Bootstrap Leadership Blog

Let’s face it - you need your boss. Unless you work for yourself, the boss is still an organizational necessity, and a big part of your work experience. Your boss hands out work assignments, makes sure you get paid, keeps you from falling asleep in meetings, and hopefully protects you when you do something stupid. But sometimes the boss is the last to notice when you’re ready for something new. This is understandable. After all, they’re focused on making the team look good (not to mention themselves) and that can be a full-time job. No, it’s your job to manage your boss, and that includes telling her when you’re ready for something else. Like a new project or assignment, or even a new job somewhere else in the company.

Now, you have to bring a couple of things to this conversation. You can’t just walk in and say “I want to do something different”. First, you need to be on top of your current work – you better be knocking the ball out of the park, or asking for a better, cooler role is going to get you laughed out of her office. The one “must-have” for this discussion is a great performance record. It also helps to have a sense of the culture, and “how things work around here.” If you’ve only been in your role for a year, and the unwritten code is that managers need to “pay their dues”, well, you better factor that into your thinking. It’s probably going to be an issue.

Second, you have to bring a plan with you. You need to do your homework. You need to have an idea of what you want, and a few reasons why this is such a brilliant idea. You’re selling here, and you better be prepared to answer your boss’s questions. If you want to do more, why do you think you can take on more team members or responsibility? If you want to move to a new role, who will do your work? Who’s on the bench to replace you? Why do you need to make this move right now? What are your long-term career goals? Think through both sides of the conversation; anticipate what your boss is likely to say, feel and do – and be ready with your arguments. Prepare to defend your position, and try to steer the conversation toward why this is good for you and the company.

Lay out your ideal next job and the reasons why it makes sense. Maybe it’s expanding your current role or shedding some of what you do to focus on a specific task. Maybe it’s moving up in your current department, to a leadership position just above your current role. Or maybe it’s an entirely new job elsewhere in the company. Whatever it is, have your facts straight, and a strong rationale for your reasoning. Say: “here’s why I think this is good for me and the team/company.” Be firm, but don’t back her into a corner. The secret is to ask for her input and support in helping you achieve your goals. After telling her what you’d like to do, say: “I’d like to get your thoughts on this - what do you think?” And as the conversation goes along, don’t be afraid to ask for her support directly. Say: “can you help me make this happen?” or “is there anything else you need from me?”

Your immediate boss is probably the most important person in your work life, certainly as far as your career is concerned. Each boss you work for has the power to help you move forward, or put you in a box. They have the ability to accelerate your career, or frankly, derail it. Don’t be that manager who sits in the same job year after year waiting for the boss to offer a new and exciting role. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and go out and make the case for yourself. If you don’t do it, who will? Do you really want to risk putting your career in someone else’s hands? Make your boss an offer, present it with passion and conviction, and appeal to her sense of pride in helping you move your career forward. If you’ve nailed your current role, chances are good that your boss will be there for you. Just don’t be afraid to have the conversation!

When it comes to leadership development, how big are you willing to dream?  How about a development journey so comprehensive that it will permanently change your leadership brand?  Welcome to the one-skill-a-year learning experience.  That’s right – a significant focus on one skill, for a whole year.  Let’s say the average leader starts managing people sometime in their late 20’s and has a normal 30 year career.  Even if you worked on just one skill a year, with this plan you’d master at least a dozen top leadership behaviors before your fortieth birthday, just when you’re hitting your stride as a leader.  Would you be interested in having world-class skills in that many facets of leadership?  Here’s how to do it… 

The first thing you need to do is choose the leadership area you’re going to work on.  I recommend picking a leadership behavior - actions you literally take on a daily basis.  For illustrative purposes, let’s pick “Driving Innovation” and plot a 12-month plan that has you moving through three integrated learning phases – study, practice and teach.    

In the first quarter of the year, you’re going to study – you’re going to hit the books, surf the internet, and tap into experts to learn everything you can about innovation.  Spend time in early January lining up your resources, buying three or four books on the subject, bookmarking websites, finding a conference to attend, identifying local companies known for innovation, etc.  Next, take all of your resources and planned trips and get them on the calendar; literally, carve out time every week from January to March to spend time with your favorite research topic.  Then, execute the plan.  By the time April rolls around, you’re going to know everything there is to know about innovation! 

