Here’s a gift of 5 actions you can start right now in service of strengthening your Leadership capabilities!

1. Build greater trust. You do this by ensuring that you follow up when you say you will. Lack of follow up, putting promises on the back burner because your busyness is the priority, or dismissing the promise to follow up as not really that important can dramatically erode trust. Instead of espousing intentions to follow up, commit to doing so and DO IT, whether you are managing up or down.
2. Put on your big set of listening ears. People want to be listened to, they want to know that you care. Practice harnessing your energy that hungrily wants to take over every conversation and anxiously move things into action. Just decompress for a moment a really listen to your staff, customers, peers, team members . . . hell, even your boss. If you want to develop high contributors, they need space to be heard and acknowledged . . . by you!
3. Increase your self-awareness. How are you showing up for others as a leader? Don’t know! Contact your Human Resources people, Organization Development professionals or your RWBA executive coach to be in service of your finding out what processes, instruments or other support might be available to help you understand yourself better and leverage that knowledge into stronger top and bottom lines!
4. Be a better relationship builder. Vertically, horizontally, and diagonally . . . throughout the organization.
5. Model great leadership to others. You’ve got to walk the talk. Your direct and indirect reports emulate the leadership that they experience with you. Are you proud of everything that you do? If you had to pick one leadership behavior to work on, what would that be? How can you assure you can successfully change that behavior?

Most importantly, have fun with these thoughts and enjoy yourself!

“What happens if you walk out the door and get hit by a bus?” It is not unusual when dealing with leaders in our coaching conversations when a question similar to this surfaces. There’s usual a bit of chuckling involved and an exchange of humorous comments before we get down to where the client wants to go . . . the serious five-sixths of the iceberg below the surface of the initial discussion. There is a tendency for some leaders (not you of course) to feel infallible and indestructible. This can get in the way of building greater capacity in those who report to us.

The metaphor of ‘the bus’ comes in many forms. If a version of the bus does in fact unexpectantly run over you (note Schultz’s Law: Murphy’s an optimist), then who is able to seamlessly step into your shoes should you find yourself temporarily out of the game . . . on the sidelines as it were? Are you ready my friend for such an event? Quickly filling the leadership pipeline is one of your major responsibilities . . . your organization should not expect less! As an executive coach who works with clients around the world, I have the slight luxury of a broader perspective of organizations . . . both private, public and not-for-profit sectors. In fact, this year to date I have seen three key senior leaders be unexpectedly moved over to the sidelines in their respective organizations. One leader, a Vice President – Operations, recently reflected on just such an experience. They shared just how thankful they were for the executive coaching support that was in service of their ability to see the value of changing their leadership behavior of shifting from a high need for absolute control to that of developing a greater capacity in others to grow, develop and increase their skills and abilities to take on increased accountability and delivery of high quality results . . . not to mention dramatically enhanced levels of professional and personal satisfaction. The value of succession planning for this particular leader has taken on a whole new level of importance, not to mention for the organization. 

Letting go of the reins of control can be exceptionally challenging for any leader, yet the return on the invested time and resources for the leader, key staff, other stakeholders and the organization typically exceeds all expectations when (not if) the inevitable reality of an unplanned highly stressful event occurs and readily takes the leader out of the game.

Should the inevitable surface for you, are you or your organization able to operate at you’re the most effective levels? Are you truly able to successfully step back and confidently address the presenting issue when temporarily sidelined? I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts, your truth, when the bus comes screaming through your world.

One of the most common frustrations that I hear from my executive coaching clients often centers around the need for change and to remain a high performance organization even when to outsiders (and some insiders) there is a sense that the organization is doing very well. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great stated that the enemy of great is good and the experience of my clients reflects precisely that.

Often we focus in on the ability of the leader and the leadership team to create a sense of urgency to support and drive the change. This is easy to create when the organization is losing money and market share in a very public way. But how do you create it in a profitable and stable organization. Waiting for the crisis to become more evident is not always a good plan (ask music stores about iTunes or Blockbuster about NetFlix). The key comes down to creating a meaningful sense of urgency within the organization.

Weighing in on this issue is respected Business thought lead John Kotter in his recent book “A Sense of Urgency“. To assist his readers, Kotter discusses three distinct states: complacency, false urgency and true urgency.

