Look online at any of the thousands of articles available on the challenges of networking for a job, and you’ll find that 100% of them give advice on how relatively junior professionals can network “up.”

But surprisingly little advice is available for senior executives, who experience a different but equally challenging set of networking hurdles. That’s a problem, because knowing how to reap networking’s full benefits is crucial for people at the top of the pyramid, especially a time when CEO turnover is at a record high.

We have decades of experience working with and studying senior executives who are making career changes. In this article, we’ll identify six common hurdles that that they often struggle with when it comes to career networking, and we’ll provide some guidance on how to get over them.

1) Reluctance to ask for help

Networking for a next role means asking for help. Research in social psychology shows that people with high status are more apt to feel pressure to maintain an image of strength and competence and to value self-reliance, all of which can make them reluctant to seek assistance. They fear rejection and worry that asking for help might expose perceived weaknesses, potentially undermining their status, position, or reputation. This is ego-driven reluctance, and we see it frequently. As one of Herminia’s students put it, “I give help — I don’t ask for it.”

One way around this tendency, which is a natural one, is to start your networking process by reaching out to lower-risk (and lower-yield) contacts — ideally, executives who you know well, who have done their own networking, and who can share not only how they approached others for help but also what they got out of asking for it.

You can probably do this with more people than you realize: As the Stanford social psychologist Xuan Zhao has found, people regularly underestimate others’ willingness to help, because they don’t realize how happy it makes those others to do so. Low-risk warm-ups and rehearsal practice — what Spish calls “hearing the dreaded words come out of your mouth” — will help you fine-tune your message, defuse your emotions, and experience success. And having a few positive experiences under your belt will make your later, more-challenging calls and emails easier.

2)  Prioritizing secrecy

The more senior an executive, the more likely they are to want secrecy, especially if they’ve been laid off. One of Spish’s clients, for example, asked: “How do I go out into the market without letting the market know that I’m looking? I’d like to reach out to people, but I don’t want them to know that I’m interested in looking.”

Such worries limit your exposure to others, which is a problem in its own right. But they also force you to be secretive as you work on networking and career change — a process, according to Herminia’s research, that often takes far longer than people expect. That burden of secrecy, carried for a long time, can exact a significant psychological toll.

Limiting your exposure to others can be especially pernicious when it keeps you from stepping back and exploring broadly what you would really like to do next. And try as you might, you won’t fool people by obfuscating. At senior levels, it’s a small world: The people you talk to can figure out what you’re up to, perhaps by making a call to a source in their own network, or perhaps just by doing a search online. If you do succeed in concealing your story, it’s likely to tax your nerves and cost you a lot of energy to get the same result that just speaking honestly and directly would have gotten you. With rare exceptions, honesty is the best policy.

3)  Unrealistic expectations

Because they’re reluctant to ask for help and don’t want word to get out that they are in the market for a new role, senior executives typically want to get their networking done fast. Or they simply assume that because they’re senior, the process won’t take very long. Unfortunately, the more senior you are, the more time you’re likely to need to find and align on the right fit. In Spish’s experience, the shortest possible search is about three months, and the longer ones can take as much as 18 months.

Not only does effective networking take a long time, it also involves a great deal of work, stamina, efficiency, and patience. There are three primary reasons for this.

First, as both of us have found, only a small percentage of people looking for their next role know exactly which handful of companies they’d like to work for. Because they don’t know enough about the market or what they really want to be able to come up with a targeted search, they have to start with research and very general exploratory networking. That all takes time.

Second, what you want and are best suited for may not actually be available to you. Both of us have seen highly qualified and experienced people take an excruciatingly long time to find their next role. One executive that Herminia recently observed thought, given his past experience, that he’d be an ideal candidate for the audit committee of a big corporate board, but as the selection criteria shifted to include a greater diversity of professional profiles, he found himself waiting to get a nod.

Third, most companies today have elaborate, time-consuming, and unpredictable vetting processes, which can often add months at the tail end of the hiring process.

In the senior-executive job market, it helps to recognize that in the messy meeting of supply and demand you have surprisingly little control. A great proactive tactic that can help you compensate for that as you do your networking is to fill your calendar with stimulating, parallel activities (community work, pro-bono consulting, short-term advising, adjunct teaching) in which you can have a more immediate impact and receive a more gratifying response. This compensates for the tedium, if not burden, of asking and waiting for help. It also provides battered egos with positive, if provisional, identities.

4) Not wanting to put in the work

Executives who are used to having things done for them often balk at devoting time to tedious work that they can’t delegate. But to network successfully, you need to treat the task as fully worth your time and energy — and you need to be methodical and organized about it.

To help with that, Spish has developed a networking process that consists of identifying and then contacting three kinds of contacts: information givers, door openers, and decision makers. Information givers are people who can tell you about the market, companies, and hiring trends; they can help you get smart and get over your fear of networking. Door openers are typically people you’ve worked with in the past. They’re responsive, and because they know you and your work style, they’re willing to vouch for you and can introduce you to the decision makers.

If you’d like to use this process, the best way to start is by first making a list of all your employers, clients, and customers, and then by writing down the names of the people you met in those roles. You might find you easily come up with 100 names.

No matter what approach you use to organizing, targeting, and segmenting your search, you’ll always need to start by generating a long list of people you’ve worked with and then methodically following a system for reaching out to them. Because it’s a learning process, you can’t plan it all out in advance; you’re better off adopting a “snowball” approach” in which you ask each contact who else you should meet. This is especially true if you’re looking in markets that are unfamiliar to you. In that case, you’ll need to network in what Spish calls “the valleys below the clouds.” There are lots of opportunities in these valleys, but they unfamiliar and require exploration. If you don’t explore them, you limit your options and can hurt your career growth.

It’s a high-cost, high-yield game, but it pays off. Spish has found that once you’ve reached out to 50 or more contacts on your list, the network will start to reach out to you, at which point you can let the process carry you forward.

5) Overly focusing on “the narrative”

Once you’ve made a contact, there is the important matter of what to say. All too often, executives spend the bulk of a networking conversation in small talk about shared contacts or experiences without getting to the point (that they need a new job) until the very end of the conversation. This is especially common when they feel they need to conceal the reality of what’s going on — that they don’t get along with their boss, say, or that they’ve been fired. When that happens, they often enter into the conversation already on the defensive, they speak evasively, and they devote their energy to protecting their public image instead of learning all they can. The end result is that they waste a lot of their — and their contacts’ — time.

Another unproductive tack is to spend 80% of your time trying to explain why you’re unhappy, or leaving, or got fired — a negative approach that anchors your conversation in the past when it should be positive and focused on the future. You’re much better off spending 20% of your allotted time explaining your situation and focusing the remaining 80% on what you’re looking for instead.

The best practice in networking conversations is to be direct, succinct, and positive. People want to know why you’re calling them and what you want from them, and the more senior they are, the more likely they’ll be to expect a brief, executive summary of this sort: “This is why I’m calling you. This is what I want from you. I hope that there’s enough in these two points for us to have a 10-minute conversation.”

