4 Reasons Great Leaders Get Overlooked
Despite all your best efforts are you failing to get the recognition you think you deserve? Here's what's going on.
There you
are: battling away month after month in difficult surroundings, giving it your
all (or nearly your all), saving everyone else's hides, thinking so far outside
the box that the box is barely visible, delivering added value faster than a
speeding train... basically, you're laying waste to every leadership metaphor
there is.
And yet, despite all your best
efforts, you might as well be working down a coal mine for all the recognition
you get.
Ever felt that way?
Despairing that your obvious talents
are going to waste--or at least are not being recognized? Fearful that the time and effort you're putting in isn't yielding the leadership recognition that
you'd hoped for?
The good news is, you're not alone.
I meet similarly frustrated leaders all the time. The bad news is, you're not
alone. Your first challenge is to distinguish yourself from them.
If it feels like your leadership
efforts aren't resulting in the recognition you deserve, run down this list of
possible reasons. I guarantee it'll save you a lot of time, and will point the
best way out of your current dead end:
1. You're not as good as you
think you are. Yep, it happens. Maybe you arrived at the organization with an
inflated sense of your own ability. Maybe your helicopter parents convinced you
that you can do no wrong. Maybe you've never really played in the big leagues
until now.
Whatever the underlying cause (and
there are many), by far the most common reason I see leaders get frustrated by
lack of recognition is that they're simply not as competent at leadership as
their self-image leads them to believe.
Here's the easiest way to test that
this might be the case: Ask your boss what you need to do to get a promotion.
If she gives you one or two
specific, precise pieces of feedback, you're fine. If she looks away, blushes,
chokes or changes the subject, you're probably in this camp.
How do you fix it? Well, you could
start by asking to undergo a 360 assessment. Make sure that you chose a wide
range of people as raters, including people you don't naturally like or get on
well with. Then find a mentor or coach to help you work with the opportunities
(we used to call them "weaknesses" until it become politically
incorrect to do so, but that's what they are, all the same) it throws up.
2. Your company doesn't value
leadership skills. Let's assume you're not in the first category
and that you actually are a
good leader. In that case there are only two possibilities as to why you're not
receiving the recognition you deserve.
The first possibility is that your
organization quite simply doesn't value leadership, full stop. You'll know if
this is the case. You'll see it in a lack of innovation and creativity;
there'll be a lack of a challenge function at higher levels of leadership, and
you'll probably have noticed that good leaders don't hang around too long.
The solution? Get out. There's
nowhere to go in an organization that doesn't value leadership, and there's no
point kidding yourself that the culture is going to someday change. It won't.
3. What you've achieved
doesn't align with your organization's goals. If you are
in fact a strong leader, but aren't receiving the recognition you deserve, the
second possibility is that what you're achieving doesn't align with the
organization's core goals.
I see it regularly: A hot-shot
executive knocks a couple of projects out of the park, then wonders why no
plaudits appear. The reason is usually that the projects in question aren't
central to the organization's core goals, and are therefore perceived only in
the C-suites peripheral vision, if at all?
The answer? Get closer to the core.
Volunteer for projects that are plumb in the middle of the organization's
strategic interests. Ask for a transfer to a more central department or
division. Find ways to connect what you're doing to key functions in the
company. If you can't get transferred to the software division, or the
warehouse, or the manufacturing floor--wherever the pulse of your organization
beats, at least connect what you do to them, as much as possible.
4. You're not actually
leading. One final thought. Don't allow yourself the luxury of
thinking you're not getting the recognition you need because your boss is
stealing all your glory. Leaders don't get overshadowed, only managers do.
If someone is stealing your glory,
it's precisely because you're not leading,
you're managing.
By: Les Mckeown
Source: Inc.
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