The coach's corner - June/July 2024

Julia Rowan answers your management, leadership and team development questions

Q. I am head of function in a large organisation. My career has gone well, and I’ve been recognised and promoted several times. I am a quiet person who puts the head down and works hard – as does my team. However, I have a new boss. He came in with a lot of fanfare and even made a presentation about the way he likes to do things. He recently told me that he doesn’t think I drive my part of the business enough. I feel I drive my team hard – but I don’t shout about it.

A. This could be a personal style issue. He comes in with fanfare and clearly communicates how he likes to do things. He could be overlooking you because his style is different and time might help him see your value. 

But it might also be time to recognise that as we rise in organisations, sometimes new skills need to come to the fore. 

There are a couple of things you can do:

Wait and see: As your manager gets to know you and the work you do, their concern about how you lead your team may abate.

Talk to your manager: Say “I want to have a conversation about how we work together. You’ve probably noticed that I’m a quiet person, so what kind of information and communication do you want about the work that I do?”  

Show them otherwise: Send a short email at the end of every week or fortnight sharing three successes (e.g. projects completed/moved on), and three priorities for next week. This will create a sense of momentum and a record of progress and achievement over the year.

However, this could be a useful time to look at the skills that senior leaders need to develop. 

Your current approach has served you well up to now. But does the organisation need a bit more? How would your stakeholders (your team, the teams you serve, your peers, etc.) benefit if you shared what you did more broadly? Not just sharing what you do, but the value add: what you have learned, the insights, information and support you can offer to stakeholders.

The scope and focus of how we communicate naturally changes as we rise through organisations, reflecting what is needed from us at our level: the connection between the work of our team/function and the organisation’s strategic vision, the complexity of the decisions we make in a fast changing environment, the risks we need to mitigate and manage, and how we develop talent and ensure smooth succession.

The temptation is to fall into the binary of “I can either be true to my natural style OR give my manager what he wants”. The trick is to see beyond that and to find a way to showcase your work from that quiet and hard-working place you inhabit. 

I wonder what would happen if you discussed this with your team: my guess is that they would have a ton of ideas.