes things such as the ability to express empathy, communicate persuasively, seek common ground with stakeholders, and engage people so they feel invested in the company.

A recent LinkedIn study conducted by economist Guy Berger also identified the top ten soft skills that companies were seeking in their job candidates: communication, organization, teamwork, consistent punctuality, critical thinking, social skills, creativity, interpersonal communication, adaptability, and a friendly personality as the ten soft skills most in demand among employers.

The study also found that close to 60 percent of companies in the United States cannot find talent with strong soft skills. In my experience, this isn't just an American issue. It's an issue everywhere.

You have an obligation to yourself to make a sincere commitment to develop strong soft skills to accompany the technical acumen you probably already possess. If you ignore the soft skills necessary for effective leadership, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant and, ultimately, unwanted. Alain Dehaze, CEO of The Adecco Group, takes this issue even further when he states that in years to come, leaders will be measured more for their ability to cultivate soft skills rather than technical expertise. Will you be one of these leaders?

A lot of the hard work that you must do will be personal in nature. Once you are given the label of emerging leader, it's hard not to let it go to your head. However, if you do, everyone will know it, and it will affect your relationships with your colleagues. So it's important to remain humble.

It's also important that you start building your personal resilience and resolve by deliberately stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone. And it's a great time to pay attention to all the core people skills that you will need to excel at. Develop your ability to manage conflict, give feedback, and hold people accountable. Let me tell you from personal experience and the experience of hundreds of leaders I've worked with, it's best to learn these skills now, because if you don't, your personal gaps in these areas will come back to haunt you later.

You can also start paying attention to building a sense of community with fellow leaders. The best way to do this is by connecting with other emerging leaders in your organization. You may also find it helpful to build a small group outside your organization, either through a professional network or your own contacts. That's what I did when I was an emerging leader in my first job. I struggled to find like-minded individuals inside my organization, so I gathered a few colleagues and friends and set up a network myself. We would get together four to six times a year to talk about leadership and our careers. I found it helped me cope with the challenges I faced within my own organization.

Start looking for ways to bring forward your ideas and start showing up as a leader, even if you don't have the title or the role yet. You need to start building your resilience to be able to deal with the increased demands and adversity that will come from having your first leadership role. Take advantage of whatever development opportunities your organization may offer. Look for ways to expand your skills on the job through special assignments and projects. And begin to observe other leaders in action. See what works for them and what gets in their way. Over time you will gain clarity on how you want to show up as a leader.

Finally, I hope that you never lose sight of this reality: Your organization is going to need a constant supply of strong leaders for the future. If you decide to be one, the future is yours for the taking. But you must first get clear about what it means to be a leader and have the commitment to make it happen. Your key action at this turning point is to be honest with yourself.

Turning Point 2: Front-Line Leaders

If you are a front-line leader, you have one of the most critical leadership roles in your organization. I know you may not believe it, but it's true. You are the closest person to the employees and customers of your organization. You have the proverbial finger on the pulse of what is happening. You can have considerable impact. You will also start noticing that you are held to a different standard. Excuses that may be tolerated for employees will no longer be acceptable for you. You will realize soon enough that leadership isn't about excuses—it's all about accountability for results.

The first time you decide to become a supervisor or manager of people is one of the most important leadership decisions you will ever make. We work with front-line leaders in The Accountable Manager development program. One of the first important insights we share with these leaders is that they must stop thinking of themselves as individual contributors.

It's no longer about you. You have made the decision to stand apart from the pack and be the leader, someone committed to adding more value to your organization. You have suddenly entered a different zone, and it will affect you in ways that you never would have suspected.

Take Thomas, for example. He became the supervisor of a team that he was a member of. It changed the relationships that he had with his peers. He knew that. What he didn't realize is how much those relationships would change. This became clear to him when the team organized a summer outing and didn't invite him. At first, he was hurt. But when he put his leadership hat on, he understood that it was good for his team to do social things without the boss. He realized that's the price one pays as a leader.

