In the last few weeks, I have recapped the key themes of the past year, largely in the context of how an inspirational leader shows up in an organisation. I want to wrap up this week by focusing on the responsibility of an employee to manage upwards in service of his career growth. True, the leader has a responsibility to create the conditions for his team to excel and become unapologetic ambassadors of the company, but the employee has no less accountability for making this happen.
He has to consistently justify his place in the team by manifesting values that motivate the leader to support his career. So how do you achieve this?
Be a strong team player: The most successful teams have learnt to embed the spirit of “one for all; all for one.” Your leader (business owner or manager) expects you to place the company’s agenda and ambitions above your personal ones; no self-aggrandisement or self-promotion over a winning team spirit. Team effort is always more powerful than individual effort; and your boss would more than cherish your creating inter-dependencies with your colleagues, even on assignments that are not directly under your remit, but where your inputs make a difference. In that context, you must leverage your strength for the company. Be sure to make sacrifices for the team. I mentioned before that in a typical football squad, you would hear of some players being called “utility players.” These are the ones the coach plays in different positions depending on the need of the team; and irrespective of the fact that these players have their own favourite positions.
Own the whole: You must understand the difference between owning a task and owning an outcome. The former refers to the task that you are directly responsible for, while the latter refers to the overall deliverable of the team. Get it right – even if you achieve a 100 per cent of your task and do not follow up to ensure that others in the team do as required to deliver the overall goal, “nothing” is achieved. Remember in a 4X100m relay race, it is not enough for you to run a fast race in your “leg”, you must ensure the baton is safely handed over to the next person in your team. I have given the example before, that in one of my previous CEO roles, my Finance Director (FD) sent an employee to put a signed cheque on another director’s table for counter-signature; and the second director inadvertently piled various files on top of the cheque; such that the cheque was stuck there for weeks. When the matter came up, I refused to accept the FD’s explanation that his work was done the moment he signed the cheque. That’s owning the task instead of the outcome which was to provide and pay the vendor on time for a critical production material supply.
Earning the boss’ trust: It’s mightily important that there’s absolute transparency in everything you do, to earn your leader’s trust. You must be fully expressed in your professional conversation with him; and leave nothing unsaid so you do not leave him having to second-guess or (worse still) doubt you. Good or bad news – share with him as early as possible, especially the bad ones, so he can co-create business solutions with you. As I said before, it “kills” any boss to learn about something happening in his business, from his own boss or from external sources. Furthermore, you must honour your word to him. Nothing puts off a boss more than you making a commitment and walking away from it.
Be your company’s ambassador: You must be so loyal to your company that your loyalty becomes infectious within your household and among people around you. If you don’t have any passion for your job or your company, you would get bored “every” second and this would ultimately affect your performance. In the same spirit, when you are out in the public, news fed back to your organisation must suggest that your conduct enhanced the reputation of your company. You cannot afford to de-brand your company to third party entities. If you are a banker and see your bank’s ATM machine malfunctioning, for instance, you must “refuse to have peace” until it is resolved. Such behaviour will surely endear you to not only your boss but everyone in the organisation that gets to know.
Being a peer-champion: You must be a real source of energy in the organisation and the go-to-person when people need reassurances about the company. Whether you belong to the leader’s “kitchen cabinet” or not, stay focused and let people point at you as a great role-model. Governance and compliance are becoming increasingly big for organisations.
Peer champions typically provide credible endorsements of management’s change agenda. Developing the appetite to champion change and helping to establish a culture of excellence in the organisation would massively boost your equity in the company. Additionally, you must lead by example in displaying emotional maturity. You can’t afford to be overly chatty or be given to grumbling, gossips and uncontrolled anger. You will do well to exude maturity belying either your age or your level in the organisation or both.
Performance! Performance!! Performance!!!: All of the positive attributes described above are fantastic – absolutely required. However, when the rubber hits the road, everything comes down to the delivery of quality performance. That’s the bottom-line. In businesses, we measure and value outputs not just efforts, and in fact on balance, much more the former than the latter.
The higher your level of performance consistency is, the higher the level of trust you elicit from the leader, the more comfortable he is delegating to you, the more you grow and the higher your probability to get on the succession and development radar. Honestly, growing to a C-suite position in your career, like several things, also follows the 80:20 rule; the 80 being about you. It’s truly down to you.
Happy Palm Sunday!
Be the first to comment