The Executive Role Alignment Guide
Decide what you should own, where you need more say, and which work needs to sit elsewhere. Prepare a proposal for leadership that makes room for the contribution you want to make.
For Directors, VPs, SVPs, and executives who want to take a more deliberate part in shaping their current role.
The work people know you for
You may be the person people call when a project needs rescuing, several teams need coordinating, or a commitment has to be made to work. You’re good at it. There may also be decisions you’re ready to take on that rarely reach you.
Over time, colleagues can become used to involving you in a particular way. They experience your judgment through the work you keep doing. Being relied on to recover a decision someone else made can keep reinforcing that contribution, even as your responsibilities grow.
The Executive Role Alignment Guide helps you examine that pattern and decide what to do about it. You’ll work out which responsibilities belong with you, what you want more opportunity to lead, and which changes to discuss with leadership.
Where this can help
You contribute across several areas, but it’s difficult to establish what is yours to lead. You need to sort out which responsibilities belong together and what your own contribution should be judged on.
Your reliability has made you the person who fills the gaps. You want to decide which work deserves a permanent place in your role and what needs to return to another owner.
Day-to-day demands still take most of your attention. You need a proposal that shows what would have to change for you to spend more time on the decisions leadership wants from you.
You’re often brought in once the direction or promise has been settled. You want to establish where your judgment should enter and what you would take responsibility for.
How you’ll work through it
Compare what leadership expects with the work that fills your time. Look at when people involve you, which decisions you make, and what your repeated contribution may be teaching them to rely on you for.
Establish whether you need clearer ownership, a specific decision right, resources, or a choice between competing priorities. Test your explanation before assuming the problem is how leadership sees you.
Choose what to ask for first. Connect the change to work the business needs, explain what you would own, and account for the effect on other people’s responsibilities and priorities.
Bring a specific recommendation, a workable alternative, and the decisions leadership needs to make. Decide what you’ll look for afterward to establish whether your role is operating differently.
Included with your guide
Seven chapters combine explanations, examples, and application. Work through expectations, recurring assignments, decision authority, and the changes available to you. Complete it digitally or in print.
Use these companions when several requests seem reasonable, asking feels risky, or leadership agrees and then continues as before. Each adds thinking around the guide.
Choosing What to Ask For First · 5:56
When Asking for Authority Feels Risky · 6:49
When Leadership Agrees, Then Keeps Operating the Same Way · 7:28
Connect your request to a business priority and identify who can approve it. Prepare your proposed role responsibilities, a map of the decisions that matter, and an agenda for the leadership conversation.
Maya, a fictional VP of Operations, is trusted to recover customer launches after dates have been promised. Follow how she examines the pattern, revises her first explanation, and proposes a change to when her judgment enters the process.
The work people keep bringing you can shape what they trust you to lead next.
What you’ll leave with
Frequently asked questions
It focuses on shaping your current role. It can also help when you’re entering a newly created role, taking on a promotion, or working through a reorganization. Start with one responsibility or pattern you want to address.
It helps you examine the work people experience from you and prepare changes that could give them more opportunity to see your leadership. Their conclusions will depend on what changes in practice and the judgment you demonstrate. A completed guide alone cannot establish a different reputation.
You can start with one consequential change: earlier involvement in a decision, ownership of a defined responsibility, a handback of recurring work, or support that frees capacity for agreed priorities. The guide helps you compare realistic options and prepare an alternative if your first request is declined.
Career Direction helps you decide what you want next and whether an opportunity is worth pursuing. Role Alignment helps you examine how your current role is shaping your contribution and prepare a proposal for what you want to change.
The guide includes teaching, competing explanations, and worked examples to help you interpret your situation. The fillable tools bring that reasoning together into preparation you can use with leadership. You can work digitally or in print.
You’ll receive access to the 47-page fillable PDF and all three audio walkthroughs through your Positioning House library. The PDF also includes listening links and QR codes. This is a self-guided product; individual advisory sessions are available separately.
The Executive Role Alignment Guide
Work out what you want to own, what needs to change, and how to bring a clear proposal to leadership.
Get the guide + 3 audios · $75