One of the things I realized when I was a front-line leader is that your team also makes a leadership decision: They decide whether they will follow you. If they do, your job will be a lot easier. If they don't, you will have some hard work ahead. So pay attention to your team. Be deliberate when making small d leadership decisions during team meetings. You'll be amazed how far deliberateness and consistency on your part will go in helping your team drive high performance.

What you will also find as a front-line leader is that you start really thinking about the responsibility and obligations you have to your organization (or at least you should). Your core obligations are twofold: to drive the performance of your team and to learn the essentials of your new role.

You'll quickly realize that you are now accountable for the performance of your team. Depending on your role, your span of control can be considerable. You may be responsible for 10, 20, or more direct reports—no easy task. In fact, the larger your group is, the more you may start feeling a bit of the heat as a leader because you are truly accountable for their performance.

You will also need to master the leadership essentials that you will count on for the rest of your career—key skills such as coaching, listening, delegating, setting clear expectations and managing performance, holding people accountable, and confronting conflict. Again, it is best that you learn to master these skills now, because if you don't, your effectiveness will suffer if and when you take on a more senior leadership role later. You will find your day will become consumed by people issues. In fact, you'll be surprised how much time they will take and how much personal energy they will sap from you.

Although you may not find your obligation to your communities as obvious, I encourage you to find ways to give back to society. It's important that you develop the ability to pay attention to this broader obligation now, because it will increasingly be expected of you as you move into more senior-level roles.

Some of the hardest work you will face as a leader centers on the shift from being a doer to becoming a delegator. Many front-line leaders struggle with it. You may have a role that still demands that you do the work in addition to managing others. You will most likely also have the greatest technical expertise on the team. Your team will look to you as the expert, which can be a difficult transition for some people.

The other hard work that you will need to do is to shift where you get your personal sense of gratification. As an individual contributor, it primarily would have come from your own accomplishments. Now you need to shift so that you gain personal gratification from building your team and watching everyone grow. You will need to let go of the desire for personal glory and replace it with the desire for glory for the team. You will have to let go of rating your performance based on your own contribution and instead be judged by your team's contribution.

Your final challenge at this level is to not isolate yourself. Reach out to leaders at your level in your own organization. Find ways to connect with them at work or after work outside the office. Day to day, it's also important to build the habit of connecting with your fellow leaders in real ways. Instead of always sending e-mails, pick up the phone. Better yet, walk down the hall and sit with a colleague to discuss an issue. These small but important practices to connect with other leaders will be invaluable to you over your leadership career.

A few final thoughts for front-line leaders: There will be times when you feel ignored by your organization. It's nothing personal; it's just the way some organizations run. Don't let this get to you. The good news is that more and more organizations are recognizing that front-line leaders are critical to their overall success. In fact, I believe there has never been a better time to be a front-line leader than today.

Turning Point 3: Mid-Level Leaders

Mid-level and senior leadership roles are the glue within any organization. At this level, it's all about your ability to have organizational impact; this skill is what you will be judged on as a leader.

As you make the leadership decision at this level, you will come face-to-face with the challenge of letting go. What drove your success up to this point—your strong technical expertise—is now being replaced with that murky world of organization-wide leadership. In this world, your success is defined and measured largely by your ability to influence, collaborate, and drive innovation. You will need to break down silos to get the work done and meet customer needs.

What I realized when I had a role at this level is that the leadership decision is not a onetime single event. Every day you'll show up to work and face significant challenges and demands, and they'll force you to regularly ask yourself: Am I up for this? Am I prepared to do what is necessary? Do I have the stomach to take this on? Depending on your day, you may be asking these questions a lot.

These questions are critical because this is the level where you may find yourself checking out or starting to settle. When this happens, you run the risk of merely going through the motions as a leader. If you find yourself doing this, stop and question your leadership decision altogether.

Your core obligation at this level is to have organizational impact. This means not looking to your executives for permission or approval to do things. You must be able to effectively work across your organization with other leaders to drive change and create high performance. It will no longer be about your own team or department. For probably the first time, you'll start realizing that your obligation is to be an ambassador of your organization now. You are the company! You are expected to lead inside and outside. You will start thinking much more about your obligation to the communities in which you do business. Depending on your role, you may be the face of your company to your local community.

There is a lot of hard work at this level. The people issues continue, but they will feel harder to handle because now you are also dealing with other senior leaders. You will face your fair share of big egos and petty politics.

The drama can be intense at times, and you will need to learn how to deal with it. You will be challenged to be strategic at the same time that you're dealing with tactical priorities. You'll be in the middle—caught between pressures from the front-line and from the executive level. You'll feel like you are always reacting, or in firefighting mode.

This is the world of big project implementation. You may not be a sponsor of these big projects, but you will own their successful execution. And although you will live in one department or line of business, you will also need to start having an enterprise-wide perspective.

It is at this level where your resilience and personal resolve will truly be tested. You will learn whether you are up for it. You will also start getting a glimpse of whether you have what it takes to succeed in a more senior-level role. But to move forward, you will need to overcome some of the traps that weaken mid-level leaders.

One leader whom I worked with was a brilliant individual. Tazeen's personal performance was outstanding. She had also developed strong personal relationships with her team members. Unfortunately, she blurred the line between being a leader and being a friend to them, and team members behaved very causally with her. She wanted to be seen as one of the team and, as a result, she didn't tackle performance issues.

Some members of the team took advantage of her good nature. Although she was liked, she was seen as being a weak leader. Ultimately, this stalled her career. Executives saw her as a capable middle manager, but they didn't have the confidence that she would succeed at more senior levels of the organization. Tazeen was struggling with her role and the power that came with it.

As a senior leader, you will have more power than you did at lower levels. It's important to understand how to handle it, how to share it with others, and how not to abuse it.

All the hard work at this level is critical and necessary because it will prepare you for what's to come in a more senior leadership role. One of the changes you will experience is that you will now manage other managers, many of whom have greater expertise than you do in their own specialty areas. The hard work before you is to forge a strong team, even without that technical expertise. You will need to rely on the advice and judgment of others and make decisions based on their suggestions. This level of trust may be unsettling for you.

All this pressure can get to you, and, at times, you may feel disconnected and isolated. Yet the irony is that it is at this level precisely when a true community of leaders can be created. The challenge you will face is that you will be living in a stable of thoroughbreds. Your day-to-day climate may be one of internal competition—silos fighting silos.

You must change that climate. You must reach out to your fellow senior leaders. Because you will be collaborating on many company-wide projects, there will be natural opportunities to connect. Take the time to build truly positive and healthy relationships with your peers, relationships that will have a positive impact on the work you are doing. Form your own support group within your organization, made up of a small number of trusted colleagues. Leverage social media tools to connect across geographies. There are more ways to connect with fellow leaders today than ever before.

It's also important that you not insulate yourself or stay too internally focused. Stay connected with leaders in your industry outside your organization. At this level, you have a huge opportunity to transform your relationships with peers and colleagues to ones based on trust, respect, and mutual support.

I find many mid-level and senior-level leaders underestimate the impact that they can actually have on their organizations. The reality is that as organizations continue to become more lean and streamlined, leadership roles at the middle are critical. Don't lose sight of this. Your company's success is in your hands. As always, the decision is yours. I encourage you to make it and lead your company to greatness.

Turning Point 4: Executive Leaders

Welcome to the big leagues. You've finally made it to an executive or C-suite leadership role. Everything will feel more intense: the accountability, the scrutiny, the need for professional maturity. At the same time, becoming an executive leader is an amazing opportunity to shape the future of your organization.