Now it’s time for the next phase – practice.  Dedicate the next two quarters to applying what you’ve learned on the job.  Set up an innovation lab in your department or division.  Set a goal of brainstorming product or process innovations with your team.  Volunteer to lead a task force that is looking at new ways to innovate.  Write a white paper about the history of innovation in your company.  Make a pitch to senior leaders about the best opportunities for a new breakthrough.  In other words, roll up your sleeves and really get into it - make a concentrated effort to have innovation be a big part of your daily work life.   

Finally, in the last three months of the year, move into the teaching phase.  Volunteer to teach a course on innovation at the company university or organize and market a speaker series where you travel around the company giving talks about innovation.  If you don’t work in a large organization but like this development idea, look into teaching a course on innovation at a local community college.  What’s the point of this phase?  If you’ve ever taught a course, you already know – when you have to teach something, you really have to learn it. 

What do you think?  Can you do it?  A full year of development is ambitious, that’s for sure.  It will require a lot of dedication and perseverance.  But if you were able to do this with your three or four weakest leadership skills over a six to eight year period, just think how proficient you’d be – without question, you’d turn those opportunity areas into towering strengths.  Give this plan some thought the next time you find yourself frustrated about not improving a particular leadership skill or behavior.  Maybe all you need is the time and focus to do it right. 

Let’s pretend you find a genie in a lamp on your way to work Monday morning… when you rub the lamp, the genie will grant you mastery of one leadership skill that you can carry with you for the rest of your career.  Here’s my advice – choose the ability to listen.

Listening is an art, yet very few leaders can claim to be great listeners.  In fact, of all the leadership skills, this is one where we tend to get in our own way.  Because listening is so natural, most of us don’t see the need to get better at it.  Of course, by now you’ve learned all the classic techniques for active listening – lean forward in your chair, maintain eye contact, nod your head, paraphrase what you’re hearing, ask questions, pause before reacting, etc.  But the real issue isn’t whether you’re merely demonstrating the behaviors of active listening.  It’s reflecting, absorbing, and acting on what you’re hearing that will establish your reputation as a great listener.  

Here’s a simple way to think about listening – realize that people only want to tell you one of three things: facts, opinions, or feelings.  Your job is to listen for all three, and interpret the message for meaning and purpose.  Here’s the critical link: Effective listening happens when you are receiving and interpreting the message in the same way that the employee intended it.  So how do you maximize the odds of that happening?

First, do some pre-reflection about the person sending the message.  There has to be something they are thinking, feeling, or wanting you to believe that is worth listening to; in other words, ground your listening in a legitimate reason for listening.  Try this – before you sit down for a 1:1 or walk into a staff meeting, remind yourself why you’re going to listen to each person. What is the context?  Where are they coming from?  What’s been valuable about their messages in the past?  Listening effectively starts with getting yourself ready to listen. 

Second, people vary greatly in their communications style, so understand how each person expresses themselves. Your challenge is to absorb the message and tease out what’s most important.  This is critical - failing to recognize what’s most important is what leads to ineffective listening.  You may have heard what they said, but you missed what they wanted to convey.  This is the classic “crossed wires” feeling that people walk away with sometimes – it’s what produces the “he didn’t hear me” comments.  You can ensure more messages hit their mark by reminding yourself of the three types of information above, and paying close attention to what it is they’re really trying to communicate. 

Finally, once you have absorbed the most important piece of information, act on it.  Part of effective listening is responding appropriately; this tells the person you heard them.  Articulating what you feel is the most important part of their message will take the conversation right to the heart of what matters, and will lead more quickly to agreements or resolutions.  Again, try this – if they’re relaying an opinion, but it seems packed with emotion, ask about the emotion part.  By paying close attention to what’s most important, you can proactively take the conversation where it needs to go.   As a leader, it’s important not to be too passive or use active listening as a crutch; once you feel you’ve identified the most important part of the message, ask about it.  Put it out in the open and deal with it directly.  Put the “active” in active listening by moving on to solutions or a deeper conversation. 

It’s not like you don’t know that you should be listening and paying attention; the issue is that you’re not always doing it.  So try this – practice getting yourself ready to listen by reflecting ahead of time on the person and their communications style.  Next, practice really absorbing what’s most important from their message. Then, act on what you’re hearing.  Work on becoming a better listener – it will change the way people experience your leadership.