Do you have the right skills for your leadership role?
Executive education is aimed at top-flight professionals. The ambition is usually to become a better leader by gaining deeper and broader perspectives in key areas such as personal leadership, strategy or economics. Often a change of job is the perfect time for further education, with the new challenges fuelling your drive to develop. It is therefore only natural to continue to build up your competence at several points in your career, as the role and challenges change.
From leading yourself to leading others
When you become a manager, your success depends on the contributions that other people make. You need to switch from doing the job to getting others to improve and perform better. The capacity to help others thus becomes critical to your own success. This can very often be a challenge, since you were given the managerial role because you were good at the job yourself, rather than necessarily being adept at leading others.
From leading others to leading managers
As a manager of employees, operational work tends to make up a minor part of the job description. When it comes to leading managers, on the other hand, you need to engage with strategic issues that affect the whole business. A common mistake here is to give your managers feedback on their operational work, and not on their management skills. Coaching is also an important tool in this context, as all too often the first tier of managers does not receive proper managerial training.
From leading managers to leading a department
Going from leading managers to leading a department can be a difficult transition for many people as it requires a new focus, moving for example from questions of detail to a strategic view of the bigger picture. You also need to work with other heads of department to make the best decisions for the business. A great deal of time is spent working on questions from senior management, which means you have to delegate more tasks to other managers within the department.
From leading a department to leading a business unit
This is one of the most important roles in a company, where the leader truly has an opportunity to influence both the strategy and the operation. It is an exciting but challenging role that goes beyond you working with different departments – you also need those departments to pool their resources and form an effective team. If, over your career, you have worked your way up within one department, you will now have responsibility for largely unknown territory, creating a very steep learning curve.
It is important to actively choose executive education that is designed to meet the particular challenges faced. That way, participants can enjoy content tailored to their specific target group, alongside the opportunity to share perspectives and experiences with people in similar roles. An effective educational program can supply techniques for looking at challenges from different perspectives and understanding your part in the bigger picture. This can create clarity in situations that would otherwise have felt challenging and provide the self-confidence needed to tackle new duties. As the circumstances of our lives constantly change, leadership also has to be refined, renewed and developed. Leadership is about lifelong learning and even the most experienced leaders must remain actively open to new ideas and challenge their own thinking.
Original text: Carl Klingborg
Graphics: Emma Duong
Reviewer: Peter Myhrström
Editor: Annika Alfthan
