Page 52 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Never Have To Rely on Your Technical Brilliance • 33

Even if you’re the boss and you can just say, “Go do it,” you will
have only light support, enthusiasm, and improvement from the person
bossed. Instead, ask directed questions to get to mutual agreement.
Be prepared to accept the unacceptable response for now, though.
Don’t be irritated, angry, or turn autocratic. Ratchet up your cooperative
effort. Try again later. Time, tenacity, and finesse in your reengaging may
turn the person around.
On your own, take the initiative to do a minirotation yourself by
doing some ride-alongs with company sales people. It gives them a chance
to learn about you and your work, and you to learn about theirs. You
develop more connections in and outside the company, appreciate
“another world,” and broaden your generalist skills.

Resolve Problems—Yours and Others

Be grateful for problems because if there weren’t any, you wouldn’t be
needed. Problems make it fun. This is your job in life and in your work—
to overcome obstacles and fix problems. Everything is about overcoming
obstacles—every novel, every movie, and every triumph in business
or in life.
The fact that you choose to address problems puts you ahead of
others who usually choose to ignore and tolerate them or, worse, make
them bigger. You get the reputation as the “go to” person when there is a
hitch in progress because you won’t ignore red flags; accept suspect facts;
turn a blind eye to questionable actions and practices; accept overly upbeat
news and predictions without testing them out; plead ignorance; blame
problems on rogue underlings; or take a deaf, dumb, and blind defense.
Find and define (accurately and well) the right problem to fix as
soon as possible. While you are getting “your own house in order,” at the
same time find out what your boss, boss’s boss, or boss’s boss’s boss has for
problems, and try to solve those too.

I found [that] most people want to see their own career move forward,
so I’d go off and do something they needed done. Sometimes I got a
little bloodied, but I learned.