Kathy was a mentee of mine who met with me monthly. She would bring various challenges that she faced to our meetings and we talked about how she could handle them. One of those conversations focused on some feedback that she received from her manager who thought she was really good at leading projects, but she needed to be more strategic.
She asked me for advice because she wasn’t sure what to do to be more strategic and how to show that to her manager. To be honest, I had given this same feedback to people who were my direct reports too.
Strategy is a big word that can be intimidating and it isn’t easy to understand because it can mean something different to each person.
In that moment, I went back to a similar conversation that I had many years ago with my own mentor. My mentor told me that “these things like being strategic are new to you and they are just firsts. Just because you haven’t done it before, doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it is just your first time and it takes practice.”
I didn’t want her to be overwhelmed by what strategic meant. I wanted to give her some simple ways to understand how to apply this feedback. “Your manager can see that you can deliver things, but now he wants to see if you can do more than deliver projects. He wants to know if you can think with a bigger perspective, prepare plans for potential impacts of decisions, and find opportunities in obstacles that you may encounter. They want to know that you can focus on things that are bigger than your current role.”
I told her that this feedback is great news. It means that they can see potential in you. They want to see you explore your strategic side and be able to show them what you can do. All these firsts will help prepare you for a future role with more responsibility.