Becoming an effective executive means changing your approach to work.
Early in your career, your job is to work hard to deliver results on the tasks you are given. You get promoted and rewarded for your individual expertise, your mastery of the details, and your ability to solve problems. And you will keep advancing in your career with those strengths…but succeeding as an executive requires a different approach.
Executives don’t do the work themselves – they coach their team to deliver the work they once did.
Executives can no longer be the experts, because they can’t track all the details of multiple projects – they crisply communicate the results they need, and trust the team to make the detailed decisions to get those results.
Executives focus on setting direction and creating alignment. They communicate expectations to the team, across to their peers, and up to their stakeholders, so that their team’s hard work will not be wasted by working on the wrong things that aren’t delivering value the organization.
Executives set the tone for their team with their presence. If they are in a bad mood, it spreads. If they show up with confident enthusiasm, it spreads.
I teach a Maven course on How to Become a More Effective Executive where I share how to apply these mindsets to your career, with a new cohort starting next week.
This course is for you if you feel like you are stuck and not getting the opportunities for the next level role you want, or if you are working so hard that you don’t see how you can take on more. You will learn how the habits and mindsets that brought you success thus far in your career are now holding you back, and we will design experiments together to explore new possibilities for how you might show up at work.
Click on the link in the comments to learn more about the course and sign up. I’m happy to answer any questions you have!
P.S. While I learned many of these mindsets by working with top Google executives for six years as the Search Ads Chief of Staff, they are applicable in any situation. I have coached managers and executives at early-stage startups as well as directors and VPs at big tech companies. The fall cohort included managers at bigger companies, entrepreneurs, management consultants, and non-profit engineering leaders – they all found value from the content and you will too!