Our career track can take interesting twists and turns. We walk the tight rope between challenging ourselves and balancing work with life. It certainly isn’t as easy as it used to be. Certain companies reward hard work with opportunity. With each step up the ladder, you gain more responsibility and advanced leadership potential.
Things started changing a while back. Climbing the ladder became less desirable to some. The internet generation has brought about the ability to do more work in less time. Client meetings have been taken from the boardroom to the virtual office. Independent results have become a process of great individual strategy. The big money makers are individual contributors who crush their quota by means of their own effort. Even in the largest of corporations an entrepreneurial spirit is alive.
So we are faced with the question:
If I can make more money working at my own pace, why would I want to transition into a leadership role?
I would like to emphasize 3 points that might help make the argument for accepting the leadership challenge:
- You owe it to yourself to try
- Diverse skill sets are life enhancing
- There is no such thing as stability
Leadership is an act of creativity
I had a conversation with a young person recently who left a company because she was bored. She wanted to work at her own pace to develop opportunities for herself. Her motivation was contradictory. She did not want more responsibility for a title perspective; she wanted more room to create. She affiliated job promotion with less flexibility despite the challenge.
If you really want to be more creative you have to accept the advancement track. Understand that the more responsibility you possess, the greater your chances for diverse and fruitful daily interactions.
Ask yourself: Am I opposed to being bound to my organization or am I afraid I might fail?
The more you work the more you live
There is a myth in work/life balance that you are afforded more time in certain positions. In fact, if you love your job you are always working. If you are invested in what you do as a professional, your personal life evolves.
The worst thing any professional can do is to get comfortable. If you are making enough money through limited effort do you genuinely feel like you are maximizing your potential?
The myth of stability
Many people leave sales jobs to join a leadership team because they feel they will have a better financial foundation. A bigger base salary equals more stability. That is nonsense. Everyone has goals they are expected to perform to….everyone is in sales.
You cannot assume you will be a good leader because you are a good individual contributor. Nor can you use the determinant of “stability” to motivate a decision for advancement.
The greatest thing anyone can be afforded is the opportunity. It’s better to try, fail, and go back to where you were than to deny yourself an opportunity and wonder what might have been.
Develop the ability to assess your greatness through the following:
- Accept every invitation to be better
- Know that every new professional opportunity will benefit you personally
- Be aware that stability is contradictory to professional development
Thank you for reading!
– Dave Kovacovich