One of my clients is recognized as an up-and-coming leader in his company. He aspires to be part of the senior leadership team (SLT) but isn’t there yet. His biggest frustration is this: He has many ideas for moving his business forward, but his more cautious, conservative boss, who is a member of the SLT, doesn’t seem all that interested in knowing about them.
“What can you do,” he asked me, “when you’re stuck in a holding pattern?”
Being in a holding pattern is frustrating because you can’t afford to lose a step, but nothing feels new or exciting. You still have to do all the work to keep everything going, but you can see that mounting opportunity costs and waste are being incurred by just doing the same old things; you fear missing the window of opportunity and you dread the idea that your best team members will become disaffected and go somewhere else to find more rewarding challenges. You might worry that you’re starting to feel that way too. Nothing feels like progress.
Progress Is Still Possible, Even When You Feel Like You’re Standing Still
Here are several ways to establish and substantiate your own extra value to the organization and be noticed more—both by your boss and perhaps by other members of the SLT.
Learn new skills—and become expert in new areas. Take online or in-person classes or seminars, either for your own education and sense of engagement or to ensure you have more impact at work. If it’s for the latter, consider programs that provide formal certification in important business areas like supply chain or marketing. Or choose classes that are skill-focused, like conflict resolution or coaching. Whether or not you earn certification, you’ll have fresh background and ideas that will make you more valuable.
Share your expertise in a nonthreatening way. Use your ideas to help others succeed. Apply your new expertise not just to being an authority but also to collaborating and contributing to what others are doing. This way, they’ll learn to look to you for help and support, and they’ll talk about your input and participation as a vital part of their projects or their own success.
Collect and share examples of how things work in other organizations. Sometimes you need some kind of validation for your suggestions, and mentioning how another organization does what you want to do provides social proof. Try: “I don’t know if you saw that the XYZ company is using something similar? Here’s how they’re seeing a benefit.”
Speak positively of what other colleagues are accomplishing. Highlighting others’ successes can help everyone think of you as a connector and booster—someone who recognizes the good in others and helps everyone play well together.
Stay upbeat with your boss about everything that is going well. Emphasize the things your boss cares about and then find ways to mention the extras you think could add to the situation: “This direction is keeping us stable and letting us accomplish A, B, and C. That’s terrific! [Pause] If we could also do X, here are the additional gains we would see.” Or: “It’s great what we’re doing with [name of initiative], and given how well that’s going, just think of what we could accomplish if we added X!”
Ask your boss to help you choose your future focus. You could say something like: “I’ve been thinking about how we could grow/implement/enhance this initiative. I’d like to share my thinking with you now because I don’t want to go too far in any direction without your knowing where I’m heading. There are several possible directions that could be productive—is it okay if I review some of these alternatives with you?”
Make Sure You Stay on Track
Do be careful not to trash your boss’s plans or conservatism. Their approach likely comes out of their own experience, and challenging their stance directly is more likely to make them defensive than accepting of your point of view. Depending on your relationship with your boss and whether you feel they’re supportive of your career needs or not, you can add in the idea that these choices will have real implications for your career, and that you’d like the benefit of your boss’s opinion.
Either way, you want to show your boss that you see multiple useful options, reveal the breadth of your thinking and potential contribution, and be able to provide input without their necessarily feeling the need to shut you down.
If you’ve already tried these things, though, and you still feel stuck, you may need to get support from HR or other senior leaders—or start looking for a new job.
Onward and upward—
LK