My Designation Defines Me....?

As I am interviewing leaders for my forthcoming book, I stumbled across a leadership myth - ‘My Designation automatically warrants respect!’

Hmm, let’s take a pause and explore this further because for most of us our designation is a yardstick by which success is measured. This is also subconsciously linked to the hierarchical seating mechanism in an office – the bigger our designation, the more exclusive desk we get in the office until we have a room and then the corner office. Don’t get me wrong – one should be proud, very proud of moving up the corporate ladder and as the designation gets sexier and sexier, one has the right to feel on top of the world.

Looking back, years ago, I used to agonize over the title on my business card. I was in sales and in my mind, my designation was the window through which my customers would judge me and my power within my organization - the bigger the title, the higher I stood in the ‘importance’ ladder. Also, the perception was that the designation seemed to be a way of getting past a gatekeeper – after all a CEO does not have time to meet with everybody! Huh, there was however, ONE BIG point I was missing – every other person was a Vice President or had a fancy title. So, what differentiated me?

Approximately 2.5 years ago, I had an enlightened discussion with one of my clients – he admitted that given his position, everybody wanted to meet him and yes, designation played a role, however, he wished people were more innovative with that. He wished he had a way of knowing who could really provide value and who was just a fancy designation. He had met many CXOs and unfortunately found many were a waste of time – it really did not matter to him who he met as long the person made a difference and really took his problem off his hands.

That gave me an idea – henceforth, every meeting I went to, I stopped giving out my business cards. I would make some excuse about running out of business cards. Interestingly, I noticed that I made some of my best connections when I did NOT give away my card and focused instead laser like on my customer and on the value that I could bring. Henceforth, my introduction was ‘I am Ruma & I handle sales in this region from ‘my company’ – If you need a solution that I have, rest assured, I know how to navigate through my organization and can get things done for you. So, let’s get the show on the road.’ And now it has become a habit. Except for networking events, I just forget to hand out my business card. (So, if we ever meet and you want my business card, please do remind me….)

One of my good friends, Shantanu Sen Sharma (who now runs his own company, Ozone Education), jokes about how everybody appears to be a Vice President or a Senior Vice President. According to him, the right hand text that comes AFTER the Vice-President gives a true indicator. So, one should ignore the ‘Vice President’ designation and focus on the right side of the title to get a true picture ie Vice President – Americas, Vice President – Infrastructure, Vice President – Service Delivery, Vice President – Customer Services and so on.

And today, in a world of commoditized designations, there is a distinction between going up the ladder on paper and going up the ladder in practice. There is a distinction between a designation and the person behind that designation. And this is one case where the distinction should not be clear at all – if both merge, rest assured a leader is emerging.

Yes, the higher up the ladder you go, people around you will laugh harder at your jokes and your request or suggestion becomes a command. Yes, you will have people working for you but have you earned the right to lead? Have you earned the respect that accompanies the designation? Maybe a better question to answer is ‘What is my unique contribution to this designation?’ ‘What is my identity minus the designation?’ ‘What is the one change I would bring about using my designation?’

Here's to shifting away from just being a wannabe leader defined by designation alone…..