6)  Failing to tailor your story

Executives looking to make a transition often spend inordinate amounts of time perfecting a single script — the fabled “elevator pitch” about their “core skills and abilities.” They do this assuming that this script will make them universally relevant, but almost invariably what they end up with just isn’t satisfactorily tailored to the needs of the receiver.

We’ve seen a lot of executives try to approach networking the way they would work with head-hunters: They write a generic email, just changing the name and one or two sentences, attach their resume, and send it out to a bunch of people. Likewise, many walk into a meeting and robotically state their one-minute pitch even if it doesn’t fit the unique circumstances and requirements of the person who’s listening.

That just doesn’t work. Yes, figuring out your core storyline (Who am I, and why am I here?) is important. But you can’t assume that you’re going to be saying the same thing about yourself to every person you meet. Nor can you assume that every listener is capable of translating your pitch into their own business context.

In the end, here’s what you need to remember: It’s not about you. If you hope to clinch a role for which you’re truly well suited, you need to figure out how to make the switch from talking about yourself to talking knowledgeably about the company and its problems — and then to articulating how well equipped you are to solve those problems. As Spish has found, that’s how you create opportunities for yourself: A large percentage of the most senior executives he’s coached have ended up moving into roles that didn’t even exist before they had their conversation.

When you’re a senior executive, networking is a delicate, complex, and time-consuming task. Ego and impatience, left unchecked, will sabotage your success. The best approach is to think of networking as an opportunity not just to scout out your next role but also to strengthen or deepen relationships you already have — and, even better, to add new relationships that will help you be a better professional in your new job and the others that come after it.

This content was originally published here.

The post The Challenges of Networking as an Executive appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Career coaches provide a range of services, from helping you figure out what you want to do to exploring opportunities for professional growth to supporting you through the ups and downs of looking for a new job. Engaging with a career coach requires an investment of time and money, so it’s important to do your due diligence to determine if working with one will help you accomplish your goals and if so, which coach might be the right fit for you. Here are five reasons you might consider hiring a career coach and five tips on how to choose one.

When do you need a career coach?

You don’t know what you want to do next.

You’re aimlessly searching LinkedIn, and every job feels like a job you can do, but you aren’t sure what you actually want to do. When family or friends try to help you narrow down your choices, their suggestions may be informed by what they’ve seen you do in the past or what’s the “easiest” career or job to move into — not necessarily what resonates with you. If you don’t know which career or job will bring you fulfillment, a coach can help you consider possibilities that might be a departure from your past experience or that you hadn’t considered.

You aren’t sure how to make your resume substantive — and also simple.

Resumes need to showcase the right skills and capabilities to do the job at the level being advertised. A career coach can help you position your skills in the context of a potential role — especially transferable ones that don’t match up exactly with what’s in the job description. Not all accomplishments, no matter how great, belong on a resume. A career coach can help you determine what experience is relevant to the job you’re applying for and simplify your resume and LinkedIn profile with one message that will position you to attract recruiters’ attention.

You aren’t over your ex — job, that is.

Maybe you have or had a job that made you angry, sad, or anxious, and you’re struggling to move on from that horrific experience. Too many people think the next job will make that negativity go away, but it’s not that simple.

For example, after a successful, decade-long career, a colleague of mine made a few bad career moves, all ending with her departing multiple companies, not always by her choice. Her confidence in being able to make good career decisions was shattered. A career coach helped her move past those repeated unpleasant experiences and review her assumptions about herself, which were not only impacting her job search but also her daily motivation and family life. She’s now happily employed and regaining her confidence under an amazing manager.

You’ve been interviewing but haven’t landed the job.

If you tend not to move to the next round of interviews after the initial recruiter screen, you make it to the next round but don’t make it past the hiring manager, or you continually come in second place at the end of the hiring process, you may need help connecting your experience to each job. A career coach can help you answer tricky questions like, “You haven’t actually done [fill in the blank] before?”, refine your answers to other common interview questions, polish your executive presence, and practice with you so you feel comfortable.

You’re not moving up in your career.

Career coaches aren’t just there to help you find a new job. Many coaches can help you understand why you aren’t advancing at your current company. Coaches can administer a 360 review or decode your performance feedback to uncover behaviors you need to adjust for continued career growth.

If you decide you need a career coach, there are five things to consider when choosing the right one for you.

How to hire a career coach

Know what type of professional you need to hire.

Career coaches help clients come to their own resonant decisions about how to “maximize their personal and professional potential,” per the International Coaching Federation. In other words, they’re there to help you figure out what you want to do and understand assumptions you’re making about yourself that are preventing you from advancing in your professional goals.

Career coaches may also provide some consulting services to achieve your goals, such as drafting your resume and helping you sharpen your interviewing skills. Importantly, career coaches should never promise they will get you a job or help you achieve a certain salary, because you hold the key to your success.

If the issues you’re trying to address extend beyond just your career, you may want to start by engaging a therapist, who can help you explore your past trauma and understand its impacts on all areas of your life, including your career.

Know which services you need and be open to services you don’t know you need.

Many people engage coaches with the goal of having a well-designed resume, thinking that’s enough to get them in the door. But no matter how well formatted, your resume won’t stand out to recruiters unless it frames your experience through the lens of the new role.

Go into your coaching relationship with an idea of what you think you need from them, but be open to their guidance about what other measures may make you more successful — for example, a values exercise to make sure you’ll be fulfilled in a new job, coaching on assumptions about your capabilities or career progression, and executive presence coaching for interviews. That said, don’t feel pressured to take assessments for additional costs or hire a coach for any area you feel confident you can own yourself.

Try sample sessions with at least three coaches to find the right one for you.

Most coaches offer free sample sessions, which will give you a clear understanding of what type of coach and coaching style work best for you. You may want a coach who incorporates specialty techniques like somatic coaching or meditative coaching, or if you have personal issues you need to resolve while also searching for a new job or career, you may want a coach who’s versatile enough to offer life coaching as well.

If you aren’t sure what you want, ask questions like: What was your greatest success in coaching? Why is your coaching better than other coaches’? Assess whether the coach “gets you” and your unique situation as they describe how they would add value to your career growth or trajectory.

Research coaches’ training, certifications, and experience.

Career coaches aren’t licensed, so anyone can call themselves one. That said, there are numerous coaching certification programs. Ask the prospective coach where they were certified, then do some research to make sure they had to go through an extensive training program and didn’t just pay for the certification. The gold standard of certifications is the International Coaching Federation certification. Having this certification means the coach is upholding a coaching code of ethics and engages in continuing education to recertify every three years. Also, determine if there’s other experience, such as HR, recruiting, entrepreneurship, or a background in your industry, that would be beneficial for your unique needs.

Consider cost, cadence, and contact.

Coaching fees are not regulated. Career coaches could charge as little as $5 when in training to more than $1,000 per session. Sessions range from 30 minutes to one hour. Some coaches charge extra for resume revisions, whereas others include that in the overall price. Understand exactly what you’re receiving for the cost. Also, know how often you’ll meet either in person or via telephone or video and whether the coach will answer questions outside of scheduled sessions.

Once you’ve gathered all this information, you can determine if career coaching and a specific coach is right for you. But before deciding to hire a coach, make sure you’re ready and willing to put in the work, because only you can achieve your goals.

This content was originally published here.

The post Do You Need a Career Coach? appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

If there’s any beauty that’s come from this pandemic, it’s that we’re reorganizing our priorities to honor what really matters to us. And for many, “career” is top of the reboot list. But letting go of what we always thought we could count on, like a five-year plan, can be painful and leave us feeling like we’re floundering.

Having a plan is one of the best stress-reduction strategies out there. As humans, we crave feeling like we’re in control and that we have certainty. In fact, research shows that a sense of control helps us stave off symptoms of depression and anxiety and can even decrease mortality risk. And the more we crave control, it turns out, the higher achieving we tend to be.

Just because we no longer have the illusion of knowing what our long-term future holds doesn’t mean we can’t still benefit from the stress-reduction — and achievement-enhancing — results of planning. It all comes down to how we look at time and goals.

If you want to thrive and be part of the meaningful change, adaptability is the key ingredient. But I don’t mean to just go with the flow and take life as it comes to you. This new brand of adaptability channels our desire to make a strategic plan, while building in planned checkpoints for course correction as new information arises and circumstances shift. It’s called micro-planning.

Micro-planning is simple. It takes a larger vision and breaks it down into yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily check-in practices to plan and adjust as necessary. We get some of the same stabilizing effects that a five-year plan may have given us but with shorter chunks of planning that make more sense in our current economic and cultural context.

Micro-planning is based on biomimicry, “a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design problems — and find hope along the way.” Prolonged stress, like the kind experienced during a global pandemic of unknown length, can cause a significant decrease in our ability to function optimally, especially when it comes to our cognitive abilities (like our brain handling high-order tasks or our ability to make decisions based on our goals instead of based on our habits). Micro-planning allows us to relieve this stress without the seduction of thinking, however erroneously, that we have control over what is going to happen in the next one, three, five, or more years of our lives.

There are six elements of micro-planning:

1. Purpose: Identify your compelling purpose that allows flexibility in terms of how it will come to pass. So many people are in a reboot phase when it comes to their careers. New directions can feel risky, but when we look back at our career history, we often find a thread that connects what all of our different roles have had in common. That thread is a great place to start when it comes to identifying your compelling purpose. For example, my purpose is to help leaders become more connected to sustainable sources of personal power so we can all make our highest contribution to humanity and the planet.

While how I implement this purpose may change as circumstances change around me, the purpose itself remains the same. If you aren’t clear on your purpose, do a quick exercise: Jot down the most fulfilling career experiences you’ve had to date. Notice what commonalities they have. Those are the ingredients of your purpose.

2. The Year: Make a plan for the year that aligns with your purpose, based on the best information you have available to you. Reflect on the previous year and what worked (or didn’t work) and take into account past lessons you’ve learned. Identify one to three areas of growth that you want to focus on. I don’t recommend trying more than three; a larger overhaul often fails because, when we put too much on our plate, we end up overwhelmed and not achieving the results we want. Your yearlong plan could include a job search, pursuing growth opportunities in the career you currently have, meeting and exceeding your KPIs, laying the groundwork for starting your own business, or whatever else makes sense for the current moment you’re in.

3. Quarters: At the beginning of each quarter, reassess what you’re working on and how you’re working by asking yourself powerful reflection and planning questions, such as: What themes emerged this past quarter? What worked, and what didn’t? What did I learn? How can I apply what I learned in the next quarter? What needs to shift in my plan based on new information and circumstances?

Based on the answers to these questions, set goals for the next quarter, being careful to choose no more than five per quarter. (The fewer the better; the fewer things you do with more focus and attention, the better results you’ll get.) For example, you might notice that a theme that emerged over the previous quarter was that you weren’t recognized for your ideas at work. After reflection, you realize you weren’t advocating enough for them.

You may then shift your plan for the next quarter and set a goal to share one new idea with your department every month and that when you do so, you also share very clearly how it will positively impact results for your department. You might also decide to read two books on increasing your influence as a leader to improve in this area.

4. Months: Each month, take your goals for the quarter and assess where you stand with them. For any active goals, break them into specific projects and then break each project down into phases. Every project requires four distinct phases to get it off the ground and achieve the results we want: planning and initiation, shipping/launching/making it visible, completion and integration, and rest and reflection.

For example, if your project is to “search for a new job,” the “plan and initiate” phase would be updating your resume, tapping into your network for potential opportunities, and searching for openings. The next phase, “making it visible,” would be applying for jobs, showing up for interviews, and following up after. The “complete and integrate” phase would be the onboarding phase once you receive your new job offer. Finally, the “rest and reflect” phase would be allowing yourself to exhale and celebrate, knowing that a new cycle has begun — and you have accomplished your goal.

5. Weeks: At the start of each week, make a weekly to-do list — rather than a daily one that’s a mile long and leaves you feeling defeated when you shut down for the day. This weekly plan allows you to have a broader view of what’s ahead and gives you more flexibility to plan than your average to-do list. But don’t just think about work tasks. Prioritize movement, sleep, time outside, hydration, and healthy food, too, as you look ahead in your week. Optimizing your physical energy make you significantly more effective at executing your plans than buying into the common, yet inaccurate, belief that our best work comes exclusively from our intellect.

6. Days: Finally, track your energy on a daily basis. Gathering data about yourself and your physical, mental, and emotional energy at the end of the day can give you powerful information as to how to optimize your workflow. Keep a journal by your bedside and jot down how you felt emotionally, mentally, and physically. Note what you worked on, how it went (what went well, what didn’t, and what you learned), and what you’re grateful for. This five-minute practice allows you to incrementally adjust the way you show up at work and in your life so you can approach your weekly, quarterly, and annual planning more mindfully. Using this data collection practice to make micro-adjustments to the way you work and your goals also gives you a tremendous sense of control, which has been proven to decrease the amount of time it takes to get tasks done.

The world is changing dramatically all around us, and we need to change with it. Clinging to a long-term strategy like the five-year plan isn’t going to work anymore. But letting go of our need and desire to know what the future holds does not mean a freefall into anxious indolence. By breaking down our planning processes into smaller chunks, we begin to check in more frequently and adapt more naturally. The five-year plan may be dead, but our capacity for doing our most impactful work and live into the goals that we set for ourselves is very much alive.

The post How to Plan Your Life When the Future Is Foggy at Best appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

The good news is that these changes don’t happen overnight. Chances are you’ll see the writing on the wall. You can most likely predict whether your job is at risk due to changes in the market. If you anticipate that your career path may become a dead-end, what can you do to prepare?

If you hold a senior position, there’s probably a lot you can do to encourage your firm to adapt, assuming you’re willing to engage in a little destruction of your own. If you’re further down in the hierarchy and lack the influence needed to shape company strategy, there may be less you can do. Either way, it’s important to future-proof your career by carefully assessing your skills and how they might apply elsewhere.

Focus on transferable skills.

