By Vin Bittencourt | MBA Bites S1 Episode 6
With more than 15,000 printed books in catalogue and thousands of articles every year, leadership is one of the most popular themes in higher education, printing and media. The fascination has its place. To match the challenges of a convoluted, volatile digital age, professional power structures are gradually changing, now giving way to a newer and better class of leadership in vogue, one that’s more inclusive, decentralized and autonomous. In that scenario, understanding the new rules of power, and empowerment, can prove vital for any career strategy.
Here we share some secrets about leadership, more specifically why thinking and acting like a leader can boost your career, regardless of role or position, and give you tools to do more, give more and be more in the age of cross-functioning teams, networks and platforms.
What Leaders Do?
Professional leadership is about serving and connecting. In organizations, leaders are paid for two things, (1) to get results and (2) to build teams. But it doesn’t necessarily take team management or supervisory duties to actually think and grow professionally as a leader. At least not initially. Every time you serve your team or your company in a way that generates tangible, value-adding results, you’re acting as a leader. If you make autonomous decisions that generate solutions, enhancements, innovations of any sort, you’re acting as a leader. And if you bring original, fresh insights to problem solving and new ways of doing things, you’re definitely acting as a leader.
So contrary to what many believe, leadership is not about ruling or telling people what to do, but about thinking and making decisions, big or small, while connecting, compromising, negotiating and persuading people towards a collective goal. In summary, leadership is about decisions. And people who make better decisions simply achieve better results in career and life.
Career Dynamics of The Digital Age: Everyone Starts as Leaders Now
If you look critically at the mainstream corporate jobs of today, you realize most entry to mid-level positions have many leadership components associated with them, even without direct reports. So regardless of managing others, you should definitely expect to embrace many leadership related responsibilities. A quick LinkedIn search for roles such as Project Manager, Program Manager, Systems Security Manager, Business Analyst, Customer Support Manager, among others, indicate that, based on experience and job requirements, most college graduates today start as leaders in top organizations. At base level, companies expect to hire people with technical skills who are capable to contribute individually, but who can also coordinate and mobilize resources by themselves.
The nature of cross functioning teams demands leadership competencies at every organizational level. For a long-time, entry to mid-level professionals could excuse themselves from decision-making and direct bottom line responsibility. In other words, people could hide behind many layers of management, red tape and bureaucracy. But now, in most world-class companies, everyone is expected to make original contributions and operate with a fair degree of autonomy.
With organizations becoming more nimble, agile and customer facing, leadership responsibilities became diffused and decentralized. Power is changing from the bubbleheads, bossy types of the past to the creatively thought, autonomous taskmasters of today, a better class of leadership that is custom made for a fast pace, volatile, unpredictable digital age.
What Abilities You Need to Succeed?
Career wise, and regardless of role or position, a leadership mindset gives you admission to superior learning and growing opportunities. Abilities such as curiosity, initiative, persuasion and drive are basic leadership competencies the best companies recruit for and expect to find in every single candidate.
Additionally, leadership skills and competencies are pretty much on the job competencies. Although they often benefit from specific individual and personality traits, there’s not a formula or a recipe to build your leadership skills, other than learning as you go and bringing your authentic self to work.
Why Should You Become a Leader?
Some questions you’re probably asking by now may include, “can I really aspire to become a leader in some area even if I don’t have these competencies yet? “Should I even care about developing leadership competencies?” "Other than better learning and growing opportunities, what else can I gain from becoming a leader, or thinking like one?”
It all depends on what you want to accomplish professionally. Some of the advantages in joining the rankings of executive level are the platforms to make more impact as you would otherwise. You simply have access to better resources.
When teamwork works, there’s personal satisfaction associated with being the leader of a high performing team, a special feeling in turning something around, in driving positive changes, in allowing others to grow and achieve results through a group effort. Your work then becomes the kind of work that creates a legacy, that’s memorable enough to build your reputation as someone that mobilizes people and gets things done.
As information is asymmetric in business, people at the top also have exclusive access to privilege information. The closer you get to the top, more control of opportunities and projects you have, and better decisions you can make.
Also, in leadership roles, you have a face outside the organization, with a lot more association opportunities to build a solid professional network. In the process, you simply learn a lot more by mingling with like-minded individuals who bear similar levels of responsibility than you in other companies. Typically, these outer company associations are exclusive for people in leadership roles, not being available elsewhere. Obviously, more people you know, more connections you have, so your overall industry knowledge and subsequent career moves are quite expanded too. Most professionals’ next job or career venture often come out of professional and personal networks, where leaders are not only ambassadors of their companies, but also recognizable faces within their industries, with more possibilities to build their personal brands.
You Make More Money in a Leadership Role
Earning potential is another perk of professional leadership. While many rewarding positions today are tech-centered and subject matter driven, most six figures plus jobs are still allocated to supervisory, managerial and executive level roles, where the stakes are higher and companies need a lot of high energy, high ambition, smart people to lead teams and efforts.
Once a leader of people in change management, sales or product creation, more tradeable skills you have for leveraging. Competent, experienced leaders make top pay in almost every industry. It's a rarefied place. No more than 10% of talented professionals reach executive level during their careers. In other words, you become a hot commodity by the laws of supply and demand if you become a leader, especially if you work for a reputable company that’s part of a fast-growing industry.
The reason MBA courses are popular is because people want to fast track their careers by learning the secrets of leadership. Everyone wants the gravy train. Although MBAs are great tools for self-discovery and actually help you define the leadership style and the environment that best suits you, no MBA or masters program for that matter can get you to executive level without you having relevant job skills and experiences on a given career or industry. So keep that in mind when you’re looking at higher education as your only ticket to career acceleration. It might come with a huge tag price that won’t translate into the kind of growth you expect and likely deserve. In the end, it's about the experiences and results you generate, your leadership mindset and the quality of relationships you're capable to develop along the way.
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