Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo.
On this episode, I want to talk about an interaction I had with a
person at one of the companies I consult for. They were kind of expressing
to me a frustration with one of their employees who was a great employee.
They do well. They they they get their job done, and they are
constantly applying for promotions that when when those jobs open up, even for things
that they are one percent not ready for, like you know, we're trying
to skip multiple levels in their organization, kind of just really kind of jumped
the ladder quickly. And the first time that this happened, the person expressed
to me that it was kind of cool to see that that level of ambition.
You know, they they're not used to seeing that from a lot of
people. Some people have to kind of be coaxed out of their shell to
do this, and they kind of liked this, but it's becoming frustrating because
this person feels like they're having a lot of conversations with their employee around making
sure that they don't actively start disengaging in their job and they don't lose that
ambition and that drive to succeed while also constantly being told no, no,
no, you can't get this job, you can't get this promotion. And
they reached out to me to, you know, wonder like what what do
you do? How do I prevent this from happening without losing the engagement I'm
getting from this employee who does really great work. It's a great conversation.
I think. I think this happens to a lot of people, maybe even
especially the earlier you are in your career and the less experience you have.
Yeah, now I think it's you know, ambition is great. You want
people that want for more. And I look at ambition it's like I take
the kind of the positive spin on it. It's like you want to learn,
you want to grow, you want to develop. I don't necessarily look
at ambition. It's like I just want the next title. Sure, sometimes
people fall into that trap of like they're just trying to get the next job,
to get the next job, to get the next job. They're only
looking at something like compensation, and again, like let's be keep it one
hundred, like compensation matters, money matters. People want to make more money,
Like I get all of that. But when I when I hear ambition,
I think somebody is really motivated and driven to do more. And so,
you know, I think it's it's it's it's really important. You you
know, you're gonna have when you have a balanced team, you're gonna have
some people that are just like happy with what they do. They're really kind
of like, you know, they feel good about the role that they have.
It works well for them, it works well for their lifestyle, it
works well for their passions, and you know, they're open to learn.
Maybe they don't want to go into the next job or a different job,
but that's going to happen, and you're gonna have those people on your team,
and you need that on a team. You need some stability in some
of those types of spaces. But when it comes to people having ambition,
I like to see it. But to your point, it requires a different
level of conversation. It requires more time and attention to give to them,
to provide perspective, to ask questions, to give analogies, to help them
to understand and talk about things that are going to help them to have them
ambition and take you know, take in what they are learning and what they're
kind of getting on their path of growth and not just thinking about the next
thing. Because you get hyper focus on that next thing, it can feel
like all you're getting is turned downs. All you're getting his nose instead of
taking the time and appreciating all that you're learning on the way. And then
all of a sudden, it's like you start to get yes is a lot
more often, and it starts to feel a lot better, and you start
to understand that the journey in this space, and like Simon Seneks has an
infinite game, like this idea that you're constantly looking to improve and to grow
and to develop, and that the jobs that you get these are just mile
markers on your way through your life. Yes you want the next job,
Yes you want that responsibility, Yes you want kind of the things that come
with that, but these are going to happen if you stay at that higher
level and you really think about what you're learning. Right. I like that
you use the example that the word you use was mile marker just now,
and I love that because but I'm thinking, when when I see employees react
this way or act this way, I think that it is possible that they're
just looking for you know, more compensation or more money, or or you
know another title, or you know. They're looking for those things. But
what's rooted in often is they're looking for validation. They're they're looking for some
type of way of being able to say I'm doing a good job. And
you think about mile markers, you know, if I'm if you're running a
marathon and someone and someone just took away all the mile markers, so it
was just I got to run twenty six point two miles and I don't even
know when I've hit mile one two three four. Oh my gosh. How
much harder would that be psychologically to get to that marathon than if there were
mile markers along the way. I don't know anybody who who would embark on
that, Like why why put yourself even through that without even knowing? Like
you could you could start to tell yourself I'm further along than I am from
a standpoint of like trying to psych yourself up, and then all of a
sudden you get you find out how far back you are and it becomes really
discouraging or you get discouraged thinking I'm so far away, why even try?
