Leadership Development: What’s Your Leadership & Impact Level?

No matter your level at work, you have the ability to influence and create change. By understanding levels of influence, you will have a better understanding of how you can make your greatest impact.

Read on for an introduction to responsibility and delivery expectations for different organizational leadership levels to both identify where you are today and where you aspire to be in the future. 

LEVEL 1: INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR

·   Responsible for work activities and/or project delivery

·   Can evolve skills and competencies to be highly valued experts to meet the company’s objectives

·   Collaborate with management, cross-functional teams, partners, and customers to execute and grow ore skills

Strategic (Mission to Vision to Strategy)

Through the individual’s pursuit of mastery in areas of work, you can choose to learn beyond the requirements of today’s role or job task list. By looking across the organization or into other organizations, you can see how your work directly impacts the team, department and org. Spending time thinking of how to innovate yourself or the work itself is very strategic to the business that is you. This gives you a strategic perspective that allows you to direct your own development and value in the market. 

Influence (Knowledge to Confidence to Communication to Networks)

·   Effectively communicate how you work and influence others in execution across the team, org, or market. 

·   Provide a positive cultural example in the way you work and are available to support others in their work. 

·   Take responsibility to illustrate and build best practices that can be share with others across the org and to leadership. 

·   Maximize your influence without authority no matter your level or room. 

·   Often, this comes from having a servant leadership approach vs a “sales” approach. 

Execution (Works to Excellence to Expertise)

·   Everyone starts here

·   This begins with three building blocks of work – 1) Performing work; 2) Being available to deliver the work; 3) Work well with others

·   No matter where you start, this is the requirement for you to get paid for your service

·   Growth starts by continually improving in these three areas
  

LEVEL 2: MANAGER TO LEADER OF TEAMS
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·   Delivering a more senior leader’s plan through others

·   Own the development of others in the execution of roles & responsibility

·   Ensure compliance to organizational standards

·   Leading others as a team, department, or cross functional group to a desired results and non-financial outcomes of the org

  Strategic (Mission to Vision to Strategy)

·   Establishing a team or sub-org vision for success & strategies within a larger vision & strategic plan of the org

·   Bringing the larger multi-year vision and strategy into the sub org is critical to maximizing the outcomes of each individual

·   Creating alignment for key measures that immediately tie into the larger orgs financial and non-financial objectives is critical and requires a more senior leader’s approval 

Authority (Strategy to Structure to Roles to People)

·   Managing and leading others in a structure with direct reports

·   Responsible and accountable for the performance of others to meet time bound execution against metrics (annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily)

·   Influence: Effectively communicate how you work and influence others in execution across the team, org, or market

·   Provide a positive cultural example in the way you work and are available to support others in their work

·   Take responsibility to illustrate and build best practices that can be share with others across the org and to leadership

·   Maximize your influence without authority no matter your level or room

·   Often, this comes from having a servant leadership approach vs a “sales” approach.

Execution (Works to Excellence to Expertise)

In moving from being competent to excellent to being a subject matter expert that groups or orgs can’t do without moves you to a level of mastery that requires thousands of reps, application of competency across multiple projects types, and an insatiable appetite for replacements & innovation

LEVEL 3: ORGANIZATION EXECUTIVE LEADER

Setting Vision and resulting organizational strategy to meet required outcomes for business sustainability and growth; leading leaders to multi year results

Strategic (Mission to Vision to Strategy)

 To truly set an organizational vision and strategy, you must have a mission to accomplish.  Whether the mission is set or to be set, the ability to see the required multi- year future state requires full market insights and analytics of potential environmental concerns that impact the current state of the business.  A leaders’ ability to seek out appropriate market insights, experts, and environmental trends to inform a full enterprise approach to cast a vision over many years with underlying strategies and structures to meet goals

Authority (Strategy to Structure to Roles to People)

Leading leaders that have their own teams requires significant resource planning skills and ability to challenge leaders on the basis of the markets and the required financial disciplines in P&L, Balance Sheet, Talent, Competition, Growth, and Operations as it relates the full enterprise 

Influence (Knowledge to Confidence to Communication to Networks)

·   To properly create organizational influence, a leader must have authenticity and credibility

·   Authenticity through a high level of confidence in who they are, know their effect when dealing with unique individuals, groups, or forums, and ability to be maintain integrity

·   Credibility through understanding born out of knowledge, experience, curiosity

·   Ability to communicate clearly; and connect people to ideas easily across multiple mediums

·   This allows the leader to not only influence directly, but also cascading powerful ideas through others

Execution (Works to Excellence to Expertise)

 In moving from being competent to excellent to being a subject matter expert that groups or orgs can’t do without moves you to a level of mastery that requires thousands of reps, application of competency across multiple projects types, and an insatiable appetite for replacements & innovation
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LEVEL 4: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER

 Impact reaches into industry and markets; highly strategic in approach setting strategic plans with 5+ years vision for industry and company; a “Go To” voice in the space; highly influential beyond career time

 Strategic (Mission to Vision to Strategy)

 In many ways, has a futurist mindset in the ability to see what is possible while grounding in the analytical capabilities that create scenarios for high caliber decision making that informs how the vision of an industry will impact the role of the company in the industry

Authority (Strategy to Structure to Roles to People)

·   Your span and scope of governance goes beyond the walls of the organization

·   The leader of leaders also has leadership in boards, regulatory bodies, investment groups, or other transversal or complementary groups that provide a forum for industry or market impact

·   Seeing how competitive and coop-petititon across effected organizations are impacted in financials, operations, and value chains

Influence (Knowledge to Confidence to Communication to Networks)

·   You are being asked to speak to investors, industry forums, news outlets, and market-based stakeholders who are requiring your expertise and vision

·   Ideas are your currency of value that outweighs titles or successful events in your experience

·   High credibility bolstered by authenticity that informs other’s decisions for innovation, growth, or sustainability

 Execution (Works to Excellence to Expertise)

If you are transformational in execution, you are Genius level! Think Beethoven. He was fully transformational to all music over generations. Yet, he was not transformational for communicating visions and getting others to even like him, much less develop people or the industry to meet a new market need. 

Which level best fits you in your current career journey? And how can you maximize your talents in conjunction with your level of leadership and influence in order to make your greatest impact? Part of Koda’s value is ongoing education and self-discovery. Want access to other articles like this? Sign up for early access to the Koda app in order to gain access to an ever-growing library of free resources.