Stepping up: promotion

Team leading / 01 April 2009

For all the extra authority and privileges, promotion to a leadership role is a daunting prospect. There’s a heavy weight of expectation to deliver – and quickly, because your performance in the first few months shapes your future success. Jane Lewis reveals how to rise to the challenge and put your best foot forward

Successful candidates for top jobs often talk about being thrown in at the deep end. But the water has rarely been so deep, so murky or so dangerous. “The future of capitalism is here and it’s not what any of us expected,” observed McKinsey consultants Lowell Bryan and Diana Farrell in a recent paper. “Executives confront a more profoundly uncertain business environment than most have ever faced.” When even seasoned operators are quaking in their boots, imagine how much more of a challenge it is for those who are taking their first plunge into a leadership role.

If you fall into that category, you can at least take solace from the fact that you’re far from alone. As one City fund manager points out, there has seldom been such a synchronised movement of UK executives in and out of high-ranking jobs. Companies are responding to recession by ditching the tired and weary and sniffing out new blood. He reckons that one third of the FTSE companies he invests in are looking to replace either their chief executive or finance director – and if that is true at the top of the pile, you can bet a similar sweep is taking place all the way down the management ranks.

Gallows humour prevails in many workplaces right now, notes the FT’s management correspondent Stefan Stern. People worry that they might be, as one newspaper executive puts it, ‘in the fingertip club’. When asked what he means by that, he explains: “You’re hanging onto your job by your fingertips.”

Given all the uncertainty, no wonder companies are crying out for great leadership, says Jez Cartwright, CEO of Performance Consultants, which specialises in coaching managers in leadership development. “Two years ago, to be honest, you could get by without – everyone was making so much money anyway.” Now, suddenly, everyone understands the value of inspiring and steady direction. The complaint he hears most (especially in City circles) is one of lions being led by donkeys. “Our senior managers don’t know how to lead,” one investment banker told him. “They seem incapable of going to the troops to gee them up with the message that ‘it’s tough, but we’re going to get through’.”

Early experience

The pressure on new leaders, then, is huge. But even in the sunniest business climate the transition into management and, ultimately, leadership, is fraught with difficulties. Professor Linda A Hill of Harvard Business School believes that the initial stage of the process – when you become a boss for the first time – is often overlooked. That’s a shame, she says, because the stakes involved in this first rite of passage are high: the outcome can have big long-term consequences for both the individual and the organisation.

“Executives are shaped irrevocably by their first management positions,” says Hill. “Decades later, they recall those first months as transformational experiences that forged their leadership philosophies and styles in ways that may continue to haunt and hobble them throughout their career.”

Executives are shaped irrevocably by their first management positions. Decades later, they recall those first months as transformational experiences that forged their leadership philosophies and styles in ways that may continue to haunt and hobble them throughout their career.

Professor Linda A Hill, Harvard Business School

Organisations, meanwhile, “suffer considerable costs when a person who has been promoted because of strong individual performance and qualifications fails to adjust successfully to management responsibilities”.

The problem is partly down to the established system of career progression. When star performers look for promotion, the obvious route – indeed, the only route in many companies – is into management. Yet, as Cartwright notes, the qualities needed to excel as an individual performer are rarely the same as those that count in a leadership role. Sometimes, in fact, they’re diametrically opposed, as countless studies of personality types – from Belbin onwards – have shown. “Everyone has the potential to be a leader, but some people will have to do a lot more hard work to get there,” says Cartwright. “There’s the core of leadership within everyone, but not everyone’s prepared to drill down to it.”

The situation is further complicated by the distinction often drawn between management capabilities and leadership proper. Carol Bartz, the Silicon Valley pioneer who has just been parachuted in to lead Yahoo out of its current troubles, believes there is a “real difference” between the two. Bartz – described in a recent profile as ‘a hardened, disciplined, occasionally ruthless, but often inspiring boss’ – started her career in the 1970s at the blue-chip company 3M, quickly rising to junior management level. When she requested a transfer to headquarters in pursuit of a leadership role, she was told that ‘Women don’t do these jobs’. She walked straight out of 3M, into the fledging computer industry, and never looked back.

“Managing,” she says now, “winds up being the allocation of resources against tasks. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed.”

Tricky transformation

Bartz’s steely resolve ultimately saw her through all the transitional phases needed to get to the top. But the fact that so many people fail or stall in the journey isn’t surprising given the difficulty of the transition. According to Professor Hill, who has spent 15 years studying the travails of star performers as they fumble their way towards leadership roles, the struggles they face are the norm, not the exception.

“Ask any new manager about the early days of being a boss – indeed, ask any senior executive to recall how he or she felt as a new manager. If you get an honest answer, you’ll hear a tale of disorientation and, for some, overwhelming confusion.” One branch manager she canvassed compared the experience to the ‘out of control’ feeling some experience when they first have a child. “On day X minus 1, you still don’t have a child. On day X, all of a sudden you’re a mother or a father and you’re supposed to know everything there is to know about taking care of a kid.”
 
Why is learning to manage so hard? One reason, says Hill, is that leadership can’t really be taught in a classroom. “It is a craft primarily acquired through on-the-job experiences – especially adverse experiences in which the new manager, working beyond his current capabilities, proceeds by trial and error.”

