Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others

Foreword

Leadership makes a difference.

You might not know that now. But you will.

I've been in banking my entire career, primarily with Fifth Third Bancorp, which operates in a dozen states in the Midwest and Southeast. Banking is an interesting business for many reasons, but one of them is this: We don't make anything. Our product is exactly like our competitors'. We borrow it for the most part, and it all looks the same. It's green, rectangular, and has the same relative value on a given day. In order to stand out in a crowded field, the focus needs to be on how we deliver that value—100 percent through our people.

I believe that leadership happens all around you. It happens in the tone you set and in the many, many conversations you have to accomplish one simple, but complex thing—bring people into the vision of the outcome you need.

But most people don't think about those things until they get their first leadership job. You're good at being an expert, and then you get promoted for your expertise into a completely different job. And so you experiment, because no one ever tells you—except for DDI—the right or wrong way to get the most commitment from the people around you.

Let me rewind the clock a bit. My first big leadership job was what my organization called a “broadening” responsibility—an assignment that addresses a challenge a company is having and that also helps a leader grow and develop. One day I was called in to see my boss's boss, the Vice Chairman, and I found ...