I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. -- Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader, 1963.
There probably isn't a person in the world who would not wish for a fair chance, and an opportunity to succeed. We would all prefer to be measured by the content of our character. In the business world, this translates into an opportunity for a rewarding career.
American companies like Rohm and Haas have been working for more than 40 years to be more inclusive, to put the diverse talents of their workforce to full use. There's no doubt that significant progress has been made, and no doubt that more needs to occur. For that to happen, both individuals and corporations need to take responsibility to effect change.
There have always been differences between perception and reality. During my career, I have observed that the perception of a successful leader in a small, entrepreneurial company can be quite different from the perception of a successful leader in a large corporation. In an entrepreneurial organisation, one's success is almost always the result of individual performance. Measurement of success is absolute -- and can be tied to the amount of money one makes, or the amount of individual recognition one achieves.
In a large corporation, success is somewhat dependent on individual abilities, but also heavily reliant upon team performance and influence skills. Here, success is relative -- one's degree of success is measured against the performance of others, before the next move up the corporate career ladder.
Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own careers. However, it is important to know and understand the impact of perceptions, and a willingness to recognise that companies expect different skills at different points in one's career.
As a man of Indian ancestry, I have developed my own beliefs about the perceptions of Indian professionals. These are my personal opinions, and may not reflect reality, but when I mentor or speak with Indian groups, these are some of the perceptions we discuss:
- Excellent academic credentials
- Smart and aggressive
- Ambitious
- Very good individual contributors
- Good communication skills
- Good functional leaders
- Not necessarily good leaders of large, diverse organisations
What's the missing link here? Strong influence skills.
Whether you are Asian, African, Japanese, French, Polish, Brazilian or American, the skill sets expected of you will change as you rise through an organisation.
Early in your career, you are known for specific, often specialised skills. For example, you know the intricacies of tax law especially well, or you are up to date on the latest generally accepted accounting rules. People seek you out for your expertise, individual knowledge and aptitude.
Those incredible skills you had at the beginning and middle part of your career -- in accounting or tax -- become less important as you move higher up in an organisation. These skills are replaced by your ability to influence and persuade people -- often your peers, or people higher in the organisation than yourself.
In these later stages, people seek you out because of your collective experience across many endeavours, and for the people you know both within and outside of your company. Your ability to move a project forward that involves many team members is valued. You bring solutions to the organisation even before they realize that a problem exists.
These are the skills to develop in order to reach these higher levels of performance:
- Learning agility: The ability to learn new things even as you let go of outdated concepts
- Flexibility: Being multi-dimensional
- Risk-taking: Get out of your comfort zone and try something new
- Focus on results/performance
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