You Got the Promotion! Now What?
You Got the Promotion! Now What?
Jake was elated. His COO had just called him into his office to give him the good news. The executive committee approved his promotion to VP of Client Services. This was the promotion he had been working towards for the past five years. It had even come a bit sooner than expected as his predecessor resigned several weeks ago to take a position with another company. He wanted to call his wife immediately to share the good news, but she was on an airplane returning from a west coast business trip. Instead he had to rush to pick up his two sons and take them to their after-school sports activities. He was scheduled to be on vacation over the next two days and looked forward to the long weekend to get his mind in gear and prepare to step into the new role. It would be effective one week from today and the announcement would go out on Monday. (more…)
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How many times have you had a medical issue you considered to be minor, and instead of going to the doctor, you googled the topic, asked friends or family for advice and visited the drug or grocery store for solutions to address it. All of this only to realize after a period of weeks that you really needed expert help. Even if you had health insurance, you didn’t want to take the time to visit the doctor’s office, get a prescription, go through a medical procedure, or worse, hear news you didn’t want to hear. This “bad news” might range from a firm directive to change your eating or health habits, or worse, a condition left untreated has reached a serious state. It now requires greater intervention, greater disruption of your “normal” routine, and significant stress to manage through it all. You took a risk and now you’re dealing with the consequences.
Supporter relationships are evidenced by business interactions that are more transactional. Supporters focus more on what they are getting, rather than what they are giving. Supporters emphasize the importance of clients’ understanding and valuing their expertise. They tend to receive more crisis calls as a reactionary response from the businesses because something hasn’t turned out as expected.
Everyone has a purpose, but not everyone will recognize it and fulfill it. And one of the biggest reasons why is because they won’t have the patience to go through the process to see it come to pass. Joe is a good example of how practicing patience and preparation ultimately led to fulfilling his purpose.
Bob sat down at his desk and let out a huge sigh. He had just returned from lunch with one of the board members at his company. They were preparing for the current CEO to retire within the next 6 months and the board wanted to initiate a formal selection process to confirm Bob as a candidate to replace him. Bob had been with the company for 15 years and held the CFO role for 5 years. It was time to step up. He knew the inner workings of the company as well as challenges in the industry. He also knew that his chances of being selected were pretty good. But there was one nagging issue on his mind. He fundamentally felt that the strategy the current CEO and Board were pursuing wasn’t going to pay off the way they thought. He had shared his concerns in the past but given the politics didn’t feel he could push it too far. Now, if he were to be selected as CEO, he realized he couldn’t lead the organization forward with a strategy he didn’t believe in. He knew that two or three of the twelve board members might support his thinking, but that wasn’t sufficient to make the shift he felt was necessary. And if he declined consideration, he’d have to come up with a really good reason because telling them he didn’t believe in their strategy would call into question his role over the past several years. 
While many of us intellectually understand the importance of building trusting relationships, we don’t always demonstrate it.
Capital One has a frequently aired commercial with the tag line “What’s in your wallet?” It conveys the message that if you possess their credit card, you will have greater spending power and ability to acquire the things you want and need. But if it stays in your wallet, and you don’t use it, you won’t activate the power it holds. You need to not only have it, you need to use it.
Pat arrived at the office early. She hadn’t slept well the night before because she was wrestling with an important decision that needed to be made in her Executive Committee meeting that morning. They had been evaluating the development and launch of a new product for the past six months. Today they needed to make a final decision on whether they were going to move forward. The discussions had been thorough yet difficult with wide ranging opinions on what they should do. There was significant risk associated with the launch, but the potential reward could be a greatly improved market share. As CEO, she needed everyone to make a full commitment to the decision, and while the objective analysis appeared to lead the team to adopt it, a number of other issues had arisen, and there was a LOT of debate. 
A key requirement of good leadership is to ensure that the organization and its initiatives are sustainable, both during and beyond the leader’s tenure there. This means that the company’s values, beliefs, goals and objectives cannot be dependent upon a single or few people as the glue holding it together. Situations will inevitably occur where such individuals are no longer a part of the organization, and thus the glue fails.
As leaders we’re constantly communicating to our stakeholders with strategic intent. The question is whether our communication plan is effective or not. This may sound simple, but amazingly, many leaders miss excellent opportunities to communicate with employees in ways that develop them by enhancing their understanding of business priorities and engaging them in driving sustained business outcomes. When you’re communicating with others it’s important to think about your goal to ensure your methodology is properly aligned.