Advancement Requires Change
“What got us here won’t get us there” is a truism that applies as we advance from one level of organizational leadership to another. When someone with professional or trade skills does their craft well they may be promoted into leadership roles – often without training in how to lead. The same is true when people are promoted through leadership ranks, say from supervisor, to manager, to VP, to CEO. They are frequently left to figure out on their own what the new role requires. At best, that’s inefficient. At worst, they never figure it out and keep doing what they did before without recognizing the changes required to do their new role well.
The Leadership Pipeline
The 2001 classic book, The Leadership Pipeline[1], models leadership[2] career growth as a pipeline with transitions, or passages, represented by bends in the pipe. We all start off our career by leading ourselves. We develop skills in our craft and find satisfaction in what we produce with our own hands (either literally or figuratively). Some continue that path for their whole career, and there is no shame in that. But for those who proceed on a leadership trajectory, there comes a point where they transition to leading others. Later they might transition again to where they begin leading leaders. In a large organization, this might continue through as many as six kinds of transitions until they find themselves in the top seat of the organization.
Passages Require Change
A healthy transition through a passage in the Pipeline requires that we change in three ways:
- Skill Requirements – Being a good teacher doesn’t make someone a good administrator, or a musician a good conductor, an athlete a good coach, or a carpenter a good supervisor. Similarly, leading other leaders takes different skills than directly leading workers and so on through the Pipeline transitions. Moving up the Pipeline means I must give up doing what I’m proudly expert at and set aside my ego to humbly learn skills I’m a novice at.
- Use of Time – Leading takes time, and I can’t continue doing all the work of the previous role and still have time to learn and do the requirements of the new role well.
- Work Values – This is the hardest one. I took pride in my own work and now I have to find fulfillment in the success of those I lead. I have to care about different things and trust others with things I’ve built my reputation on.
Changes Aren’t Automatic
Why do we promote people and expect them to figure these things out on their own? Let’s commit to intentionally developing ourselves and others so that we can lead well.
[1] Charan, R., Drotter, S., Noel, J. (2001).The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company. Jossey-Bass.
[2] The book uses “leadership” and “management” somewhat interchangeably. I distinguish between those two skillsets, although the Pipeline model applies well to both. The emphasis of my practice is leadership, so I choose to stick with that term where the authors sometimes choose “management”.
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