The safest path involves making a serious evaluation of your skills. Many people are good at describing the specific tasks they do and their experience with particular processes and skills. That is why people list their job titles, describe a project they were on, and then list apps or certifications on their resumes. But your job description is only a rough guide to what makes you succeed at work.

What are you really capable of doing? Can you bring people together to work on a project toward a common goal? Are you good at taking abstract problem statements and turning them into a set of actions that can be carried out? Are you skilled at facilitating tough conversations and resolving conflicts among your colleagues? Some of these skills may relate to your current role, but others might be things you do routinely without getting credit for in the yearly performance evaluation.

Make a list of those more abstract capabilities; they are the strengths you want to build on, and they might point toward the next step in your career.

Identifying your true capacities might seem an obvious task, but many find it difficult. In my role at UT Austin, I’ve talked with many PhD students over the years who wanted to go into industry but couldn’t articulate what transferrable skills they had picked up during their years of study. Similarly, advocates for military veterans have pointed out that as soldiers transition into the civilian workforce, they struggle to translate what they have done in the military into statements of what they can bring to a firm.

Once you know what those skills are, you can start to explore where they apply, perhaps by going to job fairs or other career events and engaging with recruiters from other industries. Get a sense of the job titles that could make sense for you in an unfamiliar area. Learn the jargon that field uses to describe them. You might need to learn a few new apps or processes to be a viable candidate, but knowing what you bring to the table will help you present yourself as a worthwhile applicant and get an interview.

Innovate from within.

If you’re a little higher in your organization’s hierarchy and you have some entrepreneurial spirit, you might adopt a different mindset. Instead of focusing on where you might go next, you could think about how your company could evolve. Almost every sector of agricultural, product, and service industries is going to change in the next 20 years. Even university education, where I work (which in many ways hasn’t substantially changed its methods in 500 years) is likely to see significant disruption in the next decade or two.

In other words: If you assume that your job is going to get eaten by change, perhaps you should be the one doing the eating.

The classic example of a company that was unwilling to eat itself is Kodak. Despite being the developer of digital imaging technology, it had concerns about pursuing the technology for fear of cutting into sales of photographic film. It was right about the implications of digital imaging technology for its core business but wrong not to take the lead in bringing that technology to market.

In contrast, companies such as Netflix kept an eye on factors that could make their businesses obsolete from the start. Netflix recognized that the video rental business, and in particular the behemoth Blockbuster, was saddled with the huge costs of maintaining brick-and-mortar locations and that a less-expensive model, using centralized warehouses and an online interface, was feasible. It also quickly recognized that it was essentially sending computer files via a very low bandwidth connection (the US Postal Service) and shifted to a streaming model. Then it recognized that streaming other people’s content would not be sufficient to maintain subscribers and began producing and acquiring original shows.

If you have some influence over your organization and are willing to take a risk, think about how you could capitalize on the next trends in your industry before they capsize your company. This is no small endeavor. A few key questions can help you start.

These questions will focus you on the things that other companies could most easily do to make your industry obsolete. And by examining ways to steal your own market share, you are changing the typical dynamic. Most companies ask how they can steal market share from competitors, which leads them to continue playing the same game but trying to do so more efficiently. When you ask how you can steal your own market share, you have to focus on playing the game in a completely different way.

Your industry, like all industries, will ultimately undergo radical change. Instead of lamenting the changes that are coming, face them head-on. Your career will depend on staying ahead of — if not creating — those changes.

The post Worried You Might Be in a Dying Industry? appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

But despite the challenges that extended periods of uncertainty present, those periods also offer unparalleled opportunities for strategic planning. Total control and predictability are always an illusion — and when circumstance strips that illusion away, it can open our minds to the wide variety of paths we could take. On the basis of our experience as consultants and leadership coaches, we’ve developed five strategies that can help anyone leverage the power of uncertainty to reinvent their career strategy.

1. Explore a range of options — including the unthinkable.

Anything can happen in uncertain times. The breadth of possible outcomes can be overwhelming, and even when we understand them intellectually, we often avoid confronting our worst-case scenarios. But explicitly considering the most unimaginable of outcomes can actually make them less intimidating, enabling you to think through your options more clearly and to plan more effectively.

One of us, Dorie, worked with an organization that was drafting budgets detailing what it would do if the pandemic led to revenue declines of 5%, 10%, or 20% for the year. Dorie urged it to craft a scenario in which 50% of revenue evaporated. Thankfully, that financial apocalypse didn’t come to pass. But knowing what it would do in that case meant that the organization was prepared no matter what, giving it a far greater shot at success than peer organizations that avoided even considering such a possibility.

Similarly, if you’re looking for work, consider planning not just for the most likely scenarios but also for one in which you’re unemployed for twice as long as you expect, or in which your spouse also loses his or her job. Although such possibilities can be difficult to think about, figuring out exactly how you would handle them — and setting triggers for action, such as “If I haven’t landed a job by February, I’ll move to a cheaper apartment or rent out the spare bedroom” — can help ensure that you don’t find yourself in a more dire position later on, such as having to sell your home or move in with relatives.

2. Imagine your best possible future.

Of course, strategic planning isn’t just about imagining the worst possible outcomes. Equally important is considering ideas and opportunities that might never have occurred to you before. Challenge the assumptions you are making about yourself — things like “I’ve never tried that type of work before, so I wouldn’t be a good candidate” and “I’m just not cut out for management.” Think about different ways you could leverage your skills and fulfill your passions, both at work and in other aspects of your life. Would working a three-day week give you more time for parental care or entrepreneurial ventures? The more you’ve thought through your options, the better prepared you’ll be to act when an opportunity arises.

Although it may sound simple, imagining best-case-scenario futures is sometimes even harder than preparing for the worst. Here are some strategies to help you get started.

3. Build capabilities relevant to your future self.

In normal times, it’s typical to first identify a job you’d like to have and then work to acquire the skills needed to land it. But in periods of extreme uncertainty, that can be a risky approach, because the company or even the sector you’re focused on may face unexpected disruptions. We suggest taking a “skills first” approach instead: Identify the skills you’ll need to cultivate in order to grow toward your broad personal and professional goals, and then determine which jobs might be a good fit. A colleague of ours was committed to the idea of becoming a “global leader.” To pursue that high-level goal, he determined that he had to improve his cross-cultural communication skills, regardless of the requirements of any particular job opening.

To identify and develop new skills, we recommend the following strategies:

4. Start small.

To move past the paralysis of uncertainty, focus on what you can change in the short term. If your tasks feel intimidating, try “chunking” them into more-manageable sub-tasks. Writing a book might seem overwhelming, but drafting a high-level outline can be done in an afternoon. If you’re not sure what to prioritize, start with some “no regret” moves — actions that will be helpful regardless of changing circumstances — such as brushing up your résumé or updating your social media profile. Finally, ask yourself, “What small move could I make today that would bring me joy?” or “What could I accomplish if I gave myself a week?”

An executive we know was contemplating a career move, but after years of focusing exclusively on the day-to-day tasks of his job, he found the prospect of rebuilding his skills and network somewhat daunting. As a first, step, he decided to set up five calls every week with people in his network (university friends, previous customers, and people he knew socially) to catch up on news in their various industries and learn more about different roles and organizations. After a few months, some of those people started sending him job openings they thought would be relevant — and he eventually landed one of them.

