By Sue Shellenbarger
Smart leaders have a knack for spotting hidden potential in
their employees and suggesting jobs to draw it out.
Pushing people into jobs they don't feel qualified for can be a
hard sell. It can be just as difficult, however, for employees to
sit back and allow the invisible hand of management chart their
careers.
DowDuPont Inc. Chief Financial Officer Howard Ungerleider wants
to advance employees who collaborate with colleagues in different
departments and look beyond their own jobs toward improving the
company's overall results. Several years ago Beth Nicholas stood
out when he visited the chemical giant's Shanghai operations, where
she was an accounting director, he says. He watched her give
presentations and talked shop with her over dinner.
In 2014, Mr. Ungerleider advocated for Ms. Nicholas's promotion
to global finance director for Dow's agricultural-products unit,
where she would report to him. The unit posted record earnings last
year. He recently offered Ms. Nicholas another stretch assignment,
to become the company's chief tax officer, effective in January.
The job will require especially strong collaboration skills as the
company, formed by the merger last month of Dow Chemical Co. and
DuPont Co., proceeds with a plan to break up into three
companies.
Ms. Nicholas lacks credentials common among corporate tax chiefs
-- a master's or law degree in taxation. Mr. Ungerleider says
DuPontDow has other executives with deep expertise in tax law. What
he sees in Ms. Nicholas is the ability to collaborate with them on
a company-wide goal of improving global tax strategy.
When Mr. Ungerleider offered her the promotion, Ms. Nicholas
says, "it was one of those moments where you pause and the tummy
turns a little bit." After taking about a week to think it over,
she said yes. "You should feel uncomfortable when you take a new
job," she says, "because the opportunity to grow is so vast."
Spotting untapped potential is especially important in advancing
women, who tend not to apply for jobs they aren't already highly
qualified to do. Executive coach Joel Garfinkle of Oakland, Calif.,
also sees this tendency in "the introvert who may be intimidated by
the extroverts around him or her, the talented but shy person who
is afraid of self-promotion, or the person of a different race or
culture who has been taught not to put himself forward."
Bosses also need to reassure employees: "I care about you, I'll
support you with mentoring and coaching, and there's an exciting
path forward if you take the stretch assignments and succeed," says
Suzanne Bates, a Wellesley, Mass., leadership and executive coach
whose firm, Bates Communications, has worked with executives at
Dow.
"You've got to be kidding me!" was Jennifer Roseman's response
when her boss Dan Frank, chief executive of Three Wire Systems, a
Falls Church, Va., government contractor, suggested three years ago
that she take over financial management of the unit where she was
supervising client-service staff. Ms. Roseman trained as a social
worker and had no interest in adding profit-and-loss accounting to
her role at the unit, VetAdvisor, she says. She reluctantly
agreed.
Mr. Frank, a former Navy pilot, says he trusted Ms. Roseman to
learn the job and excel at it. "What I saw in her was somebody who
loved the mission" of providing housing, health, career and other
support to veterans, he says.
After a few months of managing VetAdvisor's revenue and expenses
from her Ebensburg, Pa., office, she realized meeting targets gives
her a sense of teamwork and pride. She has since been promoted to
executive vice president. Looking back, Ms. Roseman says, "Dan had
a knack for understanding what I could do -- for seeing things in
me that I didn't necessarily see."
People who want to work for a leader who nurtures talent should
look for executives who spend time with employees and take an
interest in them, asking questions and welcoming honest answers,
says Jessica Bigazzi Foster, a senior partner at the
management-psychology consulting firm RHR International in
Chicago.
Motivating many, Ms. Foster says, is a desire to pay it forward.
When these leaders tell stories about their own careers, "a
consistent theme is that somebody took a chance on them and helped
them make a significant leap -- without checking all the
boxes."
Catherine Zelenkofske was thriving as a program manager at
WegoWise Inc., a Boston maker of software for building owners, when
tech entrepreneur Laila Partridge became the company's chief
executive last year. Ms. Partridge noticed how smoothly Ms.
Zelenkofske worked with others. During her performance review, the
CEO asked, "So, what do you like doing?" Ms. Zelenkofske talked
about mentoring employees and building customer relationships.
Ms. Zelenkofske was surprised when Ms. Partridge offered her a
job she'd never considered, as head of "people ops" or human
resources. Ms. Partridge explained that she'd still be doing what
she enjoyed, but with all 50 of the company's employees rather than
a smaller team. She promised to provide mentors, training and
guidance. Ms. Zelenkofske took the job. In her first nine months,
she set up two programs for employees, one to improve the
performance-review process and another to help them with career
planning.
"She was a good performer on her previous job," Ms. Partridge
says, "but on this one she's a rock star."
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 26, 2017 09:04 ET (13:04 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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