The Three Pillars of Self-Efficacy

How can you avoid these traps? How can you create virtuous cycles that build momentum rather than vicious cycles that sap your strength? We will call the equilibrium you should aim for self-efficacy, a state that is built on a foundation with three pillars. The first pillar is adoption of the success strategies presented in the previous eight chapters. The second pillar is creation and enforcement of some personal disciplines . The third pillar is support systems, at work and at home, that help you to maintain your balance.

Pillar 1: Adopting Success Strategies

The strategies spelled out in the previous eight chapters represent a template for how to learn, set priorities, create plans, and direct action to build momentum. When you see these strategies work and when you get some early successes under your belt, you will feel more confident and energized by what you are accomplishing. As you progress through your transition, think about the challenges you are facing in light of the core challenges summarized in table 9-2 and identify chapters to which you want to return.

Table 9-2: Assessment of Core Challenges

Core Challenge	Diagnostic Questions
Promote yourself	Are you adopting the right mind-set for your new job and letting go of the past?
Accelerate your learning	Are you figuring out what you need to learn, from whom to learn it, and how to speed up the learning process?
Match strategy to situation	Are you diagnosing the type of transition you are facing and the implications for what to do and what not to do?
Secure early wins	Are you focusing on the vital priorities that advance long-term goals and build short- term momentum?
Negotiate success	Are you building your relationship with your new boss, managing expectations, and marshaling the resources you need?
Achieve alignment	Are you identifying and fixing frustrating misalignments of strategy, structure, systems, and skills?
Build your team	Are you assessing, restructuring, and aligning your team to leverage what you are trying to accomplish?
Create coalitions	Are you building a base of internal and external support for your initiatives so you are not pushing rocks uphill ?

Pillar 2: Enforcing Personal Disciplines

Knowing what you should be doing is not the same as doing it. Ultimately, success or failure emerges from the accumulation of daily choices that propel you in productive directions or push you off a cliff. This is the territory of the second pillar of personal efficacy: personal disciplines.

Personal disciplines are the regular routines that you enforce on yourself ruthlessly. What specific disciplines are the highest priorities for you to develop? It depends on what your strengths and weaknesses are. You may have a great deal of insight into yourself, but you should also consult others who know you well and whom you trust. (Some 360-degree feedback can be useful here.) What do they see as your strengths and, crucially, your potential weak spots?

This list of personal disciplines can stimulate your thinking about routines you need to develop.

Plan to Plan. Do you devote time daily and weekly to a plan-work-evaluate cycle? If not, or if you do so irregularly, you need to be more disciplined about planning. At the end of each day, spend ten minutes evaluating how well you met the goals you set the previous day and planning for the next day. Do the same at the end of each week. Get into the habit of doing this. Even if you fall behind, you will be more in control.

Judiciously Defer Commitment. Do you make commitments on the spur of the moment and regret them later? Do you blithely agree to do things in the seemingly remote future, only to kick yourself when the day arrives and your schedule is full? If so, you have to learn to defer commitment. Anytime anybody asks you to do something, say, Sounds interesting. Let me think about it and get back to you. Never say yes on the spot. If you are being pressed (perhaps by someone who knows your vulnerability to such pressure), say, Well, if you need an answer now, I ll have to say no. But if you can wait, I will give it more thought. Begin with no; it is easy to say yes later. It is difficult (and damaging to your reputation) to say yes and then change your mind. Keep in mind that people will ask you to make commitments far in advance, knowing that your schedule will look deceptively open . Ask yourself, as my former colleague Robert Robinson so aptly put it, whether future you will hate present you for saying yes. If the answer is yes, say no.

Set Aside Time for the Hard Work. Do you devote time each day to the most important work that needs to be done? It is easy to get caught up in the flow of transactions ”phone calls, meetings, e-mail ”and never find time to focus on the medium term, let alone the long run. If you are having trouble getting the real work done, discipline yourself to set aside a particular time each day, even as little as half an hour , when you will close the door, shut off the phone, ignore e-mail, and focus, focus, focus.

Go to the Balcony . Do you find yourself getting too caught up in the emotional dimension of difficult situations? If so, discipline yourself to stand back from difficult situations, take stock from 50,000 feet, and then make productive interventions. Leading authorities in the fields of leadership and negotiation have long praised the value of going to the balcony in this way. ^[5] It can be tough to do this, especially when the stakes are high and you are emotionally involved. But with discipline and practice, it is a skill that can be cultivated.

