Promotions you feel you are not ready for should definitely be the ones you should grab. Promotions aren’t just rewards for past performance. They’re investments in your potential. Organizations promote people not only for what they’ve done, but for what they believe they can grow into. Saying yes to a role you feel unready for is not arrogance — it’s courage. It’s a commitment to stretch, to learn, and to lead even when your inner critic protests, says Accenture CEO Julie Sweet.
In a recent podcast of Fortune called “Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast with Alyson Shontell”, Accenture CEO made these remarks. She also gave many more career growth tips and hacks that can surely accelerate your career if you stick to the end of this article. She explained how these tips helped her land the top job profile at Accenture beyond her resume.
How did Julie Sweet land the top-job?
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet explained how she landed in this position. She says she never thought she would one day be in the running for the top job at her company, since she did not fit the traditional mold. However, when her former boss asked if she was interested, Sweet did not let her instincts of self-doubt kick in. Instead, she leaned on the advice of a former JPMorgan Chase exec who says never to question a promotion you don’t feel ready for.
“At the end of the meeting, he closes his notebook and he pushes it aside, and he says to me, completely out of the blue… ‘I think you could run this place someday,’” Sweet recalled. It was a surreal moment for Sweet, who was serving as general counsel at the time and did not fit the mold of a typical CEO, she had a legal background, not a traditional business one, she was a woman in a company historically led by men, and unlike previous leaders, she had not spent her entire career at Accenture.
But instead of letting doubts slip out, the now-57-year-old leaned on the advice she once heard from Dina Dublon, the former CFO of JPMorgan Chase who served on Accenture’s board: “When someone gives you a stretch role… chances are that the person offering you a stretch role is as nervous or more nervous than you are. So, don’t say anything, like: Are you sure?”. Armed with this advice, she says I did not flinch: “I looked at him and I said—with Dina in my head—’why, yes, I’d be interested. What did you have in mind?”
And it set her career in motion toward the top of the ladder, leading the tech consulting firm’s North American practice in 2015, and eventually being named global CEO in 2019.
Importance of Deep Learning
“I think the idea of being a deep learner at the top is really critical, and that is not usual in a lot of companies,” she said. “Because many times, the senior leaders, whether it’s the CEO or one level down, they’re the ones with all the wisdom. They’ve gotten these big jobs, and so the idea of training for leaders is often really odd to think about.”.
Meanwhile, she added, “I figured out pretty quickly that if I wanted to be the business leader with legal experience, I had to deeply understand the business,”. It’s a skill that ultimately helped her stick out from the pack—and be in line for the top CEO job: “transparency builds trust,” she added. “Because the more value you can contribute to your company, the more likely you’re going to get that best nextjob.”
Power of confidence
Being confident in the workplace is something that extends beyond just being offered a job—it’s something that is needed every day from all workers. In fact, Sweet said that confidence as well as humility and excellence, is core to what makes a “great team” at the $150 billion company with a 770,000-strong workforce.
“We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions,” she explained. “When you build a team that thinks that the status quo is challenging assumptions, embracing change, it means you’re constantly questioning. You don’t need to stop and have a big strategy… because you’re always working on the strategy.”
