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| Author: Dwight Lacey |
I'm sure many people
start out their careers with high aspirations – and a good number make it to
management and from there to the senior executive ranks.
What they didn’t know
was during that journey they were going to have to deal with a lot of
surprises. Unfortunately, most companies do not provide enough formal support
to help people become the leaders they need to be.
The Challenges of Leadership
When I talk to senior
leaders and CEOs/owner operators, we often discuss the challenge of the corner
office.
I like to think of each
promotion in the same way as we think about Six Sigma: if you are going to have
a process that has 6 digits of perfection (o.999999% error free), you need each
step in a sequence to be perfect.
Now think about becoming
a first line leader. You are no longer “one of the guys”. The information you
used to be privy to, the conversations people would initiate with you, have
changed. Now what you get is filtered by knowing “you are the boss”.
Let’s say, for argument’
sake, that only 10% of information is withheld at each step along the way. In
this case, you will end up 6 leadership layers away with a formula like this:
0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.53. That’s 53%! Only 53% of what the real
chatter is at the front line now gets to you at the top.
You are isolated.
When I talk with teams
about employee engagement, I provide several examples of how senior management
responds to items in the survey and then how front line employees respond.
Almost always, senior management is
twice as optimistic as the front line about what life is like in the
company!
How to Get to the Truth
How do we break through
this barrier and stay on top of what is really going on in our company?
There are two key ways:
1) You need to use a
survey tool that guarantees total confidentiality to all employees and gets at
the true sense of how things are done. A good employee engagement survey
supplier will get these answers for you and pinpoint the key things that you
need to do to fully engage people.
2) Secondly, you must
build the culture you need in your company by living by it daily. Build trust
with employees. Listen to them. Connect with them.
Getting to the top isn’t
all it is cracked up to be. However, if you get some help along the way and are
prepared to become a better leader (and if you check your ego at the door!),
you can have the best time of your life.
What are some unexpected
leadership challenges you’ve encountered?
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