O'Neil / Hiebert Changing Altitude

How to Soar in Your New Leadership Role
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2565-5
Verlag: Lioncrest Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 324 Seiten

You've strived to be your best in every step of your career. Now you're starting a new leadership role, one with more responsibility in areas and organizations where your experience is limited. The template for success you've always relied on may no longer apply. You need an adaptable roadmap based on shared values and thoughtful strategy. You need improved clarity, renewed confidence, and deeper capabilities. But first, you need a starting point. In Changing Altitude, Dennis O'Neil and Greg Hiebert provide you with a comprehensive framework for optimizing your impact and maximizing personal and professional growth. When it comes to leadership, character counts. Dennis and Greg show you how to identify values that underscore who you are as a leader, define what success means to your organization, and take your team into the future with a synergistic balance of self-reflection and self-development. No matter your industry, experience, or responsibilities, this book is your official guide for becoming a more impactful leader.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Neil, Dennis

Hiebert, Greg

Leseproben

Introduction
“Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life.” —From the West Point Cadet prayer It was not the weather forecast anyone would want to see just before getting on a plane. Sitting at our gate together at the Miami airport, we uneasily read the scrolling captions on the muted TVs: “Six inches of rain expected along the Eastern Coast in the next twenty-four hours. Eighty-mile-per-hour winds. This is a Category 1 hurricane…” Out of the large windows, we could see the massive storm front moving in, already unleashing torrents of rain. Baggage tram workers sprinted from their carts to the plane’s underbelly, the hoods from their yellow slickers covering their faces. We saw the large reader board update flights with new notifications in the adjacent terminal corridor: Delayed. Delayed. Canceled. Canceled. We had been to Miami often in the past six months to provide leadership coaching for a large hospital system—but we’d never experienced weather like this. Finally, a voice from one of the flight attendants crackled onto the intercom: “Good news, folks, it looks like we’re going to be the last flight out.” As we boarded the plane, heavy rain pounded on the roof. With some trepidation, we settled in and buckled up. The plane was able to take off, right ahead of the storm. The pilot took us seven miles above the earth’s surface, flying high above the storm below. Up there, we sailed through the blue sky. It was calm and peaceful. But looking down, we could see a line of dark clouds, perfectly parallel to our aircraft. We could even see nonstop lightning strikes illuminating the darkness below. It was easy to observe all the misery pouring down—and yet, what we experienced 37,000 feet up was calm, smooth, and clear. The increase in altitude brought clarity and calm. But changing altitude can bring its own set of challenges too, as we were quickly reminded. A woman sat next to us, reading Jim Collins’ business bestseller, Good to Great. We commented on the book and mentioned that it’s one we often reference in our work as leadership coaches. “You’re leadership coaches?” she asked, perking up. “What kind of clients do you serve? Big organizations?” We nodded. “Do you help leaders at lower levels,” she asked, “or do you just work with the C-suite crew, the CEOs, the CFOs…?” Yes, CEOs, we agreed—but just as often, leaders further down the organizational chain, as well: executives, directors, VPs, managers. “We build long-term relationships with our clients, and then over time, we help leaders at all levels of their organization improve,” we explained. “We help them become more effective, more confident—essentially, our job is to help their people become the best leaders they can be.” She nodded, looking at us intently. “Can I pick your brain?” she asked. The woman’s name was Rebecca. She said that she had picked up Collins’ book because she’d been promoted to a director role at her data analytics firm. But after six months in her new role, she was struggling. “In the last few months, I’ve realized that the scope of what I need insight into is enormous. My head is swirling with everything I’m responsible for. Honestly, I’ve begun to significantly doubt my ability to do this job. I miss my old life when I was just a manager.” Her previous promotion had been easy, she explained. As a manager, she’d worked with her former team, and they were all familiar with her skills in data analytics. They trusted her, and she knew exactly what she was doing. “I was confident; I was comfortable. I knew how to help my employees do their work well because I understood the ingredients for success. But it’s a totally different situation now that I’m a director.” “How so?” we prompted her. “It’s a