5. Be ruthless about what you need to leave behind.

Planning for an uncertain future isn’t just about arming yourself with new skills or making new connections. It’s also about making strategic choices concerning what — and who — to abandon. Of course, it’s hard to give up things in which you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, and energy. And it’s easy to be nostalgic about the past, especially when facing uncertainty in the present. But moving forward means taking a clear-eyed view of what’s no longer serving you and giving yourself the space to pursue something new.

One of David’s colleagues had always envisioned herself in a portfolio career, one that would include serving on a corporate board. She realized she was not on track to achieve that goal because she chronically overfilled her calendar with work and volunteer obligations. Once she understood the opportunity cost of her current schedule, she began delegating more responsibilities. She created formal handover plans, developed a script for turning down requests and more assertively saying “no,” and practiced such delicate conversations. Once she had eliminated the unnecessary responsibilities that were weighing her down, she had a lot more time and headspace for exploring director opportunities.

Human beings are wired to avoid uncertainty — but no matter how hard you try, there’s no escaping it. Instead, it’s best to view uncertainty as an opportunity for growth, whether that means exploring new skills, a new job, or an entirely new career. There are no easy answers, but with the strategies described above, you’ll have the tools to deal with whatever the future might bring.

The post 5 Strategies for Reinventing Your Career in Uncertain Times appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Just as entrepreneurs need people and institutions with money to invest in their start-up ideas, leaders and managers need people with social and human capital to back them. How much support they get directly influences their effectiveness. The good news is, your immediate boss is already invested in you (she knows your background and hired you). But your direct reports haven’t voluntarily made the same “investment” — at least not yet. And you should never assume that they’ll automatically follow your lead just because you have the title of manager, vice president, or even chief fill-in-the-blank (that is, formal power). You must win them over, and you should have a strategy for doing so that you can translate into a cogent set of talking points that guide — rather than script — all your early conversations with them. If the group you manage is large, these discussions will probably begin with an all-staff meeting at which you introduce yourself, followed by individual meetings with your reports over the next several days.

What Should a New-Leader Pitch Include?

To answer this question, I asked full-time professionals, via an online survey platform, what they would want to learn from their new leader in their first conversation. In total 278 people responded. Their average age was 36, and the group was approximately half men (53%) and half women (47%), made up mostly of college graduates (77%), and represented a wide range of industries, including telecommunications (14%), government (12%), health care or pharma (11%), education (11%), finance (10%), and manufacturing (10%). I purposely made the context a conversation rather than a presentation to allow respondents to offer what they personally would want to know — rather than what they think others or their group might want. In my framework, I also incorporate other research my colleagues and I have conducted over the past decade on work relationships and new employee onboarding.

The respondents in the survey broke down fairly equally into two groups: “warriors” and “worriers.” Each group had a distinct set of concerns. Chances are, you’ll have some of each type among your reports, so you’ll need to figure out how to address both in your pitch. Let’s look at what that entails:

Warriors evaluate your knowledge, competencies, experience (and whether it’s relevant), and leadership approach to see if they will support you. They want to know if you can handle the job and understand how to help them do theirs better — or will just get in their way.

One warrior technical professional for a large high-tech firm, for instance, said that what he wanted to know from a new leader was “… have they actually done the job, or do they just think they know what the job requires. How willing would they be to get in the trenches and try out our job themselves?” Another warrior who was a nurse said her biggest concern was whether the new leader “really knows how to do my job. It is offensive to me that people who don’t know my job try to make judgments.”

Some new leaders might interpret this line of questioning as an attempt to undermine them, and although that’s possible, warriors’ general intent is different. Employees’ reactions to a new leader usually are based on their experience with the most recent leader. While a warrior direct report might be happy to be rid of a less-than-stellar leader, he or she may still be rightly on edge about whether history may repeat itself with you. Indeed, the nurse went on to explain that “all of this is important, because it has been a problem in the past.”

Warriors also want to know if you will be an active, hands-on kind of leader. Ultimately, they want you to (as one professional put it) “jump in and take responsibility to make sure the team is kept up-to-date, while shielding the staff when there are issues with upper management.”

Worriers, in contrast, are more focused on whether you’re a “safe” investment. One sales professional summed it up well when he said he wants a new leader to “make us feel secure in our jobs and in the company.” How can you set these reports at ease? Many of them ranked “clarifying job expectations” as the primary task of new leaders. Deep curiosity about the leaders’ plans for the future and next steps was also common (particularly in turnaround situations). “I would like to know if they plan to make any changes, especially what changes would affect me,” said one worrier. Last, the worriers also wanted insight into the new boss’s leadership approach, but their concerns were slightly different from warriors.’ They wanted answers to questions like: What is her supervising style? Does she have an open-door policy? How does she want us to approach her with problems?

To address both groups, make sure your pitch provides information on competence and change, experience and expectations, and your overall leadership approach. Jonathan (a pseudonym), a global product development associate at a pharmaceutical company based in the Caribbean, described how a recently hired leader did all this in an initial conversation: “The new leader reviewed his past accomplishments in significant detail. It was impressive. He laid out his approach to learning the priorities of the various departments. He also told me that although he would restructure the organization to support the business, jobs and opportunities would expand. No one would be fired, but everyone would need to interview again for positions. That first meeting left quite an impression, and I was excited to see what was to come.” Although it’s true that the prospect of interviewing for positions might have alarmed some worriers, setting clear expectations settled the future for them.

Don’ts but Dos

The survey respondents also pointed out ways that new leaders can get off on the wrong foot — and what they should be doing instead.

1. Don’t overshare, but do relate to reports on a personal level.

Relationships with supervisors can be powerful motivators. Research shows that when a direct report has a strong connection with a leader, the report is more likely to identify with the organization, engage in creative behavior, and help others at work. As one professional said, a good connection with the boss “helps with morale and teamwork.”

Interestingly, another respondent, an IT consultant, provided nuanced guidance on how to create a productive connection. New leaders, he said, should “tell me a small bit about their personal life; nothing too revealing, but enough to make them feel like an actual person.” In short, do not get overly personal. Another professional went a bit further: “I would like to know them more, not just about where they worked…. If they could do anything in life besides what they are doing now, what would that be?” Others said that sharing personal details helps a new leader be “more relatable” and “to bond.” It also may help lay the groundwork for later presenting your vision for change and continuity. And while it may seem as if relaying that vision right away will help you get your reports excited about you, you may not want to rush in. One professional underlined a preference for the new leader to wait to “give the vision for the department once they know us, the staff, better.”

2. Don’t just share your résumé, but do tell them your “story.”

While warriors may be examining your experience and worriers may be wondering how it influences your approach to them, both groups want to know about your work history. However, they both want you to stake your claim as the new leader through your career “story,” or narrative. They want to know, for instance, why this particular job makes sense for you at this time. As one warrior said, “I would like to know what led my supervisor to get into a role like this. We help hospices manage their patient care, and our company is only medium-sized and not wealthy. It takes a certain kind of person to give up money and work for a good cause.”

Jonathan’s boss was able to provide a powerful and personalized career narrative. As Jonathan recalled, “The new leader expressed his excitement with being here. He took the opportunity to share a bit about himself. He highlighted that his previous college athlete days provided him valuable lessons for his career and his daily drive. He related past successes in a similar role that he thought would translate to our organization.”

In your narrative, you can and should project your story into the future. Indeed, several respondents wanted to know about a new leader’s goals for the leadership position itself. A health care industry professional commented: “I would like to know what their vision for the position entails and how this vision affects me personally.” Employees also appreciate it when you explain why your new position is integral to your story and, most important, how your direct reports play a critical role in that story.

After all, everybody likes to be part of a story — especially a success story. And if, as a new leader, you put some thought into how to make a good first impression on your reports and win their support, you can help them be part of yours.

The post Stepping into a Leadership Role? Be Ready to Tell Your Story. appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Imagine that you have a new supply-chain leader starting next week. You hired her to do supply-chain transformation before the crisis took hold. But now she is joining remotely and inheriting a remote team, and her short-term, urgent priorities are very different from what they appeared to be before the pandemic. As her manager, how can you make her onboarding experience a productive one? What can you do to support her so that she’ll hit the ground running?

Earlier this month we polled leaders about their companies’ current onboarding practices. Of the 125 who responded, 75% said that their organizations were still onboarding leaders, albeit many (45%) at a lower rate than before the crisis. However, only 17% indicated that their organizations had developed systems for onboarding new leaders into remote-work environments. That’s a big gap, given that most onboarding is happening virtually now and that the stakes in quickly getting new talent up to speed have rarely been higher.

The good news is that it’s quite possible to onboard new leaders effectively into a remote-working environment. The biggest barrier is probably mindset. We are all being tested to adapt to new ways of working, and it’s no different with virtual onboarding. Here are some principles to guide you.

1. Be crystal clear about short-term objectives.

Like every leader in transition, your new hire needs to quickly figure out how to create value, and that’s even more important during a crisis. If you hired someone specifically to help with crisis management — for example, with workforce downsizing — their role and goals should be clear from the outset. But if you hired someone before the crisis, as in the case of the new supply-chain leader, they need to understand their role at a greatly accelerated pace. Continuing the example, you should clearly outline what aspects of the original supply-chain transformation role still are a priority and what has changed because of the need to deal with immediate disruptions — ideally before the new leader starts.

2. Provide a structured learning process.

To accelerate learning in a virtual context, you need to provide information in a more structured manner. Doing so requires paying much more attention to what you include in the upfront “document dump”: organizational charts, financial reports, strategy and project documentation, and the current crisis response plan. In a recent Savannah Group study of 200 senior interim executives, 95% said access to that information made them more effective in their first few weeks, especially if the organization asked them ahead of time what would be most valuable. Beyond that, you need to help your new hires get a broader and deeper view of the organization and their role in it. For the new supply-chain leader, you could schedule virtual briefings on critical issues related to the existing system and associated challenges along with ones on culture, planning, and decision-making processes.

3. Build a (more) robust stakeholder engagement plan.

Your next priority is to help your new hires identify, understand, and build relationships with key stakeholders. When onboarding is virtual, it’s essential to be even more detailed and structured here, too. Start by building a consensus internally about who the new leader’s key stakeholders are and, critically, the order in which the new leader should meet them; these things are often not apparent to new hires themselves. For the new supply-chain leader, there may be people one level down in finance and operations whose support will be crucial. Once you have identified the key stakeholders, reach out and align them on the objectives you have set for your new leader; that will maximize the value of their meetings.

4. Assign a virtual-onboarding buddy.

Quite a few companies built buddy systems into their pre-crisis onboarding processes (Microsoft is one example). And for new managers coming into remote-working organizations, a buddy is essential. Good buddies play four key roles: (1) They help orient new hires to the business and its context (2) They facilitate connections to people whose support is necessary or helpful (3) They assist with navigation of processes and systems, and (4) They accelerate acculturation by providing insight into “how things get done here.” Of course, you must take care to choose buddies who have the time, ability, and inclination to help, and you need to brief them on how they can be of most assistance. Typically, they should not be in the new leader’s chain of command; they should be peers or others with the “big picture” understanding necessary to be of real help. For the new supply-chain leader, a peer in operations could be a good choice.

5. Facilitate virtual team-building.

Helpful in face-to-face situations, a new-leader assimilation process is essential when onboarding happens remotely. This is a structured process for creating alignment and connection between a leader and their inherited team. A facilitator asks the leader and team members questions to uncover what they would most like to share with and learn about one another. The facilitator summarizes the resulting insights and uses them to guide a conversation between the leader and the team. The good news is that this process can be done effectively through video conferencing.

6. Consider hiring a coach.

Well before the crisis, research had established that transition-acceleration coaching halves the time required for new executives to become fully effective in their roles. Given that you, your team, and your new leader’s team are all dealing with the stresses of responding to the crisis, transition coaches can be especially impactful now. They are particularly helpful when they understand the organization, the company culture, and the stakeholder environment. Buddies and coaches play complementary roles in advising new leaders on the challenges they are facing and providing a safe space within which to discuss them.

As you apply these guidelines, keep in mind that effective virtual onboarding doesn’t just mean helping external hires. Employees making internal moves at a remote-working organization can face challenges that are as tough as — if not tougher than —  those confronted by new leaders coming from the outside. And in the midst of a crisis, it’s just as important to get them up to speed fast. So you should use the same approach to accelerate every new leader joining your team.

The post Onboarding a New Leader — Remotely appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has forced organizations into perhaps the most significant social experiment of the future of work in action, with work from home and social distancing policies radically changing the way we work and interact. But the impact on work is far more profound than just changing where people work; it is also fundamentally altering what work is performed and how we perform it.

Many workers are doing tasks they never could have imaged a few weeks ago — sometimes in ways they wouldn’t have thought of. Employees in apparel companies like Brooks Brothers and New Balance are now producing surgical masks and gowns, while Tesla, Ford, and General Motors have retooled their factories to produce ventilators from car parts after idling their automotive plants due to plummeting consumer demand.

With jobs at the heart of how work gets done, leaders have an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine them by rearranging work and having employees take on different responsibilities to better respond to the evolving needs of their organizations, customers, and employees. We propose three ways to shift work, talent, and skills to where and when they are needed most, thereby building the organizational resilience and agility necessary to navigate uncertain times and rebound with strength when the economy recovers.

1. Make work portable across the organization.

Given the current situation with Covid-19, it’s more important than ever to move people to the most mission critical work as fast and efficiently as possible. As part of its coronavirus crisis response, for example, Bank of America is temporarily converting more than 3,000 employees from across the bank into positions intended to field an onslaught of calls from consumer and small business customers.

By breaking out of rigid job constraints, the right talent and work can be matched to solve evolving business challenges in real time. Networks of teams empowered to operate outside of existing organizational hierarchy and bureaucratic structures are a critical capability to reacting quickly in times of crisis.

