My client, a director in a Fortune 100 company, was loyal to those he led and relished being “in the trenches” with them. Still, he had a gleam in his eye and his boss, two levels up, saw his potential. That’s when I got a call from his boss.
My task? To help prepare the director for a vice-president’s role. It’s a task I enjoy and take dead-seriously. I say “yes” to those who are looking at how they can be of greater service–those who are willing to fully engage in the hard but rewarding work of leading differently.
There were no openings in the company. None. No one was leaving, no one was retiring. Yet we worked together to prepare the director for that next role. Worked with his mindset. With his behaviors. With building his relationship equity within the company. He was able to take a strategy he exercised masterfully when it was outward-facing—client-facing—and apply it internally with integrity. That’s not an easy task.
All the while he remained attentive and responsive to the people he led. That role was his priority. And then, where there had been no opening, there was one. He was ready for it, and others knew it. And he, like the new Pope Francis, stepped into the senior role with humility and grace.
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U.S. Library of Congress ISSN 2164-7240
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