completely different job than what I’ve done before. I have all these new responsibilities, and I’m in charge of people who do jobs I don’t understand. I’m supposed to get results—like everyone is looking to me to hit these benchmarks—but my team is not performing, so then it’s presumed to be my fault. And because of that, I feel like I have to do everyone’s job for them.” She sighed. “It’s exhausting. I’m working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, but it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere. I’m starting to hate going to work.” She looked at us sheepishly. “I don’t think my employees like me. I feel annoyed with them. And I just feel so much pressure, all the time.” Rebecca’s story was familiar to us. In our years of leadership consulting, we’ve learned that promotions like hers inevitably produce challenges. She was certainly not alone in the challenges she faced. You might be personally familiar with many of them. The Storm
When you “change altitude” like Rebecca, moving from your area of expertise to a much more significant supervisory role, the picture changes. New skills are required. Rather than moving from a storm into clear skies, moving upward can quickly feel like the reverse: things felt clearer at a lower altitude. Now that you’ve gained in elevation, you might be flying in the storm. It doesn’t work to keep doing things the same way you did them before. Those skills may have gotten you promoted, but a promotion means a significant expansion in your responsibilities. It can be an enormous struggle to get on top of them. Many of your employees are likely doing jobs you don’t have experience in, making it hard to mentor or motivate them. Perhaps you try to compensate by micromanaging or demanding more from your employees. Or, maybe you opt for a feel-good atmosphere at the expense of getting results. Turbulence can come from many problems: mediocre performance, poor communication, low trust, high stress—or maybe all of the above. You need more tools, but you don’t know which ones, and you don’t know how to get them. You might feel like you’re flying a plane without instruments. Things go relatively well, so long as everything is clear and it’s blue skies ahead—but rarely do you have that level of clarity. Somehow, you need to learn how to utilize more tools to get above the turbulence. You need to see more. You need to know more. You want an accurate appreciation, understanding, and perspective of your new responsibilities—which, all too often, are murky at best. You want to gain a deeper understanding of what’s really going on in the areas you’re leading. You want to make sure that your departments are functioning as effectively as possible. You want to enjoy the people you work with, feel a greater sense of fulfillment, and build a positive legacy. You want to feel less burned out, more energized, and with more purpose. But how? Getting Out of the Clouds
It’s no easy task. Rebecca had felt successful flying at a lower altitude; now that she’d been promoted to Director, she was trying to find tools to be successful at a higher altitude. But truly influential leaders must be ready to operate at a range of altitudes, depending on what their environment and people require. Sometimes, you need to elevate your altitude to rise above the storm: you need to get clarity, revisit your big picture goals, and ensure you’re flying on course. Other times, you need to decrease in altitude; you need to view in greater detail what’s happening at the lower levels of your organization. Often, it’s necessary for leaders to fly right into the thick of the storm, like when conflict inevitably comes up or a worldwide pandemic hits. In those instances, the pilot must utilize every skill they’ve got. They must trust the instruments, hang on amid turbulence, and reassure their people that it’s going to be okay. The task of leadership requires that you develop the ability and insight to navigate a range of altitudes with agility. This may feel like an overwhelming task, especially if you find yourself in a position like Rebecca, where the skills that helped you excel in your former position don’t seem to translate to your new role. True, there’s much to learn—but that learning process is precisely our passion. Truly influential leaders must be ready to operate at a range of altitudes, depending on what their environment and people require. In conversations like the one we had with Rebecca and so many others, we’ve realized that leaders need assistance navigating the journey when the leader’s roles and responsibilities have greatly expanded or when the context they are operating in has dramatically changed. In this book, we’ve made it our goal to help shed light on what you may not yet know (or fully appreciate) and provide practical next steps on how to develop in critical areas, pivotal to your individual and organizational success. These strategies are research-based and have been honed throughout our decades of leadership development and coaching. They’ll give you the momentum you need to change...