Part IV. Your Career Challenge
Do you want to become a chief executive, an executive vice president, or a general manager? Do you think you have a shot at a big promotion? Do you feel frustrated and or thwarted in your present organization? Do you feel you are climbing a ladder of promotions that is leaning against the wrong career wall? Do you feel like you are becoming a one-dimensional "organization man" (or woman)? This section of Your Masterful Coach in a Book will show you how to find the career that's the right fit, advance your career in any organization, while at the same time, support you in broadening out and becoming more of a complete human being. All of this is key to mastering your leadership and business challenges.
We heard a great story about Warren Buffet that gets to the heart of having a great career. Buffet was addressing a group of college students at the University of Nebraska. In his usual down-home style and slightly disheveled appearance, Buffet said, "I am really no different from any of you," and smiled. As Buffet is one of the richest men in the world and most of the students could barely cover their cell phone bills, this comment brought a chuckle.
"I may have more money than you, but that doesn't make the difference. Sure I can buy the most luxurious handmade suit, but I put it on and it looks cheap. I would rather have a cheese burger at Dairy Queen than a hundred dollar meal." The students don't quite buy it. So Buffet makes a concession. "If there is any difference between you and me is that I get up every day and have a chance to do what I love to do. If you want to learn something from me, this is the best advice I can give you. This is the secret of my success."1
This section of Your Masterful Coach in a Book starts with asking you to take a stand for having an extraordinary career. This goes part and parcel with being an extraordinary leader and creating an extraordinary future for your company. Take a moment to step back from your position on the corporate ladder, from today's and tomorrow's goals, and from the heat of daily action, and ask yourself if you feel you are pursuing an extraordinary career or do you feel your career is stuck in neutral?
You are probably like many executives we work with. You may be in a high position, but you may not feel that you are climbing the corporate ladder and getting ahead fast enough. Or you may feel that your career is stuck in neutral somewhere. Or it may be that you feel that your career is being pushed along by choices made long ago by someone or something external to yourself: "My father was a lawyer, so I became a lawyer." Or it may be that you are stuck in doing something that you don't have a passion for but are simply good at. We have observed that there are three career challenges you need to meet to have an extraordinary career. Let's look at each of them.
Career Challenge One: Make Sure that It is a Fit; Discover Your Talents, Passions, and the People You Want to Work With
We have learned that one of the most critical factors in creating an extraordinary career for yourself is to put first things first. What do we mean by that? According to James Citrin and Richard A. Smith of Spencer Stuart, a respected search firm, the foundation of extraordinary career is discovering your talents, passions, and gifts and finding the right fit, rather than finding the next step up some ladder, which by the way could be leaning against the wrong building.2
The issue is that many people in leadership positions find themselves succeeding in careers that they are not passionate about and that are wrong for them. To be sure, success can be more dangerous than failure. If you are successful at the wrong thing, than the mix of promotion, money, and praise can result in your getting trapped in the wrong place forever. For example, we knew one rapidly emerging leader named Bill Jones, a division vice president in an investment banking company, who had superb leadership and business skills, as well as political acumen. Bill's career had followed the familiar advancement track of many highly talented people, from team leader to manager, to vice president.
However in the middle of this rapid ascent, he realized that he was in the middle of a career that was wrong for him. "I was a biology major in college and earned a Doctorate. After graduation, I went into a big biotech company, because I thought that was where all the money was. However, now I see that my progress toward the top is just carrying me away from what I really want to do." We had asked him where he though his passions were and he said, "As seductive as the power, prestige, and money is in this company, I believe my passion is in coaching and teaching." He left the company, got a job in a small college teaching, and then became a full professor at a major university. He also became an assistant coach on the school's rowing team.
Creating an extraordinary career depends on meeting your first career challenge which is to have "fit," and that depends on three factors. First discover your strengths. Second discover your passions-the thing that gets your juices flowing. And third, find a company with the kind of people and culture that is a natural fit for you. Discovering the right fit is not something that you do at the beginning of your career and then forget about, it is an ongoing process that requires continuing vigilance.
