Welcome to my new blog, My Leadership Journey. I am going through a period of re-evaluating my leadership approach and I would like to share my journey with whoever is interested. This blog is primarily for me, so I will not be offended if it is not for you!
I am having the experience of joining a new organization in a leadership role, where in my last company I started as a front line employee and worked my way through various leadership roles. I am noticing that you really do get reset in your level of leadership when you don't have years of experience understanding the organization and building relationships. You really do start at square one again, needing to put your time in and build relationships. I know that you hear about leaders that parachute in for a turn around assignment, but that is just what it is "an assignment". When you are expected to execute a turn around in a short time frame you are exercising a lot of the positional authority to make things happen. Sure, you need to build relationships but this can't be how you get everything done. Thankfully I am not in this situation in my new organization, but it is humbling to understand that I have to work my way from the start again.
I am reading a book by John Maxwell on the 5 levels of leadership. In summary the levels are:
Regardless of your years of experience as a leader you start back at level 1 on the ladder. Given my sense of urgency, my goal has been to get to the 3rd level and start producing results. On the whole I have been pretty good at focusing on building relationships, but in some cases I have tried to gloss over this step and get to results. Without exception every time I try to jump to Level 3 without going through Level 2 I find it is an uphill value and I have to humble myself and put in the time to build the relationship.
Leadership is not a straight forward path, and as you grow and change you find yourself taking a step backward before you can go forward again.
Mark
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