What’s standing in the way of you?

Yesterday I had the delight of speaking at the Comms Hero conference with my Take the Lead collaborator Carrie-Ann. We ran a special live edition of the show, exploring what a modern comms leader looks like.

What struck me during the discussion was that although we were talking to a (virtual) room full of communications leaders, the principles of our discussion were as relevant to anybody looking to make that step up into more senior leadership roles.

Here are a few headlines:

• Moving into a senior leadership role is about becoming more generalist. You can't go diving into the weeds - your peers won't be doing that.

• Your expertise is a given, now it's about your overall contribution to the business. That might mean you need to broaden your portfolio (which isn't a bad thing to break you out of your 'specialist' pigeonhole).

• It also means that you need to stop making every conversation come back to the technicalities of your speciality area. Instead find ways to make your important information relatable and relevant to other people and what they're interested in.

• Start putting your values into action now. That might mean challenging your peers and seniors when you see behaviours that don't align with organisational messaging. This can be hard and scary but will set you apart and show that you are organisationally minded.

• Confidence is a big barrier to people feeling that they can make that next step into leadership. Explore what that really means - leadership is about bringing vision, setting the direction, empowering others, being authentic, including others. Which of these are you struggling with? Or is there something else at play?

• Demonstrate your adaptability. No more 'it's always been done like that'. Instead, show you have an eye to the future, a filter that can pick out what could be relevant to the business, and an attitude to give it a go.

Which of these have you found to be the biggest challenge for you in your career as you've progressed?