It is important in this process to see the big strategic picture of where you want to go in your career rather than get stuck in career myopia. Discovering the right fit means allowing your talents, passions, and gifts to pull your career in the right direction. This sometimes requires turning down what might look like a seductive promotion, or allowing your career to migrate from one areas of a business or industry to another. All to often leaders have career myopia, which causes them to continue to fight their way up the ladder, even if means giving up their real dream or putting aside their passions.
A lot of you may be asking yourselves a question right now that goes like this, "I have a big job in a big company, and in all honesty, what I am doing now is not my passion. So now what do I do?" Or "You've got the diagnoses right; now what is the cure?" The best advice we can give you is to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is a lot of risk in jumping from a top job in one field in which you have a lot of experience, but one in which you are frustrated in, to another that suits your passion, but that you have no experience in and might be entering as a beginner.
Our suggestion then is to continue in your present situation for the time being, spending eighty percent of your time on your day job, and then figure out how to spend fifteen to twenty percent of your time on the thing that you are passionate about. (See story about Jon Mars coming up.)
Career Challenge Two: Get to the Top by Mastering the Corporate Chessboard: Build Momentum through Achievement, Stand for Other's Success
One day after doing a three-day Masterful Coaching workshop, when I was approached by one of the participants, Tom Galloway, who stood over 6'3" tall, had leadership ambition, bright intelligent eyes, and good looks. He is a Hal Ripken look alike, the pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles. In fact, once when he was watching a baseball game, a fan asked him for his autograph and before long, he was surrounded by over one hundred autograph seekers. Tom, egged on by his wife Sue, a Texas belle, went along with the gag, signing the autographs "Hal," but being a man of integrity, refused to write the name Ripken. "That's the man's name," Tom said.
Tom told me he wanted to talk to me about the possibility of personal coaching. He told me he had a high-level job in the company's "commercial operations" (supply and trading). He worked hard, managed the operation well and had brought about significant change, but at the end of the day, as he put it, "Robert, I don't get any satisfaction out of what I do." I felt a sense of compassion for this up-and-coming manager and set up a time to talk to him about coaching.
Tom told me that in his company, like most others, people were expected to be "a good soldier," do a good job and deliver the results. Supposedly, if you did that, they would eventually be rewarded with a promotion or a raise in pay. The issue was that in Tom's case, he had done all this, but the payoffs weren't coming. Instead, what was happening was that his boss, Joe, an astute corporate politician, was stealing all the credit for what Tom had done. Tom actually liked his boss and felt some degree of loyalty to him. Perhaps he also feared him.
Tom just kept plodding along, caught in the dilemmas between feelings of ambition, loyalty, and smoldering resentment. He could talk about his ambition and loyalty but was suppressing his anger and resentment. He had begun to feel profoundly resigned to his situation and to accommodate his resignation with rationalizations and justifications. Yet the bottom line truth was that his career was stuck in neutral and he was not getting any satisfaction from his work. What made it worse was that that he had no one to talk to about it.
Many leaders like Tom feel like they have to pretend that they are not ambitious, in order to not be considered a corporate predator and, thereby, be elevated to the next wrung up the ladder. Our experience is that, while you don't want to appear to be a corporate predator, one of the most important things in getting to the top of any field is to set your ambitions free. This not only means setting your ambition free so that you can go after exactly the job you want, but also make the kind of difference you have always wanted to make once you have that job. It also means creating the right strategy, goals and plans for reaching it.
Four Basic Strategies for Getting to the Top of Your Field
Getting to the top of the ladder or at least the next rung requires becoming a virtuoso in what I have come to call the "Master Game," which involves not only having a constant grasp of your job, but also a grasp of the political, economic, and human forces at play in any large organization. The ability to become such a virtuoso performer requires keeping your eye on four different priorities at the same time, some of which may seem to contradict each other.
