Developing
Your Skills as a Leader Within Your Company
By now you've
discovered that if you intend to drive your
company beyond its current plateau, you’ll have
to change the way you relate to your work.
You have doubtlessly concluded that this next
level requires you to let go of things like
hiring, product design, and day-to-day sales, or
the things you handled so well in the past, and
focus on your role as CEO.
Remember that the three stages to making the
transition from your former position to CEO
consist of understanding and focusing on your
highest value contribution to your company,
recognizing your position as a leader and owning
the job, and delegating everything else and
holding others accountable. This article will
focus on the second stage.
Recognizing Your Position as Leader and
Owning the Job
As a CEO, you are no longer the “head of
everything.” Instead, your job is to provide
leadership. The sooner you understand what this
means, the better. Being the leader involves
certain responsibilities that cannot be
delegated to anyone else under any
circumstances.
Much has been written about the qualities of
leadership, but leadership is not about
qualities. Qualities such as strength of
character or integrity are useful in leadership,
but leadership goes beyond qualities. Leadership
is also not about being a winning personality,
though that, too, can be useful in any endeavor.
The core responsibilities of leadership that
cannot be delegated include owning the vision
and knowing the strategy to realize the vision,
being able to communicate the vision to insiders
and outsiders, empowering others to act to
realize the vision, and developing new leaders.
The vision consists of the concept of the future
of the company. It is called a vision because
most people experience their mental
representations as images. When we think,
imagine, or conceive of what we want to create
in the future, we tend to visualize it. We
perceive how it is now, in the present, and
envision how we want it to be in the future.
A company’s vision might include being a
front-runner in the industry, generating a
certain revenue, serving a particular class of
customers, having multiple locations, being
located internationally, or discovering
breakthrough medical cures for humanity.
Basically, the vision of the company is its
desired future.
A vision that is powerfully held and shared by a
group energizes and inspires its members. It
gives them a goal or purpose; a destination, or
a place to go. Having a specific destination
draws people forward like iron filings to a
magnet. Vision is a vital catalyst. It
multiplies and enhances the efforts people put
into their work because they know what they are
working to create. Obviously, having a vision
also clarifies the resources needed and makes it
easier to set priorities.
The vision might have come from a brainstorming
session between three friends over a cup of
coffee. It could have been created at a strategy
seminar or a board meeting. It could have washed
over the founder of the company in the shower
one morning or occurred on the commute home one
evening.
The CEO/leader is the keeper, or “owner,” of the
vision. No one else in the company can play this
role but the CEO. As the CEO, you should embrace
this vision and make it yours. The vision should
be the animating principle that gives life to
your company. Your vision will most likely
encompass elements of product vision, company
vision, and industry vision.
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