I will never tire of saying that Leadership is a journey, it’s not a destination. And it’s a choice – or at least it should be.
In professional life, we end up in leadership positions for a couple of main reasons
- We are so good at our job that the organisation we work for decides we should now help others be as good as we are
- Our own business has grown beyond what we can do ourselves and we have to go out and find people who can help us in the next stage of growth
And both these reasons are amazing! And yet, because you are great at what you do and are successful, doesn’t mean that you automatically know what to do when it comes to leading a team. This is also a skill that you have to learn, AND it’s not a skill that you learn once and you’re done. This is a lifelong journey.
Why?
Because we are leading people in a fast-moving world and we there are lots of different types of people, in lots of different situations, many of which we cannot anticipate! Just think about the Covid pandemic! There were people who anticipated it but how many? And how many of us were caught off guard?
In the graphic I outline the main stages in the journey.
We all start off as Operational Genius and then move through the other stages, but it’s not linear and we don’t just go around once. As we come up with different people and different situations and as our position and life changes, we may need to revisit aspects of one of other stages in the journey.
Here’s a quick summary of the stages
Operational Genius
You’re known for delivery and get praised for it. It feels great to be the person people go to, to get things done! And you know that working harder is just not possible and won’t get you any further. But it’s what you do! And everyone else is so much slower than you and others just don’t get it… this could be where you get stuck unless you learn to let go…
Explorer
You’re full of questions, learning who you are as a leader and how to influence and deal with conflict.
You may have a team or not but you definitely have to achieve more through others. You know that working more strategically is definitely something you want to do.
Guide
You definitely have a team; big or small, and although this may be what you wanted, but boy! What a minefield! Everyone is so different and now you spend all your time in the soup that is “people stuff”. How can you get things done? How do you make sure the team deliver? And are happy? And get what they need? What about you?
Driver
Your team is on fire! You have complete trust in each other, and they get on with things and
are delivering. It’s actually quite comfortable here. So, do you want to go further? If you do, what are you going for now? What do you want to be involved in? How do you play a bigger game and what does this mean for you and your team?
Visionary
As a visionary, you’re a role model. People will fight to get to work with you and for you. Now it’s your turn to identify and nurture new talent. But what’s my purpose? What
impact do I really want to make at work, in my community, in the world?
The other point I made at the beginning is that leadership should be a choice. You may run your own business but hate the thought of managing and leading other people. So what do you do? Well you can choose to run a small business that you can manage yourself or you can choose to bring someone in to do all the people stuff or you can choose to learn how to actually enjoy having a team that’s as excited about your business as you are.
You could be in an organisation you love working for and you are offered a promotion where you have to be responsible for a team but shiver at the thought. Well, again you can choose to stay where you are and not take the promotion, move to a specialist role where you don’t have to manage others or you can again learn to love the people side of things and revel in seeing others enjoy the work as much as you do.
To find out more about the roadmap, download the free workbook here
Where do you think you are on the journey right now? What are the key questions and challenges that you’re facing? Comment below, I promise I read every comment or email me at sonia@soniagavira.com