And you don't realize how far along you are. But neither of those scenarios
is good. But what is very common is for you to have an inaccurate
vision of where you actually are without those mile workers along the way. And
this is exactly the same thing. If you're you have employees who are looking
for these things. They want validation, and if they're not getting it from
you as a leader on the work that they're doing every day, or by
being rewarded with more responsibility or you know, bigger asks from you to kind
of stretch themselves or think outside the box, they're going to look for in
other ways, such as I want to get promoted, I want more money,
I want more responsibility officially, and those are important too, but the
appetite or the hunger for them, and how that can be tempered with kind
of patience and a realization that sometimes things move slowly, those are much easier
pills to swallow. If you're in a situation where your leader is giving you
that validation and that feedback, you know, on a on a much more
frequent basis, that doesn't necessarily have to come with, you know, more
responsibility or a different title or more money. Again, if you want to
stretch and you want to grow, then then you should be able to do
that, and your leadership should be able to validate that with more of that
for you. But if you're not doing that, then chances are the leadership
that you report to is not doing doing a great job. The other aspect
I want to, you know, kind of talk about when it comes to
this is if you as a leader are experiencing this. So if you want
to grow and develop and you're applying for things, or you feel like you're
stagnating, how can you do a better job at balancing these two things so
that you aren't viewed this way by your boss? Uh and instead, you
know, because because if you're a leader, you have a bigger responsibility to
this. It's not just an individual contributor who is you know, maybe need
some coaching up on the right way to go about these things. If you've
been in this business for a while and you are a leader of people,
it doesn't mean that you don't need validation anymore. It doesn't mean that you're
not trying to go for the next step in your career progression. But it
does also mean that you could fall into the same trap of the employee that
I'm talking about here, and your leaders might view this about you, and
so you know, it's important that you take steps actively to make sure that
this is not happening to you, that your leaders don't view this about you,
but that you're still being able to get the validation you need. Yeah,
and something to take into account. And I have this conversation quite often
to when you have people that are ambitious and looking to continue to grow,
is like, as you move in your career, what ends up happening is
those opportunities. The distance between opportunities becomes greater and greater and greater because there's
less and less jobs as you move up, have you have fewer jobs when
you go from an individual contributor to then like a leader of people, then
a leader of leaders, then a leader of leader of leaders. That like,
as this kind of happens and you progress, there are less jobs for
you to look at unless you want to go sideways, which can definitely happen
and happens for a lot of people. But as you kind of move up,
there's less of them. There's there's higher levels of competition because there's less
jobs and there's a more highly skilled candidate pool for those types of things.
So if all you're thinking about is just moving into the next job or the
next thing, and you're not taking the time to take in what you're learning
and how it's helping you to develop and become more efficient and more effective,
then you're you know, you're gonna be really disappointed, like you're going to
get stuck in those spaces, and and there can be times when you know,
it can feel like, man, I'm just not I'm not moving,
or I'm really like I feel I'm capable and confident to be able to do
the next level of role. But finding the joy in the role that you're
in, if you truly the essence of who you are, you enjoy leading
people, You enjoy the watching people develop, watching people grow, watch people
opportunity. If that's really what you say that you enjoy, then you can
find that joy in the roles that you have and take the time to work
through them. I also think that you know, I quote Malcolm Gladwell,
like the ten thousand hours, right, like that's that's such a thing.
And again, in a full time job, it's about five years. Right.
If you're gonna, if you're gonna truly you know, have mastery over
a job or a role or what that looks like. It's five years in
the same job. I'm not saying everybody has to have five years in the
job to master it or at least become proficient enough to take on the next
responsibility, but there is something about taking the time in a role to not
just have short term success, to not just have like success over the course
of a year or two, but to have the opportunity to influence peers,
to have the opportunity to solidify your leadership style, to have the opportunity to
see pretty much and experience anything that could possibly happen in the role that you
have, and to continue to build your network, gain perspective, and take
in additional mentors and leaders and partners in your career development. If you start
to look now at that five years, you start to see that, like
there's a lot that you can do in that space where you are continually growing
yourself, growing your brand, growing your influence, and these become imperative as
then you take the next step to take the next step, So like,
you know, this time that's needed is really really important if you're not just
looking to get the next job, but you want to be successful in that
job so that you can be successful in the next job. And so I
do think that, you know, again, it's really important that you have
ambition, but then you also have to have the patience and the perspective to
understand what you are learning and the things like journaling and taking you know,
in any type of additional courses or larger perspective. These are things that are
really important to fill that kind of fill that cop of learning and growing developing
if you're not seeing movement into a new title or new respect ononsibility right right,
the idea of mastery is is something that can't be expedited. It truly
just takes time. And you're right, like most jobs, you don't have
to spend five years in a role in order to master it. But if
you look at you know, just pick pick somebody who has been in the
same industry and go look at their LinkedIn profile and watch at the time difference
between different jobs, and you'll notice that it. You know, if they've
been in at the beginning of their career, the role they were in for
their very first role, it probably lasted one to two years. The next
role they were in probably lasted two to three years. The next role they
were in probably lasted four to five years. The next role they were in,
Like, each time you move up, you need to spend more time
in those roles in order to master them because the things that that role requires
typically expands over the previous role. You know, I think back to,
you know, one of the job that I had when I was going to
college, and I didn't apply for any promotions because all I wanted was a
job that worked well with my college schedule, and the number of times that
I had been in the role for three or four years while going to college,
where people who were either peers of mine or newer to the organization,
or even leaders of the organization would would have a have a problem with something.
