I am doing a lot of development at the moment with senior leadership groups and am finding something rather insidious that only seems accessible through the kind of immersive development that braver companies are willing to go after.
The fact that the business leader of today is being pulled and stretched like never before is not a new thing, this has been running directly in tandem with the lives that we are all living, I know my life has got quicker and increasingly full of economic, social and personal pressures in the last 5 years (which may well have something to do with reaching 40 years young).
But I can honestly say that things seem to really ramping up a notch, with a what I can only describe, as a sense of perceived helplessness for many senior business leaders. Within the current climate there is literally no room to vote with your feet, many are trapped in a role that was not necessarily a vocational choice but it rewarded handsomely, moved them up the career ladder, satisfied various levels of personal validation and this covered for the fact that itself it wasn’t intrinsically rewarding. (It’s possible to swallow a bitter pill if you think the outcome is paid off mortgage and a decent pension).
BUT and its is pretty big but, what happens when the climate changes and it goes into melt down, when the pressures of the role are such, that they threaten your ability to leverage your own position off a free market, when the market looks even more dubious than the situation you are in.
One of the programmes I am involved in, is I feel one of the most progressive leadership development experiences available today and there is a simple 5 minute segment of this 10 day, 5 module process that simply asks the participants to go outside and take some time with and for themselves (this isn’t quite as simple as it sounds as it sits a top of at that point: 3 days development, 360 feedback and a pretty full-on coaching session) and you know it never ceases to touch my heart that people sit down afterwards and say simply, “I can’t recall the last time I took 5 minutes just for me, not just watching TV to wind down, but actually just to really be with myself”.
Why does this matter and why does it happen? Because as Lynda Gratton from the London Business School says, “people become bewitched by their own agenda” and for me this means that one outcome of this can be losing ones identity to an agenda that envelopes us and slowly, cunningly, deceitfully takes away our true selves and thus our ability to truly lead.
So the Executive Coaching Guru offers the following thoughts:
- When you find yourself talking to people, but you are thinking of what you are doing next, instead of being fully present with the individual(s) in front of you then. Stop, Breathe, Think, Re-focus.
- When you realise that you have too much work on. Stop. Talk to your staff, explain the workload and ask for their help and guidance and where needed. Coach, Support, Delegate, Direct.
- When your bosses behaviour is without focus and reacting instead of leading. Create a moment in time, when you can look them in the eye and truly converse about how things are for them and how you can work together.
- When you are at home and yet still at the office. Remember that to truly lead you need to be complete as a person and that ‘wholeness’ comes as a foundation from the home.
These are without doubt challenging times, for the last decade we were able to sail through, now it requires navigation.
Filed under: leadership behaviour | Tagged: leadership behaviour, leadership culture, leadership decisions, leadership in tough times, leadership presence, leadership responsibility, situational leadership
