By Vin Bittencourt | MBA Bites S1 Episode 7
Even if you’re on initial/intermediate steps of you career, or you may not see yourself as a leader yet, the mastery of five simple competencies can unleash the world-class professional inside of you, and eventually help you become a great leader, whether in a formal leadership role or not.
During the series, we shared on how the power of thinking and acting as leader can transform any career. More specifically, how a leadership mindset has become a basic ingredient for growth in the digital economy. Among the top reasons, the fact competitive companies hire fresh college graduates as leaders today, where they expect professionals to manage resources and projects independently, way before they’ll get a chance to manage other people.
"Exclusive access to key people and superior projects is available to less than 5% of people in most organizations."
In other words, the best companies in fast-growing industries expect to hire leaders at base level. A leadership mindset has become the minimum to compete for fulfilling, rewarding roles, as everything else that does not ask for original contributions that depend on individual character and personality is getting outsourced or automated. In addition, leadership roles are often great conductors of career acceleration for a fundamental reason: they give exclusive access to key people and superior projects, items available to less than five percent of professionals in most organizations.
Based on these findings, we’re sharing five competencies common to all great leaders that can definitely propel your career.
1. Self-awareness
Only people who know a lot about themselves can achieve meaningful things in life. No professional at the top 10% percent of any career or segment gets there without truly knowing about their talents, passions, strengths, weaknesses, and values. Every conscious choice they make takes these factors into consideration, rather than money, convenience, or whatever short-term incentive on the table.
Professional life today is about meaning. To perform at your best, you must connect with a higher purpose. As a rule, self-aware professionals operate by long-term visions and fit. Their body of work reflects who they are.
If you want to embark on a similar pathway to greatness, it’s paramount to know what kind of contributions you want to make. For instance, if the job you have does not tap into your creativity and personality, it’s time to move on. Either because you’re wasting time on something that’s a poor fit for who you are, or the job doesn’t come with meaningful experiential learning. In the end, jobs that lack fit prevent you from making unique discoveries about yourself - your preferences, your style, your talents, things that lead to the consolidation of your unique brand over time.
At the beginning of your career, it’s normal and even expected not to know who you are. At some point, though, you’ll have to experiment with enough activities to figure out where your talents and your character really are, because sometimes having the talent for something it’s not enough, you must have the vocation, personality and temperament as well.
To illustrate, you may have a propensity for numbers that makes you enjoy analytical work. But perhaps working in Finance it’s not really your thing, as you don’t like to travel, you’re not comfortable with selling, or even dealing with demanding clients. Maybe you don’t like the corporate environment of a bank or a financial institution, and you rather spend your years doing something else, making a different kind of contribution to society. In this case, can you become a researcher? Can you become a professor? Can you become a consultant? If nothing else seems to fit, you might consider taping into a different pool of talents of yours.
As a rule of thumb, not everything we’re good at turns into a professional activity. While finding fit it’s vital for fulfillment, it’s not always a slam dunk. Instead, it’s a process that takes time to mature, but one that leads to self-awareness for those who pay attention, who seek feedback and who measure their results. By taking these steps, you can find self-awareness too. Otherwise, you might run in circles at lot.
2. Self-management
The first component of self-management relates to self-control, controlling your emotions, your negative impulses, your negative reactions. In simple terms, how to keep your composure.
When you have a positive attitude and calmness, you become the voice of reason. By extent, you create environments of trust and fairness, essential conditions for highly productive teams to exist. More than what you say and do, people remember how you say things and how you act. When push comes to shove, everybody wants to work with people they respect and trust. As a result of the rise of creative collaboration and cross-functioning teams, loose cannons and disruptive superstars are losing momentum. Thus, you should pay special attention to your behaviors, to make sure you always project a professional attitude, with off the charts self-management.
The second component of self-management relates to self-discipline. It involves punctuality, honor, trustworthiness, as in keeping your promises, holding yourself accountable to commitments. It also involves tackling the most important things first, getting work done even when you’re not feeling at your best for a day, for a period of time. At a macro level, self-management is probably the individual competency that does the most to separate average from world-class performers, at any level.
3. Inner Drive
Inner drive to face adversity and capacity to work for long-term goals beyond money and status are common traits of both world-class professionals and effective leaders. Obviously, more it's done with extra motivation, but it only happens after you find fit and purpose, or when you operate within the three must haves of career acceleration, (1) the right boss, (2) the right company and (3) the right assignments. Until then, work it’s mostly a grind, an undesirable one.
How you find inner drive? Define your career mission. Look desperately for fit, then set the bar high, keep rowing towards meaningful goals. Master the ins and outs of your trade, become a reference, a mentor, a role model, be an infinite learner, get in touch with new technologies, with new approaches, challenge things in a good way so you keep breaking new limits.
4. Tough Empathy
No leader thrives without followers. One of the top priorities of cutting-edge organizations today is the commitment to attract, retain and develop diverse talent. When leaders embrace different perspectives, different views, they’re a step closer to effectively manage cross functioning, cross cultural teams, staples of the global, networked economy.
Tough empathy also means give people what they need, not just what they want. Leaders must push boundaries and stretch people for their own good.
Tough empathy also means give people what they need, not just what they want. Leaders must push boundaries and stretch people for their own good. Too much energy is depleted trying to be liked. Real leaders, instead, focus on being respected and trusted.
The added benefit of tough-empathy is the indication to others that you operate by high-standards, that you care about the tasks, that you care about the organization, but more importantly, that you care about your people, that you care about your team.
5. Political Awareness
To be effective, you must understand the power dynamics of who’s who in your organization. As a world-class professional, and eventually a leader, you can’t be oblivious to what’s happening outside of your team.
Things to get a grasp on: currents of power, who’s responsible for what. At some level, you have to march to the drum beat to make sure your efforts fit with the overall strategy. Be conscientious of priorities, items that are making senior leadership restless.
Without political awareness it’s impossible to build relationships, to compromise, to negotiate, to connect. As organizations are emotional units, great performers and leaders demonstrate superior competencies in people and political skills to navigate through challenges. So regardless of how busy you are, make time to dialogue, to socialize, to connect outside your perimeter. Things you should do: join committees, volunteer, find ways to get introduced to other division managers, expand your internal network.
Other ways to build/support solid, high performing teams:
In the end, when you master these five competencies, you operate on a whole different level. You not only build or support high-performing teams, you simply operate way beyond the reach of a regular professional. While finding this level of excellence comes with a lot of dedication and effort, it also comes with more rewards and better experiences. So here's a few more pointers:
Build and sustain trust.
Lead by example.
Share your goals and explain what you’re working towards.
If within your power, form a team of complementary skills, with talents around your weaknesses.
Strike the balance between pushing too hard or too little – too hard, and you may lose support, too little, and you may lose on results.
Know how to operate with gray, embrace calculated risks.
Support people at the top and help them succeed - managing your superiors’ expectations is the single most important task, as they hold power over project pipelines.
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