From Doing to Leading

The journey we take from our first proper job, where we were selected based on exam results and acquired knowledge or technical skills, to our eventual career defining role is one of continual development and the assembly of our unique profile. We collect experiences, expertise, networks, achievements, failures, followers, mentors and colleagues.

We also seek and obtain new and additional functions, roles, responsibilities, teams and direct reports, projects and whatever other opportunities we think will help our progress.

It’s clear to see how easy it is to become overwhelmed at the prospect of what’s on our plate at any stage of this journey.

And to avoid becoming overwhelmed, we need to decide, and follow through on those decisions, what to discard through these cycles of accretion.

· What do I need to drop?

· What do I need to stop?

· What can I afford not to pay attention to anymore?

· What’s not that important anymore?

Something that might help in this is to think about the growth trajectory differently.

We begin our journey as a doer. We complete ever more difficult, complex or valued tasks and as a reward we get more valued tasks.

Eventually our reward for being a great doer is promotion into leadership roles. And each new role gives us a host of new responsibilities.

The problem is that we are often so attached to the tasks of the previous role and the hit we get from task completion, that we end up not actually leaving the old role behind us (or not sufficiently so).

So, the thing that we need to lose, is doing the tasks of our last role. They are now the responsibility of the person who stepped into that role when we were promoted to a leadership role. We should not be doing someone else’s job!

We are responsible for those tasks only in so far as they contribute to the success of the wider team. In a leadership role we’re required to decide what is the correct level of our involvement in the tasks of the team.

That means many things. We need to work on defining tasks and success measures, delegating tasks, coordinating outcomes, coaching people, correcting and quality assuring work and orchestrating the delivery of team tasks as part of overall team performance.

In short, everything to do with the task, except doing it!