What is your road to leadership?

Recently, at a leading business school, I was asked to offer my thoughts on what it takes to move your career forward and the traits of great leaders. In my view, leaders are largely self-made. Many people with the passion to lead can learn to do so, and grow to become good and even great leaders.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned several lessons that have served me well in both advancing my career and preparing me for the leadership role I have today. Here are some of those lessons that I shared with the students.

Moving Your Career Forward

Do what you enjoy. I didn’t set out to become a CEO. I set out to do something I enjoyed, where I could also have the opportunity to lead. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it makes it more difficult to succeed. So try to figure out what you enjoy doing early on.

Develop the courage to take risks. Many times as I moved ahead in management, I was put into situations best described as “sink or swim.” Fixing failing operations and mastering other difficult situations led me to faster career growth. Frankly, I believe you should never take a job you are absolutely sure you can do.

Learn from both bad managers and good managers. In fact, you can learn quicker from bad managers by observing what not to do.

Find opportunities to diversify your knowledge. Diversifying your point of view will help you become more effective in dealing with challenging issues or ill-defined projects.

Delegate wisely. Delegating comes with risks, so it’s important to choose who you delegate to carefully. It’s also important to remember you can’t delegate accountability.

Focus on the success of your organization. If you focus on your business’s larger objectives, and not just your individual career, you naturally become a leader who others want to hire.

Cultivate a life outside of work. Spending time with my family is extremely important to me. Time with friends is also important, and I find that developing networks outside of the workplace can actually help at work as well. I love to golf. It gets me out talking with others, and I often come back to work with fresh new ideas as a result.

Four Stages of Leadership

Much has been written about the path to becoming a highly effective leader. In particular, what has been described in the literature as the “Four Stages of Leadership Development” best describes my own career path and the stages that prepared me to be ready when I was selected to lead Pfizer. The four stages are:

• The individual contributor — You bring a needed set of skills, knowledge and abilities to the table. You build your credibility and develop a reputation for performance, ethical behavior and good judgment. You learn to work in teams on projects and begin to focus on the larger objectives of the enterprise.
• The novice manager — You earn your first leadership opportunity and run with it. You fine-tune your organizational and management skills, learn to listen, and learn the importance of engagement and creating a culture within your team.
• The experienced manager — You have mastered your skills and are seeking to diversify your knowledge and gain new points of view. You think and act both locally and globally, learning to lead and manage, oftentimes amidst competing forces.
• The transformational leader — You can balance long-term and short-term expectations, manage the competing interests of stakeholders, delegate authority wisely, forge an enabling culture and develop future leaders in the organization.

That said, every leader takes a different road to leadership. There’s no “one size fits all” here. My path was my path. It fit me, my personality and my circumstances.

At the same time, I believe that there are several underlying traits that are common across great leaders. They are dedication, listening, courage, empathy and compassion, and a willingness to take responsibility and make decisions. You can acquire any and all of these traits at any stage on your road to leadership provided you are self-aware, willing to learn and are not afraid to fail.

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Ian C. Read is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Pfizer.

Image: A Businesswoman is silhouetted as she makes her way under the Arche de la Defense, in the financial district west of Paris. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann