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How The Leadership Desert Will Destabilize Your Busines

This week I had an epiphany based on trends I’m seeing in business that can lead to destabilization of your business. Small and medium size businesses continually elevate subject matter experts with some management experience and hope the essential skills of leadership will catch up. And then we look sideways at that person in the corner who raises their hand, asks well thought out questions, may even be the squeaky wheel and we “manage” their presence vs. realize they’re a future leader. Failure to recognize leadership in your organization or even a system to evolve leadership in an organization will lead to a leadership desert; leaving C-suite leaders in wonderment why their business is not thriving. 

Just this week while facilitating a workshop at a client, a few people who were lower in the hierarchy were rather quiet; letting the discussion continue with more senior leaders in the room. When there was a pause, they came forth with the most profound statements and questions that completely turned the conversations in a different direction from sometimes rabbit holes we were falling into. While I was successfully brought our workshop to technical conclusion; I realized there were quiet leaders in the room for which most leaders will not recognize them. We finished our business and these individuals went back to work. However, on my next visit, I’m going to suggest we flip the accountability of the project to those individuals and we are in service to these leaders.

Leaders are all around us, but we lack the lens to see them. When we don’t see them and take the time to evolve their inherent leadership skills we run into situations for which business will lack the talent and the work results ebb and flow. The Leadership Desert is a real thing and we need to be talking more about it to raise awareness and have the courage to take action. 

If this is a challenge for you as a C-Suite Leader or you see people on your team struggling with this exact same issue, but you don’t have the capacity or capability to address, please have the courage to leverage a support system. The Drop In CEO community can help you. 

Drop in to my next Drop In CEO Collective offered on March 20th and click here for your exclusive invite to this offering. This forum is for C-Suite Leaders of today and tomorrow. Mostly the Leaders of Tomorrow are coming for which they’re gleaning so much help to them get into the C-Suite. I invite C-Suite leaders to attend because a) you may gain some insights for yourself and b) you may see this as the place for your leaders of tomorrow to gain the skills they need. 

It may be the best investment of 50 minutes towards resolving the Leadership Desert. 

Let me know; I’d love to support you. 

Until then, I wish you much success-Deb

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C-Suite Leadership Messaging is the greatest under developed skill

With my 35 years of business experience and the last 4 years in my own, coaching C-Suite leaders of today and tomorrow, one of the most under developed skills is in messaging vision & strategy.

I have seen so many talented leaders including myself successfully delivery tactical content only to be deflated because we were unable to move the needle, spawn conversation or achieve the outcome we seek to achieve. It becomes a source of frustration for many and then creates limiting believes and a negative mindset about ones’ capabilities. Ultimately it deflates confidence for which stuck C-suite leaders of tomorrow cannot find a path forward. 

In this week’s Drop In CEO Collective, I provided a framework for which I have found is starting point to not only craft your 30 second elevator pitch for your vision & strategy, but gets you to think differently.

Here is the framework, an example of good and a very bad example of what not to do:

Framework:

  • Grounding statement that relates your Topic to a greater strategy (gets people to wake up and listen)
  • Provide more details and context that justify why the topic is important
  • Propose a solution or course of action to spawn conversation.

Example of good:  Evolving our Root Cause Analysis capability is critical to reaching long term defect reduction in order to create a greater customer experience. By implementing this training & coaching program within these functional areas in the next 24 months, we will not only see a reduction in our customer defects, but we will be the first business unite of its kind to take a step forward in investing in our people which pays many dividends in employee loyalty. I propose we have a follow up workshop in the next two weeks to work out the details of the strategy, deliverable timeline and necessary resources.

Example of bad: We need to purchase now the Root Cause Analysis training package in order to train all employees across 3 business units using state of the art software that enables collaboration and real time reporting. When we implement the new tool, we should be able to show people how to do RC analysis more effectively and ultimately reducing our defect rate from 5% down to 2% which is our 2024 goal. The cost is $25,000 and would like to discuss how / when we can move forward with this proposal.

The good example aligns the leaders message to a greater strategic goal, provides a bit of context to help people to understand the impact and a call to action to move the conversation forward.

The bad example is from a place of siloed thinking and provides too much detail for which people may deflect or delay any constructive conversation leaving the messenger deflated. 
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The attendees of this past collective agreed that this was a different way of thinking and this could help them to craft more impactful messages and be seen, heard and respected as a C-Suite Leader. 

If this is a challenge for you as a C-Suite Leader or you see people on  your team struggling with this exact same issue, but you don’t have the capacity or capability to address, please have the courage to leverage a support system.

Drop in to my next Drop in Collective offered on March 20th and click here for your exclusive invite to this offering. 

It may be the best investment of 50 minutes towards effective Messaging for influence & impact. 

Let me know; I’d love to support you. 

Until then, I wish you much success-Deb

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