Are you unintentionally creating a toxic workplace?
Toxicity often starts when talk diverges from action. Learn diagnostic questions to reconcile lived experience with strategy and improve outcomes...
Brain Circuits
Looking to accelerate your leadership career? Start here
Progressing to senior leadership begins by upgrading your mindset. Here’s how to get started.
Going from capable contributor to credible leader
At the start of your career, your success is often defined and measured by how well you perform the tasks assigned to you. But progressing successfully to senior leadership is not just predicated on strong performance – it calls for an intentional upgrade in the way you think, the way you form relationships, and the way you model different behaviors and approaches.
Thinking beyond the task
How do you start making this upgrade? It begins by thinking beyond the task. The onus shifts from delivering outcomes to shaping direction. What matters now is being able to see the bigger picture ahead of your role, function, or even organization and taking the initiative to reshape it.
This means transitioning from a reliable executor to a forward-thinking contributor who thinks beyond the immediate task, challenges assumptions, connects tactics to strategy, and anticipates what might be coming down the line.
Tips to get started
To do this, integrate these behaviors and habits into your management practice:
- Ask questions about goals that invite deeper exploration of the risks, opportunities, and trade-offs. Ask “why” as well as “what” or “how.”
- Think about how your work connects to the broader business goals of your organization.
- Leverage this to formulate insights in meetings, not just updates.
- Share ideas that will improve customer impact, team efficiency, and the overall strategy of the business.
- Manage upward by proactively keeping your boss informed while offering insights and solutions.
Key learning
In your early career, you are valued for your ability to get things done. To progress in leadership, you need to shift your mindset from delivering outcomes to shaping direction.
Authors
Related
Is your legitimacy being questioned? Here’s how to respond
Having your legitimacy questioned can happen to anyone, particularly in novel, tense, or challenging circumstances. Here are three tools to deal with it....
Don’t just do something – sit there!
Leaders are conditioned to leap into action to meet challenges. But what if remaining calm and simply listening is what the people around you need in such moments?...
A trust test for leaders
Trust is foundational in leadership, yet is more of a science than an art. Answer the questions below to assess whether an absence of trust is affecting your leadership. ...
Learn Brain Circuits
Join us for daily exercises focusing on issues from team building to developing an actionable sustainability plan to personal development. Go on - they only take five minutes.
Explore Leadership
What makes a great leader? Do you need charisma? How do you inspire your team? Our experts offer actionable insights through first-person narratives, behind-the-scenes interviews and The Help Desk.
Join Membership
Log in here to join in the conversation with the I by IMD community. Your subscription grants you access to the quarterly magazine plus daily articles, videos, podcasts and learning exercises.