Welcome to another Ask Katrina. The question today is:
“Katrina, what if I miss the need to change my leadership?”
When we step into the executive seat for the first time, we have missed in a lot of ways, the reality that there’s a growth curve in order for us to be successful.
Because we missed this cue, that event creates two cause-and-effect relationships.
The first is the awareness of growth in order to succeed. Once we realize we need to grow then we start doing the work to grow into our new roles.
Right, wrong, or indifferent, we feel the need to rectify the miss. We missed the cue so we need to fix it.
This is typically resolved by this “heroic” decision to “earn” the knowledge because we equate “earning” knowledge with earning the right to be in the role. (Listen to last week’s vlog to learn more about this.)
The second awareness point is regarding the changes around us.
Ultimately we start to question our ability to pick up on the cues such that we start to question if we will see the need to grow/shift/change in the future.
“What if changes happen around me? And because I missed the huge growth and learning curve when I stepped into this role, what if I miss the need to grow and change again?”
What if I miss the next signal to grow into the next phase?
Ready for the answer?
You’re not going to miss it.
I promise. You’re not going to miss the need to grow, change, pivot, shift, and adjust as an executive.
Fear of the Miss: The Two Mental Culprits
I want you to think about two things.
Number one, in all of your other roles, was there not some sort of signal, a discussion, or a period of collaboration and alignment that occurred within the organization prior to changes being made?
The answer is yes. I know this because this is how it works in larger organizations.
Any significant change will require a discussion, collaboration, and a re-alignment of the organization before the trigger is pulled, and changes have to be made.
It’s not going to be an overnight change that you are going to miss.
We stress over this possibility not just because we weren’t fully prepared to exec on day 1 of our new executive promotion. But there is a second reason for this as well.
The COVID hangover and the impact that COVID had on businesses and the industry and the economy.
We felt like there were these immediate, sudden, changes where everything had to shift.
We found ourselves asking, “How do I navigate it?”
We must understand that COVID was in and of itself, its own unique situation.
We know that COVID was the anomaly, not the norm.
And yet even COVID decisions and reactions didn’t happen overnight.
We were adjusting and pivoting and moving no doubt.
There were a lot of decisions that were made and discussions that were had to drive those pivots and adjustments.
While it may have felt like everything happened at once, if you step back and don’t look at the high-level view, you come down to the macro level, you’ll remember that there was a lot of conversation.
Now the difference is that you were probably a director or mid-level leader during COVID, versus where you sit now as an executive.
That means that information was coming down to you vs. you creating the decisions and messaging as you do now.
So while it may have felt like all of a sudden your work world changed a little bit, know that the executives were having conversations regularly.
Those conversations didn’t happen once for five minutes, they happened constantly and continuously.
You’re now part of that conversation team.
You’re going to have active dialogue, active communication, and active decision-making discussions, that are going to happen more than once to drive changes in your organization.
As the industry changes, as the economy changes, etc., you’re going to have enough awareness, discussion, and dialogue such that you’re naturally going to move and pivot yourself into those areas of need.
You’re going to continue to keep yourself in a place where you can add value, and it’s going to be so natural to you that it’s not going to be a surprise.
See the difference?
Eliminate the doubt and know that you’re going to pivot as necessary because your role inherently prepares you for it.
There’s going to be ample time and ample discussions to support you.
If you have questions or just simply want to talk through this with someone, send us an email at info@legendleaders.com and we will schedule a call together.
If you want to create a personalized plan to keep your eye on company, industry, and economic changes, learn about our 60-day program.