From Expert to Leader: Being Right vs Being Effective

You were right in that meeting and nobody listened. Dr. Mira Brancu breaks down what technical experts miss when they ignore workplace politics in favor of being right.

Most technical experts get promoted because they were brilliant at the work. They spotted the flaw nobody else saw, they said it out loud, and people respected them for it. Then they step into leadership and that same directness starts landing as criticism and nitpicking.

The usual fix is to gain political savvy, build executive presence, get better at diplomacy. To a lot of functional experts-turned-leaders that sounds like being told to be fake, so they shut down and ignore it completely.

Mira takes a different route. She walks through why the political side of the job is not noise getting in the way of real work, it is the majority of the work now. Then she gives you a 30 minute environmental scan you can run before any high stakes meeting, so you stop leading with your conclusion and start leading with what you actually understand about the other person's concern.

This is part two of her series on what happens when strong individual contributors move into leadership roles.

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