Leadership Coaching: Be A Leader, Take The Tough Job

Take The Tough Job

Earn management’s respect and guarantee your job security by stepping up and offering to undertake the toughest problem facing your manager. If you are trying to keep your job, show traits like initiative, courage, and leadership. Take the tough job.

Getting your manager’s buy-in is important, but not critical. Look, you really aren’t taking a great risk by volunteering for the “tough job” for a reason. People have been trying to slay this beast for a while. Sure, you may be shining a flashlight into a black hole, but the worst that is going to happen is you join the ranks of those who tried and failed. Hey, as the saying goes, some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you.

Upside potential is the good news about taking on the tough job. It is tremendous. Resolving the problem enables you to become not just the fair-haired boy or girl, but you have a job with the company until it sells the furniture and locks the doors. So get to work scrutinizing and laying out whatever resources, facts and researches you have like pieces of a puzzle to see if anything fits together. Just sorting out and separating the issues into distinct groupings may put head and shoulders above everyone else who has ever gotten into the ring. Ask for as much help as you can get, so that you have other people working on side issues while you concentrate and stay focused on the overall problem.

Face The Challenge Of Becoming A Leader

When you realized that your best plan to solve the puzzle has turned out not successful and ineffective, it may be time to go to plan B, which is attacking one aspect of the multi-layered problem. Check back with your manager for his approval on your course of action. If you get the green light, ask him what section of the puzzle is causing him the greatest concern, or he would most like resolved. Then focus on straightening out that tangle.

Be aware that there are consequences to taking a little at a time approach. Sometimes the answers to individual parts of a larger problem do not fit well with an overall solution. If you do nothing else, try your best to move the ball forward as much as possible. So, taking the tough job is worth taking the risk. It’s worth the challenge to become a leader.