Stepping Up: 3 Tools for Navigating New Challenges

This article was first shared in Forbes.

Recently one of my former clients, Rena, contacted me both excited and pensive. She had just been offered a big new senior role and she wanted my help to “hit the ground running without being intimidated.” Rena is not alone. Many of my clients are also undertaking big new roles these days.

I’ve personally been thinking about this topic of mastery in my own career. As a certified coach with a PCC credential from the ICF (the main coach credentialing organization), I decided to undertake the learning process to become a Master Certified Coach (MCC) this year. For me, it has been a welcome challenge to put my coaching to the literal test and learn some great new skills along the way. My clients’ experience as well as my own has made me reflect on the benefits of “stepping up” into new challenges and yes, also, the unknown.

Taking on a bigger role, whether inside your current organization or by moving into a new one, comes with built-in contradictions that my clients can struggle to negotiate. That expertise that landed you your new role is often no longer enough now that your span of control and remit widens. On top of that, the feeling that you deserved the promotion and opportunity is often replaced with feeling like an imposter who’s in over your head with all the new challenges.

What are the best strategies for navigating this beautiful tension between skills, knowledge, and learning?

Dr Jo’s 3 Three Most Important Tools for Navigating New Challenges

1. Give Up Being The Knower: Early on in their career, many of my clients built their identities around being a subject matter expert and having (or being able to quickly find) the answers. Whether you are the expert in a niche field or have been in a role long enough to “have it all down,” there’s a natural pride that comes with being able to do your job well and answer other people’s questions. The challenge comes when you build your self-identity around being the “one with the answers” and then find yourself in a new situation where all your current knowledge is no longer sufficient. I have found that the sooner you can adapt your identity from “the knower” to “the one who learns well,” the more in integrity you will feel going through your day. If you learn well, you’re curious, you ask good questions and you feel comfortable saying, “I’m not sure but let’s think about it together.” From that space, you can feel wholly in integrity stepping onto a bigger stage without having it all figured out already.

2. Befriend Others Who Know: Once you have fully embodied the humility in not having all the answers, it frees you up to ask other experts about their opinions and listen for new perspectives rather than focusing on what’s right and wrong. If you’re in a new organization, you can be guaranteed that others know more about how to get things done in this organization, who to ask about whatever, and what’s been tried before and the history you would benefit from understanding. Even if you’re staying at the same organization, you now have some new peers and direct reports – both at your company and at other similar companies. Start by exploring with them how they see the landscape, and any landmines you should be aware of. Learning from others has multiple benefits: you build relationships with others as you learn together; you have ways to recognize and credit others for their contributions; and most importantly, you get the opportunity to build better solutions from the multiple perspectives you take away from each stakeholder.

3. Build in plenty of integration time: Once you’ve become a competent crowdsourcer of information, you need to make sure you have enough time in your schedule to generate insights from all this data. It’s not enough to have the conversations if you spend all the rest of your time fighting fires and responding to emails. If you’ve been following my articles for while, you might recognize that I am a fan of journaling. But that’s not the only way to generate insights. One of my clients loved doing mind maps to understand how different ideas were interrelated and what actions were necessary next. If you’re an extreme extrovert, you can even create weekly lunches with a thought partner where you each talk out your biggest problems, ask each other good questions and emerge with new connections you hadn’t noticed previously. Innovation research consistently demonstrates that our first ideas are rarely our best. Brainstorming and pushing yourself to come up with more ideas reliably leads to better ideas so get practice putting aside time to iterate your solutions. Working both alone, and with others, you can arrive at practices that combine your collected knowledge, research, and ideations for the true advances you want in your new role.

These are the three tools I consistently advocate to my clients.

There is a fourth secret tool for navigating new challenges: learn to inhabit the frustration of being new. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable with not knowing the next steps or the answers. Once you experience that frustration, recognize that you’re on your journey towards mastery, and what you’re feeling is just another sign that you’re engaging in the unknown and using it to fuel growth towards your next stage.