What Managers Are Looking For In Tomorrow’s Leaders

The following is guest piece by Dan Schawbel.

When I used to work in a Fortune 200 company, I always wondered what it took to get ahead at work. No one ever spelled it out and there were no set expectations for becoming a manager at the company. You had to figure it out on your own.

The basis for my new book, “Promote Yourself”, is that I wanted to reveal the criteria that managers were using to evaluate employees for management roles. If you know what managers are looking for, and what they don’t care as much about, then you can spend your time wisely and increase your probability of success.

One of my predictions was that the higher up you go in an organization, the more important soft skills are to your success. The reason is because you have to start managing people, leading a team, delegate tasks and communicate constantly. This was confirmed in the research I did with American Express for the book. We found that managers are looking for soft skills over hard ones when promoting.

Then we decided to break the soft skills down to find out which ones are the most important. The top three most important skills that managers are looking for when promoting employees is the ability to prioritize work (87%), a positive attitude (86%) and teamwork skills (86%). No one would have guessed that the ability to prioritize work would be so significant but let’s think about this for a second.

The economy has forced organizations to do more with fewer resources. A lot of companies have frozen hiring and salaries for the time being and workers have had to take on more responsibilities because there’s a smaller headcount.

In today’s workplace, if you are unable to prioritize work, you won’t be able to deliver. The employees who can take several tasks and focus on the most important ones with the closest due date first have an advantage.

Having a positive attitude is underrated at work. People take it for granted but it can make all the difference. If you have a great attitude, people will naturally want to work with you and it shows that you have a commitment to your work and the organization.

On the other hand, if you hate your job or the people you work with, you will naturally have a bad attitude and you won’t have your position for very long as a result. This is even important in job interviews where recruiters are trying to see if you would fit into the corporate culture.

Teamwork skills will only become more important in the workplace. We are all on a team, working on projects to accomplish goals that will push our companies forward. If you aren’t able to play well with others, you’re going to have a very difficult time at work.

You need to support your team, acknowledge their efforts, show them support and give credit where it’s due. This way, they will want to reciprocate. It’s also smart to befriend them if you can because it’s easier to work with your friends and research shows that people are more productive and stay longer when they work with their friends.

Dan Schawbel is a Gen Y career and workplace expert, the Founder of Millennial Branding and the author of the #1 international bestselling book, “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future“. Dan is also a columnist at both TIME and Forbes, and has been featured in over 1,000 media outlets, including “The Today Show” and “The Nightly Business Report”.

The research he discusses in this piece serves as the basis of his second book, “Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success“.

4 comments on “What Managers Are Looking For In Tomorrow’s Leaders

  1. I agree that a positive attitude can make a tremendous difference in the productivity of a team. It's often under-rated…and positivity is different than optimistic. Many get the two confused…positivity is looking at the situation in a realistic way and uncovering the positive aspects of it. They do not expect the situation to change, and they learn to live within the new rules. Optimists, however, do expect the situation to change and that can be dangerous when the situation is volatile or when moving into the unknown.

  2. "If you aren’t able to play well with others, you’re going to have a very difficult time at work."

    Or, I would add, in any meaningful role in life and business. One thing people take for granted is team skills, how to play with others and build value. It's not something that you'll learn along the way. You need to focus your time and effort to learn how to be team player. Yes, you can finish some project yourself. But even if you are the most valuable expert in the world, if you cannot work in a team, your career will go down.

  3. I strongly agree with having vital teamwork skills. Having the ability to reveal that you could function collaboratively with others from a wide range of backgrounds is a crucial need in the majority of professions and is very important when securing employment. Employers see your capability to work as part of a group as a vital skill, as well as you should have the ability to demonstrate convincingly that you have sufficient understanding as well as experience of teamworking.

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