They're trying to solve an issue, and they couldn't figure out why something
was doing something other a system or a way to solve a problem. And
I was able to very easily say, oh no, just do this and
this and this and then and it worked. And they would look at me
like, how did you know that? And the answer would almost always be
I saw it once before. It's been like a year or two. I've
never seen this issue before, beside this one time. But but I had
to struggle to solve it myself when it happened to me one or two or
three years ago. And when I figured it out, that information gets filed
away and you don't know if you'll ever need it again, but I'll tell
you when it. It feels really good. When you do need it and
you're able to do something for somebody else where, they were like, oh
my gosh, like this is how could you ever have known how to do
this. There's no way to expedite that. There's no way to put yourself
in situations that where that happens to you and you're able to learn from it.
You just have to do the job. And the more you do the
job, the more mundane it can feel. Because nine out of ten interactions
with customers, nine out of ten problems with the things the systems that you
have to use. Those are things that you will see and be able to
become very good at within six months or a year or eighteen months, and
then all of a sudden, it'll feel like this just feels like the same
thing all the time. But then every once in a while something comes up
that is different. And when that happens, it should not be viewed at
as a frustration. It should be viewed at as a moment where you can
think, Okay, if this is happening to me, there's no way I'm
the only person this has ever happened to. So whatever comes of this interaction
right now, there needs to be a learning taken from this, because that's
what gets filed away towards that mastery of the role. Because if you've ever
had somebody come to you to say how how do I solve this and you
can very quickly say, oh, you just do this and this and this,
and they look at you like you like you're a magician, that's because
you did it at one point, and you file that information away, and
that that's what mastery looks like. If you and and you may not have
the answer, maybe it's somebody else that has it, and you don't have
to have all the answers. It's not about having all the answers. It's
about validating that you've been in a role long enough to where it becomes second
nature, not to the point of doing it yourself, but to the point
of explaining it to others. And if you can do that, well,
then it means that you've mastered that role. That's when it is time to
start really thinking about, Okay, how do I move on to the next
step? If you if you've not gotten to that point yet, and and
again it might not take five years, but it's not five months either,
you know, So really think about what you're doing as far as when you're
when you're applying for you know, promotions, when you're applying for more things,
the formality around that process, those are the those are the times that
need to be kind of pushed out further. The informal growth and learning that
occurs from just reaching out to your leader and saying I want more. I
want to get promoted now, but I want more that Those are the things
that you should continually strive to do. And if you're a leader and your
employees are reaching out to you to say I want more, it doesn't necessarily
mean that they want a promotion. It means they want something. And if
in the lack of you giving that to them from additional job responsibilities or thinking
outside of the boxes us how they solve problems, if you're not giving that
to them, they will manifest that in you know, asking for promotions,
asking for more money because they need that validation somewhere absolutely, and with that
it brings us to this episodes one minute Hack. But first a few words
from our sponsors. All right, for this episode one minute Hackers, I
want you to do. I want you to get a list of your employees
and I want you to talk to each one individually and ask them what their
goal is from a career standpoint for the short term and for the long term.
