What Your Leader Expects of You

The latest copy of Harvard Business Review landed on my desk this morning. As usual I took a look at the contents page to see what topics April’s edition would be dealing with, and lo and behold the top article was “What Your Leader Expects of You”. I had just published a blog article ("...what is expected of them?..." ) that covered this topics a few days ago. I turned to the article with the view of comparing Larry Bossidy’s (the articles author) thoughts with mine.
The following is a summary of what Larry (who has held a number of CEO/COO positions at companies like Honeywell and GE ) expects from his direct reports

Get involved –
Know when and how to step in and sort things out.

Generate ideas –
Product ideas as well as ideas to improve business processes and solve problems.

Be willing to collaborate -
Not getting on and not communicating with others not only diminishes your performance but threatens the performance of others in your team or network.

Be willing to lead initiatives -
Don’t run away from challenging projects. Good organisations and good line managers recognize and reward those who are prepared to step forward and take on difficult tasks.

Develop leaders as you develop -
Do not be selfish; be interested in the careers of those you work with especially those who report directly to you. Do not be vague over what you require from them.

Stay current -
Keep up to date with world events and developments as well as local events – after all our products are designed to be used in this world and it’s the world that shapes our communities where our businesses operate and have to sell into.

Anticipate -
If you don’t stay current you will not be able to anticipate what's going to happen. If you can not anticipate, where is you’re next killer application/feature going to come from.

Drive your own growth -
Take control of your own ‘continued professional development’. Ask for feedback from peers on your performance. Read good material – watch good TV programmes , meet new people and be willing to tackle risky projects that stretch your abilities and help you to grow.

Be a player for all sessions -
Be able to apply all the above in the good and bad times. We all need to be able to perform when the pressures on and the business environment is not favourable.

Larry’s article goes on to discuss what he expects from his direct reports. Ironically this is something that I have on my road map to do. To date I’ve asked my direct reports what they expect from me – I think comparing the list of expectations will be interesting reading. I’ll let you know how I get on in a future posting.