Many organizations, such as Allianz Global Investors and Cisco, have already set up internal project marketplaces that break down work into tasks and projects that can be matched with people from anywhere in the organization with relevant skills and availability. These marketplaces can enable people who suddenly find themselves bereft of their normal job tasks to quickly and easily find different work using their core or adjacent skills where their contributions make a difference.

Using such marketplaces, organizations can also quickly backfill a sick employee, add extra team members to mission-critical projects, and cope with sudden hiring freezes. One hiring manager faced with a freeze recently split an intended new hire position into five part-time experiences for existing employees — thereby giving employees new opportunities to learn and grow while also enabling him to meet his business goals.

Deconstructing jobs into component tasks also makes it easier to see which tasks can be performed by workers working remotely or in other geographic locations. Leaders can bundle adjacent tasks that allow for remote work into new jobs, and port the tasks that require on-site work into other, fewer jobs — thereby limiting the amount of work that must be performed in the office or on-site.

2. Accelerate automation.

For certain types of work, automation can increase reliability, improve safety and well being, and handle sudden spikes in demand. In fact, automation isn’t a job-killer in today’s economic environment, it is becoming a mandatory capability to deal with a crisis.

Many utility companies have expanded their use of automation software in recent weeks to allow workers to operate, monitor, and control systems remotely, thereby reducing the risk of human exposure to the virus and enabling utilities to run smoothly without service disruptions.

To handle increased call volume, others have increased their use of automation in call centers. Automation can speed up response times and free agents from transactional tasks so that they can focus on responding with the empathy and emotional intelligence that customers need now more than ever.

3. Share employees in cross-industry talent exchanges.

As leaders, we must all ask ourselves: How can we tap into the broader ecosystem of talent to build the resilience of both organizations and people during these challenging times? One innovative response is to develop a cross-industry talent exchange, temporarily moving employees without work due to the crisis (e.g., airlines, hospitality) to those organizations that have an excess of work (e.g., health, logistics, some retail stores). This avoids the frictional and reputational costs associated with letting people go while supporting workers in developing new skills and networks.

For example, supermarket Kroger is temporarily borrowing furloughed employees for 30 days from Sysco Corporation, a wholesale food distributor to restaurants that has been hit hard by the coronavirus.

Months earlier in China, companies also creatively started sharing employees, moving employees without work from organizations like restaurants and lending them to others that have had a spike in demand like Hema, Alibaba’s retail grocery chain known for its fast grocery food delivery. More than 3,000 new employees from more than 40 companies in different sectors have joined Hema’s employee sharing plan.

In these arrangements, the companies receiving employees define which skills they’re looking for. They then work with the companies sharing their employees to define the length of the exchange as well as the implications for pay, benefits, and insurance.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic is a difficult time, it can also be a time of unprecedented creativity. Reimagining jobs around the constraints of today’s challenging business environment may accelerate the future of work and open up new and innovative ways in how, where, and by whom work gets done. Ultimately, this can help us build greater resilience and efficiency in our organizations, and help people live healthier, more sustainable lives.

This content was originally published here.

The post How the Coronavirus Crisis Is Redefining Jobs appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Most of us have had minor setbacks at work. But how do you recover from a setback so big that it causes you to lose your job or completely derails your career?

An up-to-date LinkedIn profile and your existing professional network will only get you so far. The changes you need to make, and the realities you need to accept, are much more significant.

I know because I’ve been through it. My early career was extremely gratifying. Through hard work, and a bit of luck, I became  the first woman in Massachusetts to serve as chief of staff to two consecutive governors, and then the first woman to head the Massachusetts Port Authority, operating Boston’s Logan Airport, the Port of Boston, and other major transportation facilities. I thought that I would spend the rest of my working life in effective, groundbreaking public service, perhaps managing a federal agency, working in the White House, and possibly running for office.

Then the unimaginable happened on my watch.

Logan Airport became the launching pad for the two hijacked planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11. The horrific terrorist attacks cruelly ended so many lives and devastated thousands of families. My experience is not at all equivalent, but my life and career were also shattered. I was blamed in the media and by political leaders for supposed security flaws at Logan. I was forced to resign, and later, a 9/11 victim’s family sued me personally for wrongful death.

Even though, the national 9/11 Commission ultimately found that Logan’s security was no different than that of any other airport and the federal courts dismissed the airport from pending cases, the damage was done. The “Virginia Buckingham” I had built from the age of 17 when I moved to Boston for college — hardworking, smart, successful — was gone.

A couple of years later, I started down a very different path as a writer for a major metro-daily newspaper editorial page. A mentor declared that I had made a  “complete comeback” and after doing this well for a few years, I then moved to the private sector, where I’ve applied my communication  and strategic skills to corporate public affairs. I am now among a few hundred of the most senior executives at a Fortune 500 company. But I have come to understand that “comeback” is a misnomer. I would never be able to get back on the same track. But I did find a rewarding new path. If you’re facing a setback that feels impossible to overcome, remember that it is possible, provided you keep a few simple things in mind:

1. Take your time

I didn’t start looking for a new job for more than a year. If you can swing it financially, the decompression and time to think and regroup is essential. Don’t underestimate how flattened you are after a career debacle. Give yourself time to recover, gain perspective, and, simply, rest. You need this separation from the crisis to dispassionately evaluate whether it’s possible to pick up again in the same function or industry, or whether you need a wholesale change. Even when you’ve made that choice, don’t take the first new thing that comes along. A setback is an opportunity to thoughtfully reset your path.

2. Take a chance

I recently read a story about a finance executive who returned to his first love, woodworking. His change was a choice, but even if yours isn’t, it’s worth reflecting on your passions. What is that gift you nurtured when you were younger and didn’t pursue for any number of reasons? Now may be the time to take a chance. For me, that was writing. It was something I’d always loved. So, when my government career ended, I made a list of media and business contacts I knew, then made the rounds inquiring about jobs and got one at the Boston Herald. My salary wasn’t anywhere near what it had been, but I was being paid to read and use words, which was a dream come true. I then took another leap and moved into the corporate world to a role that used the same skills in an industry that I am passionate about.

3. Redefine resilience

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me to “move on” from what happened at Logan, I would be writing this essay from a lounge chair in the Caribbean. The societal notion that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is in fact dissonant with most people’s experience of setbacks and loss, be they in a career or in a life. There is a big difference between moving on and moving forward. The former means that you’ve slammed the door on the pain and frustration and, therefore, the lessons learned from your setback. That’s impossible and undesirable. Moving forward means you carry the full experience with you, painful loss alongside your hope for the future. In my book, I offer a different definition of resilience using the metaphor of sea glass — created from something broken but still valuable.

4. Pass it on

You didn’t ask for the career setback, but you sure learned from it. The wisdom and perspective gained from your experience is a gift to share with others. That’s why I tell my story. The power of traumatic, intense, and unplanned  — Warren Bennis called them crucibles — in a career can transform you as a leader. Offering a compassionate ear, a steady hand, and calm suggestions when your colleagues face their own turbulence is the kind of leadership you have learned — and earned.

This content was originally published here.

