Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Moving from Individual
Contributor to Leader
Leadership Pearl #1
Leadership is a journey from execution to empowerment.
You are reading this book because you aspire to be a leader. When you begin your career it's typically in an entry-level role as an individual contributor. Your duties are assigned, your specific actions are dictated. Your job is to understand and execute any assignment you are given. In other words, your job is to DO, not to DEFINE, and to execute EXACTLY as instructed.
There will be times when you are given an assignment and are expected to add your own style. Other times, you will be asked to perform using a hybrid approach, doing some of what you were asked to do and some of what you decide is necessary. But for the most part, as an individual contributor, your focus is on achieving a previously defined outcome. Your performance review will likely focus less on the process and more on how well or how closely you followed the instructions you were given. In short, how well did you get the job done?
As an individual contributor, you are also generally not responsible for managing or leading other people. Typically, no one reports to you, you don't have to assign tasks to others, nor are you responsible for their coaching or professional development. You are not concerned with managing resources, optimizing people, or considering the concerns or needs of external constituents.
While your work or contribution is important to the company and may even be essential to the profitability and competitiveness of the organization, your reward is tied solely to what you produce. You are given the resources you need to accomplish what you are responsible for. You are not concerned with balancing the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, senior leadership, or other stakeholders. Your job is to create an outcome.
As you enjoy more success as an individual contributor, you will start to develop a strong, positive reputation. People in leadership positions will start to notice you and begin to consider you a leadership candidate. Your company will begin to inquire about your interest in advancing to a leadership position. In most organizations, after it appears you have mastered your role as an individual contributor, managing other people is the next step. Part of the assessment of your readiness for a leadership role focuses on whether you have exhibited leadership attributes while in your individual contributor seat: Have you demonstrated that you can take initiative, do you know how to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, do you have the ability to build relationships, and are you comfortable taking risks?
Leadership is a journey from execution to empowerment. As a leader, you go from getting the job done to focusing on giving others the tools, the resources, the experiences, and the opportunities they need to develop and evolve their own leadership skills. While there certainly might be tasks and decisions that only you as the leader must make, your time as a leader should be filled with anticipating the needs of those working with you and those of the customers, constituents, and other stakeholders that your actions serve.
As you are advancing along your career journey, it is important that while you execute your assignments, you also look for opportunities to lead. Often those who are evaluating you are looking for signs of your ability to lead or for signs that you have an appetite or aspiration to lead.
It is important that you take the initiative to seek out these opportunities because those above you will not always tell you that you are being observed and assessed for potential leadership opportunities. Part of the "test" used to assess your leadership capabilities includes how much initiative you demonstrate in your day-to-day work and whether you can recognize opportunities to lead, as well as take advantage of them.
Allyson had been working on the presentation for a new marketing idea for one of her firm's largest clients. This was an idea that could significantly enhance the effectiveness of the client's digital marketing campaign. It was a lucrative contract for the firm, and the project had a compressed go to market deadline. Every assignment before the pilot of the new program had been tightly controlled and dictated by the partner on the team. While Allyson had been working with this client on various projects for over a year and had a great relationship with her counterpart at the client as well as with their senior officers, all communication with the client had previously gone through the senior partner on her team.
Allyson finished the project and thought she had put together an outstanding solution. She really wanted to get a sense of whether it would receive a positive reaction from the client. Her inclination was to call her counterpart there to get an "off the record" reaction before moving forward with the recommendation. But she recognized that while it might show initiative, it might anger the senior partner, who could perceive her as going around his back. On the other hand, she thought it would demonstrate strong forward thinking and initiative and might give them the opportunity before the meeting to use informal feedback to refine their approach if necessary.
Allyson decided to call her counterpart, who gave her significant feedback, prompting her to completely overhaul their original solution. When the team went in to present, the client loved the recommendations and gave them the contract. When Allyson's boss asked her how she had developed an idea that was so closely aligned with the client's objectives when they had received so little guidance, she told him, with some trepidation, about the "off the record" call. Allyson decided to be transparent because she knew that transparency is one of the keys to building trust. Her boss had clearly trusted her up to this point. She did not want to impair that trust. In fact, she hoped it would grow if she told him exactly what she had done.
Allyson was thrilled when her boss praised her for having the idea and the initiative to get the preliminary feedback and to work with the client to produce a product they were excited about. At the end of the year, as the partners were discussing promotion candidates, this incident was used as an example of Allyson's readiness to be promoted to a leadership role in the department. Why? First, she showed her ability to take a calculated risk. Second, she demonstrated her relationship skills by leveraging a contact to get valuable information. Third, she showed she could take initiative by changing the presentation. All these attributes are similar to those expected of a leader.
Now let's imagine that Allyson had played it safe and decided not to follow her instincts and risk the ire of the partner. Allyson's team would have gone with the original presentation and would not have received the same effusive praise from the client. Further, they might not have been awarded the contract or, at a minimum, would have opened the door to competition. In addition, there would have been no example of Allyson exhibiting three of the four major characteristics sought in a leader-risk-taking, initiative, and the ability to approach, collaborate, and innovate with clients. When the partner discussion turned toward Allyson's capacity or readiness to lead, the outcome would have been unclear at best.
