Recently diversity was celebrated as part of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's events and conferences for 2010, including the annual meetings for such cable diversity groups as Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT), the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) and the Walter Kaitz Foundation . What’s most interesting about all of these gathering was the one theme that stood out - “leadership.”
The question of concern, which is applicable to all industries today, was: how will you develop and hone your leadership to guide your people through this ever-changing business landscape? Spanning such diverse topics as mentoring, developing leadership and the bottom line, being strategic, producing multi-ethnic content and programming, developing multi-ethnic high potentials and more, diversity really boils down to one thing – people. In the words of Eric Hawkins of Discovery Networks International, “Who makes organizations run? People. Who ensures a culture is innovative? People. Who continues to keep us competitive? People.”
Well said by Eric. After all, even if you are talking about programming, marketing, digital, or any field of business, it’s all about leadership. Leaders are the ones that spearhead organizations, make decisions that affect what goes on cable/television and the Internet, and create an environment for employees to be creative, to innovate and to feel valued and motivated to do their best.
During the WICT conference, I was on a panel entitled, “Leadership and the Bottom Line”, and all of my fellow panelists – Nomi Bergman, President of Bright House Networks; Margaret Lazo, Executive Vice President in Human Resources at NBC Universal Television; Jill Smart, Chief Human Resource Officer at Accenture – all encouraged the participants to grow, nurture and cultivate leadership skills in order to become the most relevant and essential element of their organization.
Easy to say, and not so easy to do. However investing in yourself and your leadership ensures that you avoid what Jacqueline Welch of Turner Broadcasting, Inc. called, “POPO – ‘passed over and pissed off.’”
To avoid being POPO, here is a top ten list of some of the most useful and relevant tips for advancing your leadership:
1. Go international - Take a short-term or long-term international assignment to understand the international marketplace. After all, if your organization makes money globally and your employee pool is global, wouldn’t it help if you had global experience and understood this landscape well?
2. Seek and enlist a champion – Ask someone inside the organization to be your “champion.” This person can advocate on your behalf, give you advice and promote you consistently. Whoever you ask needs to be trained to understand what opportunities you are seeking (aka, what is your “sweet spot”) and what to say about you. A champion may be someone who emerges from working jointly on projects or who takes notice of the good work you are doing or simply someone you ask for help. In any case, get one!
3. Business strategy – Understand the business you are in and the company you have joined. Be sure to listen and participate on earnings calls, join affinity groups and become a well-rounded student of your organization and business.
4. Applied formal and informal learning - Being a life long learner is critical to advancement. This enables you to have an open mind and learn different disciplines and points of view. Naturally, learning makes you smarter, and applied learning will effectively make you stand out.
5. Professional presence – At Diversity Week, Dr. Tonya Cornelius from ESPN emphasized the need for leaders to know and leverage their brand. Know what people “see” in you when you walk in a room and how others think of you. Hone, develop and manage your brand.
6. Scrappy wins - Become a “scrappy” leader. Be resourceful and do what you need to do to get the job done, e.g. devise innovative ideas, enlist departments, which never worked together before, hire people with non-traditional experience.
7. Stand out – Win people over with your ideas, performance, goals and mission. Allow people to see all parts of who you are.
8. Measure your success – Learning how to use and devise metrics will set you apart from the rest. Consider how it sounds to say, “the campaign was a success” versus “78% of our clients voted this campaign as being the key driver of their business, increasing revenue by over 50%.” Which one impresses more?
9. Pay it forward – Mentor, look for places to champion others, give constantly with a clear consciousness wanting and asking for nothing in return.
10. Know who you are – Great leaders are self-aware, drive with authenticity, know when to ask for help and are always true to themselves.
Pick one of the top ten and go for it full force. Take your leadership and your career into your own hands, because if you don’t, no one else will.
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