Career
Managing Your Successby Kay Johnson
Did you know that the skills and strengths you had in getting your executive position are not the skills you need to keep it? The skills that granted you your current job are no longer necessarily strengths. Your current executive position requires new skills, new growth, and new competencies. The higher you go the more people skills and people management skills you need. Additionally, you want to develop advanced skills in team development, finance/budgeting, and proficiency in problem solving.
Research shows the higher you are in an organization the less you really know about the issues and needs of your employees. This is termed the "hierarchy effect" and documents that the higher you are in an organization the happier, more content and satisfied you are. The employees downstream are less satisfied, less content, and more aware of different issues than you. The hierarchy effect says the further down you go in the organization the less content are your employees. This creates a predictable gap in needs, issues, and morale, impacting your ability to manage and make decisions. Senior level executives are generally clueless to what their employees downstream think and feel.
Also, the higher up you go, unless you create an open environment, the less bad news you hear. Employees are hesitant to give you bad news if you act as if you don't want to hear it. Recently, a senior manager at a Fortune 300 company told us, "The President isn't getting the information he needs to make decisions." Well, why not? "He doesn't want to hear bad news, so no one is willing to pay the price to tell him. He shoots messengers."
How open are you to all the information? How much are you willing to hear? Most senior managers say, " I want to know." However, their behavior does not support the message. They don't walk the talk. So, they don't get it. Eventually their decisions are based on inaccurate information, their decisions are ineffective and costly, and the senior manager is out the door. "What happened?" he asks. " I was blind sided." "They set me up." Or, "They got me," are the behaviors exhibited. In reality, the senior manager set this up by not knowing what he didn't know. You must have more than a willingness to know. You must have the behavior to endorse the willingness.
The key questions to ask are: Are you in tune with the real issues downstream? Are you developing new competencies as you move up the career ladder? Are you willing to know?
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Kay Johnson, MEd., CSP, is the president of Johnson-West Associates, a full-service consulting and training firm specializing in strategic planning, needs assessments, executive retreats, 360-degree feedback, and customized skills training workshops. For
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