I can remember my first job at IBM. I was brought on with a team of people dispersed across the US to help onboard employees and decrease the amount of time it took for them to be productive. Prior to that, it could have taken weeks for a manager to track down the right person to create an email address, user accounts, order business cards, secure a computer and an office, etc… so Lou Gerstner launched an initiative for new hires to be productive on day one. After about 9 months, they determined that this team would be centralized instead of dispersed and several of us were asked to move to North Carolina. Two of us accepted, negotiated leadership roles, and quickly found ourselves immersed in a scenario that we had absolutely no training for. Both of us were fresh out of college with very little real world experience, placed in a world leading a team of IBMers, many of whom had been with the company for years but didn’t necessarily have experience with onboarding. We were also placed in an office with a third lead who had been at the company for over 20 years and was clearly not happy about leading alongside the two of us “youngin’s”.
While the dynamics of that experience held many complexities, there are three specific things about that time that I’d like to discuss as I believe they embody the interrelated challenges all leaders face, no matter the level.
The first being the comparison that was constantly happening in my head between the other leads and I. It’s extremely natural for the brain to do this as it tries to figure out where we all fit in, but it also has a tendency to feed back all the areas where we fall short and forget what we bring to the table that is unique to us. In this case, the thoughts happening included the fact I was too young, not polished, didn’t have as good of an education, didn’t say the right things in front of leaders, and inexperienced at political game playing. I lost sight of the main point, creating results, and would spin in all of this comparison which then impeded my own performance.
The second challenge was the hierarchy that comparison created in my mind. Our brains love to create structure in order to make sense of situations and in this case, my brain started to rank other people in terms of power and I always landed in an inferior position. This meant I allowed others to speak to me in ways that were unacceptable, take on the work of others while they did very productive things like sit and file their nails, and not advocate for myself when praise for the work was misdirected. When you do this enough, you no longer show up in your full capacity. Instead of leaning into what I could be, I got caught up in the drama, frustrated and angry with the hierarchy I created on my own and consistently fed into.
The final challenge was my self image. I continued to see myself as a strong version of my original role, a New Hire Facilitator. It was a role I had mastered because I didn’t like to take “no” or “that’s not possible” for an answer, especially on little petty things like securing new email addresses, phone numbers, and business cards. This was not rocket science. But I could not see beyond that. I could present as a subject matter expert, but when it came to taking ownership of seeing beyond the current, creating even more efficiency, holding the team members accountable, and adding to the impact we could have on the organization, I wasn’t there yet. I didn’t have someone teaching me how or encouraging me to establish my voice as this new and different version, so I stayed small. At the time, my self image was one of a lifetime individual contributor and until I was able to see something greater, I stayed stuck.
Luckily, I was able to find great mentorship in future roles and eventually came out of my shell, but it took me years to truly understand what I learned from that role and how I was holding myself back. I continue to see these challenges recur throughout my journey and I see them in my clients too, every time I start to hit that edge of my comfort zone. This is exactly why coaching is so important. It’s because in coaching, we take the time to define what makes you unique and who you are as a leader, outside of any comparisons. Coaching exposes your blind spots and areas where you give your power away to others due to a perceived hierarchy in your brain, placing their needs, talents, and expertise in a superior position to your own. And we create your self image from a place of possibility instead of where you are right now.
Coaching is a powerful way to advance your career for leaders who are ready to take their journey further than they ever imagined. The big question is, are you one of them?