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Leadership Journey of Managers

 

Leadership Journey of Managers

Leaders climb up the ladders to take new roles and additional responsibility. Their adaptability from performing transitional activities to do the transformational activities will be evaluated. The most challenging transitions occur in moving from being a functional leader to being a business or enterprise leader for the first time and when there is a lack of clarity in the nature of those shifts.

1.   From specialist to generalist. A company’s business functions largely run on manager and leaders planning and decisions. Managers moving to enterprise leadership roles work hard to achieve the cross-functional task. Someone who grew up in marketing obviously cannot become a native speaker of operations or R&D, but he or she can become fluent—comfortable with the central terms, tools, and ideas employed by the various functions whose work he or she must integrate. Enterprise leaders must know to evaluate and recruit the right people to lead functional areas to grow the experts' team

 

2.   From analyst to integrator. The primary responsibility of functional leaders is to develop and manage their people to achieve analytical depth in focused domains. By contrast, enterprise leaders manage cross-functional teams with the goal of integrating the collective knowledge and using it to solve important organizational problems. New enterprise leaders make the shift to managing integrative decision-making and problem-solving and, even more important, to learn how to make appropriate trade-offs. Enterprise leaders must also manage and accept responsibility for issues that don’t fall neatly into any one function but are still important to the business.

  From bricklayer to architect. As managers move up in the hierarchy, they become increasingly responsible for laying the foundation for superior performance—creating the organizational context in which business breakthroughs can happen. One must understand how strategy, structure, systems, processes and skill bases interact. They must also be expert in the principles of organizational design, business process improvement, and human capital management. Few high-potential leaders only get formal training in organizational development theory and practice. Other leaders not much trained to be the architects of their organizations.

From problem-solver to agenda-setter. Many leaders are promoted on the strength of their problem-solving skills. But when they reach the enterprise leader level, they must focus less on fixing problems and more on setting the agenda for what the organization should focus on doing. This means identifying and prioritizing emerging threats and communicating them in ways that the organization can respond to. The rest of the task calls for mobilizing preventive action and driving organizational change. And it ultimately means creating a learning organization that responds effectively to shifts in its environment and can generate surprises for its competitors

 

5.     From warrior to a diplomat. Effective enterprise leaders see the benefits in actively shaping the external environment and managing critical relationships with powerful outside constituencies, including governments, the media, and investors. They identify opportunities for cross-company collaboration, reaching out to rivals to help shape the rules of the game. Functional managers, by contrast, tend to be more focused on developing and deploying internal capabilities to contend more effectively with key competitors.

 

Important to keep in mind that the biggest reasons why leaders fail in such transitions are because they don’t go back into a learning mode. Nothing fully prepares someone for becoming an enterprise leader for the first time but there is a lot that can be done in preparation and by knowing what the shifts to be done.

Manage Your Hiring Manager

 

All the talent acquisition professionals or recruiters must be dealing with many hiring managers.

Sometimes their expectations reach the sky and with available tools and limited resources one must manage the hiring managers before making hiring plans. Whether you are leading a team of recruiters or working directly on a hire, use these tips to build happy, healthy, and stress-free partnerships with your hiring managers.

1.     Break the ice

Review hiring managers working style, interests, and shared connections. To increase your credibility, demonstrate that you have a firm grasp of the business and how in the past you have encountered similar situations.

2.     Learn their individual styles

Openly ask how they like to hire – for example, do they prefer to check in immediately after interviews or do they need time to reflect? Do they want to see multiple candidates before deciding, or will they hire the right person once they meet them? Agree on responsibilities at the outset and confirm how involved they want to be.

3.     Set the action plan together

Outline the raw skills and personality requirements. Forward sample profiles and drill into specifics on why they like or dislike them. Determine how involved they want to be and agree on what success looks like. Get all the details like must to have and good to have skills the prospective candidate must possess!

4.     Tap their contacts

Ask them to refer star performers. Request that they share jobs and company news on select platforms to make them feel invested in the process. Make it easy for them by drafting language they can adapt.

5.     Prepare them for candidate engagement

Educate them on your employer brand. Inform them that candidates evaluate the employer too. This is especially important if you are a small business with a lesser-known brand. Help them build profiles that convey their excitement about working for your organization. Inspire them with authentic employee stories and language they can use when talking to candidates.

6.     Listen and refine

Ask candidates about their recruiting experiences, regardless of outcomes. Collate and show the hiring managers and agree how to adjust. Be the solution provider to their problems. Guide them when to hire, how to choose.

7.     Look to the data

Track the performance of hires over time so you can identify top quality sources. Communicate this approach to demonstrate your commitment to attracting the right talent.

8.     Keep the communication going

During the hiring process, send regular progress updates to hiring manager on key stages in the pipeline (profiles viewed, candidates contacted and screened, etc.). Check in with them even after filling a position to see how things are going. This will build trust and strengthen your relationship over time.

9.     Give and get feedback

Manage expectations with numbers and facts. Do the market mapping and show the size the talent pool and share the stats. If the pool is too small or too big, adjust criteria with your hiring managers.

10.  Show them your progress

Share the statistics or progress of their hiring chart. Give status of offers made, future joinees.

Happy Hiring !!

Self improvement

Executive Interview

Firms hire executives at leadership position to drive organisation towards path of success.

Executive interview determines- potential success within an executive-level position. Firms used - psychometric test, top grading interview, STAR method and other ways of Interview to find the suitable match for the role. The executive interview is a two-way process. It is as much about one finding the role compatible as the firm’s finding the right candidate.

An executive interview is a conversation. The trick is to balance a cool-headed approach with the right degree of research.

 Executive-level interviews are unique in that they are used to evaluate:

• Situational skills
• Taking right and appropriate decisions at the need of the time.
• Ability to implement change within a company
• Management skills
• Setting and meeting challenging goals
• Capacity to deliver results
• Ability to manage and lead teams and organizations

Top grading Interview:  Along with regular sourcing and interview process, topgrading gives a unique approach to interviewing is the structure and specific goal related to the method and that is helping recruiting team evaluate talent to make sure candidates have the skills and attributes that are needed to perform at the top level within company

STAR method- This process will make answers more credible and it’s much easier for hiring managers/recruiters to get the evidence in answer.

1.    Situation: Not more than a sentence to share the detail of situation or task given.

2.    Task: Summary is what has to be done and outputs of the task

3.    Actions: What hurdles one will face and how to overcome.

4.    Result: What are the final result, how to deal again with same situation.

For an executive job search, this kind of research needs to go beyond just knowing broadly what the company does. One should know the company’s financial situation, what challenges it’s facing and its leaders’ backgrounds.

One should focus on the company’s top competitors. Where is the company outperforming its competitors? Where is it falling short? What new products or services do the competitors have planned for the near future, and how might this affect the industry? Being able to converse about these things in interview will convey expert knowledge, also it will show the hiring manager that the candidate is kind of person who thinks two steps ahead.

At the executive level, interviewers are looking for concrete proof that person can deliver measurable results for the whole organization—and that leadership style is a good fit for the culture. Being able to articulate leadership philosophy and back up those big picture ideas with real-life examples will strengthen the case that one is ready to make the move into the executive ranks. Prepare for interview questions that seek to determine what kind of manager one is and what kind of vision a person have for the company and team.

 

Shekhar Prasad

Executive Hiring

shekharpd@gmail.com