The Himalayas of invisible transitions

I moved across 3 industries: FMCG, Retail & Banking. Each had its unique way of working & I had to learn each time. Today's leaders don't have an option, their industries are changing at a breakneck pace. Learning agility is the key skill for leaders today in a world of constant changes.

?Transitions for me evoke many emotions. There is a sense of excitement as well as a sense of fear for the unknown. I bicycled across the Himalayas when I was in college & that expedition had transitions every single day-changes in terrain, weather, people & circumstance.

I transitioned from being a corporate executive to an entrepreneur & then became a leadership coach & mentor. These were my visible transitions.

Leaders grow over the years & face many transitions & not all of them are visible. Some happen silently & come to our attention only later. The invisible transitions are the Himalayas in the leader's life!

All of us remember the visible transitions & have memorable lessons learned from them. My transition as a CMO in Shoppers Stop & then later to HDFC bank created rich lessons for me. And then my transition as an entrepreneur post my corporate stint added more fat to the learning fire.

?These transitions were visible to others, when you take on a big job or you get married or you get promoted, people notice the moves. Those transitions are important as they need you to look at different frames of reference. Your perspective needs to change to deal with the complexity that the transition presents to you. And people expect you to change & do things differently. Examples of formal leadership transitions include promotions, lateral transitions (moving to a different part of the business), and geographic transitions (moving to a different country or market).

?Your first transition often has a lot of complexity. The move from an individual who delivers value herself to a new paradigm of managing a team is stressful for many. And a transition that makes you a CXO or a functional head can be complex & highly visible.

?I remember my first transition so vividly. I had joined Shoppers Stop as the CMO & suddenly I had a large team. When I think back to those years, my first impression is about how intensely I wanted to succeed at whatever I took on. I remember clearly how I pushed myself & others to create outcomes that could be publicly celebrated. My move as the CMO for HDFC bank fuelled another level of transition for me. It was a transition of scale & scope as I had joined a significantly larger organization. It was also another kind of transition, one about industry change, as I knew nothing at all about banking. Even here my memories are a lot about driving visible, meaningful outcomes. Doing things differently, and creating a lot of energy within my team for sharper outcomes were the themes that resonated with me very sharply then.

?My next large transition was when I was 43 & I Co-founded Cequity & what a ride it was! I had been a client all my life for service providers & here I was crossing the chasm & becoming an adviser. I had worked for big brands all my life P&G, Shoppers Stop & HDFC bank & now I was creating a new brand as an entrepreneur. I was part of large companies & played a part in their culture & then I co-created culture as an entrepreneur. The culture of a company is mostly about what leaders "do" & not so much about what they "say". Most of what I did was about hustling & getting things done. That was important, we may not have survived if we hadn't hustled.

So large visible transitions are important stages in any professional's life.

?But leaders often go through invisible leadership transitions, with additions to the nature or scope of their leadership roles without any changes in their official positions. Sometimes these invisible transitions are fuelled by personal growth & often they are fuelled by conversations with mentors & others. Often these invisible transitions are fuelled by both failure & success. It is only as I look back now that I can spot many of those invisible transitions that I went through. Organizations, in their focus on formal transitions, assemble a host of organizational resources for onboarding and position changes. Invisible transitions, however, fall between the cracks of the system. Leaders are expected to handle expansions of their jobs and shifts in their roles on their own. Companies seem to simply assume that competent leaders can adapt.

My journey of becoming a more complete leader took decades & continues to this day. Post my initial CXO roles, it took me many years to develop the acumen to assess others around me & the emotions that my actions were evoking. I do vividly recollect the ambition & energy that was driving me in my earlier years & how that sometimes didn't allow me to reflect on the transitions that were underway.

?Research published by MIT has shown that leaders, regardless of the industries they were in, experienced invisible transitions as significantly harder to navigate than formal ones. They reported that invisible leadership transitions were 27% more difficult.

?How To Make "Invisible" Leadership Transitions Easier

I am curious about how I might have shaped my evolution as a leader differently if I recognized & engaged with "emotions" as much as I did with "high energy" in my earlier transitions. In Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett, a professor at Yale University, presents a simple approach to managing our emotions. As leaders, he says, our feelings aren't sped breakers, rather they provide important information that can change our lives for the better – when we permit ourselves to feel them.

What is the aperture of your emotional lens? How are you shaping transitions for yourself & your companies as a leader? Today I work with many leaders who are beginning to ask how might they navigate these "invisible transitions".

Here are 5 ways leaders and organizations can make navigation across these "invisible transitions" easier:

1. ?Take authority: As leaders, we need to be open to first recognizing that a shift in our role is taking place. Be aware of what is changing? Is there a change in your relationship with the boss & others? How are others expectations of you changing? If you are a leader who has seen your role and responsibilities suddenly shift, take the initiative to address the matter with your boss. Discuss the transformation and how it's affecting you, what needs to happen for the transition to go smoothly.
2. Embrace transformation as an opportunity for growth: Being an effective leader often requires you to embrace change. Those who do so effectively can see their careers grow successfully as a result. According to Professor Robert Kegan, a pioneer in the study of adult development, becoming an adult isn't about learning new things (adding things to the 'container' of the mind), it's about transformation — changing the way we know and understand the world (changing the actual form of our 'container')
3. Pause to move faster: Being in full flow & operating action while at the same time being able to pause can create the ability to "reflect in the flow". Pausing while remaining engaged in action is a counterintuitive step that leaders can use to create space for clear judgment and speedy, purposeful action. There is an old Chinese saying -"make haste slowly".
4. Reflection & make meaning: Often leaders claim they have no time for reflection. And yet "meaning making" is a critical leadership skill. Warren Bennis, an early proponent of ideas on Leadership says "The point … is to use your experiences rather than being used by them, to be the designer, not the design, so that experiences empower rather than imprison." To reflect & not get paralyzed!
5. Experiment with small actions—and yourself: Act your way into a new way of thinking and being. You cannot discover yourself by introspection. Thinking of yourself as a living laboratory helps make the invisible transitions far easier.

Hindsight is always 6/6 but I often wish that I had done more of the above during my "invisible transitions" & given myself a longer runway to apply the learnings. Today I coach young entrepreneurs & senior leaders & recognize that it is never too late to look for the invisible transition which is happening as we speak.