3 things I wish I knew as a Director #careertok #careeradvice #executivepresence #fyp #corporatelife

When I stepped into the director level there were three things that took me months to figure out and those things caused me a lot of confusion and a lot of frustration so I wrote about it so that you don't have to make the same mistakes. My latest newsletter is about how to be successful at the director level and it is filled with comments like this and this and this and this so obviously you need to read it but because I'm nice I'm going to give you a preview. So the first thing is visibility. Everyone tells you to be visible so that you can advance but self-promotion is cringy. Everyone rolls their eyes at the person who talks about their work all the time at work. It's annoying but visibility done the right way is not about that. So before I reframed it I was putting my head down which meant I was hiding which meant executives didn't know what I was working on which meant I wasn't getting credit for the work that I was doing. Do you see how that works? So the second thing is managing managers. You cannot manage your managers like you manage your individual contributors. So many leaders get this wrong and that's why they're micro-managers. So I learned how to coach my manager's judgment and hold them accountable to outcomes instead of their outputs. And the third thing is playing good politics. Early on in my career I thought that all politics were nefarious so I was very much a person who said I didn't play politics. Then I realized you could play good politics. So good politics is having relationships. It's understanding who has influence. It's understanding what different stakeholders care about so you can tell your team that. It's also knowing how to advocate for your team in times that decision makers care about. This isn't just about you. It's also about your team as well. So I talk about all of this in detail in the article and I also link out to deep dive resources. Enjoy. I'm Ashley. I'm an executive coach and I help smart people get to the next level in their careers. I also write a weekly newsletter and it's called reframed and you can subscribe for free at the link in my bio.