By Lisa Martin & Betsy Jordyn

It’s a common career trajectory: First you become a front-line supervisor, then a manager, then a leader of leaders and then eventually an executive over a department or an even broader entity. From that perspective, leadership is leadership and executives merely have a larger scope and span of control.

It is common to perceive that executives simply have a broader scope and span of control, but the reality is that being at the top of an organization requires a completely new set of behaviors, which weren’t drawn on previously. For example, compare the executive leadership of accomplished starship Captain Jean-Luc Picard, (a fictional character played by Patrick Stewart in the long-running television series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) with that of Ensign Wesley Crusher whose job it was to be technically great at navigation. The Captain not only provided long-range strategic thinking and inspired his entire crew to deliver results, he was ultimately accountable to the Federation for the strategic mission of the USS Enterprise, a very apt description of the role of an executive. The better you as an executive understand the uniqueness of this role, the more willing you will be to let go of the behaviors that worked for you in the past and pick up new ones that will enable your future success.

The Great Exchange: What to let go of and what to pick up to be stellar To become a Rising Executive, you have to let go of what got you to your current level of success, which is more than likely your ability to personally deliver results and technical competence, and pick up a whole new skill set. This exchange doesn’t mean you have to give up who you are and your strengths. But it does change the lens through which you have viewed your strengths and the ways in which you have leveraged them in the past.

Also as part of this exchange, you have to accept that your sense of accomplishment at the end of the day will be entirely new. You will no longer have a “to do” list of all that you accomplished during the day. Instead, you will have a list of how you have influenced and coached others to do what they did.

You will now be in the business of defining opportunities and solving problems for the good of the entire organization, not just your functional area. Your stellar results will depend on what the entire entity accomplishes. Moreover, you will have to live with the strange paradox that with greater accountability and official organizational power, more will be outside of your direct ability to control. In fact, the command and control style that may have worked in your previous role will absolutely not work in your new situation, because influence is now the strongest leadership tool in your box.

New Role…New Behaviors

Like any leader, an executive is responsible for setting direction, managing performance and coordinating the efforts of others. But there are five ways in which the role of a Rising Executive is distinctly different from any other leader in an organization. These are: Executive Presence: “Presence is that magnetic personal quality which enables a Rising Executive to hold people to higher standards and energizes them in good, bad and ordinary times.”

You will know when a successful Rising Executive enters the room by the way he or she carries himself or herself and instills confidence in others. Executive presence is not about being the narcissistic center of attention; rather, it is about being a calm person in the midst of a storm. An executive with great presence generates security and reassurance in others.

Strategic/big-picture thinking: “Strategic/big-picture thinking is the provocative, collaborative dialogue among people who can affect a company’s direction and success. It is a way of understanding the fundamental drivers of a business and challenging conventional thinking about them in conversation with others.”

Rising Executives are at the top and thus need to have a broader vantage point on the company and industry. They see the big picture and can now connect the dots among functional areas. They live beyond the silos and can leverage the value their functional area creates for the good of the whole organization.

Accountability (vs. Responsibility): “Accountability for results: Getting work done through others.”

Rising Executives get their work done almost exclusively through others. In other words, they are accountable for the work that others are responsible for creating. They define the what and empower the team to define the how.

Political savvy: “Political savvy is the ability to partner with peers to contribute towards the business goals. Politics is all about horizontal leadership or, in other words, leading across organizational boundaries.”

Effective Rising Executives know how to “reach across the aisle” and develop strategic alliances with others in the organization. They know how to partner well with other functional areas and leverage staff groups such as IT, HR and Finance to facilitate their work.

Work smarter, not harder: Decisiveness and discipline are key to working smarter, not harder. Mastering one’s priorities and time spent against them ensures appropriate results and helps to avoid burnout.

The pace of life for a Rising Executive is break-neck. In order to be effective, executives must learn to develop routines that maximize their time and energy. They also must learn how to master their calendar and master their time, in order to keep up with and stay ahead of the workload and pressure that come with being on top.

The Top Line

When you are promoted to the executive ranks, you will find that your new leadership job is qualitatively different from your previous leadership roles. You will also find that what it takes to be successful is also qualitatively different. In other words to succeed in your new role, you need to boldly go where you have not gone before.

Even more importantly, what you do is incredibly important. Rising Executives are the captains of their corporate ships, meaning they can guide their organizations to success or failure.

© Copyright 2011. Lisa Martin and Betsy Jordyn. All rights reserved.