Focus on Process. Do you have good ideas but consistently find that you alienate others in trying to implement them? Does the way you make decisions cause unnecessary dissension and disagreement ? If so, discipline yourself to focus on influence process design before plunging ahead. Think: How are others likely to react to your ideas? How might you manage the process of consultation and decision making to increase your effectiveness? Remember: People will often go along with things they are not completely happy about if they perceive the process as fair. ^[6]

Check in with Yourself. Are you as aware as you need to be of your reactions to events during your transition? If not, discipline yourself to engage in structured reflection about your situation. For some new leaders , structured self-assessment means jotting down a few thoughts, impressions , and questions at the end of each day. For others it means setting aside time each week to assess how things are going. Find an approach that suits your style, and discipline yourself to use it regularly. Work to translate the resulting insights into action. Consider adopting the guidelines for self-reflection listed in the accompanying box.

Guidelines for Structured Reflection

The power of structured reflection is heightened if you pursue it regularly and are attentive to how your responses change over time. Consider setting aside fifteen minutes at the end of each week to answer the same set of questions. Save your responses so you can look back regularly at the preceding couple of weeks. You will see patterns develop, both in the nature of the problems you face and in your reactions to them.

What do you feel so far?

On a scale of high to low, do you feel:

• Excited? If not, why not? What can you do about it?

• Confident? If not, why not? What can you do about it?

• In control of your success? If not, why not? What can you do about it?

What has bothered you so far?

• With whom have you failed to connect? Why?

• Of the meetings you have attended, which has been the most troubling? Why?

• Of all that you have seen or heard , what has disturbed you most? Why?

What has gone well or poorly?

• Which interactions would you handle differently if you could? Which exceeded your expectations? Why?

• Which of your decisions have turned out particularly well? Not so well? Why?

• What missed opportunities do you regret most? Was a better result blocked primarily by you or by something beyond your control?

Now focus on the biggest challenges or difficulties you are facing. Be honest with yourself. Are your difficulties situational or do their sources lie within you? Even experienced and skilled people blame problems on the situation rather than their own actions. The net effect is that they are less proactive than they could be.

 

Recognize When to Quit. To adapt an old saw, transitions are marathons, not sprints. If you find yourself going over the top of your stress curve more than occasionally, you have to discipline yourself to know when to quit. This is easy to say and hard to do, of course, especially when you are up against a deadline and one more hour might make all the difference. It may, in the short run, but the long-run cost could be steep. Work hard at recognizing when you are at the point of diminishing returns and take a break of whatever sort refreshes you.

Pillar 3: Building Your Support Systems

The first two pillars of self-efficacy are systematic planning and disciplined execution; the third is solidifying your personal support systems. This means asserting control in your local environment, stabilizing the home front, and building a solid advice-and-counsel network.

Assert Control Locally. It is hard to focus on work if the basic infrastructure that supports you is not in place. Even if you have more pressing worries, move quickly to get your new office set up, develop routines, and clarify expectations with your assistant, and so on. If necessary, assemble a set of temporary resources ”files, references, information technology, and staff support ”to tide you over until the permanent systems are operational.

Stabilize the Home Front. It is a fundamental rule of warfare to avoid fighting on too many fronts. For new leaders, this means stabilizing the home front so you can devote the necessary attention to work. You cannot hope to create value at work if you are destroying value at home. This is the fundamental mistake that Kipp Erikson made.

If your new position involves relocation, your family is also in transition. Like Irene Erikson, your spouse may be making a job transition too, and your children may have to leave their friends and change schools . In other words, the fabric of your family s life may be disrupted just when you most need support and stability. The stresses of your professional transition can amplify the strain of your family s transition. Also, family members difficulties can add to your already heavy emotional load, undermining your ability to create value and lengthening the time it takes for you to reach the breakeven point.

So focus on accelerating the family transition too. The starting point is to acknowledge that your family may be unhappy , even resentful, about the transition. There is no avoiding disruption, but talking about it and working through the sense of loss together can be helpful.

Beyond that, here are some guidelines that can help to smooth your family s transition:

• Analyze your family s existing support system. Moving severs your ties with the people who provide essential services for your family: doctors , lawyers , dentists, babysitters, tutors, coaches, and more. Do an inventory, identify priorities, and invest in finding replacements quickly.

• Get your spouse back on track. Your spouse may quit his or her old job with the intention of finding a new one after relocating. Unhappiness can fester if the search is slow. To accelerate it, negotiate up front with your company for job-search support or find such support shortly after moving. Above all, don t let your spouse defer getting going.

• Time the family move carefully . For children, it is substantially more difficult to move in the middle of a school year. Consider waiting until the end of the school year to move your family. The price, of course, is separation from your loved ones and the wear and tear of commuting. If you do this, however, be sure that your spouse has extra support to help ease the burden . Being a single parent is hard work.

• Preserve the familiar. Reestablish familiar family rituals as quickly as possible and maintain them throughout the transition. Help from favorite relatives, such as grandparents, also makes a difference.

• Invest in cultural familiarization. If you move internationally, get professional advice about the cross-cultural transition. Isolation is a far greater risk for your family if there are language and cultural barriers.

• Tap into your company s relocation service, if it has one, as soon as possible. Corporate relocation services are typically limited to helping you find a new home, move belongings, and locate schools, but such help can make a big difference.

There is no avoiding pain if you decide to move your family. But there is much you can do to minimize it and to accelerate everyone s transitions.

Build your Advice-and-Counsel Network. No leader, no matter how capable and energetic , can do it all. You need a network of trusted advisers within and outside the organization with whom to talk through what you are experiencing. Your network is an indispensable resource that can help you avoid becoming isolated and losing perspective. As a starting point, you need to cultivate three types of advice givers: technical advisers, cultural interpreters, and political counselors (see table 9-3).

Table 9-3: Types of Advice Givers

Type	Roles	How They Help You
Technical advisers	Provide expert analysis of technologies, markets, and strategy	They suggest applications for new technologies. They recommend strategies for entering new markets. They provide timely and accurate information.
Cultural interpreters	Help you understand the new culture and (if that is your objective) to adapt to it	They provide you with insight into cultural norms, mental models, and guiding assumptions. They help you learn to speak the language of the new organization.
Political counselors	Help you deal with political relationships within your new organization	They help you implement the advice of your technical advisers. They serve as a sounding board as you think through options for implementing your agenda. They challenge you with what-if questions.

You also need to think hard about the mix of internal and external advice-givers you want to cultivate. Insiders know the organization, its culture and politics. Seek out people who are well connected and who you can trust to help you grasp what is really going on. They are a priceless resource.

At the same time, insiders cannot be expected to give you dispassionate or disinterested views of events. Thus, you should augment your internal network with outside advisers and counselors who will help you work through the issues and decisions you are facing. They should be skilled at listening and asking questions, have good insight into the way organizations work, and have your best interests at heart.

Use table 9-4 to assess your advice-and-counsel network. Analyze each person in terms of the domains in which they assist you and whether they are insiders and outsiders.

Table 9-4: Assessment of Your Advice-and-Counsel Network

	Technical Advisers	Cultural Interpreters	Political Counselors
Internal Advisers and Counselors (inside your new organization)
External Advisers and Counselors (outside your new organization)

Now take a step back. Will your existing network provide the support you need in your new situation? Don t assume that people who have been helpful in the past will continue to be helpful in your new situation. You will encounter different problems, and former advisers may not be able to help you in your new role. As you attain higher levels of responsibility, for example, the need for good political counsel increases dramatically.

You should also be thinking ahead. Because it takes time to develop an effective network, it s not too early to focus on what sort of network you will need in your next job. How will your needs for advice change?

To develop an effective support network, you need to make sure that you have the right help and that your support network is there when you need it. Does your support network have the following qualities?

• The right mix of technical advisers, cultural interpreters, and political counselors.

• The right mix of internal and external advice-givers. You want honest feedback from insiders and the dispassionate perspective of outside observers.

• External supporters who are loyal to you as an individual, not to your new organization or unit. Typically, these are long-standing colleagues and friends.

• Internal advisers who are trustworthy, whose personal agendas don t conflict with yours, and who offer straight and accurate advice.

• Representatives of key constituencies who can help you understand their perspectives. You do not want to restrict yourself to one or two points of view.

^[5] For a discussion of going to the balcony in the context of negotiation, see chapter 1 of William Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1993).

^[6] W. Chan Kim and Ren e A. Mauborgne, Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy, Harvard Business Review, July “August 1997.