Are You Ready for a Leadership Position

There is a common belief that if you stay in a job long enough and that you are doing fairly well, you will eventually earn a leadership title. Management skills are often mistaken for leadership skills. What people fail to realize is that being a leader isn’t an extension of their current role. It’s not the title but rather how you think, act and lead. It’s the commitment to improve and the determination to get better. Additionally, leaders need a high degree of self-awareness — the ability to see their blind spots, accept holes in their knowledge, and shun their years of thinking like a manager to give way to thinking like a leader.

Evaluate your leadership skills concerning your ability to make decisions with a 10,000-foot view of your organization.

 Operate with a 10,000-foot view:

 Rather than focuses on the day-to-day execution, leaders take a holistic view of the company, identifying and remedying areas of concern before they have a negative impact on the organization.

 Instead of attacking the tip of the iceberg, which is the symptom, leaders are more concerned about discovering the underlying root cause. No one person can be cognizant of all of the obstacles that mat have a negative impact on the organization, but leaders have the ability to focus on the core issues, and consequently what deserves their attention.

Another important aspect of operating with a 10,000-foot view is their ability to make decisions without all the information. Even though not involved in the day-to-day execution, and therefore not have full details of a new product, leaders have the experience to review and invest in a promising new idea. Moreover, they may not know the entire product development effort, but they have the ability to do a rough estimate to determine if it’s worthwhile to invest. They may not know the ins and outs of a new technology, but they have the technical aptitude to find the right technology for their organization.

 Ask Yourself: Do I have the ability to make decisions with a 10,000-foot view of your organization: Can I make decisions and guide your teams into solving the right problems even when I am not involved in day-to-day execution?

 Future Orientation:

 Managers execute, leaders direct. Leaders address immediate organizational needs while simultaneously looking beyond the bounds of the organization to identify future needs that will allow for continuous growth and profitability.

Once identifying the future needs, leaders act. Leaders understand that doing the right thing is more important than doing it right. Efficiency may refine the process/change, but what is required must be done first. In other words, first effectiveness and then efficiency.

“Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained. To be reasonably effective it is not enough for the individual to be intelligent, to work hard, or to be knowledgeable. Effectiveness is something separate, something different. But to be effective also does not require special gifts, special aptitude, or special training. Practice effectiveness until it becomes a habit. Effectiveness can be learned — and it also has to be learned.” — Peter Drucker

Future oriented forward-thinking guides how leaders think and act — deciding the new initiatives to launch, identifying the projects that aren’t generating value and must be terminated, cultivating ideas that require a new strategy to execute, discovering the challenges that must be addressed with creativity and innovation, resolving conflicts that need to be dealt with now before they are too difficult to handle, and making decisions that require a fresh perspective.

Equally important, leaders must continuously evaluate if the corporate organizational structure is optimal to scale, and consequently, what skillset and type of people are required to ensure the company operates effectively in the future.

Ask yourself: Do I Lead with a future orientation: How do you use your strategic thinking skills to identify new initiatives that will determine the future of your organization? How do you contribute to hiring and organizational structural planning?

 Act as a multiplier:

 In “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,” Liz Wiseman describes two types of leaders — the Multiplier and the Diminisher.

The Multiplier is a genius maker — leaders who grow people’s intelligence by engaging. They do not try to be the center of attention or worry about how smart they look. Rather, they extract the smarts and maximum intelligence from each of their team members. They speak less in meetings and give space to their people by empowering them to figure out an answer on their own. They bring out the intelligence in others and create collective, viral intelligence in their organization. Multipliers invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius — innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence. Multipliers not only access people’s current capability, but they also stretch it.

The other type of leader, the Diminisher is a genius — this type of leader does all the thinking. They are very smart, but also have a way of shutting down people around them. They kill other people’s ideas, give a lot of feedback, and do most of the talking. They make all the decisions by themselves and then announce those decisions to the organization. They have an answer for everything, are strongly opinionated, and put all their energy into selling their ideas to others and convincing them to execute on the details. No one else’s opinion matters to them.

They hire intelligent people but don’t give them permission to think for themselves. They tell others what to do, make all the important decisions, and jump in to take over when someone appears to be failing. They are so absorbed in their own intelligence, trying to be the smartest, most capable person in the room that they stifle other people’s intelligence and capability. They underutilize people and leave creativity and talent on the table.

Ask yourself: Do I act as a multiplier: How do you build critical thinking skills in your organization and empower your teams thereby utilizing their talent and increasing their intelligence?

 Contribute to a Strong and Cohesive Culture:

 Leaders not only set the direction of the company, but also shape the corporate culture. They convey the message not only by their words but also through their body language – facial expressions, hand gestures, and eye movements.

How do they make decisions?

Good leaders are willing to make decisions that are unpopular if they believe they are in the best interest of the organization. However, instead of letting hierarchy bottleneck decision-making, they also encourage people who have the right information to be involved; thus, leading to the best decision. They are willing to say, “I don’t know.” These simple words invite others to provide positive contributions to the decision making process. This has the effect of breaking down siloed thinking, leading to collaborative thinking for better decision making.

Bad leaders allow themselves to be swayed by popular decision, even if not the best decision, so that they won’t be disliked. Additionally, instead of using a framework or relying on the best information available, they rely on judgement and their “gut feeling.” This can create a culture in which expert intuition leads to one disaster after another.

How do they handle disagreements?

Good leaders embrace multiple points of view. Disagreements gives them information they need before their ideas are implemented. They create a culture where people feel safe to share their points of view and recognize that differences of opinion are valued.

Bad leaders tie their ideas to their identity. They discourage dissent and reject opinions and ideas that contradict their point of view. By creating a culture in which people keep their heads down and do not feel safe to express their opinion, they miss the opportunity for new ideas. Eventually, this can lead to a culture of groupthink.

How do they react when someone makes a mistake?

Good leaders use mistakes as a learning opportunity to improve. They are open about their past mistakes and share valuable stories and information they have learned from their experiences. In effect, conveying those mistakes and failures may be an essential part of success. Such sharing most likely promotes a culture of innovation and uses their failures as a sign to implement new strategies.

Bad leaders show their frustration, get angry, roll their eyes, blame others, and openly express their disappointment. Rather than promote innovation, the bad leaders conveys that any failure is unacceptable. In return, they create a culture in which employees avoid challenges, play it safe and are unwilling to raise their voice to promote new ideas or strategies.

 Ask yourself: What positive contributions have I made to the culture of my organization? Do I encourage others to disagree and make mistakes, and if so, how do I handle it? What is my framework for better decision-making?