Career Advancement for Leaders

I've been reflecting on what I'm about to write for the past several years. I'm 44 years old today. My wife and I own three businesses. I've sat in a variety of roles during my career. I've reflected on the lessons I've learned and the things peers or bosses said to me. I've watched the careers of many people play out right before my eyes here on LinkedIn.

In the past, I was too stubborn and arrogant to see the things people were trying to show me. I thought I knew better than they did, but the truth was that I really didn't "get it". I was reading lots of books on leadership, but I had blinders on.

Humbly, I want to state right up front that I still don't know everything. There's a lot of people that have led at much higher positions than I have, and they may see things differently from their perspectives. However, I believe the things that I have learned are some of the right things to help most of you advance in your careers.

If I was to go back in time, talk to my younger self, and explain a different strategy for career advancement, these are a few of the things that I would share.

Lesson 1 - Most likely, you won't be in the same role very long.

If you knew that you were definitely going to be moved to a different role or company in 1-3 years, would that change how you performed during that period of time? Would you act more like a steward of the role rather than an owner of the role? How would you use the time to prepare for your next role?

In the fall of 2010, I was hired to be the Executive Team Leader of Logistics for a Target store in the El Paso market. It was pretty broken at the time from an operations and morale perspective, and it had almost $1 million in shrink per year. I was hungry to try and prove to myself and others how "great" I was. I didn't want to ask for help, because I viewed that as weakness. As a result, I made a lot of mistakes due to my inexperience.

What were some of the mistakes I made?

• I alienated myself from people rather than collaborating.
• I hindered relationships trying to demonstrate how "smart" I was.
• I caused a lot of hardship on my peers from not fixing things as fast as I could if I would have simply asked them for help.
• Rather than building relationships with the district level team and other stores' leaders, I damaged them with some of the things that I said.

The only thing that I really had going for me was that I was willing to work 12-16 hours a day to learn how to run the business and fix it. Once we turned the store around, I was awarded Top Contributor of our store a few times and recognized as a District MVP.

Want to know what I wasn't awarded with? An interview for a Store Team Leader position.

The recognition I received felt good at the time, but it was simply a sheet of paper with some words on it. They may as well have taken a plain sheet of paper out of the copy machine, grabbed a Sharpie, and wrote "good job" on it. Was that what I actually wanted? Nope. I wanted career advancement.

By the summer of 2012, our family relocated to Las Vegas. I transferred to a Target in that market, and I felt like I had to start all over again.

When I look back on that part of my story, I was only in that El Paso role for less than two years. I had 700 days to either gain support or damage it, and I definitely damaged it. I was too good at what I did to be fired, but my leadership back then was too problematic to be promoted.

Why?

I lacked perspective and maturity on how to use that time wisely to prepare for advancement.

Lesson 2 - Relationships trump performance.

Ideally, you should want to do a great job building relationships and have great performance.

But...

having great relationships with everyone in your sphere and mediocre performance...

will get you farther than...

having mediocre relationships with everyone and a great scorecard.

Why?

In leadership roles, the way you succeed is through influence. I had several leaders in Target try to explain that to me, but I was too stubborn to listen. If you try and do everything on your own and neglect building relationships, then your peers will let you. When your boss is working on their succession plan, who do you think they will want to recommend? Someone great at their role that no one really likes, or someone good at their role that everyone likes, trusts, and respects?

Performance matters, no doubt. Everyone of us in business roles are trying to make money for ourselves and the company. However, I came from a sales background, and in the car business, it was the individual performance that got rewarded. Your ability to build relationships with customers and sell cars had a bigger impact on your success than making friends with everyone.

But here's the problem...

If your focus is on being great at tasks, then people will let you continue to do those tasks forever.

If you want to be a great leader, then you must be someone others will gladly follow. The best leaders are able to "win friends and influence people."

Performers get paid for performance. Leaders get paid for leading.

Lesson 3 - Be willing to move.

The next step in your career may not be right above you; at least not in the next several years. You may need to move to a different area, or you may need to move to a different company. I've seen a few people move up in their careers staying put; I've seen far more people move up by being willing to move to where the opportunity is.

