How to Go from Manager to Director

if you want to advance from manager to director then this is the video for you today I'm going to be laying down the most impactful steps that you can take to advance from manager to director very quickly if you haven't subscribed yet to the channel then subscribe and hit that Bell so that you're notified each time that I release a new video my name is Ryan stsus I'm the founder of the job hackers Network where we help leaders to change their career trajectory by building their brands and ultimately growing their impact in today's video we're

going to go over three core areas that you can very purposefully be focusing on as you're looking to change from manager to director now these are things that you can control so let's work on controlling the controllable and dive into number one the first step that I want you to take is doing the work now you've got to dive in you've got to get into that work so let's talk about this from the really from the perspective of a project I want to look at it through that lens okay so manager versus director doing the

work now now what do I mean by this you're not going to automatically be given the p&l of a director when you're not a director you're not going to be given the the ultimate control right your center of control your center of influence is bigger than your center of control you have the ability to push out your center of influence by the way that that you do your work so through the lens of a project let's start off at the beginning of a project for a manager versus a director how is a project initiated for

a manager often times that project is handed to that individual versus that individual seeing a problem and saying wait a second we can solve that a director is going to be looking at the landscape a broad landscape and saying what's broken that I might be able to affect that we might be able to change and so at the initiation of a project often times a director is one who identifies the problem and then assigns resources to be able to fix that problem how can you do that as a manager you're not going to own the

resources not yet but you will have the ability to to look at the landscape based upon how you perceive it how you purposefully want to look at it you've got to pick your head up from the desk pick your head up from the team get over the cubicle wall figuratively or literally and look at what's happening around you and then find a problem go and potentially gain resources gain stakeholder buyin for those resources because you won't own them yet but now you're initiating the project so that's the difference between a manager and a director at

the initiation of a project they're seeing the Strategic landscape and they're starting that project okay during the project now you're in the middle of it you have the resour sources as a manager you're leading this project during the project one of the key things that a director will do is make sure that they're assessing still that broader landscape and saying who needs to know about this who in the end is this ultimately going to affect who needs status updates who needs to know the metrics of how we're tracking who needs to know the new etas

from a resource perspective who needs to know how we're using these resources and that we're doing it prudently so that we can then go attain more because again you don't yet own that full pnl as that as you would as a director right so so now we're going out there and saying how do we communicate effectively so that you are empowering the broader organization that is going to be affected by this project third place that we're going to go in regards to this project example is to the end of the project after the project is

completed what is the difference between a manager and a director how can you look like a director now you can think about the broader landscape communicate effectively the results of the project that's kind of level one but then level two is to say who else could be affected by this project that is not yet in scope right so again bringing your head up above that cubicle wall to look around and say who else needs to know about this who else what other silos what other parts of the organization could potentially use this project or the

structure of this project or do something similar to this project who else do I need to get in front of that that ultimately through your work through then enabling others your impact is going to grow okay directors are always looking at that larger landscape it's no longer just a about the team in front of you it's about something bigger this is how you can in your manager seat with a project in front of you with a problem in front of you pre-project start looking at things differently so that you are acting like you are doing

the work now even though you don't have the title if an individual looks at you and says right this is now an individual who holds the purse strings for a promotion they look at you and say well it's obvious he's been directing she has been directing so of course we would promote into that director level capacity that is the quickest and easiest way to be identified for promotion is to do the work now so that's step one all right let's talk about the second thing that you can do and that is to manage visibility all

right three components I want to go into in regards to managing visibility and that is analyzing who holds the p L talked a little bit about this in number one you got to understand who has the purse strings but here it's really important so who has the p&l to what p&l means profit and loss statement it means they have the budget but it's even bigger than the budget they really own that business and with that they're able to create roles that they want to serve their business if you're a director of engineering you might not

own a p&l for that for that organization it might be a director of operations that's going to truly own the p&l so now we have to look and say if I was to be promoted from my manager position into a director position who would hold the power who has the perrings those individuals have to be analyzed and and understood by name you got to chart that out and write in these different silos and areas that you have interest in who holds the purse strings maybe one layer up two layers up and then number two what

you have to do with that is you have to assess your brand with each of those individuals by name yes by name and you look at John and you look at Tabitha and you say what is my current brand with that individual by name so how do we analyze this one thing that I like to do is I like to think about points of contact points of visibility that this this person has had of you or with you you might have had a skip level one-on-one with these individuals at some point in time that's maybe

an hour that they were with you that's a point of visibility ibility hopefully in that point of visibility you were thinking about what you were trying to accomplish in the past and it wasn't willy-nilly and you got something from it right so now they have a positive brand perception from that maybe they saw you speak at an all hands meeting a point when you were on stage talking about the tactics of what we were going to do manager tactics but hopefully they even saw you talking about the strategy the larger landscape speaking like a director

right and if they didn't even know it and they saw you speaking in that way they would have just assumed you were a director already think about that when you're on a stage the landscape that you're speaking from managers get too deep in execution versus that strategic layer and level okay so now that's two points of contact this person has with you the one-on-one this all hands now the third component that you're going to go into to build on this is to create additional visibility points how do you do this you think about when that

individual might have a line of sight to you how you can strategically show up in front of them or maybe how you can draw them into a line of sight for you I think about myself and uh a story that I have from ADP at ADP I wanted to really get into Career Development more and more and have that be more of my day job that I was doing that program the career development program was was led by a senior director Dorian Kohl's and I had only had one point of visibility with her early on

in my time at ADP it was okay but it wasn't me really putting myself forward in the career development space now I heard she was going to be coming into our site and so what I did with that time is I put together three specific moments I got to the person holding her calendar and and got her into three times where I knew I was going to be speaking in different settings to a leadership group to an associate population on the topic of career development one was a formal presentation I would be doing now two

weeks after she didn't give me any direct feedback but two weeks after she left she then called me and said Ryan would you take over the webinar program for career development for ADP across the world and I said yeah hands down yes absolutely let's do it and uh and so that's that's what we're talking about when we're thinking about creating additional Lin of visibility and that should be with individuals by name whenever you're presenting know who's in your audience and and and then be able to assess are those individuals that hold the purse strings over

something that I want so that wraps up number two you're going to analyze who holds the p&l to that role that area that you want assess your brand with them by name and then assign additional tasks to yourself ways that you're going to create visibility points which with each of those people by name if this is helping you then give us a like down below and then answer in the comments this question how purposeful have you been honestly how purposeful have you been in The Branding of yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 just

throw a one to 10 down in the comments down below one being not very purposeful and 10 being very purposeful are you ready to start or optimize your job search process do you feel stuck and need help connecting the dots join this free web class where you'll learn the stepbystep formula to control your career progression we've helped hundreds of experienced engineering and operations leaders just like you to build their brand and grow their impact register for this exclusive training today to step into the driver's seat of your career the third way that you can help

yourself in the transition from manager to director is to be selective and I want you to be selective in in three key areas now the first of those is you've got to learn to say no now one of the pieces of advice that I'm sure you probably got pretty early on in your career I see this advice wrongly given quite a bit is to just say yes right somebody comes to you with a project just say yes dive into everything no bullhonky that is crap advice you have got to learn to say no now as

a certified strength space coach I help individuals to really dive into their strengths the work that fuels and engages them in lights them up so now that individual has a a temperature check a barometer to say okay wait a second if I say yes to this is it going to play to my strengths am I going to show up well is it going to fuel and engage me and light me up so I do think looking at your strengths the work that you would be actually doing is a really really good way to determine are

you going to be sustained by this project or is it going to be a burden now that you're saying no to things to the right things and saying yes to the right things of course as well we want to analyze projects so this is number two in how you are being selective okay analyzing projects how do we do this in a way that is very thoughtful and purposeful to going from manager to director we look at as one component what is that project going to be affecting is it affecting maybe a product that's the the

core product of the organization that's front and center that's going to have all eyes on it that would be a good place to play or is it something over here maybe it's a project where we're sunsetting something and it's over to the side with very limited lines of sight and visibility well now it depends upon who is it important to even if it's over on the side it might be really important to one of the individuals that you're trying to change visibility with can you see see the angles on this as you're looking at projects

look at whether those projects are going to be visible to the right people impact the organization create a story that can help you overall in this brand building that you're doing right think about before you start something how is this going to contribute to My overall story My Career brand okay now the other thing that I want you to think about is your strengths as a certified strength space coach I go deep into helping individuals to understand the work that fuels and engages them and that's how I I see strengths right it's the Marcus Buckingham

definition of strengths your strength based Lane is when you're in the lane of doing the work that lights you up that fuels and engages you this is where career sustainability comes from playing to the work that lights you up now when you're looking at a project and you're understanding the role that you would have to play in that project ask yourself am I going to be in my strength based Lane is this going to be work that I drive towards is this going to be work that I want to do or is it going to

be an absolute vacuum drain of my energy because if it is it will not be your best work when you've got that component right you're looking at the the projects through the right lens you're saying no to the right things yes to the right things the next area that I want you to be saying yes to is stages one of the things that really helps an individual to catapult their career is their ability to present if you look at individuals who have performed the same in their career but were not able to get on stages

typically an individual who is able to get on stag is going to make about 20% more throughout their career than somebody who doesn't get on stages and honestly that person who can't get on those stages is going to be capped at a certain point in their career because they won't be able to affect cultural growth they won't be able to to get up there and affect the whole organization under them so getting on the right stages how do you assess a stage how do you assess whether you want to be the one in the front

presenting out on something one you look at the topic you look at the impact of the topic the results two you look at the who's going to be in the room who will you gain visibility points with if you're on that stage number three does the topic play to your strengths is this in the area of how you want to be known and want to be branded because if you get up on that stage you will likely be perceived as an expert in that knowledge area that topic will be associated with your brand and is

that what you want so that's how I would analyze stages is is it going to match up to the overall brand perception that I want to deliver to whom am I able to deliver that brand perception and is the this something that's going to catapult my career up based upon the impact of what we're presenting now stages are great stages have absolutely changed my career trajectory if I didn't have that capability of getting on stage wouldn't have been able to lead that career development program wouldn't have been able to create the impact and change hundreds

of people people's lives through the job hackers Network so if you don't have the skill set of presenting on stage that is probably one of the number one things that I would invest in myself in is that ability to present that ability to effectively communicate to larger bodies of people as a recap those are our three main components of how we're going to make that transition from manager to director you've got to First do the work now push out that area of influence you've got to manage your visibility specifically to those people who hold the

power to create roles that you would want and then you got to be selective and make sure that you're doing the right work if you feel like you're ready to advance from manager to director but you can't quite get over the hump then I'd like to help only set up time with me if you feel like you're ready for that next step but you want some professional help to be able to get there to get through that transition you'll find the link to my calendar down below for a one-on-one in that job search strategy session

we are going to get down to the Brass tax we're going to build out a highle plan of how you can take the purposeful next steps that you desire to in your career and be sure to check out these videos next as you continue down this career Journey that you're on purposefully owning your brand and growing your impact I'll see you on the next one