1) Master the corporate chessboard. One of the most critical priorities in this process is to remember that as you move to the top of an organization there is increasing competition for promotion and resources. It is a matter of being able to master the corporate board, not just performance. This largely involves creating powerful partnerships with people at all levels of the organization. It means consciously and intentionally sourcing a powerful relationship with your boss (See chapter 19.) It means taking a stand to make a difference and building coalitions that increase support and diminish opposition. And it means standing for the success of other people in your organization by creating as much opportunity for people as you possibly can.
2) Focus on making a difference. In most organizations, there are a few difference makers and a lot of very mediocre people. To be sure, it's the difference makers that stand out from the crowd. People who distinguish themselves in any field are those who focus on making a difference, not just making a living. This involves paying attention to the rising needs and expectations of their customers and inventing what's missing that, if provided, will make a difference. They then translate what's missing into concrete projects and execute like mad in delivering on them. At the same time, being a difference maker is a two-edge sword. Swing it one way and you change the world and get recognized for it. Swing it another way and you are branded as a rebel, heretic, and troublemaker.
3) Focus on getting the job done. There are three career phases that people typically go through on their route to success. (a) Declaring your career path. This first phase involves discovering your talents, strengths, interests and with your early job experiences, choose the career path you want to follow. For example, leading a business unit, being specialist in a particular function and so on. (b) Gaining momentum. The leaders who are most effective begin to accomplish things that have a positive impact on their organization with accelerating velocity. Their ability to get the job done has a direct impact on their ability to be rapidly promoted. (c) Reaping the rewards In this phase people receive either a major promotion, such as a chief executive or executive vice president, or connect the dots of their experiences in a new way that results in a whole new career.
4) Focus on finding a coach, mentor, or advocate. In the normal course of events, most people have a will to advance their careers, but not the humility to ask for help in the process. We find that a key step in this process, especially for those who feel stuck in their careers, is to acknowledge that you can't make it on your own. Consciously and intentionally seek out a coach, mentor, or advocate to help you analyze your career situation, give you some feedback and some meaningful advice. It is also important to cultivate a network of people that can give you a powerful assist in reaching your career goals.
Your Third Career Challenge: Broaden Your Horizons
An example of broadening one's horizon is Jon Mars, a leader we worked with in the electronics industry who was rapidly climbing the corporate ladder. When he was offered a big promotion with the chief executive's job in sight, he wasn't sure he should take it or pursue his passions, which by the way he was not entirely clear about. I told Jon, "You do have choices" and suggested that he write a resume that we could use as a starting point in planning his next steps.
Jon sat down to work on his resume. I asked him to focus not on his future potentials, but rather his past experiences, skills, and accomplishments. The exercise turned out to be somewhat of a shocker, as well as a rude awakening. "I saw in writing the resume how narrow my life and career had been. I got my BA in business in college, then went on to the graduate MBA program. After school, I did a series of jobs following the familiar advancement track from individual performer, to manager, to business unit leader. I have spent my whole career inside this one company and not experienced very much of life. On top of that, I think I have suppressed my real passions."
I talked to Jon about the importance of broadening his horizons, starting with unearthing his passions. I talked to him about the notion of 'bringing your whole self to work,' then asked, "What do you care about in the rest of your life that you would like to align more closely with your work?" His answer was his "kids." This led to a discussion about his budding interest in providing coaching and mentoring to young people who are emerging leaders. "Maybe I should go do something in this area for a living." Just to make sure he wasn't grasping at straws, I suggested, "Why don't you spend eighty percent of your time doing your day job and twenty percent of your time doing something in the area of your passion?"
Jon decided on a two-pronged approach, to think about the possibility of other jobs in other industries that might have interested him where he could leverage his years of experience in managing a business, and to also explore the possibility of starting some kind of leadership organization or movement for emerging leaders. The next question was: "How do I get started?" This led to a free ranging discussion about networking.
