The Transition From Manager To Leader

To hone in on these transitions for new leaders — we’ve spoken about some of the inherent challenges — could we talk a little bit more about the shift from follower to leader and what that means in practise?

You’re always going to be a follower in most organisations. There’s always somebody above you, so there’s an element of followership wherever you are in an organisation, even at CEO because there’s a board in place. You don’t have to follow the board, but you’ve got to work very closely with the board, so the followership doesn’t disappear.

The leadership role is the thing that has to grow and develop over time. Some interesting work has been done on the importance of people decisions as you become more senior. Actually, it’s an Egon Zehnder study. What’s very clear is, as you develop, if you then end up on a board, the people decisions are actually the critical decisions that you’re taking and assume much more time.

This transition through your career to increasing amounts of time on people is a natural aspect of personal growth in the company, and it’s very important that organisations support that growth because it’s not always necessarily a given. But why is it such a tricky thing for many people? It’s because you’re taking away — or reducing, in the first instance — the thing that’s made me successful. I’m a brilliant analyst or salesperson. Now, you’re asking me to do far less of that, and as my career progresses, increasingly little of it.

So, you’re having to adjust and make this transition. The real challenge comes, however, when the pressure’s on, when you’re really under stress, and this is a psychological response that we all have; we revert to what we’re comfortable with. So, I’m the financial analyst, I have all these people issues and organisational issues to deal with. The pressure really comes on; guess what I do? I go back to being the financial analyst. Actually, I can give you a really good example of that shortly.

The problem with that is, I then become an absolute pain to anyone working for me. I’m more than sitting on your shoulder; in fact, I’m second-guessing everything you’re saying and doing. I’ve had 29 bosses. The worst bosses were those who did not give you the freedom to operate, who were sitting, second-guessing — basically, doing your job. That is a killer in any organisation. So, you’ve taken some of the things that have allowed me to be successful away. And in the worst time possible, when we want everyone focused on driving our business because we’ve got some problems. I go and act again in the thing I’m defined by; I’m a great analyst.

There are a number of ways of dealing with that, not least in the pharmaceutical industry. When I was at Novartis, we put dual career paths in place because if my lifelong ambition is to identify and create new medicines, that’s pretty different from leading a 2,000-person organisation. It’s not unique to Novartis; many organisations do it for exactly this reason. I leave a technical, professional career where I don’t have responsibilities or organisational issues to deal with and I can focus because that’s what really gets me going in the morning. That’s where my life is. You asked me to do this other stuff; I don’t want to do it, and if I don’t want to do it, I probably won’t be very good at it.