Our careers can be very personal to us. They provide us with purpose and meaning. But as leaders and executives, it can become a little more complicated than that. There are many reasons we take a job, including how it matches with our experience, how it fulfills our ideas of our career trajectory and how much money we can make. As leaders, it also means that we can create cultures and achieve results that benefit our teams and our stakeholders. But taking on an executive position is a risk. You will ultimately be responsible for the results, retention of staff, making decisions others don’t want to make and sometimes speaking back to power.
What’s The Reason?
Before considering your next assignment or leaving your company for another, ask yourself why you want to leave. Usually, the answer is you don’t like the direction the company has taken, you don’t like your boss, you are not developing in the direction you want, the culture is not comfortable or you don’t have a work-life balance. Rarely is the answer money. However, the problem may not be the company, boss or culture. It may be you.
Our Baggage Follows Us
If someone is having a challenge in one place, they will leave and likely have that same challenge somewhere else. We bring our challenges with us wherever we go. If we are serious about growing as a leader, having an impact or making a difference, we might want to consider ourselves as the problem. If the direction is not right, it’s the leader’s job to influence it. If the culture is not working, what are you doing to change it? If you are not developing yourself or realizing work-life balance, it’s all on you. A good employee may wait around for these things to improve, but likely won’t. It is the leader that truly has influence over these important organizational needs. If you’re in a leadership role, consider digging into these challenges, influence your organization, make the pitch to create positive change and find the fulfillment in the role. This is risky, which is why most people don’t or won’t use their agency to make the changes they seek.
Lead or Get Out of the Way
As a leader, you have two choices—lead or don’t lead. If you are the CFO or the vice president of HR or Operations, you may not feel like you have this level of control. If you don’t have it, then who does? You are at the highest levels of the organization and should have the professional agency to influence others—even if they struggle with the changes. You are the one who must make the difficult choices, set the priorities and advise your leadership. This is what you are supposed to do.
Is It You?
If you still feel that it is too risky to speak the truth or set the agenda for the changes you want, then consider if your personal risk tolerance is making you hesitate or if you work for bad leaders. If it’s the latter, you might have an obligation to leave. If not, take a risk and make the changes you want to see.
In the current organizational sociology paradigm that we find ourselves in, it is all too easy to just get rid of our problems by leaving them behind. However, until we display loyalty and commitment to the causes we know will improve our companies and our teams, we will not leave a positive wake behind us. Your organization will just wait for another silver bullet executive to come in, ask for precisely what you wanted, and get it.
Valid Reasons To Leave
There are valid and important reasons to shift to a new role. They include advancement in your field that will give you development opportunities you can’t otherwise get. Financial considerations are important as we must do our best to take care of our families and ourselves for the future. If our values do not match the work we are doing, we should try to fulfill those values to ensure our energy and commitment to the missions we want to pursue. Or, if there is a big challenge to solve that will allow us to have a big impact.
However, you might also find these important assets within your company in a different role.
If you’re in a conference room and someone asks for someone to lead a difficult challenge, many would hope they don’t get called on. The true leader, however, will step up and take it. They don’t take it out of obligation, they do it out of excitement, mission and to experience something bigger than themselves. If they fail, others will say they were brave for taking it on in the first place. If they succeed, the benefits to them and the company are exponential.
Before you leave a leadership role, make sure it’s for the right reasons.
Russ Ouellette is president of Sojourn Partners, an executive and organizational coaching firm in Bedford. He can be reached at 603-232-9403 or through sojournparters.com.
Current Issue - April 2024