What keeps otherwise smart leaders from achieving the next level of career success? What stops them from moving up the career ladder? What are the barriers? Marshall Goldsmith’s aptly titled book – What got you here, won’t get you there – describes some of those barriers.
Barriers to further career success
What stops intelligent, hard-working, and driven leaders from breaking through to the next level of career success? What keeps otherwise smart people from achieving the next level of career success?
Think about it for a moment. What answers did you come up with? When I ask this question to the leaders who participate in any of my leadership training programs, I get some answers.
- Fear – Fear of failure and fear of rejection have killed more dreams than any other single factor! When we are afraid, we don’t want to take chances. We avoid taking action. And that does not help in achieving further career success.
- Lack of focus – We live in a world filled with continuous distractions and interruptions. The choices we have are endless. This often overwhelms us. Without focusing on a few things we are great at, it is difficult to achieve significant results.
- Lack of time – Lack of time and lack of focus are closely related. When we get involved in too many things unrelated to our primary goals and focus areas, we suffer from a dual problem—lack of focus and lack of time.
- Inability to change – The world is changing at a frenetic pace. Technology, communication, artificial intelligence, and a confluence of many other factors are speeding up the frenetic pace of change. Unless we change and adapt, it is unlikely that we will achieve further success. Staying in the comfort zone and not wanting to change is more a recipe for career failure than career success in a fast-changing world!
Often, the skills to reach the next level of career success are different from the skills that brought us to the career ladder’s current rung. We tend to hang on to the skills and the approach that brought us the current level of success. Unfortunately, holding on to them and not changing is what holds us back from reaching the next level of success. What got you here won’t get you there!
The root cause that stops intelligent leaders from reaching the next level
What if I told you that all these answers are mere symptoms of a deeper root cause? What is the root cause that prevents leaders from achieving the next level of success? Well, the answer so obvious and in such plain sight that we often are blindsided by it and cannot see it! What is that answer? It is a success. Yes, that is right! When we achieve a certain level of success in life or leadership, we stop doing many of the things that made us successful in the first place. What got you here won’t get you there!
Read: Lessons for leaders: Henry Ford FAILURE story & bad leadership
The paradox of success – What got you here won’t get you there!
When we become successful, we become superstitious. We want to keep doing the things that made us successful in the past. In a fast-changing world, doing the same things doesn’t bode well.
We become a little more fearful and stop taking chances. What made us successful is exactly that – taking chances, trying things, failing, learning, and moving ahead. While climbing the ladder to success, the focus was essential. We get good at a few things. When we are successful, we have more choices, we have more time and more money – and often, it results in a lack of focus and dilution of efforts. Success often takes us away from the essential things that made us successful in the first place, and hence success becomes the reason for failing to get to the next level of career success and achievement.
What got you here won’t get you there! Won’t help you move up the career ladder?
Bill Gates rightly said – “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.”
To quote Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Marshall Goldsmith warns successful leaders in his bestselling book aptly titled – “What got you here, won’t get you there!”
Read: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There-Marshall Goldsmith-Book summary.
How to reach the next level of career success as an intelligent leader?
One of the best ways to break through to the next level of success as a leader is to work with a leadership coach.
The coach also helps the leader uncover limiting beliefs that hold the leader from reaching the next level of career success. A leadership coach helps the leader understand their strengths and weaknesses. The coach then helps the leader to leverage her strengths and improve weaknesses. Executive coaching (aka leadership coaching) is the best tool for behavior change. Leaders who support an executive coach have a better chance to move up the career ladder.
Read: How to get promoted and avoid mid-career crisis
NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching
That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth. It is based on a stakeholder centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents). It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.
Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching
Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs. We go to the leader and her team. And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.
Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different. One size fits all approach doesn’t work. Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.
Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.
The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.
Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short duration leadership program at any reputed B school.
Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.
Pay us only after we deliver results!: We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis. What does it mean? If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.
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