Good Morning,
One reoccurring theme in career advancement as seen as a warning in many leadership books is: What helps us succeed in our current role may not help us succeed in our new role. In fact, it may even hurt our performance in our new role.
Being a great salesperson, phone rep or whatever we do does not equate to being a great leader of sales people, phone reps or whatever we do.
Leadership generally has different skill sets than doing most other roles. As a leader we have to think about others first. When we are the front lines people, we often do not think about others, rather we focus on the tasks at hand and meeting our production quotas and quality standards.
The disconnect in business is thinking that someone who is excellent at some task would be excellent in leading others in doing the same task. Logically it makes sense. For example, 'so and so' has the highest production in our company's history. If we get them to be a leader, we can get them to help everyone they lead to provide the same level of production.
Sadly, that is hardly the case.
Some top performers cannot make the transition to leading others. The first stumbling block is often applying their own values and work methodology to the job and trying to make everyone working for them to be like them. Trying to transform others, especially when they are not willing is usually a disaster in the making.
Others find it hard to think about others first. When we lead, we have to think of ourselves last. This is a complete 180 from being a top performer. Tougher yet is the top performer who is a part time leader who must jockey between being thinking about themselves and then about others and back and forth.
Leadership is not easy, and just because we are good at what we do, does not mean we will be good a leading others at what we do.
A tough lesson to learn.
Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net
http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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