Healthy CEO, Healthy Business

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

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

Celebrate Your Gift

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

 

Each year at this gift-giving time, I am reminded that we all have natural gifts.

Our challenge is to notice our strengths and work to enhance them. In my Vistage work, and as a leadership coach,  I refer to this as discovering and working in our genius.

While personal growth and development are part of living a full life, and after all this is what Vistage is all about, the successful CEOs and executives I know are the ones who work to become excellent at what they are already good at. And… these same successful people surround themselves with people who bring their own strengths, filling in the gaps.

As you reflect on your accomplishments for 2014, and think about 2015, take a moment and ask yourself:

  • What are my gifts? How did they serve me this year? How will they serve me next year?
  • What am I striving for that I could instead delegate to someone else?
  • What can I accept simply not doing?

Once we know and understand our strengths, and focus on them, we not only become more effective, we become more satisfied, and ultimately become better leaders.

Elisa K. Spain

P.S. This is the last post for 2014. Happy Holidays to all!  See you in the New Year.

Sometimes Things Are Not As They Appear

Sometimes Things Are Not As They Appear

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Opt 4 June 15 (2)

We make assumptions daily, mostly about other people. These assumptions enable us to take shortcuts and keep us moving forward. Or so we think.

  • We assume a person attended or didn’t attend an event because…
  • We assume a person responded to us a certain way, because…
  • We assume a person took an action or didn’t take an action because…

What if instead of assuming, we, as CEO’s and leaders, paused and asked:

  • What is the reason you made this choice or took this action?
  • When your customer complains about “service”, do you probe to understand what is really going on?
  • When we see something, as the TSA reminds us, do we say something?
  • When an employee behaves a certain way, do we ask what is going on?

When I was a young driver, I learned this leadership lesson from a police officer who pulled me over for passing him on the right, when he and another officer were stopped – blocking both sides of the road. He asked me why I passed him. My response was “I assumed you were going to be there for a while and I wanted to get to my destination”. His reply, “When you assume, you make an ass-u-me”.

I often think of this encounter when I rush to judgement.

Elisa K. Spain

 

Crawl? Walk? Run? Fly?

Crawl? Walk? Run? Fly?

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Opt 5 June 8

Hard to know when to walk, when to fly, when to run or even when to crawl. In this fast paced world we live in, our tendency is to default to run. And, my sense is, there is a place for each.

The challenge is to let things unfold at their own pace. Here are some questions I ask myself, when I remember to pause, to determine what pace fits best with the given situation:

  • If I am feeling a sense of urgency, what is driving it?
  • If I slow down the pace, what benefits/costs will result?
  • If I speed up the pace, what benefits/costs will result?
  • What will happen if I choose to observe rather than act for some time?

Elisa K. Spain

 

Leadership Quote: You Can Tell Whether A Person Is Clever…

Leadership Quote: You Can Tell Whether A Person Is Clever…

by Elisa Spain1 Comment

3d man holding question mark and exclamation pointThis month’s leadership quote:

“You can tell whether a person is clever by his/her answers. You can tell whether a person is wise by his/her questions.“

-Naguib Mahfouz

In Vistage we chairs encourage our members to stay in a questioning mode. This is probably the most important ingredient in effectively getting to the resolution of an issue and the most difficult to do.

Those of us in leadership roles are accustomed to having the answers. After all, it’s having the answers that got us where we are; we solve problems. So… when we hear  a problem, we want to shout out our answers and help the other person (or is it we want them and everyone else to hear how smart we are? Perhaps if we are honest with ourselves, it is a little of both).

Here’s the thing, I think I am smart too. When I bring an issue to the table, first I am a bit uncomfortable, because I am being vulnerable. Second, when you give me answers, I immediately go into objection mode.

If on the other hand, you ask me questions, I can get to the answer myself. Does it take longer than just giving me the answer? Sure for you. Sometimes you can help me by making observations, but don’t solve it for me. That may help you, but it doesn’t help me.

So, as our Vistage speaker, Amy K says, “strive for the better question”. Easy to say, hard to do. Here are a couple of tips I have picked up from Amy that can aid the process:

  • Write down your question before asking it.
  • Write down 11 questions, and then pick your best to ask. The act of writing down so many, helps you push for the better question.

And in the moment, when writing the question isn’t practical, listen to yourself. When I catch myself making a statement, instead of asking a question, I will pause and say, “wait, let me rephrase that as a question”.

The Socratic method after all was named for the man viewed as the wisest in the land because of the questions he asked.

Elisa K. Spain

Leadership Quote: If I Had Only One Hour To Save The World…

Leadership Quote: If I Had Only One Hour To Save The World…

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

2013-11-24 iStock_000027536746XSmallThis month’s leadership quote:

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”

-Albert Einstein

How often do we jump in and start solving things before we know what the problem is? When we process issues in Vistage, the set goal is question, question, question until the person whose issue it is finds their own way to the solution. And yet, it is so tempting to jump in with answers. Socrates, like Einstein, tells us that wisdom comes from asking the better questions, defining the problem.

Perhaps us lesser mortals, have the opportunity to be just as wise…by pausing, asking questions, defining the problem, and letting the solution emerge rather than be told.

 

Elisa K. Spain

 

Leadership View #12: Watch For (Perhaps Unintentional) Malicious Obedience…

Leadership View #12: Watch For (Perhaps Unintentional) Malicious Obedience…

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

2013 07-14 iStock_000000937577XSmallLeadership View #12: Watch for (perhaps unintentional) malicious obedience…

Early in my career, I learned this valuable lesson. I had the opportunity to lead a transition of a client reporting group from a fully manual process to a fully automated process. This area was the last functional area to be automated in this company (guess that tells you how long ago this was). When the previous manager left in the middle of the systems conversion, I was asked to take over.

As those of you who have led systems conversions know, it is never a smooth process and there are many long hours that are just part of the process. On one of these long nights, the senior person on the team came up and asked me how to calculate a certain number. I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t ask him if he knew the answer, I simply guessed. And, I ass-u-me-d, he would tell me if I was wrong. See previous post, What results when leaders Ass-u-me?

In this case the result was, every report, to every customer, went out wrong. Like, I said, I learned a valuable lesson.

Perhaps in this case the obedience was intentional. My sense is, it was not. Here was a man who was overwhelmed by change, his world was being completely turned upside down. He had never used a computer in his life and suddenly his work had to be done on one. It didn’t occur to him that how he had calculated this number before was the same way to do it on the automated system.

More importantly, I didn’t ask, I told. And, I didn’t lay the ground work for my being open to being questioned, I simply ass-u-me-d he would know.

I wonder, how many of the big disasters that we read about could have been avoided by the leader asking questions and making sure the team knows he/she wants to be challenged?

As you go through your day on Monday, I encourage you to pause and notice how you respond when someone on your team asks questions, and perhaps consider answering the question with a question of your own….

Elisa K. Spain

 

Leadership Quote: Leadership Is Not Magnetic Personality…

Leadership Quote: Leadership Is Not Magnetic Personality…

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

business team work - corporate ladder over a white backgroundOnce again, I am taking a brief pause from the Leadership View series for the monthly quote. The series will return next week with Leadership View #12.

This month’s leadership quote: 

Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations — Peter F. Drucker 

What a relief, this means EVERY leader has the potential to succeed…That is, if he or she wants to. For me, this quote means that to accomplish successful leadership, we must step outside of ourselves and focus on the people we are leading. We must identify what drives each individual on our team, identify their unique genius and coach them toward success. It is our job as leaders to inspire the people we lead to take the next step, to take the risk to achieve growth and as Drucker says, achieve beyond their limitations.

Perhaps the place to start is with identifying these same factors within ourselves…

 

Elisa K. Spain

Leadership View #6: Some Problems Can’t Be “Solved”

Leadership View #6: Some Problems Can’t Be “Solved”

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

2013 05-12 Fresh PerspectiveiStock_000019408214XSmall Leadership View #6:

Some problems can’t be “solved” (and, hopefully, made to go away) – they must be managed and may require the leader’s repetitive attention and time.

As leaders and managers, we have been taught to find the root cause and fix the problem. This Leadership View seems to fly in the face of that.

What do you mean “some problems can’t be solved”?

For me the key word here is repetition. For anything to be sustainable, it must be repeated. We humans get distracted, forget what we learned and have to be reminded. This is what Vistage is all about. Our members hear from a speaker 8 times a year. Do you really think each speaker brings something new to the table? Rather, they often are reinforcing a similar message. And, we hear the message differently depending on where we are in our lives and our businesses at the time. An entrepreneur leading a start-up will hear a leadership message differently 10 years later when he or she is challenged with building a leadership team that will lead to a sustainable enterprise.

I asked one of our long term Vistage members recently if he had ever considered leaving Vistage. His answer was “never, I learn something at every meeting, every one-to-one.” He leads a highly successful, high growth business. My belief is he learns something new each time, because he comes with different ears each time.

The same is true for the people that work for us. Some problems can’t be solved, because things happen. Life isn’t static and our businesses and our processes aren’t static. Last year in a post entitled “Is Your Leadership Team Your Co-Advisor“, I talked about the DIME Method: Design, Implement, Monitor, Evaluate. For me the repetition speaks to the Monitor and Evaluate part of the continuum. As problems get solved and things change, we must monitor, evaluate and then design again.

As you mull over this idea that problems can’t be solved, I encourage you to ask yourself the following questions:

  • When was the last time we monitored or evaluated the systems we have in place?
  • Are we doing things, “because that’s the way we have always done it”?
  • What is the root cause of the problems that exist in my company today? Which of these require my repetitive time and attention?

Elisa K. Spain

 

Celebrate Your Gift

Celebrate Your Gift

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

At this gift-giving time of the year, I am reminded that we all have natural gifts.

The notion that we can constantly make ourselves better, in theory, is a great idea. But when does it become too much?

For me, the best way to answer this question is to notice our strengths and work to enhance them. In my Vistage work, and as a leadership coach and advisor, I refer to this as discovering and working in our genius.

While personal growth and development are part of living a full life, and after all this is what Vistage is all about, I wonder sometimes if we have become so focused on achieving that we are never able to appreciate who we are or what we have already accomplished.

For me, the best way to avoid the “better, better, better” trap is to ask the following questions:

  • What am I already good at? What do I need to do to become excellent at this?
  • Of the things I am not good at and am striving to improve, what can I delegate to someone else?
  • Can I find a way to accept being adequate or “good enough” at the rest?

Once we know and understand our strengths, and focus on that, we not only become more effective, we become more satisfied, and ultimately become better leaders.

P.S. This is the last post for 2012. Happy holidays to all.  See you in the new year.