“What did you do to get promoted?” she asked, hoping for a leadership gem. “I got lucky” I said, knowing it wasn’t the whole answer.
I had just been sharing about the period of my life where I went from being a courier to a senior manager in New Zealand’s largest courier company over a five-year period.
To be honest ‘luck’ played its part. I joined when the company was growing exponentially and promotions created spaces. But luck alone doesn’t account for it. There were a bunch of other people who didn’t get promoted.
I believe I was promoted because I locked on to an axiom early on in my career;
Do all of my job and half of my boss’s
Doing ‘all of my job’ stopped by boss having to jump in and do it for me. [Note: If your boss is doing some of your job, fix that first. Not cool!]
Doing ‘half of my boss’s job’ meant I was learning outside my existing roles and helping my boss. When opportunity popped up, I was a logical choice.
Trying to do one and a half jobs, doesn’t mean I worked 1 1/2 times harder. It is hard work, but it also taught me to lead my teams better and focus on what was important.
“Do all of my job and half of my boss’s job,” clearly won’t work in every setting. But maybe it’s worth a try.
∴
Nowadays being a CEO/Founder it’s a lot harder to do my boss’s job, but my focus remains largely the same. I need to ‘Do my job and half of my future job.’
If I want to the organisations I lead to have a global impact, the leader I am today is not sufficient for the future.
It’s election year. This means you will hear two phrases in the media over the next 6 months. They are the terms “flip-flop” and “U-turn”.