By Dr. Aaron Mujajati
At the start of your career, promotions often come from being the best at the job, mastering technical skills, solving problems quickly, and showing high intelligence. Your value is measured by what you can personally produce.
After a certain level your intelligence and skills are not enough get you promoted. Director and CEO positions are more about people skills and your capacity to live with the consequences of your decisions. That is why in most cases leaders are not the most intelligent or most skilled.
Generally speaking highly intelligent people do not rise to the top because they struggle to connect with others on an emotional level; they overcomplicate decisions instead of acting decisively; and they have low tolerance for the compromises that leadership requires.
If you want to rise to higher levels like CEO or Director understand that your intelligence and skills are a very small part of what is needed to get you promoted. As you move up the ladder jobs become less about doing the work yourself and more about getting results through other people. This requires:
1. People skills like empathy, persuasion, conflict resolution, communication and motivating teams.
2. Political awareness. You need to learn the skills required for navigating power structures and building alliances.
3. Decision making under uncertainty. You need skills on making tough decisions with incomplete information and living with the consequences.
Now you see why you are smarter than your boss and why you will never get his job until you learn the skills that get people to the top. You have heard.