Building leadership experience

(upbeat music) - [Daniel] My name is Daniel, and I am a supply chain professional from North Carolina. My question is that a lot of leadership jobs want someone who has prior experience in leadership? Well how can people get the experience to advance as a leader, if no one will hire them until they have it? (upbeat music) - [Man] Daniel has a great question, he's asked us about that classic kind of catch 22, right? I need experience to get the job, but I can't get experience unless someone(laughs) gives me a shot. It's a great conundrum to talk about now, the advice I have is a little bit non typical. So a lot of people think that the trick here, is to really try and make the best case possible, and go present it to your superior so that you can figure out how to get the raise, or the promotion or the role that you really want, even though you don't quite have the experience. Now, how do you make a great pitch? Well, how do you make a great pitch quite frankly, is a fun topic. But it's not the advice I'm going to give you. What I'm going to give you is a little hard to resist, it really is a deal, you can make someone that they're going to have a hard time saying no to goes like this, You don't ask for the new leadership position, the promotion, the raise whatever the big ask is that you're looking for, you don't ask for it now. So even though you don't have the experience, even though they might think you're not ready, here's what you going to tell them. "I'm ready, I want to do this, I'm going to do it successfully for you we're all going to be very happy about it, but you do not have to give me that position." Now, what I'm going to ask you for is a six month or maybe an 18 month who knows what the timeline is that's up to you. I'm going to ask for a timeline of performance, that would look so good in your estimation that you are happily without any stress at all, going to give me that promotion into that role that I really do want. I want to step into leadership and between now, and when I ask you to make that decision many, many months from now, what are the milestones? What are the skills? What are the deliverables? What you're doing here is asking them to articulate what it takes to make them feel comfortable, putting you into that position. Whatever that might look like, it might be a certain project that is finished on time on budget, it might be a client you need to land, or some new skill that you absolutely need to demonstrate you understand, demonstrate some competence in a particular skill area. Whatever it might be, you want them to articulate it in such a way, that you have an opportunity to work towards actually delivering what they're asking for, now, when six months or 18 months or whatever it is actually passes and you re-ignite that conversation, one of two things is going to happen. They're going to give you that position, and now you're in a leadership role(laughing) and you've gotten passed that catch 22, and it's a beautiful thing and you're continuing to work hard and add value, or they don't give you the role for whatever reason but this is important that it won't sound great, but it is, you've now put yourself in the best position possible to be valuable, with the internal labor market where you work or if necessary with the external labor market, looking for other roles in other organizations. It's not about losing loyalty to your organization, but if you really want to grow there, if you've really made a nice plan, articulated the outcomes that will help them make the decision and you're still not getting that decision. It might, it just might be time to look around. Having said that, the odds of this strategy working tend to be really, really good. Managers who you report to, love to see folks add clear value. So all you're doing here is saying, let's talk about what real value looks like, such that you are comfortable not, you know no question marks at all, comfortable putting me up into a leadership role where I think I belong, what's that look like? And then you get busy making that performance track record happen. Hey, good luck to you Daniel.