It can be very difficult to change your mindset when you take on a more senior role. Having spent many years as a manager and needing to understand every detail around your specialist area, when you take a promotion you no longer can work in that way.
An organisational leader needs to be able to apply their thinking and activities across a much wider section of the business, to enable you to contribute to the future of the company. You will need to be able to stand out from the crowd and make your voice heard; there will be an expectation that you will be able to give much more general points of note rather than specialist only. You will also need to be much more diplomatic in your words and views, taking a more corporate view than perhaps previously taken.
So, do you have the ability to take this step and think and act like a leader?
As well as leadership coaching, you can do a range of actions that will help in this transition.
- Find a mentor. This can be an internal or external person but ideally someone with many years’ experience at CEO or chairman position. Use this relationship to act as a sounding board, run through scenarios, talk through concerns and just provide you with broad support. They will have been through the same development process and will be able to give you ideas for overcoming challenges.
- Get experience elsewhere. If possible, see if there are any opportunities to work in other teams elsewhere in the business, or if you can get some experience in another company through secondment or short term placement. By experiencing other environments, it will be a lot easier to step outside of your comfort zone and have to make new decisions and overcome different challenges than those faced in your usual place of work.
- Attend training and development courses. Continuous Professional Development is crucial to becoming a great leader and there are accredited courses for every aspect of leadership. These courses usually offer not only opportunity to learn new skills in a safe environment but they can also be excellent networking events.
- Leadership coaching. Hiring a coach enables you to have a supportive, safe place to talk through anything you need to. Coaches provide guidance and advice, as well as challenge your thinking. They are also external, independent and objective, meaning you get great advice without judgment.
It can be a lonely place in a leadership role so make sure you put in place the right support structure for you to enable you to become the best leader you can be.
Contact us today for more information about our coaching and training programmes