Ways to Create a New Identity

In one sense, “leadership learning” is counterintuitive. In The Leadership Pipeline, Jim Noel, along with coauthors Ram Charan and Steve Drotter, suggests that executives make “turns” in the pipeline—from individual contributor to manager, for instance—based on their success in their previous job. Each turn requires new skills, values, and use of time, as well as significant adaptation to a new role (see Figure 2.3). The individual contributor’s skill as a salesperson earned him a promotion to sales manager, but the skills required for a managerial position are different from those of an individual contributor. Nonetheless, he still relies on the salesperson skills that brought him success in the past. This is perfectly natural, but it will prevent him from learning and growing as a manager. His instinct will be to rely on what he knows and to avoid tasks that require what he doesn’t know.

Figure 2.3:  The Leadership Pipeline.

Source: Charan, Drotter, and Noel, 2001.

When I faced myself in the mirror, I realized that Honeywell was changing me more than I was changing Honeywell. I thought I was making a difference, but it wasn’t the kind of difference I wanted to make.

Bill George, former chairman and CEO, Medtronic

People often go through the passages relying on behaviors and attitudes that served them well in the past. The passages, though, challenge your self-definition (“I’m always successful” or “I’m usually in control”). Undertaking a stretch assignment, living abroad, mourning the death of a loved one, or dealing with a bad boss all communicate to people that “you’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s difficult to ignore the signs that life has changed and that you need to change with them. Of course, some people do ignore the signs. But each passage presents a new opportunity to learn and grow, and if you see it as such, you can dramatically improve your leadership effectiveness.

Learning from a passage, however, isn’t possible unless you let go of your past assumptions. In other words, you must admit that some of the very attributes, qualities, attitudes, and skills that made you successful in the past won’t necessarily make you successful in the future and that your old knowledge may no longer be applicable. Such an admission makes you vulnerable; you feel exposed as a novice after enjoying your role as an experienced pro. This is a tough psychological transition, especially because you may not even be aware the transition is taking place. In coaching senior executives who encounter a significant passage, we encourage them to admit their vulnerability as the precursor to learning.

Typically, you’re so caught up in the excitement of a passage or the complex issues it raises that learning from it is the last thing on your mind. For instance, you’ve just been given the task of turning a business around—a business that’s critical to the company’s future. Weighed down with high expectations and excited about proving yourself, you feel you need to be the expert right from the start, that you must hit the ground running. As a result, you plunge into the assignment, focused only on getting it done rather than stepping back and figuring out what you really need to know to do the assignment effectively and how you can maximize your first months in the new role. Companies such as Dell and Johnson & Johnson are beginning to intervene at this point and help leaders with this passage through transition coaching, but usually they don’t do that. Leaders may receive advice from bosses or mentors, but the advice is usually technical in nature, confined to achieving the task set before them. It’s only when things don’t go well that they begin to receive the feedback they really need.

I learned a lot about leadership in turnaround situations. This is an especially good leadership experience: to not know everything and to be highly dependent on other people for good learning. In my prior environment, I made almost all the calls myself and didn’t need any team input. But in the new, current environment, even if you are already an expert, it is a mistake not to ask other people.

Thomas Ebeling, CEO, Novartis Pharmaceuticals

To maximize learning in each passage, be willing to give up your identity. For instance, this could mean no longer defining yourself as a star, a winner, or super-achiever. The process of evolving one’s identity is often unconscious and subtle and occurs over a period of time. But it is central to the process of learning. It may mean no longer wrapping your identity around your spouse (if you go through a divorce) or in terms of your home or neighbors (when you move to another state or country). Only letting go of the old identity makes it possible to forge a new one—as a manager, a single person, or a resident of a foreign country. To forge this identity, you’ll need to acquire new skills and beliefs, and this acquisition is central to the learning process.