Before You Accept the Bigger Title, Ask About the Mandate

The offer gives you the title you've been working towards. You like the people, the package is attractive and the business wants an answer soon.

Before giving it, try describing the job without using its title. What are you being brought in to change? What would you be able to decide?

A senior job offer can look convincing while those answers remain unsettled. The mandate deserves the same attention as the package, because it will shape the work you do after the excitement of the appointment has passed.

Find the unfinished conversation behind the role

A new appointment often follows a problem the organisation has struggled to resolve. Find out what brought the business to the decision to hire now.

If this is a newly created leadership role, someone else has been handling at least part of the work. Understand which responsibilities they expect to hand over and which they expect to retain. If you're replacing a colleague, ask what the company wants to continue as well as what it wants changed.

Listen for different versions of the assignment. The chief executive may want faster growth while the person managing delivery wants a period of consolidation. Both aims may be reasonable. You need to understand how the business expects the incoming leader to reconcile them.

Ask what you would be expected to leave alone. A company may want a different customer experience while keeping its existing service commitments. It may welcome changes to the sales process but expect the existing account structure to stay intact. Those boundaries do not necessarily weaken the opportunity. They describe the job more honestly. If you are being hired to challenge an established approach, find out who would support that challenge when it becomes uncomfortable. An interview can make change sound welcome in principle. You need to understand what support would look like when an actual decision affects colleagues.

Follow one difficult decision through the business

A general assurance about ownership is easy to give. A recent example is more revealing.

Suppose you're considering a commercial leadership role with responsibility for improving customer retention. Who can change a discount policy? Who decides whether a product commitment is made to keep a customer? How would you resolve a disagreement between sales and delivery?

Ask how a comparable decision was handled recently. You can learn who needed to be involved, what slowed the discussion and where the final authority sat. The answer may describe an arrangement you could work with. It may also reveal that the advertised responsibility depends on permission from several people outside the role.

Either way, you have a more useful basis for evaluating a job offer.

Separate approved support from hoped for support

Find out what team and budget would exist when you join. A plan to recruit is different from approval to make the appointments. Support from another function is more credible when its leader has agreed to provide it.

Then look at the dependencies. If a customer initiative needs product work, has that work entered the product team's priorities? If delivery capacity is already committed, what would have to move to make room?

Some uncertainty is inevitable. What matters is whether you and your prospective manager understand the same assumptions. Agree how expectations would be revisited if a dependency failed or the business changed direction.

Make the first year specific enough to discuss

Ask what the organisation would hope to see after six months and a year. Establish the starting position before debating the target. A retention goal means little without knowing which customers are leaving and why.

Be alert to competing expectations. The business may want quick revenue gains and a thorough rebuilding of the way the team works. Discuss which outcome takes priority when both place demands on the same people.

Your prospective manager's response matters. You are learning how the two of you would handle a disagreement about the work. Where possible, speak with colleagues whose support the appointment would depend on. They may help you understand how the mandate fits into the organisation around it.

Bring the decision back to your own career

A bigger title can represent genuine career progression. It can also add responsibility you don't particularly want. Compare the whole opportunity with staying, including the development you could realistically pursue in your current role.

Travel, working hours and responsibilities at home belong in that comparison. An appointment can be professionally interesting while asking for a routine you cannot sustain.

Before accepting a senior job offer, write a short account of the mandate as you understand it and share it with your prospective manager. Resolve differences that would affect your answer. You're checking that both of you are discussing the same job.

KORUM helps professionals with seven or more years of experience participate in professional discovery. Create your KORUM profile, add your career preferences and review the visibility options. Take a clear idea of the work you want to own into each introduction, then examine the authority and support attached to it.