Turn Your Disability Into An Advantage as A Business Leader

Author:  Jim Hasse

Prepare Yourself as A Leader

Leadership is a deliberately honed set of skills that a
person usually doesn't acquire without effort. Watch
the leaders you admire. Discover why they are
effective. You can then develop your leadership skills
by trying these suggestions:

• Take courses in supervision, leadership,
  teamwork and interpersonal communication on a routine
  basis as part of your intentional learning efforts.
  
  
• Volunteer for leaderships roles both in and outside
  your organization and local community.
  
  
• Add books about leadership to your reading list.
  
  
• Keep notes and files about what works and doesn't
  work for you.
  
  
• Discover and cultivate your leadership style.
  
  

Make the Break Between Doing and Managing

Depending on the size of your staff and your
organization as well as where you are in your personal
development, you eventually need to separate your work
into three categories: doing, managing and leading.
Senior-level jobs entail much more leading than
managing or doing. The majority of the work in
mid-level jobs is managing people, programs and
resources. Entry-level jobs involve mostly hands-on
work.

Building a career around hands-on work is a viable option
today. There are many meaningful, well-paid jobs in the
new economy that do not require high-level managerial
or leadership skills. But, if your career goal is a
management and leadership position, you will need to
make a break at some point in your career from purely
hands-on work by following these tips:

• Keep track of how much time you spend doing,
  managing and leading in your daily planner.
  
  
• Make sure your job description accurately reflects
  how much time you are actually devoting to each of these
  three types of work.
  
  
• Gain experience in managing and leading by
  volunteering to work on special projects, special teams
  or work groups within your organization or within your
  community that will give you managerial and leadership
  experience.
  
  
• Document that experience for your boss and
  incorporate it into your updated résumé.
  
  
• Think in terms of your organization's big picture
  and contribute your ideas, when it's appropriate, about
  how your job can help the organization realize its
  vision.
  

Establish Understandable Roles and Clear Lines of Authority for each Staff Member According Their Interests and Experience

Once you're in charge of a team, you'll likely find
most of your time is spent initially on managing
instead of leading. Clarifying roles, for instance,
within your team is a managerial activity for building
the platform from which you can exercise your
leadership. Your role is to help manage relationships
among the people on your staff -- not necessarily to
manage individuals. Here's how to do that.

• Learn how to write an effective job description.
  
  
• Learn how to delegate authority and what can be
  delegated and what cannot.
  
  
• Build lines of authority that give staff members a
  great deal of autonomy but allow you to maintain
  control
  
  
• Help the entire team understand those lines of
  authority.
  
  
• Update both job descriptions and lines of authority
  as your needs change.
  

Use Teamwork to Capitalize on Strengths, Compensate for Weaknesses

Here's where your disability can be a source of
strength for your team, but be careful because there
will likely be someone within or outside your team who
will, in some way, try to test how vulnerable you are
due to your disability and how you handle that
vulnerability. Here's what I recommend in building your
team:

• Explain and interpret the organization's
  mission, vision and goals in terms that are meaningful
  to members of your team. This is a key skill in an era
  of "no corporate secrets."
  
  
• Use yourself (and your disability) as a example for
  your team of how to capitalize on strengths and
  compensate for weaknesses in helping your team carry
  out the organization's mission.
  
  
• Assign responsibilities according to individual
  strengths and interests instead of standardized,
  fill-in-the-box functions.
  
  
• Use those assignments as career development
  opportunities for those involved.
  
  
• Prepare for the end-run from someone within or
  outside your team who may challenge your authority
  because you appear to be vulnerable due to your visible
  or hidden disability (see Related Link).
  

Be Visible (and Aware of Perceptions)

Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. These may
be tough recommendations to carry out, but they are
essential:

• Speak on behalf of your team in public and
  private venues, even when it may take extra effort due
  to your disability.
  
  
• Delegate responsibility for key spokesperson roles
  to another on your staff only when you have made it
  clear to staff inside and outside your team that you
  are tapping an inherent strength that individual
  possesses.
  
  
• Establish one-on-one relationships with key leaders
  in other segments of the organization. Network. Resist
  the urge to hide behind your desk or inside your
  cubicle.
  
  
• Exchange ideas with those key leaders about what is
  needed for the organization's continued success.
  
  
• Offer potential solutions to ongoing problems to
  others within the organization that are a product of
  your team's creativity and communicate those activities
  (and the feedback) to your team members.
  

Take Risks on Behalf of Your Staff

Here are four tangible ways to demonstrate to members
of your staff that, yes, you are an effective leader:

• Establish a channel of communication with the
  next level authority above you.
  
  
• Communicate your team's needs and positions on key
  issues both vertically and laterally within the
  organization.
  
  
• Document how you are speaking on behalf of the team
  and the results of those efforts.
  
  
• Put your team's needs and your organization's needs
  in perspective for your staff.
  

Show Appreciation, Celebrate Accomplishments

This is the fun part of being a leader. You'll reap big
benefits by remembering to:

• Express appreciation to individuals within and
  outside your team who, due to your disability, support
  you on the job through accommodations and day-to-day
  help.
  
  
• Show appreciation to other departments and
  organizational leaders who have helped your team meet
  its goals.
  
  
• Celebrate individual and team accomplishments in
  small ways that are significant to the team.
  

Cultivate an Effective Relationship With Your Boss

A leader also cultivates an effective relationship with
his or her boss. I've found there are four essential
guidelines (there are probably more) for cultivating
that relationship:

1. Share job descriptions and lines of authority
   and how they work together to carry out the
   responsibilities of your function.
   
   
2. Describe briefly how your team is helping achieve
   important organizational goals.
   
   
3. Make known outstanding accomplishments of
   individuals within your team.
   
   
4. Support your boss (always) in person, at meetings,
   within your organization and in public. That doesn't
   mean you won't disagree with your boss or have frank
   discussions with her. At the end of the day, your boss
   needs to know that you are on her side.
   
   

Bungled Bluff

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Here's a true story about a staff member who challenges Jim Hasse's managerial authority by going to the company president with his grievances.

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