The way you decide to take on one of these roles is also critical because your impact is very significant. Although these roles have big titles, big compensation, big perks, and so on, you need to decide why you really want the role. Are you genuinely motivated to have a positive and enduring impact on your organization? Or is it all about you—your ego and your personal needs? Are you prepared to take your leadership to a very different level by becoming a great leader, one whom your employees and stakeholders will look up to?

An important factor in making a leadership decision at this level will be your relationship with your boss: the CEO or chair of the board. This relationship will need to be strong for you to have any chance of succeeding. Make sure you take the time to truly gauge what this relationship will be like. If your sense is that it won't be strong, then you need to address this before you decide to take on the role.

Your Big D leadership decisions will demand that you be honest with yourself. Many leaders aspire to the executive ranks, but few make it—and even fewer succeed. You need to have the self-awareness to know whether you are cut out for these demanding roles. You may find you are better suited to remain in a mid-level or senior leadership role. This is perfectly fine. Our organizations need strong leaders at all levels.

Your obligation as an executive leader is fairly straightforward—you must lead the future. You need to shape your environment, create a strategy that will drive sustainable growth, and establish a strong culture that will attract and keep the best talent. You should feel the weight of your obligation to your customers, employees, fellow executives, board, and shareholders. The game changes once again—now you really start to understand the many obligations you must live up to.

You should also start recognizing that as an executive, you have moral and fiduciary obligations. You must leave the organization better than you found it. You must scale the organization beyond yourself and create a business model that will drive sustainable growth. You must be externally focused and build strong stakeholder relationships.

Your time is no longer spent reacting—anticipating, shaping, and executing are your new priorities. You should also realize that your role is no longer just about your function or line of business. You must wear the proverbial corporate hat, thinking about the success of the entire enterprise.

Another key obligation is to build a strong management team and ensure you have succession in place. In fact, many CEOs I've worked with believe building a strong team is one of their most critical obligations to their company. Boards judge CEOs on their ability to build strong teams. Teams at the top are vital to the success of your company—not only because they are necessary to drive company performance, but also because you have an obligation to build leadership continuity and ensure succession issues are being addressed.

There is considerable hard work at this level, much of which is made more difficult because of the constant scrutiny you will face. As we've explored earlier in this book, when you are under this kind of scrutiny, fear may creep into the back of your mind. You don't want to be the leader who screws it all up or brings your organization down. Your mistakes could make it to the front pages of newspapers and business magazines or go viral on Twitter. Those are the risks and the challenges. You are the face of your organization, and its reputation often hinges on yours. Your resilience and resolve will be tested in a completely different way.

I worked with a small group of CEOs who were in transition and were clients of our Executive Outplacement Program. We were talking about the ideas of the leadership contract and spent considerable time talking about the hard work at the executive level. They commented that some of the hardest work is making difficult business decisions such as terminating an employee or closing a failing business unit. Even if these decisions are the right ones for the company, they still carry a personal toll for leaders.

Of the four leadership turning points, it is at the executive level where you can make the greatest impact in your organization by creating a true community of leaders in a way that will become the ultimate differentiator for your company. At a personal level, you can set the pace for others and model great leadership and ensure your senior team does as well.

As we discussed earlier in the book, executive roles can be isolating, and even lonely. You need to break this sense of isolation. Build a network of close relationships inside and outside your organization. I find many CEOs, for example, will have a small team of external advisors and colleagues they can go to for advice, support, and a sense of community. You don't have to be a CEO to establish this. Reach out and find leaders who are in a similar role as yours (inside or outside your organization) and connect on a regular basis. In the end, leadership is all about the connections you make.

I believe there is no better time than today to be an executive-level leader. If you can figure out how to leverage social media, you now have a platform to share your organization's story in ways that you couldn't a decade ago. If you are able to create a truly inspiring place to work, you will attract the best and the brightest in your industry. You also have the opportunity to have an impact on global and social levels. These opportunities are what the executive level puts before you.