Eventually a new professional identity emerges, but it is often a debilitating process – involving the ‘unlearning’ of a mind-set and habits that have previously served the individual well. The transition is frequently made all the harder because of the new manager’s misconceptions of their role. When people get promoted they typically focus on the new authority and privileges they will enjoy, only to discover that, in fact, they’re hemmed in by a frustrating web of interdependencies. It’s a rude awakening, especially for those accustomed to working in relative independence.

“They are enmeshed in a web of relationships – not only with subordinates but also with bosses, peers and others inside and outside the organisation, all of whom make relentless and often conflicting demands,” says Hill. “The resulting daily routine is pressured, hectic and frantic.”
 
Over time, dogged managers get used to these constraints and learn to deal with them effectively. But even the best can stumble when it comes to taking the next step up, especially if that entails a move to a new organisation. American presidents are traditionally given 100 days to make their mark – for better or worse. Business leaders have just 90, according to transition specialist Michael Watson, who argues that an executive’s performance in the first three months has an outsize impact on their chances of future success.

But when it comes to establishing strong relationships with those you deal with directly, the window may be even smaller. New research by European leadership experts, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux, suggests that the first 30 days are critical in determining whether the relationship will be troublesome or productive. “Getting off to a good start can pay dividends for years,” they say. “Conversely, getting off to a bad start can trigger a downward spiral” for everyone concerned. “A label applied in the first week or month tends to stick.”

So how can you ensure you put your best foot forward? The first place to start is with yourself, says Jez Cartwright. A defining quality of great corporate leaders is self-awareness. “The more self-aware you are, the better you are at working with other people,” so canvass opinion from others and dig out those old 360-degree feedback appraisals. Another useful soul-mining exercise, says Professor Stewart D Friedman of Wharton Business School, is to think back over your personal history and identify five moments or events that have defined who you are, and what your values are today. While you’re about it, he adds, you could also write a ‘personal leadership vision’ to provide a focus for both your long and short-term actions. ‘Describe the leader you want to become.’

Background research

Next, do some thorough homework on your new workplace  before you get distracted by day-to-day business. In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for Leaders at all Levels, Michael Watkins recommends that a new leader develop a learning plan well before the first day on the job. It should include markets, products, customers, colleagues, systems, culture and politics. “View yourself as an anthropologist who’s digging up all sorts of evidence about what’s in store for you,” advises one corporate coaching expert. 

Once you start the job, make a point of staying in frequent contact with all your direct reports throughout the formative early period of the relationship. Communicate key priorities and performance measures, “but learn how to listen effectively to your staff as well,” says Cartwright: it’s vital to your eventual rapport. Remember that those around you are just as anxious about the impact you might have on their fortunes as you are about them.

Moreover, if you want to avoid being mislabelled by others, don’t make the same mistake with new colleagues. In The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations, Manzoni and Barsoux show that most bosses sort subordinates into two clusters within their first week in the job: those they plan to rely on (the ‘ingroup’) and those they don’t (the ‘outgroup’). But early attitudes and behaviours are easily misread, they argue. “Given the very short time frame, the potential for error is high.”

A common pitfall among new leaders is to become over-fixated with the idea of making their mark early on, with the upshot that they go into turbo-drive. Given the troubles many companies currently face, a sense of urgency is understandable – and important. But while you should identify, and act swiftly to correct, any situation that needs ‘quick-changing’, it’s crucial to then step back and take the time to make a proper assessment of the situation, says Cartwright. “Remember that any change you make has got to be right and, because people don’t like change, trying to do it quicker will cause more of a backlash.” Be sensitive to small details, he advises: the trivial stuff is important to people. “Bear in mind that you’re there to win the war rather than individual battles.”

Defend your people

It’s important to convince colleagues that you’re prepared to fight on their behalf, and that you’re a person who gets things done. Even in these straitened times, that doesn’t necessarily mean rushing in with the cost-cutting axe. One of the most effective ways of convincing your new team that you’re a person of authority and influence, suggests Deborah M Kolb, professor for women and leadership at the Simmons College School of Management, is to demonstrate your ‘ability to secure resources’.
If that is impossible because you’ve been hired, say, with the specific remit of cutting costs or jobs, take a lesson from the bankers. Don’t splash out on the equivalent of a $1,400 waste-paper bin for yourself while making redundancies, in the manner of former Merrill Lynch boss John Thain. And if you have to wield the axe, do it with sensitivity. Former RBS chief, Sir Fred Goodwin, never shrugged off the damaging moniker of ‘Fred the Shred’, a legacy from his slash-happy days at Clydesdale Bank.

Everyone knows that leadership can be a lonely business and Cartwright recommends that every new leader ‘go and get a coach or a mentor’. Whether or not you choose to pay for professional advice, do seek out counsel. “Unfortunately, my research has shown that few new managers ask for help,” observes Hill: sometimes because of the misconception that ‘the boss is supposed to have all the answers’, and sometimes because of the perceived risk that, if you confide in colleagues, they will use it against you. If you can forge a good relationship with your own boss, “it can make all the difference in the world,” she says. “Many new managers are relieved to find their superiors are more tolerant of their questions and mistakes than they had expected.” If you’re still doubtful, seek advice from peers you trust externally.

Finally, never avoid owning up to any glaring mistakes that you do make – nothing drains authority faster. “Hold up your hands and say ‘I’m sorry I screwed up’,” advises Cartwright. You’ll be in good company. President Obama used those exact words to draw a line under a dicey moment in his own transition to leadership.