Break Through to Executive Roles

Reaching senior roles requires a crucial realization:

"What got you here, won't get you there."

While the skills and experiences that drove your early career growth were valuable, they won't get you to the next level.

The goal remains unchanged: delivering value aligned with the company's needs, but the approach shifts significantly.

Early in your career, promotion happen as a result of accomplishing tasks effectively and efficiently. However, as you aspire to senior roles, it becomes less about individual contribution and more about mobilizing, influencing, strategic thinking, and making a substantial impact on the company.

The Transition Challenge:

Transitioning to senior positions required a shift in mindset and skill set.

To navigate this transition successfully, you need to stop thinking like an IC (individual contribute) and start thinking like a leader. You also need to break through your own barriers and demonstrate senior-level capabilities.

The problem is - no one teaches you how to develop these skills. Heck, no one tells you the skills you worked so hard to develop for 5,7 and even 10 years are not going to get you promoted into senior roles and could even hold you back.

(That's why I'm hosting a FREE 5-day masterclass called Break Through to Executive Roles where I'll teach you everything you need to know.)

How to cross the chasm and break through to executive roles

The Shift in Mindset:

To level up into senior roles, you must embrace a leader's mindset, shedding the perspective of an individual contributor. Start thinking and acting like an executive, considering the company's best interests and optimizing for outcomes.

Three steps can help you make this mindset shift:

1. Expand your view by knowing the business:

• Understand the company as a business entity.
• Familiarize yourself with the business model, customer acquisition and retention strategies, financials, decision-makers, and growth roadblocks.
• Gain knowledge of competitors and industry trends.

2. Think more strategically:

• Develop a long-term perspective, evaluating decisions based on their immediate and future implications.
• Avoid settling for short-term solutions and focus on long-term gains.
• Embrace first principle thinking, challenging conventional wisdom to find creative solutions. Question what you "know" and come up with creative solutions. Be the person who challenges the norm and finds a better way.

3. Upgrade your decision-making process:

• Shift from merely following orders to making informed decisions.
• Take ownership and accountability for your choices.
• Strive for efficient and critical thinking that leads to positive change.

The Evolution of Your Skill Set:

Transitioning into senior roles demands a broader skill set beyond technical expertise. The higher you climb, the more vital soft skills become. Key skills to focus on include:

• Strategic planning
• Vision casting
• Effective decision making
• Building alliances and relationships
• Motivating and mobilizing teams
• Managing upward effectively
• Advocating for yourself

Developing these soft skills is crucial, yet so many companies don't provide any formal training. To bridge the gap, consider the following approaches:

1. Model other executives:

Keep an eye on experienced executives. Observe how they communicate and act. Pick their brains and collaborate with them whenever you can.

Communicate and collaborate with senior leaders to understand their decision-making process, and seek opportunities to work alongside them, to gain insights into their process.

2. Educate yourself:

leveling up into senior roles will require you to demonstrate hands-on experience applying these skills, but that would be hard to do without a good baseline.

Start by educating yourself. Take an online course, read a book, or listen to a podcast. Give yourself the baseline so you can be smarter when it's time to execute.

Some of my recommendations:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Invaluable , by me :-)

3. Create hands-on experiences:

Proactively seek opportunities to apply and develop your skills.

Volunteer for strategic planning projects, collaborate cross-functionally, and lead initiatives that require mobilizing different teams.

• Strategic planning - ask your manager to help them with their next quarterly business review, or better yet offer to do it for them.
• Building alliances - map out the most important stakeholders for your next promotion and build a relationship with them.
• Motivating and mobilizing people - look for projects you can lead that will require you to work cross-functionally and connect different teams

The key here is to be intentional. Don't wait for these opportunities, create them.

Creating Leverage to Stand Out:

Competition for executives role is fierce. You are likely competing with internal candidates as well as external hires with “experience”.

If you want to stand out, you’ll have to do more than check boxes.

First, you’ll need to exceed expectations.

As Leila Hormozi said recently on the young and profiting?podcast :

“ The only way to stand out, truly, is to exceed expectations.

"When expectations match reality, we are neutral. We feel nothing. We feel like this is how it was supposed to go. But the moment someone goes beyond the job description and exceeds expectations, that is when their boss will feel excited, elated, and encouraged.”

My friend Dave Kline has a similar perspective in his?article ?How to Position Yourself for Promotion As a Senior Leader:

“ Average employees do what they’re told. Good employees do better than what they’re told. People looking to rise to the highest ranks will actually tell you, as their boss, what they’re going to do and then do more than what they told you.”

Second, you need to build your internal brand.

We all know that most people can’t tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind tasting. Yet, most people have a clear preference for one brand or the other.?

With all else being equal, a strong brand is a differentiator that will make you a front-runner for the role.

Fastest ways to build a brand:

1) Become known for something. Position yourself as an expert inside and outside of the organization.

2) Build trust and rapport inside your company to grow a loyal following and enlist advocates.

3) Build a strong reputation by advocating for yourself and crafting a narrative that connects your success to the company’s goals.

The Attainable Dream:

While reaching executive suite roles may seem challenging, it is by no means impossible.

For example, my friend started as a digital marketer 11 years ago and recently became the CEO of a major division within a conglomerate. Another client grew from an intern to an AVP in 8 years by consistently developing themselves and embodying leadership qualities at each stage.

And I leveled up from an IC to a VP over the course of my career by applying what I’m teaching your here today.

If you want to level up into senior roles and keep growing as an executive you’ll need to think and act differently.

What got you here won’t get you there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means you’ll need to keep growing.

If you want to dive deeper into the HOW, I'm hosting a free 5-day masterclass called Break Through to Executive Roles starting July 31st.

I'll walk you through the process of leveling up into senior roles and you will leave with a clear action plan for your next promotion.