The role of a leader is not to create followers, but to create more leaders. –Tom Peters
Many of my clients are entrepreneurs, who go on to be a corporate employee for a variety of reasons: company exit, failed start-up, or for more job security. As some of them navigate in their corporate roles they have one common career ailment that I see emerges as their leadership foible: not being able to translate their very hands-on style in the entrepreneurial world to being an effective leader/manager in the corporate world.
Let me explain:
Many of them are successful entrepreneurs and bring with them the expertise of being a leader in their field of work. They became a known leader in their field by translating their innate expertise in the technical area—and that includes those outside the field of technology—into their Subject Matter Expertise (SME). They achieve this feat by leveraging their innate talent in a specific domain to focus on solving highly challenging problems in their subject area that creates new value in the business world.
However, in so doing they apply their gifts or unique skills to solve everyday and non-trivial problems in their area of expertise without being conscious about them. They do it as a matter of “unconscious competence,” while their corporate team members, who report to them, remain “consciously incompetent.” The process by which leaders achieve their “unconscious competence” is now their own stock-in-trade, and over time, it becomes their leadership hallmark. Their team members, though, continue to struggle watching their leader in both awe and frustration, as they are not able to cross the Rubicon, despite being under their leader’s watch! In the process the once entrepreneurial dynamos fail to grow as corporate leaders/managers and quickly tank in their roles, often being passed over by “lesser” employees. They fall prey to their own inability to adapt when they ignore or forget the simple refrain: Leaders Create, Managers Scale.
Why is that?
The main reason for this interesting paradox and pattern is that these leaders fail to codify their achievements so that they become teachers and mentors to the new generation of leaders. These leaders often forget the situations that provided them the opportunities that helped them grow as leaders, and underestimate what it takes to translate that learning and achievements into a body of codified knowledge that others can use to fashion themselves in the mold of their leader—a’ la scale their leadership success. Understanding this process and then converting that insight into a template is no easy task. It requires openness, discipline, an exceptional ability to communicate, patience, and knowing how to build the next generation of leaders, with a sprinkling of great mentoring skills.
So, to those how feel that they are not able to translate their entrepreneurial success into a dynamite corporate career here is my antidote:
O. First acknowledge your gifts and become aware of what makes you unique in your role as a leader. If you want to do a simple exercise to increase your awareness of your uniqueness try answering these questions (patterned after the LA TED-X talk by Adam Leipzig):
What am I? (this is best answered—in my own case—by phrasing the response as “I am a career coach, who shows clients how to transform their career and life.)
Whom do I do this for?
Why do they come to me?
What do I give them that others cannot?
How do I measure my impact on their work/life?
Answering these, or similarly phrased, questions honestly will get you to the bottom of your unique capabilities that you must learn how to teach others, so that you now create the next generation of leaders.2Find out how you can convert all your learning and wisdom into a development process that will allow your team members to follow it, so that they can get on a path that will increase their leadership capacity.
- Delegate the work that you normally do to your team members so that they can show you how well their learning is and how good they are getting at what you did or do. Pick the best and spread the wisdom. This is the essence of being a mentor. As a manager focus on the work that ONLY you can do.
- Aggressively delegate the work and take on more management challenges (growing teams, scaling operations, opening new vistas) to create new value in your role as a leader. Only being a good manger will allow you to scale your leadership. Once again, leaders create and managers scale.
- Develop a process by which this learning template can be replicated up and down the organization so that there is always a new breed of leaders who can repeat the process endlessly.
Being a leader is easy. Being a good leader/manager is hard. Now you know how to get the hard stuff done and make everyone successful, including you!
Good luck!