You need to know these like the back of your hand, so that
the conversations you have with your people on a weekly or monthly basis are in
spirit of those goals. If you can articulate what needs to be done in
order to get to those goals, then they'll be more likely to feel like
they're on the right track and less likely to be kind of you know,
uh, you know, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks,
hoping to kind of get to that next role. Be very very clear with
what is needed to get there. Talk about the things they're doing well and
the things they need to work on, the things they need to get better
at, and the things that they do find right now, but they will
need to do much better in order to go for whatever that next promotion or
that next milestone is every time you talk to them, see if that information
has changed at all, Because I mature responsibility as a leader to make sure
that the moment that does change for a person, you can articulate to them,
Okay, here's what you gotta do. You want, you want the
next step, You got it, Here's what you need to get there.
If you can't do that, you'll have employees that kind of like are wondering
what to do next, and they'll start, you know, probably going down
the wrong path as opposed to you know, keeping it on the straight and
narrow to get there as quickly as possible. Yeah, I think it's a
great woe in a hack And I think that those you know, these conversations
are so important to your point, like understanding where people or at what they're
thinking, where they want to go, what they want to do, and
then and then making sure that they're aware, Like that's part of your role
as the leaders to help them get there. Like hey, like I'm in
on this too, Like this is why I'm asking if you want to be
a leader, if you want to take on a new role, like I
absolutely want that for you, and you have my commitment to make sure that
we have conversations, that we have expectations, that we that we make commitments
together, that we follow up, that we hold each other accountable, like
that's the work that we have to do to help you get there. And
then continuing to have those conversations are really, really, really important. I'll
never forget a time when I had a lot of people apply for a role
that was open and I had just gotten to the team, and I wanted
to sit down and talk with every one of them, and so I had
every single conversation we made a decision, but as a part of that conversation,
I said, look, here's my commitment. Regardless of the outcome,
whatever decision we're going to make, we're going to have follow up time together.
And I want to sit down and talk to you about next steps.
Whether if you get the job then it would be next steps and like the
plan that we have and what you need to work on. If you don't,
we'll have next ups on the plane that you're going to have because you
want to have this role. And so we you know, we did that.
We sat down. I sat down with all of them. I asked
for what's the work they want to do, What are their commitments, what
are they going to focus on, what's the impact they want to have?
Everybody had answers, and then lo and behold, that same job opened up
again about four and a half months later, right and what ended up happening
was about half of those people did not even apply for the job. That's
a good thing. That's a clarity that they didn't have before. Those same
people they didn't apply have applied for other jobs and got them and have moved
on their careers. But it was an eye opening moment of clarity for them
to say, like, look, if you're serious about moving moving up,
if you're serious bout getting these jobs, you also have to be serious about
showing up every day and doing the work. And if you're going to make
commitments and say these are the things I'm going to go do to get ready,
you never know when these opportunities will open up and exist. And so,
you know, for for many of them, it was like, oh,
like okay, like you know, I don't have these examples to share.
Now I didn't do the work that I said I was going to go
do, so now I need to focus on that. So, like I
think it's such an important thing to have those conversations, to be that clear
and to be that involved in those that have a lot of ambition. Right,
there's a there's an adage that we've heard. I forget who said it
first, but I've heard it so many times in my career. It's clarity
is kindness, and if you can be clear with individuals. It's this,
you know, another way of saying it is hard truths over comforting lies.
It doesn't mean be a jerk. Hard truth don't mean, you know,
slap somebody upside the head with the truth. It means it means make sure
that you are being clear with a person on what is needed to get where
they want to go. Because in your example about all the people that applied,
it wasn't that they said they were going to do these things. They
didn't do them. It's that they didn't ever say they were going to do
anything. They just didn't know they had to do that. They thought that
they were qualified for this role simply because it was open. They thought it
was a role where you could say, all right, give me this responsibility
and then I will show you that I can do it. In a lot
of organizations, promotions happened the exact opposite way. It's let me show you
that I can do the role already for six months or a year informally,
and now you know that when you put me in the role formally, you
know that I'll hit the ground running because I've been doing a lot of that
role already. You know, you know in a lot of organizations, that's
how it works. It doesn't. It doesn't mean that you're you know,
being asked to do work that you're not being paid to do. It means
that you are saying, hey, I want this, and I want I
want to show you that you are not taking a chance on me, that
you can be confident in this decision. And if that's what you want as
a person, then there should be no problem in making that happen and doing
that provided you have the leadership that validates that with clarity on what is needed
and doesn't just kind of like allow you to think that you're further along than
you are. That feedback has to be constant and that and that clarity is
in fact kindness, absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end
of this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris,
and we'll talk to you all next time.