When I started my corporate career fresh out of college, leadership was about command and control. Many times it was an environment which was led out of fear. It was about controlling all aspect of processes and people. Many of the leaders who were able to generate the greatest amount of fear among the rank and file were promoted up the ladder on a fast track. We saw the ability to generate fear as a favorable core competency of leadership! As we have transitioned from an autocratic to a thought worker environment, we have discovered that fear in a professional setting is to creative thought and innovation like cancer is to good health. We need to realize our roles as leaders have shifted from one of dictating and measuring to one of facilitating and monitoring the energy of the team. Your primary role today as a leader is to be the Keeper of The Organizational Energy. Yes, I did say Organizational Energy and if that is a little to new age for you, get use to it. You will be hearing it more often. It is a sacred role, The Keeper of the Energy (kind of roles of your tongue doesn’t it). It is vital to short and long term success. Your ability to sustain the oscillation of your professional environment between high and low positive and to limit the amount and duration of dips into the negative high and low energy will have a direct correlation to the fiscal success of your company!
Early in our careers we get rewarded for completing task either through compensation or promotions or both. This develops a task and reward cycle. We focus on getting better and better at completing task and we get more bonuses and promotions. We read books and buy tools on time management. So we can get even more task done. Then one day regardless of weather we work late, weekends, birthdays, vacations, and holidays we no longer get the reward/recognition, bonuses, promotions which use to always follow completing task. They all stop no matter how hard and how long we work. We see others get promoted, get the bonuses, and pass us on the career track. We feel under appreciated and taken advantage of. What happen??? It was all going so well. We say to ourselves, I know what it is I do not brown nose or suck up to the boss like others do. You find a bit of comfort in that while you are not getting the promotions at least you have not compromised your values and you are not a phony. What we do not understand nor does anyone take the time to explain is that once you get to a senior mid level management position the rules change and to enter the officer ranks the priority is no longer on task but on trust. While assuring task are complete it is expected not rewarded it is no longer the prism through which you and your talents are viewed. Now the risk are higher both personal and organizational. If I am going to promote you to VP and give you responsibility for a bigger piece of the P&L I have to trust you. The organization has to trust you. Suddenly how well known you are in the organization and the collective opinion becomes critical. How much 1 x 1 face time you have spent with your boss is important. How much time you have spent with his/her boss is important, how many cross-functional teams you participate in becomes important, which employee networks you participate in, what visibility you have in your field, who you are mentoring or who you sought out to be mentor by is important. There are many activities which promote and foster trust. These are but a few. The thing to remember is to reach te next level it is about trust!!!!! It is this simple, if you are in stuck in a senior position take a sheet of paper and write out your daily routine. Get very detailed do you e-mails as soon as you arrive, return calls, go to meetings? Next to each activity write task or trust. If the majority are task chances are you are not going anywhere, if they are trust it is just a matter of time.
Juan-Manuel Sanche