Your ability to take advantage of leadership opportunities is a critical step on the journey to becoming a leader. There is no question that there are risks involved. You could misidentify an opportunity. You might risk "blowback," upsetting a superior who may feel that you are overstepping or challenging their decision-making authority. You also risk that you may fumble the chance, or risk that the outcome is not what you thought it would be. However, in my experience, the benefit of stepping up to demonstrate your leadership capacity is always far greater than the risk of things going awry.
Leadership Gem:
Leadership is not about always being right but about having the courage to take a risk, move forward, maintain momentum, and, if you fail, try again.
If your job as an individual contributor is to do according to the expectations of others, your job as a leader is to define a project's objective, goals, and outcome while setting clear expectations for others and maximizing the use of the resources (people, financial, and technological) at hand. You are responsible for identifying potential gaps and challenges and minimizing any potential risks to the process, the outcome, and the organization. While you may also be involved in the execution, your primary responsibility will be to develop the agenda, determine what needs to be done, who will execute and do the work, and sometimes even how and when the work will get done.
As you transition to a role as a leader, it is important that you adopt a macro view of your organization. You will need to learn about things such as how budgets are created, how resources are allocated, who makes resource allocation decisions, who the organization's other strong performers are, and who the stakeholders are. In addition to deciding what needs to be done, part of your role as a leader is to understand how your project fits in with the organization's other priorities, as well as which resources are required and costs are associated with what you are trying to accomplish. Understanding the kinds of resources you need and the associated costs of a project are key to developing efficient assignments and agendas.
One of the great leaders in my firm would always say, "Think like an owner." This gave me the sense that once I became a leader, I had to think about considerations such as shareholder value. This not only meant revenue maximization but profit maximization and therefore cost minimization. In my endeavor to get a job done, I also had to be mindful of properly using resources and not wasting them.
It is never too early to start learning about some of the things that the leaders in your organization are responsible for. Because as you progress and can demonstrate an understanding of even a few of these things, it will create a perception that you are interested in becoming a senior leader yourself. In addition, the converse can be true. If you do not show such interest, others will perceive it to mean that either you are not interested in rising in the organization or you are not leadership material.
In the early days of my career, I believe this failure to demonstrate curiosity about the things that were "above my pay grade" contributed to a negative perception about me. I will admit that I was far too myopic, focusing only on those things that were clearly a part of the junior associate's job. I was so focused on mastering those tasks that I failed to realize that it was important to demonstrate my interest in understanding the concepts that were beyond my junior associate's role, and the positive impression that could be created by doing so.
I was working in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) at the time. One of the important components of an M&A deal is the fee letter. This letter outlines the terms and conditions between the M&A advisor (the investment bank) and the client that is retaining the services of the bank. The letter not only informs the client what the bank will charge for completing the transaction; it also contains important deal concepts like indemnifications, termination fees, the tasks that are involved in executing the deal, and any contingent or extra fees that could be earned.
During my second year as an associate, the managing director asked me to draft a fee letter. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about! Of course, I could deduce what he meant from the term fee letter, but I had no idea where to start, where to find a draft of one, how to take a stab at what the fee might be for such a transaction, or anything else, for that matter. Throughout my first year as an associate, no one had ever explained to me what the key components were, nor had I ever asked. I had kept my head down, producing models and analysis, but had never stopped to look up to understand what was involved. I had no idea how we got the transaction, what happened after the firm was awarded the business, and how and when we would negotiate the transaction's price.
I focused solely on my small part. When I started asking questions about what a fee letter was and how to write one, it was clear from the expression on my managing director's face that he was surprised and disappointed that as a second-year associate, I did not understand one of the most important components of the deal. Further, that I did not have an understanding or even demonstrated curiosity about how we got paid! Needless to say, after that experience, I made it my business to learn all the key parts of a fee letter, including the nuances or special circumstances that would cause the firm to adjust fees up or down. While I never made that mistake again, clearly, I had to work hard to change the perception about me and my career trajectory, my interest in moving ahead, and my capacity as a leader in the eyes of that managing director.
Selling the Vision
A great leader creates the vision they want others to follow. They create an argument to sell it to others, making it attractive and compelling to those who must approve it as well as to those who need to embrace and act upon it. To sell an idea, you must consider why the idea is great for the department, the organization, or the people who are involved. You will need to answer questions such as:
Why should the organization do this?
How does the organization benefit from taking on this project?
How do the customers benefit?
Do the employees or shareholders benefit?
Does it make a current process more efficient?
Does it save resources?
Does it serve or help more people?
Does this new product or process put the organization in a position to lead in its vertical or its industry?
Does it make the organization more competitive?
It is important to note, every project or endeavor that you bring to your team or organization has a beneficiary, and that beneficiary has to be greater than you. As a leader, you must always consider how your decisions impact others. Ideally, whatever idea you are proposing is scalable and will benefit a large number of customers, shareholders, or employees. I cannot think of one successful leadership vision that did not favorably impact others.
Leadership Gem:
Every leadership vision, idea, and decision will impact others.
