The CEO’s Compass is designed to provide you 8 compass points that you can go into to steer the ship back on track. This week, my ship was in a complete fog due to my 2nd COVID Vaccine and while it appeared to be wasted time, it’s probably the greatest time to help me to get back on track. In the process, I’ve learned 3 things that will help The CEO who is also navigating through the “Fog”

Sitting on my couch knowing I took the day off to simply “be”, I felt so unproductive short of clearing out email, organizing my calendar and filing. It was during this time of such brain fog and lacking complete creativity to start something new, came great clarity in what was “off track” and a message for the CEO.

Purpose via Strong Messaging

I took the time to go through a video of a recent coaching session and while I appeared to be on track, my coach said my messaging was still not of the quality and consistency I needed. I saw myself struggling with the concept as I’d been putting in so much effort, but as an outsider, they said it was not conveying strongly enough my business and how I serve my ideal client. When I look back on this session, the fog started to clear up for me; despite effort, the message was still not coming through strong. The CEO’s Compass has been my navigation tool to get me back on track in times gone by and I needed to dust it off to help myself now. Only then could I begin to service the clients who could use my support. 

And so I ask you, does your company’s messaging transcend throughout the organization. If you kicked the boxes and spoke to your support staff, would the long term vision or purpose of the company ring loudly? If not, what kind of message is being conveyed directly or indirectly through the behavior of your team? And despite all the marketing and PR to convey your messaging to your customers, it may not be coming through via your front line workers. 

Now, I’m not a brand messaging expert by no means, but when it comes to articulating “Purpose”, the compass point right next to your true north “Peace of Mind” may be critical via rolling up your sleeves and getting purpose and messaging rooted deep into your culture. 

Performance via Prioritization

Clearing out my email and getting myself ready to offload some of my “administrative” tasks to a virtual assistant was a priority for me up until I entered the “Vaccine Fog”. But as I was clearing away the email, the file transfer activities and deadlines to create more content, I realized my priorities were broken. I’ve been in this place before thinking I needed more help when my decision logic and as a result my “Performance” was not on track. I’d put so much effort into my content & marketing creation efforts, I lost sight of my business development goals and needed to steer the ship more in that direction. Sales & Marketing feeds the top line growth and to achieve “Peace of Mind”, I needed to prioritize those efforts.

In the CEO’s case, I’ve seen your people rewarded for getting the order out the door, managing through that audit and high fiving when they whittled down the inventory backlog. All activity based work that needs to get done and your people feel good for surviving to tell their story. But is the right priority? Sure we need to do these things as part of operational work, but do your people understand what it takes to focus on work that will enable you to reach the outcome of your business; moving customer relationships from transactional to partnership. Do they understand that time spent in personal development is an investment in the future leadership and maturity of the people? What activities do you need to engage in that make the business unique and interesting vs. seen as a commodity?

Unless people spend time creating a roadmap to move the needle from A to B where 5-10% of each day should be focused on this work, you’re never going to create a mature and scalable business. When your people don’t lead their own roadmap towards a greater purpose or outcome and their performance is purely judged on transactional work, you clearly don’t have a performance focused workforce. 

Pride as a source of Creative Energy

While navigating my enduring “Fog”, I also started to feel a sense of loss; did I have to give up my creative passions in favor of steering my ship’s focus on Purpose and Performance? I love the creative outlet of writing and podcasting as a way of connecting with people and creating meaningful relationships. It is that creativity that is part of my DNA and what makes me unique for both myself and others who encounter my work or create a relationship. As I reflected on a potential loss in my work, I quickly mustered up the courage to know that I still need to maintain my relationship with my “Pride” and find ways that serve my business and clients vs. being an energy drain. It is for that, the content & conversations I will have going forward need to serve the “Purpose” of my clients now and the ones I haven’t met yet. By maintaining what I’m so proud of with a minor course correction, I should be able to achieve true north or “Peace of Mind”.

When I think about you, the CEO, I often think about someone who is “Dropped in” to a new situation and needs to quickly assess your landscape and make the best decisions to move it through rapid transformation. The thing sometimes that is missed is you may have all the technical resources and processes already available from the ocean you just acquired. It’s about spending time with the people to understand their unique qualities and harness that creative energy to get back on track. There is plenty of time to enhance, improve and make more cost effective, but critical now is to work with what you have now in order to build trust in the people to follow your leadership and to maintain their confidence they can still contribute to the greater purpose.

When we preserve the “Pride” of the people and the process that has made it successful until now, we maintain a strong foundation that is needed in order to build upon it and bring it through rapid change. Once everyone is on board because you paid respect to what they bring forward into the next journey, they’ll be there for you through the rough waters. When you get through the short term challenges, they will engage with you more willingly when it comes to investing time, money & resources for that business step change you were commissioned to do. 

So as I come out of my “Vaccine Fog” and gain clarity on how to steer my ship, I offer you a tool for you to determine if you are on track or do you need The CEO’s Compass to see you through your “Fog” and get you and your team back on track.

For my free assessment tool, email me and put “Get my CEO’s Compass Assessment Tool” in the subject and I’ll get it right over to you. ([email protected]) This will give you a sense if you’re on track or which Compass point you need to focus on. If you’d like to talk through the tool, let’s connect for a free 15 minute call.

Did you wake up one morning and realize you were ready to lead a successful company? Me either.

In fact, the more knowledgable I’ve become over the years, the more I realize that I’ve never been inherently ready for anything – and neither are your emerging leaders.

Leadership is a process, and at any given moment your skilled employees are on their own (very unique) journey to becoming the leader you need them to be. It’s up to you to recognize where they are in that journey and know how to support them. 

If leadership were a fire, it would start with a spark, then develop a slow burn and finally ignite into a flame that is unstoppable. If we break the process down into these phases, there are a few not so typical characteristics that you can look out for.

Type 1 – The Spark

Characteristics:

• They’re labeled as difficult.
• People roll their eyes when this individual speaks.
• People avoid speaking to them because they know it may be work they have to do.
• People come to you and complain about this person and they now become your problem.

What do you do? This is the time most leaders develop a performance improvement plan, hand the person off to HR or simply ignore them. 

In Practice:

I’m saddened to know countless people go unacknowledged because true leadership does not recognize the leaders of tomorrow. These people are restless. They have ideas about how things should be. They vocalize their thoughts that are often not popular only to be smothered by disinterest or avoidance because it may be work or things will change. 

Every new idea and change comes with effort, but I ask are you willing to listen and truly see the spark that person brings to your organization. Their ideas may be rough, but under your leadership you could refine the message and help the individual to position their thoughts and energy into a positive impact. 

I saw this person in my last consulting assignment, a highly talented food safety specialist. I worked with them to channel their energy into messages that spoke the language of business or that of the individual they were speaking to. I mentored them to speak more concisely about concepts. I taught them to find the best time / approach to communicating with people as everyone is different. I helped them to regain their confidence in their technical expertise as they found their way to more effectively communicate and to start to effect change. This person had a beautiful spark and I found a way to keep it shining bright. 

What do you do with this “difficult” person? Your role as a leader to see leadership before everyone else sees it and it starts with that person with a little spark. Don’t let others smother it.

Type 2 – The Slow Burn

Characteristics:

• They come to your office and start writing on your whiteboard a new approach to an existing problem.
• They’re so wrapped up in the concept and story telling, they appear lost in their world of trying to convince you of a new way.
• They’re frustrated with their current role and are not delivering yet they have time to share new ideas with you and are energized by it.

You appreciate the well thought out concept, but are distracted by the fact they’re not meeting their performance objectives. 

In Practice:

I saw this person in my office and I was exhilarated with a new way of thinking to help leaders get to a deeper level of thinking when it came to root cause analysis. As we tested the idea and then applied it to the real world crisis, we uncovered a major global system flaw in some ERP software where in the past, a band aid would have been applied in the past. This person was so energized by the work to a fault that some of their other responsibilities did falter a bit, but I’m thrilled this person found a new calling that could impact the business on a greater scale.

That person later resigned to a calling of being a plant manager at another company. When they handed in their resignation, they said the work would allow him to impact so many more people on a greater scale now that he had found his passion to teach and help others to solve problems. 

So I ask you what do you do? This “Slow Burn” can have a tremendous impact on your organization if you provide them the time and mentorship to revolutionize how you do business. I won’t lie to you, but it takes a lot of work to harness this immense potential into something that can create a lasting impact on the organization. It takes an open door policy to support them with monthly 1:1’s to help them to evolve their process and to something that raises them to a level of leadership that is no longer taxing to your energy, but something that creates energy. The question you need to ask yourself is are you willing to invest the time?  And if not you, with whom?

Type 3 – The Igniter

Characteristics:

• They’re your highest performers that make you feel comfortable and you look good because they are so good at their work.
• You don’t have to worry about them, therefore you don’t spend much time thinking about developing their career.

You give them a target performance review and when they ask you for feedback, you draw a blank and say you’ll give it some thought and get back to them. They shut the door on their way out and with that, you’ve forever lost your best performer. 

In Practice:

Your star performers who are highly aware of their performance are always seeking to improve are the ones you have to watch out for. Sure, they’re probably promotion material and top of mind for new projects, but they’re a smoldering fire waiting to Ignite. They’re either going to fall into a confidence deficit, start working themselves to the bone  thinking that will get them ahead or before you know it, they leave you and then you wonder why. 

Whether you realize it or not, they’ve already mentally left you and while they continue to do their work to the highest quality, they’ve been seeking support from other people. I know because they’re being mentored by myself. They’re in my Human Centric Leadership Academy, signed up to be a mentor through a professional organziation or are consuming my content on social media and the podcast. It’s only a matter of time, they ignite themselves into a new role or company and you never saw it coming. 

What should you do? I might propose the first step is to truly “see” these people vs. taking them for granted. They are your future leaders and by not supporting them, your investment will be lost by having to pick up what could later be poor performance or they leave the company. If you realize this is an opportunity, do you have the capacity to provide this to maintain your top performers? Do you need someone to partner with you? I challenge you to ask yourself these questions and if any of these are “yes”, I’d love to connect with you and start a conversation. 

It first starts with a conversation to discuss how you can keep the “spark”, the “slow burn” or the “igniter” people in your organization and protect your investments. Until we meet, promise yourself some time to “see” these people and see if you have a different view of their potential after reading this article. I suspect you have talent that is untapped and you can be the one to help them to leave a lasting impact.

Let’s talk! I’d love to support you in discovering your untapped talent on your team.-Deb