Avoid this COMMON MISTAKE of young leaders (Politics and Alignment)

There is a common mistake of young leaders that you should avoid. Politics and the need to align work results is a key part of the leadership role of every team lead or project lead. Avoid this common mistake that many young professionals fall for, in consulting, banking and industry. If you work for a leading consulting firm like McKinsey, BCG or Bain, the need to look out for company politics and alignment is very extensive. In leadership development it is important to understand key leadership mistakes and new leader mistakes to learn how to be a better leader.

Chapters
00:00 Common mistake of young leaders
00:30 Introducing the scenario
01:35 Why team leads fail
03:56 Typical problems of missing alignment
05:38 Confusing alignment with politics
06:02 How to align your results at work

Consulting Humor

#communication #companypolitics #alignment

🎓 COMMUNICATIONS AND SLIDE WRITING COURSE*
Learn to create PowerPoint presentations and communicate like leading consulting firms with this Firm Learning Signature Course:

📄 CV AND COVER LETTER TEMPLATE*
Get a CV and cover letter template based on my own documents. With earlier versions of this CV and cover letter, I successfully applied to McKinsey as consultant:

✅ THINK-CELL - EXTENDED TRIAL AND SINGLE LICENSES*
think-cell is the leading PowerPoint tool to create professional slides. It is used by 8 of the top 10 consulting firms and the entire DAX 40. Get access to an extended free trial and single licenses:

👍 CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP
Become a member of Firm Learning to support my work and get access to perks:

📩 NEWSLETTER
Sign-up to the Firm Learning e-mail newsletter for more regular content:

☑️ RECOMMENDATIONS*

💬 SOCIAL MEDIA

* Links are Affiliate or Sponsored links. I receive a fixed fee or revenue share whenever a purchase is made. The price for you stays the same. Thanks for your support!

All views expressed on this channel are private opinions of this channel's creator Heinrich. This is NOT an official channel of any consulting firm.

[FirmLearning]

Learn to create PowerPoint presentations like consultants from McKinsey, BCG, Bain:

[fwijffels]

The number 1 lesson in change management: involve people, get them on board, collectively develop solution, only then present as final solution.

[carljonascords]

On my first day in a team (german commercial bank), as an external, the internal teamlead, a choleric person, dressed down the guy presenting in front of the whole room: "Who challengend that document for you ? " "Challenging" slides was the term for 4-eyes-principle for all slides, even before the alignment process. That poor guy just had worked through the early dawn to get the slides ready and did not have the time yet to get his slides "challenged". It was an interesting experience to work with a choleric team lead but not something I plan on repeating.

[imrank]

Alignement and getting buy in is critical to any successful engagement. Essential tool in "influencing without authority".

Regular showcases is also a good technique to ensure frequent opportunities for alignment.

Insightful and practical advice as always!

[doziee.]

Another pivotal offering. Masterful work Heinrich!

[ricardodasilva]

Been following your page for a while but this is by far one of the most important videos I´ve seen thus far! Looking forward to applying these tips!

[petrhajek]

Super valuable insights as always, thank you Heinrich!

[ajb]

Completely agree. Delivered with more passion than your other videos.

[telanos]

In short, before going into a critical meeting, you want to make sure you're confident in the outcome by gaining the support of all (or as many as you can) of the key stakeholders before you even step into the meeting.
The one additional point I would make - on the topic of managing conflicting views from different stakeholders during the pre-meeting engagement process. The most ideal situation would be to negotiate a solution through that engagement process, but sometimes you can't manage to do so. In these scenarios, I have found that the meeting becomes a useful mechanism to get the conflicting stakeholders to agree on a way forward.

[massimopernicone]

Nice one. Here is one more alignment instance: interview results. I was in a meeting with the CEO of a food&beverage company and made the mistake of just highlighting the negatives I heard about the client company in the interviews. It backfired… the CEO said “are we then not doing anything right?”. Aligning the CEO and his team on what they were going to hear before the meeting would have gone a long way…

[azhivago]

Good video, but it demonstrates appallingly poor leadership if senior leaders do not explain to the more junior member of staff where they went wrong.

[francopieracci]

Well, something very similar happened in a recent project. We were presenting the result of a gap assessment whitout a previous alignment with the main stakeholder (the right hand of the CEO, not the CEO itself) although the report was presented and accepted by the organisation PL and th Sponsors. The project has been halted with (it seems to me excuse).

Thank you Henirich for you very valuable suggestions !!!

[thaddeushan]

Hi Heinrich, great video! What can we do to reduce/avoid going around in circles too many times with key stakeholders and their feedback? I noticed this never ending feedback loop happening in my latest project and was curious if you had any advice. Thank you!

[ali-omuv]

I left one of your glorified firms as i felt we created very little value and missed the timeframe to gain some actual oparazional experience . Most of my old college's either ended in some weird startup or in a position they could have gotten without a consulting background way part of my hatred against strategy consulting especially in the big firms comes from the brainwashing one endures during internal training qnd the fact that everybody feels like he has an iq of 150... i wish i would have gotten such well present advice ... this is really valuable content, even if it seems trivial once you know it!

Another pro tip keep two backupslides with a challenging analysis that you have not but which reassures your PL and the client seniors of the key results you worked out together. Make it seem like you prpated those just recently . Easy way to shine without pisding anybody off.

[tamafun]

Thank you for your leadership on this initiative.
- Best regards, Tama

[tobias]

Nice Video! Agree that surprising your seniors might not be a good idea. However, it seems a little like a waste of everyone’s time to align everything with internal and client leadership before the meeting, ending up in circles, instead of actually having an open discussion with alle the stakeholders in the meeting (what the meeting is designed for in the first place, as one could think). It does not seem very practical that the PL has to flip between partner and client instead of them joining together for a talk, just in order to avoid anyone being surprised in front of the other. But I guess one has to adapt to the world as it is …

[judyl.]

3:00 in my humble opinion.
4:05 alignment is a big topic.
4:50 no one likes to be surprised especially not in front of colleagues.
this is just bad because that makes that person looks bad: uninformed, unawared.
5:30 not aligning BEFORE important meetings is generally considered unprofessional
7:05 some appropriate workshop formats or make them feels like they are part of the solution.
7:20 Properly take the time in 1 or 2 weeks before this very important meeting, you meet all these people one on one, and you quide them through the documents. It's not ready yet but at least the rough outline, the key results you want to share. It is a pain when the clients agree but not the internal leadership and vice versa.
9:00 think: am i the right person to present the result.

[demyandanyluk]

Nice video Heinrich! I'm now in one of the project going through familiar situation. Already was final presentation for the client, and it went well (at least for senior level, not sure about middle :) ). But in the end client want to stay on status quo as I see it. The client has a strategy, and we provide solutions based on it, we also had several meetings with analysis of the existing situation and bad forecasts of not changing, but ... it stuck.

Why do you think it is so?

In my point of view:
- the client don't use its own strategy and don't build its monthly/weekly plans to achieve objectives and the goal of the strategy
- the client uses reactive approach in everyday work
- the client has lack of trust to the lower divisions of the organization (senior management don't see capacity in middle level to deliver proposed solutions)
- the client thinks in terms of expediency (political), but not strategy

:(

What to do?
Do you think it would be good idea to say it to them?

[railzip]

Oh It should be a class in university.

[minhhuu]

Dear Mr.Heinrich,
Can you recommend us some good books to learn about Corporate Strategy and Consulting skills?