If you did a search right now for leadership roles on Indeed, how many positions would you find in your city? For me, there are 11,000 open manager jobs within 35 miles of my city. If I search New York, there are another 57,000 open management jobs within 100 miles of New York City. If I did that in all the major markets, I would start to get the picture that there's lots of opportunities out there if I am willing to move. If I really love where I live, I would have at least 11,000 to choose from. Could there be 50 ones that are a great fit for me? Probably. There might be some at the company you're at, and there may many others near you if you're willing to leave your current employer.

With our HR hat on, we know that the bottom 10% may have to be let go at some point within the next year, the top 10% will probably promote or leave within the next year, and the other 80% will be fairly stable in their current roles for an average of 4 years. Every once in awhile, there's a 20 year+ veteran! The lesson it took time for me to see is that MOST people will leave their current role within 4 years. They might stay with the same company; they might not.

If you want to move up, you need to embrace that reality. The person who comes in after you will most likely change many of the things that you think are so important right now. So don't cling to your role like it's your last job; it won't be. Just do a great job in the role you're in at the moment while starting to look out at what might be next.

The right recipe for career advancement as a leader.

So, if you knew that you would only be in a role for 1-3 years and that relationships are the real key to getting promoted in a leadership position, how would you spend your time?

Do you need good performance? Yes. But, you don't have to get those wins all by yourself. If you're going to spend up to 1000 days with a specific group of people, then you should spend each one of those days being nice to them, being humble, being on time, asking for help, offering help, recognizing others, being a team player, communicating effectively, setting goals, making a plan, work towards the plan, handle problems that occur, championing things that are important to other leaders, seek mentors, and other things that will allow you to gain influence.

What should you avoid?

• I wouldn't spend any time trying to prove to everyone that you're better or smarter than they are.
• I wouldn't try to prove anything to your boss (or their boss).
• I wouldn't do anything to make your peers look bad.
• I wouldn't do anything to make your boss look bad.
• I wouldn't neglect making your team feel valued and seen.
• I wouldn't demand perfection or put everyone into a frenzy.
• I wouldn't try to change everything overnight.
• I wouldn't give your opinion to everyone about everything.
• I wouldn't tell everyone things that should be only written in your journal.
• I wouldn't give speeches that frustrate everyone.
• I wouldn't have long conversations about anything.
• I wouldn't stay focused on just your own area of influence.
• I wouldn't talk bad about anyone behind their backs
• I wouldn't say stupid things on conference calls.
• I wouldn't ever be late to anything unless there's a natural disaster.
• I wouldn't ignore the priorities of the bigger picture.
• I wouldn't avoid asking for help.
• I wouldn't be so rigid in my approach to things that don't matter very much in the long run.
• I wouldn't cling very hard to your current position since you won't be in it forever.

Last piece of advice...

Find people here on LinkedIn that have moved up in their careers and ask them what they did to get from one level to the next. Some people stay in their roles for a long time. There's usually a reason for that. They may love what they're doing and have reached a point that works well with the lifestyle they want in that season of their lives. But if you want to move ahead and keep climbing, reach out to people who are farther along than you are and ask them how things actually work. People that are successful are usually willing to give you a few minutes and help you be successful, too. You just have to be more humble than I was, trust them, and put it into practice.

You should view your current role as temporary and steward it well while you're in it, build good working relationships with the people all around you, ask for help to speed up success, capture some wins during the 1-3 years in that role, and start preparing to interview for your next role - either with your current company or the next one.

Today, I'm in a point in my career where I want to build our own businesses. But if I ever wanted to go back to working at other corporations, I would definitely do things differently. There are lots of great positions open at lots of great companies. They need great leaders.

Questions or comments? Put them below. This is just my opinion. I may be right or wrong. I'm still learning each and every day. I still have a lot of things that I want to be able to do in my career. I love business. And I love the people that I've gotten to work with over the years. I hope this will help some of you achieve your goals.