Breaking Through Upper Limits

Marshall Goldsmith wrote a very helpful book entitled, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.  As you might imagine, the point is that the skills and perspective that have made you successful may not be adequate to get you to the next level.  In fact, they might be holding you back.

Early in your career, the key to success is often your ability to be successful as an individual contributor.  Your technical knowledge and attention to detail may have been your most important attributes.  Advancing into the role of a manager requires an entirely new set of skills, ones that are focused on recruiting, organizing, empowering, and supervising others to do the very work that you had mastered. That can be a very difficult transition.  Becoming an executive is another huge transition.  Here you must be able to see the big picture, build effective strategies and delegate the execution of those strategies to the right people.

Many people fail to successful progress because they don’t know the new skills they need to develop or how to develop them.  Breaking through the glass ceiling is one of the most important contributions a coach can make to someone who wants to advance in his or her career.

Take 10 minutes to consider how you might be stuck in your advancement.  What might you not be seeing?