Leadership Quote: Becoming A Leader…

This month’s leadership quote:

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.”

Warren Bennis

The challenge of course is gaining this self-awareness.

  • Identifying our genius
  • Learning how we show up to others and the impact we have
  • Learning when to lead from the front of the room and when to lead from the back

Whether we have been in a leadership role for a long time, or the experience is more recent, each day is an opportunity to move toward this simple, yet difficult, goal.

One of the great benefits of Vistage private advisory boards is the opportunity to learn all these things from our peers. We can then take what we learn back into our organizations and become the best version of ourselves.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Healthy CEO, Healthy Business

I recently heard a CEO say, “when I am healthy, my business is healthy”.  I have been thinking about this CEO’s statement in the context of CEOs I have known or observed over the years. My reflective observation is, he is right; there is a strong correlation between the health of the leader and the health of the business.

In the public company arena, we see the impact on stock prices when the CEO becomes physically ill.

In the private company arena, where most of the CEOs I work with reside, those that focus on their health and fitness are the ones that lead successful companies. I have watched CEOs move from poor mental and/or physical health to good health and back again and observed the company performance move in tandem.

Years ago, I worked with a CEO whose company growth had stalled. He brought me in as an advisor to help him get the company back on a growth track. While certainly there were some operational and structural changes needed, what I discovered was holding the company back was the CEO’s lack of engagement. He had suffered a series of injuries that kept him away from work, followed by a serious issue with his son. Once we put the infrastructure in place that he needed to take the company forward AND he got well and found a way to deal with his son’s issues, the company began to prosper. In fact, it was he that I was quoting in the first sentence of this post.

While a component of health is genetic and beyond our control, and life happens beyond our control, research continues to show that lifestyle and exercise are directly related to emotional and physical health.

So, as we go through our daily lives, what can each of us do to pause, reflect and recognize we have a fiduciary responsibility as leaders to care for our physical and mental well-being?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Vistage CEO Confidence Index For Q2 2016: CEO Optimism In The Economy Declined Across The Board

Small business owners reveal that hiring and retaining talent is the most significant business challenge, according to a quarterly survey by Vistage Worldwide.

Vistage, a global organization, which assembles and facilitates private advisory boards for CEOs, conducts a quarterly survey covering a variety of small business topics. More than one-third of the 1,300 respondents cite staffing as the most significant issue they are currently facing, including identifying qualified candidates, hiring, retaining valuable staff members, and training. Additionally, CEOs note that their companies’ biggest barrier to innovation is talent, pointing to a common theme, and the importance of having a talent management & acquisition strategy in place.

Below are some key highlights from the Q2 2016 Vistage CEO Confidence Index (all members surveyed):

  • 83 percent note that their team is made up of multiple generations – college interns through employees nearing retirement. And half of respondents are planning to hire recent college grads.
  • Due to the influx of millennial workers, nearly two-thirds of companies have adapted their management style in the past five years, and 57 percent of respondents now offer different benefit packages or perks to attract young talent.
  • Although 82 percent of CEOs conduct performance reviews of their employees, 60 percent of CEOs do not have a system in place for a self-review within their company.
  • The biggest barrier to innovation for 30 percent of small business CEOs is finding employees with the right talent and skills.
  • 83% of CEOs encourage all their employees to use their vacation days, although about half expect employees to check and respond to email while on vacation.

 

For more details Vistage Confidence Index.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Perception ≠ Reality

This week’s blog post appears on Executive Street Blog. Please click this link to view it.

We often hear the phrase perception is reality. In the physical world, we are told that we cannot perceive reality directly; perception is all we have. “If a tree falls in the woods…..”

As leaders, we transfer this rule into behaviors, i.e. how we perceive a product, becomes what it is. How we perceive a person or a company’s reputation is who they become for us. And, how we are perceived at work, we are told, becomes reality for our peers, subordinates and our bosses.

And yet, perception is often far from reality. Even in the physical world, when we don’t have enough information, e.g. without knowledge of time, darkness can be perceived as night or a storm.

I was reminded of this fact this past weekend. I was at our annual gathering of Vistage chairs, who have led groups for 10 or more years. Vistage chairs, as a group, tend to pay attention to the subtleties; after all, we are trained to do so. One would think, therefore, that this would translate to “knowing” that what we perceive may not be what is. Yet, like most other humans, we miss sometimes.

Here’s one example. On the first day, we did an exercise that was a “fun” icebreaker. Hmm, well, at least it was fun for the extroverts, and, to a person, the introverts found it uncomfortable. For the extroverts it was an energy break; for the introverts it was stepping outside our comfort zone. A good exercise for sure, and yet a very different exercise for us than for the extroverts. In fact, it wasn’t until I checked in with one of my fellow introverts that I understood how misaligned my perceptions were. We were talking later in the weekend and I asked him why it seemed that he didn’t recognize me when we passed each other several times during the first day exercise and he responded, “Wow, I didn’t even see you; I was just trying to get through it.” On that day, my perception was that he wasn’t interested in engaging with me. His reality was that he was so uncomfortable with the exercise that he disengaged completely.

Another way to say this: perception is about us, reality is about the other person.

The learning for me…

Ask a question and seek to understand the reality, beyond our own perceptions, and life will hold some lovely surprises.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Declare Your Independence

I have been reading a book called Necessary Ending, by Henry Cloud. In it, he uses a metaphor of rose bushes and compares them to our businesses, our careers and our lives. He explains that a rose bush cannot support all the buds it creates. And the ones that are beautiful only become beautiful because of pruning. Cloud describes three types of pruning: pruning the good but not great branches; pruning the sick branches; and finally pruning the deadwood. Perhaps the last two types are obvious, albeit sometimes hard to do in life. The first made me pause; really, I need to cut off some good branches for my rose bushes to flourish?

And, as I think about the upcoming independence day, I am noticing the parallel between necessary endings and independence. For some of our forefathers, my guess is the relationship with Great Britain was good, but not great. It certainly had benefits to go with the taxes and other challenges. And yet, despite the benefits, the founders of our country had the courage to recognize that an ending was necessary, declare their independence and fight for it.

So, for each of us, the question becomes…

Who or what do we need to declare our independence from (and perhaps fight to summon the courage to do it) so that we and our organizations can flourish like a well-pruned rose bush?

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain