Research Paper Exclusive Content
Advanced Leadership Maneuvers: How to Succeed in the VP Role
Introduction
The Five Priorities
Key Takeaways
Final Thoughts
1. Five Priorities for Succeeding as a Vice President
2. Key Takeaways for Vice Presidents and Senior Leaders
3. Final Thoughts
Introduction: The Vice President Role as a Crucible of Executive Leadership
The vice president (VP) role is often a final destination, as there are few available rungs left on the corporate ladder. Leaders who become VPs may feel that they “have arrived,” powered by their deep expertise and eager to make an impact. They don’t expect the job to be easy, but they face a double leadership mandate: deliver results every quarter without fail and, at the same time, proactively transform the organization to meet the demands of an uncertain future. This need to lead boldly now and build for the future can feel like a tall order, and at times an overwhelming crucible.
It takes more than knowledge and skills to thrive as a VP. It takes courage, confidence, and diplomacy. Are leaders prepared to meet these challenges? Many are not, and those who are sometimes spend too much time worrying that they don’t have what it takes.
New VPs can find that it feels lonely and thankless near the top. Clear, consistent expectations of the role are often absent, leaving these leaders to figure out the role on their own. VPs will take the blame when things go wrong, while shining the spotlight of achievements on their teams. On top of it all, the VP role is a vulnerable place to be when organizations opt to remove whole layers of leadership in “efficiency-by-org-chart” strategies to placate their boards and boost stock prices.
How do we know this? The ProjectNext Leadership team of coaches has worked with thousands of VPs and senior leaders around the world. Coaching gets to the heart of leadership struggles and triumphs. It provides a unique insider view on the priorities that need to be juggled, the personal insecurities that need to be conquered, and the mindsets that need to shift. This paper blends our global coaching insights and scores of interviews with high-performing senior leaders across a wide range of industries. It sheds light on the immense challenges that VPs face today, presents five priorities for mastering the VP role, and provides three crucial takeaways for leaders determined to deliver the business outcomes that this high-impact role demands.
Five Priorities for Succeeding as a Vice President
Our research on and coaching of VPs has shown that successful VPs have mastered the following five leadership priorities:
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Building a Personal Leadership Foundation
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Embracing Higher-Altitude Decision Making
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Managing Up
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Leading Across the Enterprise
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Scaling Leadership Through Delegation and Development
The exact titles that organizations use to define the VP role may vary across the globe, but these are typically the top priorities that leaders at this level need to master.
Let's deep dive into each one.
We have not listed “leading change” as a discrete VP priority. “Always-on” change leadership is now woven into everything VPs do. It amplifies the role’s inherent challenges, as the pendulum swings toward performance cultures, ever-leaner organizations, disruptive technologies, and transformation-weary employees. Change is the context in which VPs function, the “water they swim in.”
1. Building a Personal Leadership Foundation
The VP role can be characterized by isolation, vulnerability, more visible (and critical) decision responsibilities, and the lack of external validation. As a result, leaders at this level need to be secure in who they are and what they believe. Yet a surprising number of VPs we’ve worked with have admitted to imposter syndrome. One leader explained it this way: “Many of us who reach this level are validation-seeking, Type-A perfectionists. If no one is grading us, how do we know we’re doing it right? We need an insane amount of self-trust.”
Lack of self-trust—and the angst it brings—affects both the performance and job satisfaction of VPs. It can make them reluctant to leave old habits behind and lead boldly through an uncertain, roller-coaster business environment. Who’s going to shore them up? Not the C-suite—those corporate leaders expect that VPs already know what to do and don’t need kudos. Not direct reports and peers—they often find providing feedback up or across to be awkward or may even perceive it as a career-limiting move.
VPs, therefore, have to gain confidence from the inside out, leading with clear personal purpose and priorities, building resilience, managing their inner critic, and prioritizing their own development. They need to formulate a clear point of view on what they’re willing to fight for and define success for themselves. When they do, they’ll have the emotional grounding they need to lead with courage.
Courageous leadership is not the only benefit, however. A personal leadership foundation fuels inspirational leadership. It equips VPs with the clarity needed to incorporate what they stand for into their communications. Those communications in turn can effectively demonstrate who the VP is and why others should trust and follow them.
“There are no gold stars at this level. You only get feedback when things go wrong. The team gets credit when things go well.”
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“We need these leaders to be bold, but they seem paralyzed, hesitant to make decisions.”
2. Embracing Higher-Altitude Decision Making
VPs spend more time leading out front than they do following directions of those above them. At this more exposed leadership level, they make more consequential decisions than they had to in the past. It’s a long way to fall if they stumble. Yet given the speed and uncertainty of business, VPs must make decisions with less data than they’d like, account for significant risk, and build in the flexibility to respond to inevitable pivots in priorities.
The shift goes beyond the volume and nature of decisions to the way VPs need to approach the decision-making process. They need to be bold and also recognize when they need to involve others:
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As VPs focus on enterprise issues, they are rarely close to what’s happening day-to-day. To make informed decisions, they need to cultivate a culture in which their team members openly share information.
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Since their purview now extends beyond the functional domain they’ve already mastered, VPs have to augment their point of view with the ideas and expertise of others. They often don’t hold the knowledge they need to make quick decisions on their own.
Higher-altitude decision making is required, which is about more than choosing the best course of action. It’s about strategically identifying who to involve (and when), what data to obtain, and what risks to manage. And it offers a valuable benefit to the VPs who embrace it: The process itself can drive successful change when these leaders bring people along in the decision-making process, rather than merely announcing a decision and then “managing the change” it creates.
3. Managing Up
VPs need to master a delicate interplay of accepting and implementing decisions already made and taking more initiative in running the business. But clarifying, prioritizing, and negotiating the stream of directives coming out of the C-suite is tricky. Sometimes requests that sound like mandates are only inquiries, or a corporate leader may be merely floating an idea for debate. At other times, new directives reflect a shift in priorities that threaten to overwhelm teams already running at full capacity.
To successfully manage up, VPs need to persuasively and diplomatically make recommendations, debate ideas, and know when and how to push back without sacrificing relationships. They need to determine the right blend of decisive action, information sharing, and involvement of the C-suite in their decision-making.
This balancing act depends on VPs understanding the values, styles, agendas, and challenges of each executive—and then using those insights in their interactions. While this may sound simple enough, some leaders told us it has become increasingly difficult because of the elevated level of churn in C-suites today (“We’ve had five leaders in our division in two-and-a-half years”).
Moreover, upward interactions are not the only balancing act for VPs managing up, as one leader reminded us: “All the questions I need to ask to be able to represent the work at quarterly business reviews can make my team feel like I’m micro-managing them. I have to find the right balance to ensure that I have the information I need.”
“The foundations of managing up should be built at lower leadership levels, but this challenge comes to a head in the VP role, where it gets more complicated and volatile.”
“Partnership is the new leadership.”
4. Leading Across the Enterprise
VP is an enterprise-level role, as a leader we interviewed described, “At this level, VPs need to wear the company hat, participating as a fellow leader with ideas about the business overall, not just representing their function.” As such, it requires leaders to partner with other executives across functional silos.
Partnership isn’t easy, and it requires a major investment of time. Our previously published Leading Across study reported that peer relationships across the enterprise are the most challenging relationships for leaders to build and maintain. The most effective leaders at this level dedicate at least 50 percent of their time to what we coined “lateral agility.”
Success in leading across isn’t shaped by direct authority but rather by heightened diplomacy and relationship building. Yet our latest research suggests that VPs question the time required even when they recognize how these partnerships will help them succeed. One leader summed it up: “It’s counterintuitive. You feel like you spend too much time ‘politicking,’ but these relationships are a multiplier to drive impact when harnessed correctly.”
When VPs cultivate an enterprise-first mindset and break down rather than defend silos, they are able to tackle the big problems that only collaboration at the top can resolve. This approach also establishes a clear expectation for cross-functional collaboration within their teams.
5. Scaling Leadership Through Delegation and Development
To deliver on the four priorities described above, VPs need to redefine their approach to the functional leadership that fueled their success to date. They must be involved in day-to-day operations just enough to stay informed and drive results. But if they remain too far in the weeds they won’t free up space to strategize, make decisions, build relationships, and solve enterprise problems.
What’s the recipe for success? Scaling their leadership. VPs must determine what they alone can and must do and skill up their people to do the rest.
This type of strategic delegation demands ruthless prioritization and focus by VPs as they hand off tasks they may enjoy to concentrate on responsibilities they’re still figuring out. It necessitates getting comfortable with less “doing” and more coaching of team members on their leadership. And it requires clear expectation setting: When should their team involve the VP in problem solving rather than informing them of the solution after the fact?
VPs who take stock of their team’s capabilities and drivers, make tough talent decisions, and develop the leadership capabilities of their teams are better positioned to scale their leadership and minimize the time spent in the operational nitty-gritty. Cultivating a high-performing, collaborative unit empowers the team to operate autonomously and efficiently, further extending the VP's reach and capacity.
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“The role is more about delegating and less about doing. VPs need to scale their leadership.”
Key Takeaways for Vice Presidents and Senior Leaders
Our work with senior leaders confirms that the VP role promises more than prestige and compensation. It can be a fulfilling leadership experience despite its demands. Leaders at this level can influence the strategy that secures the organization’s future if they develop credibility and earn the right to be heard. They can make a difference in people’s careers through candid and kind coaching and generous development opportunities. And they can create a human-centered and results-driven organizational culture one meeting at a time with their behavior and the tone they set.
But knowing where (and where not) to focus and what (and what not) to do as a VP is an advanced leadership maneuver that doesn't necessarily come naturally to those advancing to this level. Many leaders admit that it’s an uncomfortable place to be. It requires growth that extends beyond skill development to redefining their very leadership identity.
Given the priorities we’ve laid out, we offer the following three reminders for leaders at this level.
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Deciding What Not to Do Is a Vice President’s Superpower
The VP role has wide reach. You cannot deliver on its broader responsibilities and tend to all the leadership activities you’re accustomed to acing. Be careful about prioritization or you’ll become your team’s biggest obstacle to productivity, burn out personally, or do both. Lead with an enterprise-first mindset, focusing on those tasks that only you can do.
As you concentrate on the highest-impact tasks, keep discussing expectations—not just your own expectations, but also those of your team. Recognize that your team doesn’t want you in the weeds of their work. Agree on, for example, which meetings you really need to attend and which can be handled by someone on your team.
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Quality relationships fuel trust, effective partnerships, conflict resolution, shared risk taking, and idea generation. Cultivate them up, down, and sideways, taking the time to get to know your leaders, team members, and peers. You don’t have to socialize with these colleagues or memorize their pets’ names. You do need to understand their styles, personal drivers, and challenges.
Relationships Matter as Much as Knowledge or Skills in the VP Role
Likewise, become known beyond your VP title. Share what you stand for, personally. Don’t just behave as you think a VP should act. Relationships depend on your authenticity.
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This is a role with high visibility and weight. People expect you to have a point of view, so develop one for the things that matter most. And keep communicating. People want to hear from you. Your “voice” is your primary leadership tool. Use it well and often.
You Are Now the “They” Everyone Looks To as a VP
In addition, recognize that your ability to self-regulate affects the climate of your organization. Your emotions are contagious, as one leader remarked, “If I’m having a bad day, then everyone around me ends up having a bad day.”
When trust is in place, people are more likely to assume good intent in your actions and forgive leadership missteps with unintended consequences. Trust has a positive impact in every VP interaction, whether you are advocating for your ideas to the C-suite, collaborating in a risky cross-functional initiative, reassuring employees anxious about the future, or inspiring commitment to new ways of working.
The three elements of trust identified by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman are useful guideposts to follow:
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Positive relationships, the most important drivers of trust, require a focus on connecting with others, showing empathy, and demonstrating genuine caring. People wonder, “Do you care about me?”
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Good judgment/expertise involves demonstrating competence, making sound decisions, and delivering results. People wonder, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
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Consistency is not only about aligning words and actions but also about keeping promises. People wonder, “Can I count on you?”
Trust in leadership fuels successful organizations. Widespread research connects trust in the people at the top (that’s you, one of the “they”) with high engagement and high-performing, psychologically safe cultures. Yet research reveals that in most organizations, trust in senior leadership is lower than trust in direct managers and peers. Keep working at earning trust.
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Final Thoughts: Developing Vice Presidents for Executive Leadership Success
The VP role offers leaders endless opportunities to do “great work” and make a huge difference for the organization’s employees, customers, bottom line, and larger community. Yet it’s not a job for the faint-hearted, and when they arrive even the most successful leaders can falter, despite their experience and enthusiasm.
New VPs take on fresh responsibilities while many of their earlier leadership tasks and challenges remain. The expertise that fueled their past success is still important, but it isn’t enough. These leaders are expected to make, not just execute, high-level decisions; instigate and drive strategic initiatives; navigate interpersonal dynamics and agendas in the C-suite; and partner across silos to solve enterprise problems. Phew!
Vice president is a role worth stepping into despite the challenges, but it’s time to stop assuming that VPs can navigate the complexities of their role on their own. Organizations can help by setting consistent expectations of the role across the enterprise. The leaders we spoke to also emphasize the value of getting support and learning from others who have faced similar challenges. They agree on the importance of feedback to identify their development areas and blind spots. They need a culture that supports leadership development both to advance their own capabilities and to help them create the bench strength of leaders to delegate to as they turn their attention to their expanded responsibilities.
Many of the shifts required for the VP role need to happen from the inside out. The leaders who master new ways of thinking, acting, and connecting will deliver now and shape a bright future for their organizations. They will make a lasting, positive difference that extends beyond their tenure in their VP role.
Authors
Molly Rosen
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, ProjectNext Leadership
Molly Rosen is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ProjectNext Leadership, a global firm dedicated to developing exceptional executive leaders and high-performing teams. With over 20 years of experience coaching leaders across tech, entertainment, and biotech, Molly specializes in guiding executives through critical transitions and preparing them to lead transformational change. Her work with Fortune 500 companies focuses on building sustainable, diverse, and future-ready leadership pipelines. She shares her expertise on topics like leading across silos and navigating matrixed organizations in publications such as Harvard Business Review, The Globe & Mail, Authority Magazine, and others.
Jeff Rosenthal
Co-CEO and Co-Founder, ProjectNext Leadership
Jeff Rosenthal is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ProjectNext Leadership, a global firm specializing in executive leadership and team development. With over 30 years of experience, Jeff partners with leading organizations to prepare senior executives and their teams for critical leadership transitions. A recognized thought leader, Jeff frequently speaks on executive development, leadership transformation, and future-focused succession strategies. He contributes his insights on topics like succession planning and building high-performing leadership teams to publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Globe & Mail, and others.
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Matthew Spence
Principal, ProjectNext Leadership
Matthew Spence is a Principal at ProjectNext Leadership, and an executive coach and consultant dedicated to helping leaders drive high-performing organizations while becoming their best selves. With over 25 years of experience in internal leadership roles at iconic global organizations like Meta, Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, and Gap Inc., Matthew brings a human-centric systems thinking approach to his work. Matthew is also an endurance athlete who brings learnings from that arena to his work with leaders. He is the author of the book, Lessons from the Wall: 15 Things I Learned About Leadership & Life By Doing Something Really Hard, which explores themes of resilience, perseverance, and personal transformation.
Kristen Chester
Director, ProjectNext Leadership
Kristen Chester is a Director at ProjectNext Leadership, where she designs, develops, and delivers impactful cohort development and coaching programs. Kristen excels at translating ProjectNext's research into executive experiences that yield tangible results for leaders. In addition to her client engagements, Kristen spearheads ProjectNext Leadership’s marketing efforts. Prior to joining ProjectNext, she was a Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Leadership Practice, advising clients from VP to C-Suite on leadership strategy, organizational culture, employee experience, and change management.