Page 212 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Leading Yourself 201

wrong, and then try a different approach. (See the box “Learning from
failure.”)

LEARNING FROM EVERY NEW JOB. Leaders we’ve worked with emphasize

how much they learned throughout their careers by taking different assign-
ments and facing various kinds of problems and challenges. Whether in new
positions in different functions within their existing companies or other re-
sponsibilities in other organizations (usually bigger jobs), effective leaders
use job rotations and external moves as learning opportunities and then
stepping-stones to even greater growth in the future. Xerox’s Mulcahy lever-
aged the skills, people relationships, and cultural credibility she earned by
doing years of sales and also a stint in human resources. Ferguson brought
sophistication about asset management and market risk to his job leading
TIAA from his years at the US Federal Reserve. In her 2010 book The Cor-
porate Lattice, Deloitte researcher Cathy Benko summarized this trend of
development through different kinds of roles and positions. Her research
demonstrated how the traditional practice of moving up a well-established
corporate ladder is now giving way to leaders pursuing a zigzag career along
something more like a “corporate lattice” across the organization. So seek out
opportunities to take on very different kinds of functional roles when you
can to broaden your skill set and exposure to different classes of problems.
Keep pursuing this kind of learning, even in the later stages of your
career. For example, when biopharmaceutical companies Merck and
Schering-Plough merged in 2009, Adam Schechter, who was the head of
Merck’s global pharmaceutical marketing and the US pharmaceutical
business at the time, agreed to take on the role of integration leader. He
volunteered, not knowing what this new job would entail, but he saw the
new assignment as a personal stretch and a chance to develop his skills for
a broader leadership role. As he told us, “I remember going home that night
and taking out a blank sheet of paper and saying, ‘What do I do tomor-
row?’” (see Ron’s HBR article, with coauthors Suzanne Francis and Rick
Heinick, “The Merger Dividend”).
No matter where you are in your career, you can put yourself in stretch
situations that foster leadership learning. For example, whatever your role,