Go Round And Over Bars To Your Leadership Goals
05/22/2015 01:47 PM ET
If you belong to a group that has not been part of the traditional business or organization hierarchy, you know how hard it can be to get the powers that be to take you and your hopes and dreams seriously. As you rise, you might see fewer people like yourself around.
Instead of that uniqueness making you and your accomplishments more noticeable, you may feel more invisible.
Here are ways to thwart all that.
• Show you're the best. "You should do this all the time because you never know who's watching," said Angie Morgan, co-author with Courtney Lynch of "Leading From the Front: No-Excuse Leadership Tactics for Women," and co-founder of the consultancy Lead Star.
Working on leadership skills, especially when you're not in charge, helps you build a "leading attitude and puts you in a position of excellence," Morgan told IBD.
• Make the case. Improving yourself so you'll be seen as a candidate for advancement is always crucial for your future.
But make sure you know what management's plans are for advancing candidates within your organization, says management consultant Ritch Eich.
• Care for your staff. If you are not part of the old boys' club, you must have supportive people in your corner, Eich said. That falls to executives, who "in top leadership roles have a major responsibility to mentor others."
Mentoring is a vital way for all leadership candidates to advance, and the give-and-take it provides can give mentors key data and insights as well as aiding proteges.
• Anticipate and take risks. Morgan and Lynch learned their leadership skills in the Marine Corps.
The Marines' constant drills and feedback build strong habits for dealing with danger in a peer environment, notes Morgan. This training institutionalizes discipline in work and decision-making and can benefit civilian employee teams.
"In a group like that, you can't pull rank," she said. "It creates a climate of accountability, with support."
Men don't have a monopoly on dealing with risk and stress, says Morgan. But they may get an earlier start on learning to cope with it.
"None of us are hard-wired to deal with stress effectively," she said. "Our physical response is normally flight. But we can all learn to be better than our instincts."
• Compete. All leadership candidates "must learn to stand on their own," said Eich. You must be "visible, aggressive and competitive in the workplace." Part of this process is "learning how to sell yourself vigorously enough."
• Lead as you are. Succeeding in an organization does not mean you have to change your identity or personality.
"To be effective, you need to work on enhancing your strengths and improving your weaknesses," said Morgan. "You may need to learn some new behaviors, like holding back tears, or cutting back on others, like placing blame elsewhere. But never try to be someone you're not."
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