We hold space for CEO’s
Your core leadership function is to sift through the fire hose of external data, find patterns that make strategic sense, understand the long term impact and convert these patterns into reality via actionable plans that deliver results.
Key to the organisation adopting the actionable plans is their adoption by the people in the organisation. They must believe the result, trust the process and own their part in success. Successful leadership function rests on communicating with the people, listening to their feedback, describing the journey, painting the picture of expected results and conspicuously supporting the teams innovate their action plans and implementation.
There are five personal constraints that get in your way of this sensible approach. These are:
Time: As executives, you are time-starved. As time is finite, your individual choices are to (1) deal with operational challenges by problem-solving; (2) drive tactical plans which are comfortable and rewarding in the short term; (3) devise strategic direction and market positioning which is lonely and personally risky.
Four fatal fears: describe personal risk: (1) fearing failure which fuels the need to succeed; (2) fear of being wrong and your need to always be right; (3) fearing rejection and your desire to be accepted; (4) fearing emotional discomfort and your hankering to be comfortable.
We don’t multi-task well. As we are tugged and pulled by daily demands, we gravitate to where we are most comfortable because we can see the difference we make.
To change our context we need unusual behaviours which are uncomfortable and high personal risk in terms of the four fatal fears. We also need to time to think through what we have to do – and time is scarce, very scarce.
In short, you need space; space to think; space to test your understanding; space where peers your respect are tough on you in a safe, structured and confidential framework.
Your peers at TEC keep you focused, laser-like, on strategy: your TEC leader challenges and provokes multiple views of strategic options. Your peers and TEC leader hold you accountable for your committments.
The result – high quality leadership and decisions that improve performance…