Executive leadership is fiendishly difficult and often thankless. It is almost impossible to get right, and everyone thinks they could do a better job than you. There are certain universal principles that guide leadership coaches, and it can be helpful to know what some of them are.
This list of 12 guidelines is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it is a starting point for leaders who already work with a coach, are thinking about working with a coach or have worked with a coach and could use a refresher.
Leadership is a lifelong journey. Warren Bennis wrote in “On Becoming a Leader” that “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It’s precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult.”
The best you can hope for is to become the best possible version of yourself, to leverage strengths and mitigate or manage weaknesses and character flaws. Until personality transplants become available, leaders have to learn to work with what they have and seek to grow and improve every single day.
Self-regulation is a non-negotiable skill. The number one skill a senior leader needs, assuming business savvy and strategic prowess, is self-regulation. The prerequisite for practicing self-regulation is, of course, self-awareness and the awareness of one’s impact on others. It is the leader’s job to adapt to their people – the way they think, and the way they react emotionally to different circumstances. One size most definitely does not fit all, and the best leaders are able to manage their own preferences to choose the most effective response for any given situation.
Personal sustainability is a job requirement. To be able to self-regulate requires a fully functioning prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that inhibits unhelpful behaviors, does all of your strategic visioning, analytical problem solving and decision making. The prefrontal cortex is notoriously sensitive — it needs plenty of glucose, water, oxygen and down time to be at its best. That means leaders need to take care of themselves so they can take care of their people. Leaders must eat right, get enough exercise and rest and take time to reflect. All practices and disciplines that contribute to long term personal sustainability are a job requirement.
Go slow to go fast. One of the biggest mistakes a leader can make is taking on too much, too fast, too soon. People who are new to their leadership role are particularly susceptible to the temptation to fix everything right away. You can do it all — just not at the same time, and no one moves as fast as you do. If you aren’t getting the results you want, you may need to slow down and prioritize.
Humility can be a superpower: When Jim Collins conducted research for his book “Good to Great,” he found that the best leaders displayed a combination of humility and fierce resolve. He coined the term for this indomitable combination Level Five Leadership. But what is humility exactly? Ken Blanchard defines it as “not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.” The protagonist of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series shares the four maxims that lead to wisdom, the regular use of which all require humility:
- “I was wrong.”
- “I’m sorry.”
- “I don’t know.”
- “I need help.”
When in doubt, practicing the use of any one of these is a good place to start.
“Yes” men are dangerous. Although it can be comforting and save time in the short run, it can be fatal to surround yourself with people who agree with everything you say. It takes a lot of confidence to hire people who are smarter than you are, think differently from you, will ask questions that wouldn’t occur to you and will challenge your assumptions and thought process.
In his book, “Why Smart Executives Fail,” Sydney Finklestein included a section called “The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.” Habit number four is that they ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t behind them. This leads to a culture of fear and mediocrity instead of a culture of innovation and leveraging the best minds available. Senior leaders who have all the answers will inevitably wear themselves out and be wrong some of the time. David Cote, former CEO of Honeywell said: “My job is to be right at the end of the meeting.”
You are only as good as your people. To have people you can trust you have to hire the best person for the job and the culture. In “Good to Great,” Jim Collins said executives who succeeded at creating great companies discovered that: “If we get the right people on the bus, the people in the right seats and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”
However, most people only remember the first part of the adage. Removing people from jobs they are unsuited for is often unpleasant, time consuming and can feel like more trouble than it is worth, and many senior executives tolerate underperformance for far longer than they should. Any time you have someone in a key position who cannot or will not perform they must vacate the seat so it can be occupied by someone who can. You can’t save people and you shouldn’t rescue people. You can practice empathy and offer help when your people go through rough patches. Everyone deserves a second chance, but not a third and fourth one.
Hiring is 90 percent of the battle. Too many rely on a terrifying combination of their “gut” and hope when it comes to finding talent. They do not invest the time or money they should to make sure the people they are hiring are the right fit for the job, and the culture. Don’t ask a chicken to climb a tree; if you want someone who can climb a tree, you might want to hire a squirrel. Hiring for just skills and experience is not enough, you must assess adaptability, natural aptitude, locus of control, culture fit and drive. Phil Olsen, President of Know Your Strengths Inc., offers this succinct advice: Find the qualities that exemplary performers have, and hunt for those. Then ask yourself the following three questions when considering candidates:
- Will they love us?
- Will we love them?
- Can they do the job the way we want it done, or find even better ways to do it?
What got you here (really) won’t get you there. Marshall Goldsmith wins the award for best book title because truer words have never been said. Most people are promoted to managing others because they are exemplary individual contributors, which does not predict management talent. The next move from managing individuals to managing managers requires an entirely new perspective and a different set of skills. And the same is true when leaders move from managing managers to managing businesses. When people are promoted, they often believe they can rely on what they have always done that has made them successful. In fact, doing those things will get in the way of trying and getting good at new things.
A leaders’ job is to define reality. Max DuPree shared this in his book, “Leadership is An Art.” He meant that people need clarity on where they are right now, where they are going and the values they need to use along their journey. This may seem obvious, but what is often a surprise to many leaders is the need for constant repetition of all of the above. If you are not bored with repeating the strategy, the goals, the vision and the values you are probably not talking about it enough. People are distractible, and a leader must constantly re-direct focus, define what needs doing and what does not need doing — right now.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If you are spending time doing things someone else could do, you are squandering your chance to make the unique contribution only you can make. And hogging opportunities that one of your direct reports could be taking advantage of to develop or shine.
And finally, because leading is hard, and the more responsibility you have, and the more you care, the harder it is.
Get help. Anything worth doing is worth getting help with. Leaders who have a strong right hand, cultivate mentors and have a network of experienced and wise experts they can tap will find leadership far more rewarding and less draining.
