KEEPING YOUR CAREER ON TRACK

Managers who achieve significant professional goals don’t often worry about career derailment. But complacency isn’t the same as continued success. Many high-performing executives have one or more blind spots that they ignore as long as they meet their business goals. The traps that lead to derailment can usually be found among five leadership competencies: interpersonal relationships, building and leading a team, getting results, adapting to change, and having a broad functional orientation. Managers who rely on any of these skills at the expense of the others or who neglect these skills when promoted from a technical to a managerial role can sidetrack their career. Leadership success—achieving it and continuing it—depends heavily on a manager’s developing and using each of these skills.

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Craig Chappelow has worked with hundreds of mid-level and senior executives. He managed the introduction of two CCL Internet-based assessment instruments, Benchmarks Online and 360 by Design, and writes the Dividends & Interest column for CCL’s bimonthly periodical Leadership in Action. He holds an M.Ed. in higher education administration from the University of Vermont.

Jean Brittain Leslie is manager of instrument development research in the Products group and instructor of CCL’s Benchmarks Certification Workshop. She is coauthor of several CCL publications, including A Look at Derailment Today: North America and Europe (1996). She holds an M.A. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.