CLEAN OUT YOUR INTERNAL GUNK!

DO AN ASSESSMENT OF YOUR INTERNAL GUNK!

As a CEO or top executive leader, you have to absorb too much. 

Too much information
Bad surprises in results
Big fat mistakes that cost huge chunks of money
Conflict between functions on your team
Idiotic turf wars or personality clashes 
Constant prepping for a Board Meeting or Analyst call
Top talent that disappoints or demands
Community expectations
Realization that a major initiative just isn't going to get the job done
A direct report that drives you nuts

AND being at the top you manage your emotions and your impulsive responses and your bluntly honest thoughts  and keep moving.

And mostly that's good.  You carry too much power to habitually unload on the company and your team(s).

BUT that necessary reserve can build up internal gunk that can get pretty darned distracting and noisy.  It creates a drag on your leadership energy.

You know its gunk when you:
-Talk about the same issue and person for more than six months with your professional confidante
-Blow your stack at a meeting and direct it publicly at one person
-Begin to gossip about one of your direct reports about another person on the team
-Feel insulted or outraged at most interactions with the same person
-You talk to your best friend or spouse about this issue or person during purely social engagements
-You have given up on a person and they don't know it and it's been more than 3 months
-Are jealous or resentful of someone's success
-When it feel so good to have a drink and talk about it with whoever is drinking with you
-You turn this person or issue or decision over and over in your mind when you are alone in the car

My point is that gunk is inevitable.  You need to do a mental assessment of the topics  in your internal gunk.  Usually there is one that dominates.  Then address it.
-Get clear about it first.  What are you thinking and feeling about it.  -
-Then create the conversation in your head or, better yet, on paper. 
- Sit on it for a week.  Share it with one person.  Decide if clarifying it for yourself is enough
- Then decide.  Does the idea of addressing it directly make you feel more energetic, more ready to engage, more powerful, more authentic or scared, unsure and ambivalent.  Don't act unless you know the difference. 
-Then let it go.  Clear it out.  

I am not talking about everyday irritations.  This type of gunk clearing is not to be done frequently.  But not to realize that you carry it  and not  to decide about how or whether to  handle your particular "gunk" is a real drain on your much needed clear leadership power.

BURST OF COMPASSION FOR THE CEO

Really.  I mean it.
I don't want the tone of what I write to be overly provocative or smart alecky.
Really.
I just want to help good leaders be good.
I mean good people who are also good at what they do.
And power can be so darned distorting.
And hard to keep these days too.

So here's a blind spot that gets ignored.
CEO's and top leaders are over criticized and under appreciated.

And of course, they can take the heat of the kitchen.
But when they are the highest paid person in most cases and with the most power over the lives of people in the company, it's hard not to resent them or think their life is waaaaaaay better.

Well it is and it isn't.

Top power is also:
Isolating
Running after results day after day after day after day
Demanding of engagement without respite
Leading without always knowing where to go
Always making someone unhappy
Being discussed and disliked by many
Making nice when you want to be grumpy
Hurting people and killing ideas
Being misinterpreted 
Thinking about how long you'll last or should last
Wondering about you can trust
Always holding your hand to the flame

So, thanks for wanting the job
For showing up.
For being willing to hold so much
For leading

STOP TREATING THE BASICS LIKE NEW CONCEPTS--JUST GET IT DONE AND KEEP IT DONE.  


Why do we keep circling back to the basics of running a company as if they were something new and exciting.  To keep reading articles and books about fairness and participation and recognition and feedback and development is making me nuts.  Does business have to live in perpetual Groundhog Day.
Can't anything stay done. 

Listen to some of what I just scanned in recent business writing:

Women are 50 % of the world and need to be 50% of our talent. (Fascinating)
We need business friendly family policy.  (Yep, yep, yep)
We need equal pay for equal work. (How long has this been going on?)
We need respectful/inclusive workplaces. (Do tell)
We need civility AND we need to spell out behaviourally what that is? (Maybe for Cro-Magnon leaders!)
We need to align people and get their buy-in.  (No kidding).
People need recognition and to know how their work fits into the whole. (Yawn)
Balance the chaos of innovation with the stability of the core business. (Okey dokey)
People perform better with feedback and challenge. (You don't say.)

I'm getting bored as a write.

Not that these things aren't important.
Rather that they are SO important that they ought to have been nailed long ago. 
What is it that keeps the basics of leading an organization treated as though it were new and novel?
How come learning doesn't stick?  
How come there has to be a new flavor of the day to remind you of the basics?   
Developmental talent review!!!  Shocking!  Let's try it!  Civil behaviour!!  Let's roll it out and teach civility.  Great idea!  Yawn and growl both.

There is some kind of learning disability here.  ADHD at the organizational level.
Top leaders-- you have to  demand that the basics are absolutely solid.  Then you can build on a foundation that is ready for stretch, for new markets, for disruption, for building continuous growth and organizational health.
Please nail these basics. They need to be routine and embedded in your company.  Then you can  do your particular brand of leadership and give your particular leadership gift.

TWO GREAT QUESTIONS TO  DISCOVER A BLIND SPOT


I write on the supposition that the more power you carry the harder it is to know your impact on people and your organization.  So as a top executive it is harder to continue to develop. The most fertile time to gain self-awareness as a leader is at the second or third tier of leadership.  At this point you and everyone else knows you are still learning and that it's still cool to learn. 
Executive coaching and in-house mentoring are welcome.  CEO not so much.
Not that you are not a learner and wanting to improve but you are crazy busy, nobody mentors you, people think you already actually know stuff and you begin to think you do too.  

Regardless of level, if you hold people's daily life and strife in your hands, it's hard to get a true picture of yourself.

These two questions help and can be asked simply and directly.  A formal review is a great time to use them but so is the informal conversation that kind of falls in your lap.

1.  What is an impact that I have that I may not know about?  That helps or doesn't?

2.  What do you do that is good work and effort that you think I don't see or
fully appreciate?

Simple.  Ask.  Listen.  Open up the answers that you are given.  Do it often.
With many people.

Both let you know what you are not seeing.