The post How to Recover When Your Career Gets Derailed appeared first on Matt Dallisson Global Executive Search | Leadership Consulting.

Corporate boards are under increasing pressure to diversify their ranks – adding more women and minorities, as well as executives with different cultural and functional backgrounds – to better represent the people their organizations employ and serve. At the same time, the bar for “board readiness” has never been higher: directors are scrutinized for their ability to understand more complex businesses, demonstrate technical know-how, deliver effective governance, and generate sustainable long-term performance.

What can leaders aspiring to board roles do to prepare and position themselves for success? How does one develop what we call boardroom capital?

Unfortunately, the capabilities that power C-suite careers are not the same as those needed to sit around the top table, specifically in a non-executive capacity, because you no longer have all the levers of operating power at your fingertips. That is perhaps bad (but not terrible) news for obvious board candidates: they’ll simply have to work to develop the right skills. It’s unquestionably good news for non-obvious candidates – that is, those who didn’t or couldn’t ascend to the ranks of top management, which continue to be male- and majority-race dominated around the world. They will need to work hard, too, but they can start on a more level playing field.

As Charlotte Valeur, a Danish-born former investment banker who has chaired three international companies and now leads the UK’s Institute of Directors, says, “We need to help new participants from under-represented groups to develop the confidence of working on boards and to come to know that” – while boardroom capital does take effort to build – “this is not rocket science.”

To better understand what makes a director successful today, we conducted interviews with more than 50 board members representing some of the world’s leading companies. We found that boardroom capital is built on five different types of intelligence: financial, strategic, relational, role and cultural.  The categories might not surprise you, but it is important to understand why all are necessary and to think about how to improve in each area.

Five Types of Intelligence

Financial. Can you talk in numbers, not just in words? Directors cannot fulfill their fiduciary duties without being able to quickly draw an informed opinion on to the capital structure of the company; its financial gearing, the sustainability of cash flows, or its risk envelope. These fundamentals have become even more important in wake of numerous audit-related scandals and increased scrutiny from regulators. But this mandate doesn’t require you to have been a CFO or conducted an audit. “It’s definitely not a discussion about the technical aspects of accounting,” says Crawford Gillies, who serves as senior independent director on the boards of Barclays and SSE and holds chairman roles at other public sector and private organizations. “For me, the key issue is to be able to interpret an income statement and use that to understand what is going on in the business: what may be going well and not so well.” You might want to crack open some old accounting textbooks. But more important is showing that you know enough about the balance sheet to listen attentively to a CFO, ask smart questions, and hold him or her to account if the financials aren’t clear enough.

Strategic. Being fluent in financials is one thing. Can you then translate them into strategy and back again? Ruth Cairnie, former executive vice president of strategy and planning at Royal Dutch Shell and former non-executive for Rolls-Royce, who is now chair at Babcock and sits on the board of ABF, outlines the way directors need to think: “Does the strategic thinking pay adequate attention to key trends and external realities? Are we being honest about our competitors’ positioning and competitive advantage? Is there a real credible link between the strategy and the projected financials?” Having ensured all the numbers add up, the conversation turns to how the strategic whole might in future equate to a number exceeding the sum of the accounting parts. ESG (environmental, social, governance) issues are now a top priority and an area in which any board aspirant must be knowledgeable. In our research, we identified four different ways that directors have pushed companies to understand, articulate, and measure sustainable value:

Boardroom capital requires taking responsibility for looking beyond short-term value realization, to what Joseph Bower and Lynne Paine have described as a company’s health, not wealth.

You should also be familiar with new business models and evolving sector-specific strategies (be they services, software, technology or digital to name a few recent examples) and be comfortable with a faster pace of change than boards have ever faced in the past.  Some organizations like the Guardian Media Group in the UK boast of being able to tear up and replace their strategic plans every 13 weeks. As Fabiola Arredondo, non-executive director at Burberry, Campbell Soup Company and National Public Radio observes, “it used to be that boards would hold a strategic planning session once a year. Now I more typically see boards seamlessly introducing strategic discussions into each board meeting, with a deep dive once or twice a year.”

Relational. Stepping up to the board requires you to take a step back. The role is to scrutinize, encourage, and advise, not operate. You need to build successful working relationships with other directors, the company’s top executives and wider stakeholders, each of whom come with their own experience and opinions. In the boardroom, where the pressures are high and the egos numerous, success turns on the ability to clearly communicate with others and, perhaps more importantly, understand what people are trying to communicate to you.

The ideal, as one of our interviewees described it, is “one big team together, all from different nationalities, different places in the world, different backgrounds, [working as] a unit of people together and enjoying it.” But that is not always the reality, Valeur notes, and board relationships require careful management. Being effective involves listening carefully and being able to grasp, process, react positively, and adjust your thinking quickly to the direction of the conversation and to suggestions you may have not previously considered from peers. “The one thing you need to be mindful of coming from a less well-represented group is that you are disrupting the boardroom by simply being who you are,” she adds. Her advice is to observe the behavior of more tenured peers while still serving as a diverse voice.

Role. Board members must be clear on their contribution to the conversation. As one experienced boardroom player explained, “We have eight meetings a year. You probably get the opportunity for one, or, if you’re really lucky, perhaps two questions per board meeting. That’s around 10 questions annually, so you need to make sure you think about what constitutes a material intervention.” Ask yourself why you’ve been picked for the board and on which issues you can add the most value. Mike Clasper of Coats and formerly Which? Limited, notes, however, that the difficult thing about being a non-executive director is not asking a [first] question probing an underperformance issue or challenging the strategy but knowing when to ask the same question again.

Cultural.  Mary Jo Jacobi, former senior U.S. Presidential advisor, former senior corporate executive, and current board member of The Weir Group and Mulvaney Capital Management, says that the duty of the board chair and other members is “to create an environment where the executives feel willing to be forthcoming, to admit if something is not going so well, and to seek the board’s advice and guidance on how to fix it. It is inappropriate to foster an environment where the execs have to be seen as successful and right and that everything is going great when that is not always the case.”

Any director can help his or her board chair in these efforts. That level of transparency, trust, and rapport flows from careful preparation and orchestration, an ability to quickly evaluate and understand the culture of a group and, if it needs improvement, to develop a plan for finding allies and slowly steering the group toward change. As Ruth Cairnie warns, “I have experienced plenty of organizations where you have very capable people but don’t get anything like the best out of them because the dynamics and chemistry are not right.”

Building Those Skills

The wisdom of our experienced crowd suggests you do not have to be the finished article before embarking on a boardroom career. But, if becoming a company director is one of your ambitions, you should begin to build board-relevant experience as soon as possible.

Here are a few ways to get started:

It also helps to think about what kind of board member you want to be. In our study, we found that four common approaches (though the list is not exhaustive, and there remain further variations and combinations including the possibility of board members playing different roles at different times.)

Finally, we’d urge you to seek advice from experienced colleagues and contacts, expressing your desire, aspiration, and potential to lead at this level. When sharing your resume, the content you include should be different to what you have used to date. You should instead signal your potential by outlining your capabilities in each of the five areas of intelligence.

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