Leadership Quote: Great Leaders…

This month’s leadership quote:

“Great leaders delegate success, not tasks.”

Anonymous

Frequently the leaders I work with tell me they are willing to delegate, as long as they trust the person to whom they are delegating. Makes sense. And yet, what happens when the person they delegate to doesn’t deliver?

For many leaders the answer is, I step in, because the risk of failure is too great.

In my experience, it’s when the leader won’t or can’t step in, that true delegation happens. The corollary to this quote is really, “great leaders delegate success and failure”. Hard to do, sometimes costly to do, and is there another way that will allow for scale?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Q2 2017 Vistage CEO Confidence Index Results: Strong and Steady

Q2 Confidence Index

CEOs of small and mid-sized companies remain confident in the economy and their business prospects, according to the latest reading of the Vistage CEO Confidence Index. The index measured 106.9 in the first quarter of 2017, a slight increase from the 105.2 measured last quarter (Q4 2016) but well above the 91.4 reading from the previous quarter (Q3 2016).

Other highlights from the quarterly survey include the following:

CEOs predict continued economic growth

According to the majority of CEOs surveyed, the economy has started to rebound and shows signs of continued growth in the year ahead.

Q2 2017 Vistage CEO Confidence Index highlights include:

  • Fifty-nine percent of CEOs reported that the economy had recently improved, compared to 42% last quarter and 27% one year ago. The outlook for the economy was the same as last quarter, with 57% of CEOs stating that they expect the economy to continue to grow in the next 12 months.
  • Forty-seven percent of firms said they expected to increase their investment spending in the next year. “There is no clearer indication of an improved economic outlook than the fact that CEOs have become more willing to invest in new productive capacity in anticipation of greater future sales increases,” said Dr. Richard Curtin of the University of Michigan.
  • Sixty percent of CEOs said they planned to expand their total number of employees in the next 12 months. About 32% said they would increase their hiring steadily over the year. The survey respondents also expressed the most positive net-employment intentions in the past 10 years.
  • Similar to last quarter, 77% of CEOs say that they expect revenue gains this year. Coupled with last quarter’s 78%, this represents the most positive revenue expectation in the past 10 years.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Who are the UNSUNG heroes working for you?

We worship winners—especially those who demonstrate leadership, confront a crisis and prevail. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the hero did not create the crisis in the first place.

But what about those who keep crises from erupting at all?

Who are the UNSUNG heroes working for you (and helping you avoid the ditch)?

Are you only recognizing the “heroes” in your company, and ignoring those who help you avoid the storms altogether?

This article by John Kay in the Financial Times, “No One Remembers a Cautious Captain of Industry,” explores our sometimes foolish preference for the heroic over the prudent and for the bold over the wise.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

What is Empathy Really?

The dictionary defines empathy quite simply:

It’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”

And for most of us, this simple sentence describes one of life’s greatest challenges. We come at everything from our point of view. Our style combined with our backgrounds and experiences drive how we see things.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a retreat for Vistage chairs with 10+ years. We call it Keepers of the Flame. It’s a place for reflection, learning and sharing. The retreat began with a speaker from a local theatre group. His talk was about empathy. He gave us a peek into the life of an actor and drew a parallel between acting and leadership. From his perspective, what defines a successful actor is their ability to empathize with their character. To really get inside and understand their story.

Actors follow these 3 guides to becoming their character:

  • What if I were in their situation? What wants and fears drive who they are?
  • “What if” allows us to empathize even when we cannot sympathize.
  • And then to truly empathize, we must listen with charity.

With true empathy, our speaker said, while we may not sympathize with a murderer, we can empathize and then become the character. We begin to understand the character by asking ourselves, what wants, fears and experiences drove them to take the life of another person?

And then he challenged us, isn’t this the same with leadership? Or for that matter with all our interactions with others? If we can step outside ourselves if only for a moment, can we see the world as the person sitting across from us sees it?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain