COMMON TRAPS

Even when the fit with the organization is comfortable and the objectives of a new assignment are clear, many new leaders can stumble. Confident in their skills, they rely on them without realizing that new leadership roles require them to stretch and add new competencies that have little to do with technical expertise. Or the difference they make remains invisible to others and their contributions never get linked to them. Or they can raise the bar so high for their success that they cannot see where they have made a difference, much less translate it for others. These pitfalls hinder their progress by limiting their contribution or by ensuring that it remains divorced from them personally .

• "I was brought in for my expertise to solve a problem and that's what I am doing." Expertise is the admission ticket, not a get-home-free card. Although it is imperative for new leaders to move beyond trusting in their expertise to deliver results, the step can be painful for some women, and their expertise can end up producing something of a Catch-22. Proficiency is often the key to a leadership track, yet it can quickly turn into a trap. ^{[ 5]} If, secure in their areas of expertise, they do not venture further, their competence becomes a limiting factor and constrains their views of what needs to be done. The head of one of the country's largest corporate foundations summed up the dilemma:

  A lot of women take a great deal of pride in their technical proficiency. That's understandable. But they keep focused on those skills. That's not enough. As you move from manage-ment to leadership positions , you need a broader perspective. You can't just wow people with what you know.

  The impulse to rely on competence can be intense . It is, after all, partly responsible for past success. Chelsea, faced with an unfamiliar situation, fell back on the technical expertise that clinched her appointment as chief information officer at a midsized manufacturing company. Almost as soon as she came on board, the CEO charged her with purchasing and implementing a new integrated cost and inventory control system. Broadly conversant with the available systems, Chelsea went right to work researching applications that might meet the company's requirements. She quickly identified one that promised the greatest flexibility. The software could be tailored to meet the specific demands of the individual business units and still produce aggregated data across divisions for the CEO and other members of the executive team.

  Excited, Chelsea convened a meeting of the directors of the three major business units. She put together a forceful PowerPoint presentation that illustrated the system's benefits. All three directors raised questions about the costs. Would their budgets bear the extra overhead burden ? They expressed concern about the time their people would have to devote to the project. How involved did she expect their teams to be in bringing the system online? Chelsea ignored their worries. Convinced that the technical merits of the system were compelling, she saw only the benefits of implementation. The system would, she had decided, solve many of the problems the units were having tracking costs.

  With their questions unanswered, the three directors remained unconvinced. Although they agreed publicly to go forward, they were really "raising the white flag" ”ostensibly surrendering but with no intention of capitulating. ^{[ 6]} They dragged their feet, explaining that they did not have anyone available to work on the project. What Chelsea had not sufficiently appreciated was the extent to which the directors guarded their information. They did not want an unknown entity or her team poring through their data and interfering with their routines. Although Chelsea had a great idea based on her technical knowledge, she was tone deaf to the problems that idea would create for the directors.

  Chelsea saw progress slow to a snail 's pace. The CEO began to wonder whether he would ever get the system he needed. People began to question her effectiveness. Chelsea's expertise could generate a proposal, but she would need to draw on broader skills to guarantee adoption.

• "My performance speaks for itself." There is a huge gulf between bragging and claiming value for what you have done. Yet many women lump them together. Self-promotion seems foreign to the kind of person they want to be. ^{[ 7]} They may not want to take credit for what they consider a group effort. They may fear being labeled as too pushy or too self-aggrandizing. Whatever the cause, they hesitate to emphasize their achievements. They are happy to have others sing their praises, but they won't advertise them directly. ^{[ 8]}

  One of our commentators epitomizes this attitude. When she takes on a new role, she determines to "do a great job and hopes that the tiara drops on her head." This approach is reminiscent of that old Mother Goose rhyme : "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." As a working premise , it simply does not work. Rather than moving actively to claim the contributions she makes, she assumes they will be noticed and patiently waits ”hoping ”for the rewards.