I had recently came across an interesting article in Fast Company, "Desperately Seeking Vernon," written by Harriet Rubin about networking and its role in both climbing the corporate ladder, as well as in breaking into new territory and establishing a foothold.3 Power in today's world isn't about position. Power today means being connected in a vast spiderless web. The most powerful individual is the person with the most links to others. The article was based on work by physicist, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who wrote a book called Linked: the New Science of Networks. 4
Barabasi writes, "We have learned that a sparse network of a few powerful directors control all the major appointments in Fortune 1000 companies." The most powerful individual in the United States is Vernon Jordan, the eminent dealmaker, Washington big-time lawyer and advisor to U.S. presidents and others. In recent years he and his wife Ann sat on more than seventeen boards combined, making him, according to Barabasi, the most central director of the corporate elite. He is paid over one million a year by his law firm, but never visits a court room, files a brief, because the hours he bills tend to occur in five star restaurants or on a mobile phone making a key introduction here or nudging a deal along there. These board seats result in another five hundred thousand dollars in pay.
In Linked, Barabasi maps the territory of corporate America, by showing it is not the chief executives who are stars, but rather people in the shadows. There are approximately 10,000 directorships in corporate America. They are held by 7,682 directors. However, fourteen percent of all directors serve on two boards, seven percent on three or more boards. These few overlapping directors constitute a small worldwide network where each is 3.5 handshakes or degrees of separation away.
The moral of the story is, if you want an extraordinary career-whether it involves staying in your current industry or doing something else entirely-it is vitally important to understand how to leverage networking efforts. Whatever you can do or dream, you figure out who the key hubs in your particular field of interest are and how they are connected to other nodes.
These people who are the key hubs are the people you want to invest in a relationship with, and may not be more than 3.5 or so handshakes away. If, for example, you wanted to talk to a fictitious Joe Jordan, a key director in your industry, you might talk to someone in your company you think is well connected and ask them if they know someone who knows Joe. Even if the first handshake leads nowhere, the second or third might get you where you want to go.
Jon listened to this story very carefully in a weekend conversation, and said it might have profound implications for him. The next day he called a chief executive of another company he met at a casual business dinner and told him he was originally from Boston, went to Boston University School of Management, was now in this electronics firm interested in doing some work with "emerging leaders." The chief executive happened to say that he knew the chancellor of the university and would be happy to set up a meeting. The next day the meeting took place and led to a fascinating project that in time became a movement around emerging leaders. Jon started by spending twenty percent of his time working with the next generation of leaders in his own company, then with the aid of other people in his organization, broadening out to work with organizations in the different communities his company touched.
Formulating Your Career challenge
When taking a stand for an extraordinary career, talk through the following questions with a thinking partner.
1. Do you have your career priorities in the right order or do you need a paradigm shift? Are you climbing a ladder resting against the wrong building or is your career based on your real talents, passions, and strengths?
2. What kind of job or company would be a great fit for your talents, passions, and people preferences? Also ask yourself what kind of company culture would constitute the right fit? It may be useful here to gather some 360-degree feedback, as well as talk to a coach, thinking partner, or person that knows you well.
3. What do you need to do to get to the top? What is missing that would produce a breakthrough in you getting to the top of your company or profession: a) mastering the chessboard, b) making a difference, c) getting the job done?
4. What do you need to do to broaden your horizons? Where do you want to be in your career in three years? Who are the most connected people in your field, or the one you want to go into? How can you establish a relationship with them? Now, just do it!
The Chapters in this Section
Now you are ready to turn to the specific chapters in this section for some more golden nuggets that you can use toward creating an extraordinary career. In chapter seventeen, Do You have a Burning Ambition?, you will learn that one of the most important keys to career success is having a burning ambition for power and influence, as well as for making a difference. In chapter eighteen, Strategic Networking, you will learn how to realize your ambition by investing in relationships with people who are key links in the web of people you need to influence to get ahead. In chapter nineteen, Sourcing a Powerful Relationship with Your Boss, you will learn how to manage up to get ahead, as well as how to stop being a victim of your boss. In chapter twenty, Dealing with Derailers, you will gain insight into unconscious attitudes and behaviors that could cause your career to plateau or come off the tracks altogether. In chapter twenty-one, You Do Have Choices, you will learn how to create a resume that is an effective advertisement that gets you an interview that helps you realize your potential, rather than a post mortem of your experience.