Complacency is the known quantity that we all have bumped up against and have to deal with in our own way as it blocks, both actively and passively, action designed to move the organization and the culture forward.

False Urgency is often the unrecognized issue. Because the people involved often are very active it is frequently mistaken for true urgency. These characteristics lead to high levels of activity with little productivity attached to it . . . where people tend to be reactive and defensive rather than proactive and curious, and lack clear direction or planning in their actions. This leaves them feeling overworked and frustrated which is not conducive to achievement and positive change that is being sought.

True Urgency is that rare state where people are fully engaged with a deep personal connection to the issue. It is easy to engage the mind with a well presented and factual business case. To create the deep personal connection you need to engage the heart of the person. This is best accomplished through the use of a story or example which creates a personal attachment to goals. It also creates a strong personal motivation that ties the individual to achievement of goals. It is stories that enroll the person in the desired goals and compels them to action.

Kotter provides a number of tools that can be used to help make this transition and to identify times when complacency and false urgency exist. The bottom line, you as a leader need to act with true urgency each and every day!

Bringing all this back to our executive coaching clients,means that they need to be self aware and curious about their own role. It can be easy to personally feel that once a particular task is done that the foot can be lifted from the gas pedal for a bit and a deep breath is in order. This is often observed as rationale for feeling that the worst is over and that one’s guard can be let down. Are you guilty of the same thing in your position or in managing your career? What messages are you sending to the organization that may be undermined by your behavior? How are you shortchanging yourself and your organization if you don’t act with a sense of true urgency each and every day?

This is where the executive coaching relationship can have its maximum impact and value for each of our clients. The ability of our executive coaching to support you to hold you, the client, accountable for creating true urgency. The ability and to enhance your self-awareness as leader in ways that avoid self-subvertion, but rather to be  in  true service of moving your and your organization’s agenda powefully forward.

For many of our executive clients the biggest learning has come from identifying the blocks that they create for themselves and as a result creating strategies for overcoming them . . . establishing true urgency in their lives. Once these blocks are removed you,  the client,can quickly begin reaping the competitive advantage, both personally and corporately. This comes from living and acting with a sense of true urgency!

I have just one question to leave with you, “What would you be able to create in your personal and professional life by coming from a place of true urgency in all you do each and every day?

The CEO, who I have been coaching over the past four years, called and said, “I think it’s time that we expand our coaching arrangement!” “So, what do you have in mind?” I asked. My client responded, “Well we’ve been engaged in a series of strategic planning events where frankly the rubber has been hitting the sky. Now it’s time for the rubber to hit the ground? We need to make those organizational changes that will assure our strategic success, starting with our Executive Leadership Team!”

My client continued by stating, “A primary objective that we need to quickly address is how we operate at the Executive Leadership Team level. To me Bob, our ELT is the number one team in the organization. All of our other line and staff teams, although very important, are secondary to the ELT. For us to achieve our strategy, the ELT needs to be high-performing. My direct reports don’t appear to get this concept, and if this situation continues, we’ll never achieve our current strategy! We appear to be a high-performance team in waiting!”

Together, the CEO and I co-designed an approach that would support the ELT in accelerating their growth and development. We co-designed a diagnostic method that would produce critical baseline of data and information on the ELT’s effectiveness. We did the same for presenting the foregoing results in a positive, non-threatening, supportive, and motivating way.

Because the CEO is a very big picture, strategically oriented individual and the balance of the ELT members are very here and now, data driven individuals (which spoke volumes in and of itself), the data and information collected was presented in a way that fully met their need for facts and numbers that would allow them to move forward as quickly as possible in order to strenghten the ELT’s ability to work more productively together and produce the necessary results.

Our design and process incorporated in part the key concepts developed by Pat Lencioni with a focus on further strengthening the ELT’s ability to:

1. Create Confidence in Each Other – this included the ELT’s comfort level with each other at a profoundly emotional level, a deeper knowledge of each other beyond what they thought they knew, including their personalities and preferences, levels of openness, and the ability to safely be authentic, open and candid with each other.
2. Manage Differences Between Members – the ELT’s capability to be frank with each other in a non-threatening way, call a spade a spade, not take things personally, and to integrate each other’s needs in the development of strategic business plans and actions that would powerfully move the organization forward.
3. Take Full Responsibility For Making Agreements Happen – out of an integrative approach to managing differences between each other, ELT members became individually and collectively much more able to step up and take full responsibility for commitments, these being recapped at the beginning and end of each and every ELT strategic and operational meeting.
4. Hold Each Other’s Feet to the Fire – each and every ELT member understands that they are fully accountable for delivering on their commitments as well as collectively tracking each others’ progress. This means not just being accountable to the CEO, but more importantly holding each other accountable. To this end they do not hesitate to challenge each other when commitments are not being met, acknowledging and championing each other, all in service of each other’s success and ultimately that of the organization.
5. Focus On Both Top and Bottom Lines – the ELT exclusively focuses on achieving specific strategic and operational top- and bottom-line results that have been fully committed to. They place their departments, career aspirations, or ego-driven status completely behind the agreed to collective results that define the ELT’s and the organization’s strategic advantage and success.

The journey with the ELT still continues. Momentum being built is truly wonderful to observe. Authenticity between the ELT members continues to expand and deepen. The connection between the organization’s bottom line and top lines is being much more clearly and concretely realized, and at times with amazement by ELT members. The motivation to move forward with each ELT coaching meeting continues to escalate (and quite frankly was a real concern for me at the beginning of this particular intervention). Oh, the places they’re now going!

If you have had similar experiences, I would love to hear about them. If you’re interested in exploring possibilities with your leadership/management team or project group, let’s talk. In the meantime, let me leave you with this inquiry: “What are the possibilities for team/group coaching from your perspective?” Your comments and observations would be most appreciated. Take care.

We received a call the other day from Tony, a CEO of a major oil and gas company, who shared with us that he was quite concerned about one of his key executives. He said that Frank  had been recently promoted to replace a key member of the ELT (executive leadership team) who had retired about nine months ago. He bluntly stated, “Frank doesn’t appear to be working out the way I had hoped and is quite frankly derailing! Can we explore the situation and help me better understand why some leaders derail and and some don’t? What can I do about it?”

These are not uncommon questions that are raised by our corporate clients from time to time. In our executive coaching conversation with Tony, it was noted that The Centre for Creative Leadership found that approximately 50% of high potential managers and executives derail. Contributing to this is the fact that the initial technical and problem solving skills that had fomerly served a number of these derailed leaders well now can’t be relied on to address the increased complexity of operating at a more strategic leve, nor the resulting demands placed on their leadership that are typically changing from day to day, never mind month to month, or year to year.

Further, research has indicated that those leaders who are in fact successful in their leadership roles exhibit some of the following characteristics:

1. They tend to be highly flexible and responsive to change
2. They have a powerful ability to navigate through ambiguity and complexity
3. They pick things up very quickly and in a variety of circumstances
4. They are able to coach, facilitate, coordinate and develop their teams in a variety of circumstances with many different types of people
5.  They are highly grounded, self-manage themselves and work with others well under highly stressful circumstances
6. One of their mottos is ‘Feedback is the breakfast of Champions’ and thus constantly seek it out from those all around them
7.  They are quite aware that their strengths when overused in fact become their weaknesses, and those identified become their primary focus of professional/personal development
8. They readily acknowledge and champion their people, no matter how small the contribution or how challenging the initiative(s)
9. They are able to authentically share their thoughts, feelings and wants in equal amounts with their staff, colleagues, boss(s) and customers/clients, encouraging reciprocation, and do so with a strong sense of empathy and compassion toward others

Leaders having the potential for derailment include: the overly ambitious, the perfectionist, those who go it alone, over-managing, over-loyal to the organization, those who are over-controlling and 0ver-results oriented, single minded, too focused on technical detail, unduly personable and relying solely on relationships to get things done, having excessive fire in the belly, having too many things on the go, overly dependent on others, won’t be pushed off the mark, caught up with escalating-commitment, the constant need to be right, and loves to scrap with others beyond having constructive differences. 

To avoid derailment or to rerail, the leader needs to learn thoughtfully and constructively how to develop the team; strengthen strategic thinking and decision making; clarify specific expectations around deliverables and follow up; be self-aware and self manage under stress while at the same time being empathetic towards others; creating the right balance between collaboration, independent action and delegation; manage strategic alliances, assure functional strategic alignment and effectively manage differences vertically and horizontally. 

What’s been your experience? What have you learned as result and what did you do with it? What have you done with these insights? We would love to hear your thoughts and feelings on the subject. Take care.