CEO Note to Self

ON THE OTHER HAND, COLLEAGUE RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE SOME OF THE BEST IN YOUR LIFE.

I say "on the other hand" because I talk a lot about top leaders, especially CEO's,  needing to accept the distance of their formal role from most people in the organization.  This helps creates the highest level of  fairness in a company and lessens skewed perception--the blind spot for top leaders that I talk about.  And it  also allows associates  to project onto the top leader the qualties they most want and need in a leader.  This in turns pulls from them the qualties of their best selves.  I don't mean fakery and pretense. But I do mean not  letting the organization join you in your sloppiest, worst, flawed intimate characteristics.  Human-- yes.  Repulsively real--no.

However, a top team of true colleagues is one of the richest most satisfying experiences a leader can have.  Under pressure, in a crisis, working together, creating new direction is so satisfying with good team colleagues.

You know one another well. 

You forgive faults because the goal demands that you focus on strengths. 

You support stronger bolder action because you are not in it alone.

You ignore personal slights, bat them away, because you know they don't matter in the larger scheme of things and you trust that they were not vindictive--just part of bumping into one another as you move fast and decisively. 

You speak your truth and have at it with one another and it is invigorating not debilitating or political.  

You make big glorious mistakes that are not held against you. Later they become hysterically funny. 

You rescue one another in bad moments.  There is a fundamental trust that is palpable.  You can lean into it.  You know that it is rare and you don't mess with it.  You honor and protect the trust. 

Triumph is shared and magnified because it is shared.  Big fat failure is shared too.  And both happen again and again.  And the colleagiality matures and can handle more.  What could be better? 

The art is to keep this kind of colleague relationships from becoming favoritism or too intimate.  

Not easy in practice. 

But colleague relationships can be some of the best in your life.