Author: Curt Willbrandt, Account Manager, iMPact Business Group
All too often, I’ll meet a Candidate who feels their next career move is from the staff level to a leadership role.
That’s certainly a reasonable goal to have, but… when I ask them what they have been doing to prepare themselves for that next move — they routinely reference “tenure” at their current employer and the job highlights in their resume only reflect their skills and accomplishments related to their current staff level role.
When asked about stepping up and volunteering to be in — say a Team Lead capacity, leveraging their Senior level experience in their field to help develop others, volunteering to manage a project from concept through implementation related to their current skillset, training that they’ve taken to lead others or lead projects, anything that might imply they are “preparing” themselves to truly lead others…. this is where it all breaks down.
Leadership requires a few things — to actually be successful at it (IMHO) –
- The ability to reflect on where you are at in your own career and then plan for how you’re going to prepare yourself for that next career step — you’ll need to do this for everyone who reports up to you, if you’re a leader.
- The ability to scope, risk assess, organize, delegate, and manage a project — what do most Leaders really do; they organize and coordinate the efforts of others to meet a business objective. If you can’t organize and run a project, do you think you’ll be able to lead others? Micro-managers are usually folks who are insecure about their ability to run a project, and they fail in leadership roles.
- An innate desire and drive to guide and grow the careers of others — true leaders groom and grow future leaders. I have a client who embodies this where you can NOT advance in your own career unless you have demonstrated that you have helped advance the careers of your teammates or those who are reporting to you. Â Advancement is not based on tenure, politics, or favoritism, it is only available by proving you are a true Leader.
The term “Servant Leader” should never be a cliche, it should set the standard.
If you want to be an Electrician – you do an apprenticeship and learn to be an Electrician. If you want to be a Nurse – you go to nursing school and then are precepted (mentored) by others. If you want to be an Engineer – you go to school for Engineering and then learn from other Engineers. If you want to be an Accountant – you go to school and study Accounting and then are guided by experienced Accountants. The point here is that if you want to be a Leader – you study leadership topics/techniques and you develop leadership experience before you are going to be ready to actually lead others effectively.
Leadership is not just a Title change on your business card and you should only have that business card change – when — you prove you are ready to Lead.
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