  The reluctance to call attention to a job well done can exact a high price. The personal fallout is obvious. Without judicious prompts, key people in the organization can remain unaware of what has been accomplished. When achievements go unrecognized, a new leader can find it increasingly difficult to attract talent or resources. The organizational fallout is less obvious. Unless a new leader draws attention to innovative programs or initiatives, they can drop off everyone's radar screen.

  Achievements do not have to be high profile to warrant attention (and a good word). In the course of daily interactions, "little accomplishments" can serve as a wedge , producing the first cracks in seemingly intractable attitudes ”but only if others are aware of them. Stephanie missed just such an opportunity by keeping quiet about the improvements she was making.

  Stephanie had worked out the kinks in one of her company's new plants. When an older one started having quality control problems, she was the logical person to straighten them out.

  The order flow coming from sales was more erratic than it needed to be. Tempers were frayed all around. Production and QC kept screaming, and sales kept on writing tickets with all sorts of bells and whistles. . . . In going over the order flow, I noticed that requisitions from sales often got held up ”perhaps intentionally since expense account reimbursements were especially slow. I had the controller install the program we had used at the new plant and that speeded things up.

  Stephanie put through the billing changes after a discussion with the controller. She never mentioned the increased efficiency to sales. Although she did not have to announce the changes with a self-promoting fanfare, she could have connected the rapid reimbursements directly to her intervention. She made life easier for the people in sales, but they never knew and continued to view her as the enemy. They resented her presence and resented even more the changes they suspected she had been sent to enforce. Some of that hostility might have thawed had they realized that Stephanie was not taking sides. She was, quite successfully, going out of her way to smooth operations for everyone.

  The point of promoting achievements is that they are never completely visible to others. A good deal of a new leader's work is relational ”building teams, developing people ”yet it is precisely this work that can be invisible and taken for granted when it is performed by women.

• "I never quite achieved what I set out to do." It is difficult to promote your accomplishments if you do not believe them yourself. Sometimes, we can set the bar for our own success so high that we cannot recognize when we have been successful.

Robin took on a major challenge when she agreed to run the women's initiative at her law firm. The firm invested heavily in training and yet in alarming numbers female associates were leaving after three or four years to join smaller firms or corporate legal departments. ^{[ 9]} Robin designed an effective strategy that produced results. She developed and got approval for innovative policies that lessened the stress between professional and personal life that female associates confronted in a world that measured worth by billable hours. These and other efforts lowered the turnover rate among women and broadened the range of applicants attracted to the firm.

Despite this success, Robin was discouraged. Senior partners , she felt, did not appreciate the business case for diversity. They still talked about diversity in terms of percentages, implying that there was a certain threshold ”a quota ”that they needed to retain. They did not look beyond to the overarching benefits or to the major impediments. They could not see that fielding a diverse engagement team brought in new business and increased the depth of the applicant pool.

Focused only on what she had not accomplished, Robin felt defeated. But that perspective is self-defeating. If you only see what you have not been able to accomplish, that is what others will see too. Robin, in fact, had effected the beginnings of a cultural change at her firm.

^{[ 5]} In Good to Great Collins applies the "curse of competence" to companies that become so enamored of their technological or marketing advantage that they cannot innovate. The observation is equally relevant for individuals.

^{[ 6]} Paul W. Mulvey, Priscilla M. Veiga, and John F. Elsass, "When Team Members Raise a White Flag."

^{[ 7]} Women are much less likely to use self-promoting tactics than men are. This accounts, in part, for the lower salaries they negotiate. Lisa Barron, "Talk That Pays."

^{[ 8]} A taboo on bragging is one of the conversational prohibitions among women that Deborah Tannen singles out in You Just Don't Understand . See Chapter 8, "Damned If You Do."

^{[ 9]} Forty-three percent of law associates at Boston firms leave before three years, but the primary economic return on a firm's investment comes in years five through ten. Accounting firm Ernst & Young estimates that it takes $150,000 to hire and train an associate. Boston Bar Association, "Facing the Grail," footnotes 48, 59.