The Key to Landing Your First Leadership Position

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast.

My name is Julianna Yau Yorgan and I’m a workplace strategist who teaches leaders how to show their value and increase their impact through compassionate strategy.

Today, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest challenges for aspiring leaders, positioning and marketing themselves for their first leadership position.

A lot of the time when aspiring leaders come to me, they’re challenged because they can’t break into leadership.

The great thing is most of them have an inspiring outlook on leadership, wanting to support their teams, drive the company forward, and model behavior that shows real leadership.

But the challenge is often that they are such naturally good leaders that they aren’t selling their management skills enough.

They’ll talk about wanting to empower their teams, share how they’ve helped others progress in their careers, or maybe even boldly suggest that they can make improvements to the leadership culture in the company.

Although that may be what people you’ll be leading want to hear, they aren’t the ones hiring you as a leader.

And unless you’ve been specifically approached by someone for your natural affinity for leadership, you’ve got a good chance that the person who’s hiring you is less concerned about your leadership philosophy than your ability to deliver on the work.

So what do you do about that?

Well, there’s really just one thing you need to do. Understand what the hiring manager wants and needs.

This one thing will make everything easier. You’ll know what skills and experience to highlight for them. You will keep their attention because you’re talking to them about things that they care about and are top of mind for them.

And you won’t be wasting your energy trying to convince them that you have what it takes, because you’ll be showing them that you have what they want and what they need.

For example, I had a client that I worked with years ago who wanted help breaking into her first leadership role. She was told that she needed to be in her job for 10 years before they would even consider her for a managerial position.

When she came to me, she was obviously frustrated at how short-sighted they were and why they couldn’t see the value she brought. That she had more to offer as a leader than just someone who could see 10 years of situations that her team might be faced with. And that she was thoughtful, driven, compassionate, and supportive.

All the things a team would want in a leader.

But the person hiring for that managerial position obviously wanted something else.

They wanted someone who could lead from first-hand experience. And that’s all they valued.

When we started working together, my client wanted to know how to change that person’s mind. How to better self-promote so that they could see what a great leader she was, and who she could turn into an advocate to change that person’s mind.

But the problem wasn’t her. It actually wasn’t even the hiring manager. It was that they were incompatible with what the hiring manager wanted and what my client had to offer. So what we did instead was two things. The first was to start targeting hiring managers who had the same values as her.

We worked out a plan so that she could create meaningful relationships with leaders who valued reason over procedure, compassion over HR roles, and team development over micromanagement.

Those would be the leaders who would be her first choice of who she would work for.

The second thing we did was decipher what the company broadly valued in their leadership team to find opportunities for her to either show or develop the skills and experience that wouldn’t take her 10 years to get.

And she ended up working for one of her preferred leaders in less than a year.

But it actually turned out that she needed to employ both strategies to get there. because although her eventual boss believed in her and advocated for her promotion, her boss also needed to convince others that my client was ready for a management position.

So my client pretty much was able to hand over that proof to her future boss on a silver platter because she specifically targeted the skills and experience that the company valued in their managers.

So remember when you’re targeting your first leadership position, it’s not necessarily about how you self promote or what skills you’re promoting, but targeting the specific skills and experience that your future boss and that company or department values in their leaders.

And of course, if the gap between what they value and what you offer isn’t a gap you want to close, you’re better off setting your targets elsewhere than to try and convince them that you have what it takes.

And if you’re trying to land your first leadership position and want to do it strategically, I can help. I have a group program called Path to Leadership where we’ll chart your path to leadership together.

And I also have an a la carte strategy package where you’ll get an exact roadmap and action plan towards your first leadership role. And just for right now, I have one one-on-one coaching spot that will be opening up in August.

So if any of these sound like what you need right now, just reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or by email and I’ll pop you some more details.

You’ll find the links to all of those in my show notes.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’ll see you next time