This is from the Mastering The CEO Learning Curve email series, which you can sign up for here.
[MCLC] 3 - Critical CEO conversations
“Although I was CEO, somehow I was doing all the work.”
So far in this series, we’ve covered how to use Commission/Contribution to set the frame for your time as CEO (Episode 1) and how influencing at the systemic level will create more value and progress than intervening repeatedly in operational decisions that should properly be left to your executive team (Episode 2).
But all of this comes down to a few ‘moments of truth’.
The new CEO’s world is filled with critical “CEO conversations”. You need to secure support across the whole stakeholder ecosystem:
- Bringing the board on board.
- Aligning the senior leadership.
- Creating a culture of accountability.
- Rallying and inspiring the organisation.
- Having the difficult conversations when needed.
Rob, the CEO of the $2B corporation that I mentioned previously, credited the work we did together on this topic - honing his ability to nail these conversations - as a game-changer in helping him win hearts and minds across the organisation.
Here are three things to consider as you engage your new stakeholders and win them to your vision.
Influence leaks
We all have habits and tendencies that tend to undermine our influence and impact; our proverbial blind spots.
These “influence leaks” that didn’t matter so much at lower levels can become more detrimental when you’re CEO.
One CEO client, David, had a very high emotional intelligence and his people skills were well recognised. When I spoke to his leadership team, however, I discovered a blind spot that was sapping the energy of his executive team.
David's ‘bias for action’, learned through a successful sales career, was actually alienating some of the more reflective and strategic members of his leadership team as he jumped to decisions, only to revisit them and change course just a few weeks later as new information came in. A little bit more due diligence and reflection would have gone a long way.
We greatly underestimate the impact of our influence leaks, assuming that if we’re CEO then we’ve dialled this in enough. But convincing a board to hire you for the job isn’t the same as winning hearts and minds across your stakeholder base.
I wonder what your “influence leaks” are, and who is going to be honest enough to help you discover them?
Calibrating Push/Pull
My client Craig was new in role, and had worked tirelessly on the vision and strategic plan. He’d won board approval, and now the task was to ‘sell it’ to the rest of the organisation.
But he started to find out that resistance was high and ownership was low. No wonder: after some initial discovery work as part of his 100 day plan he’d quickly moved into “design it and sell it mode”.
This is a classic example of “Push” behaviour: selling, explaining, demanding, requesting, requiring. Even if it was done with a lot of charisma and charm!
After we’d coached around this topic, he went back to the team and invited people to collaborate and refine the plan - now positioned as a working draft. Craig moved into “Pull” mode: listening, establishing common ground, and drawing out others’ thoughts and ideas.
As the CEO’s colleagues really engaged with the thinking process, their sense of ownership skyrocketed. The strategic plan ended up directionally very similar, but with enough personalisation that the team felt it was ‘our plan’ rather than ‘the CEO’s plan’.
What’s your natural tendency, and how can you balance the clarity and specificity of “Push” with the genuine interest and collaboration of “Pull”?
Role reversal
Finally, watch out for role reversal, which can happen surprising easily in these ‘moments of truth’ conversations. Let me explain how this plays out with an example.
“Members of my executive team weren’t sure our new strategy would work in their region. I didn’t manage to convince them, so I took the action to find the data points to give them comfort that it would.”
This was a comment from one CEO client who was leading a global transformation project.
During a 1:1 session, I pointed out to the CEO that he’d given in to Role Reversal: his regional SVP had managed to give the CEO an action point to persuade him to come in line with the previously agreed global strategy! His insight:
“Although I was CEO, somehow I was doing all the work!”
He decided to change his approach. Why not ask the regional SVP to come back with a formal presentation, documenting compelling reasons why he now believed the global strategy would not work, if he was so against the idea?
Role Reversal can happen very easily. For example, one of your extended team asks to pick your brains about something, and before you know it you’re playing Sherlock Holmes. You’re trying to discover the exact question you’re being asked, the exact problem you’re dealing with, and all the relevant context.
Instead, set expectations that people will come to you with “fully-formed requests”: what input do they want from you, what’s the context, what options have been considered, and what is their personal recommendation?
Summary
The highest value activities you can engage in as CEO will take the form of critical conversations. If you can identify and plug your ‘influence leaks’, calibrate push and pull behaviours to balance clarity and buy-in, and watch out for role-reversal, then you’ll get further, faster with your stakeholders without the stress and drama.
So, what are the ‘moments of truth’ coming up in your diary this week, and what does it mean for you to show up at your best in each of these conversations?
For now, I’d love to know what you’ve made of this series. We’re clearly scratching the surface of what it means to be CEO, but hopefully some of these distinctions and principles have ‘landed’ for you.
Once again this article has got quite long, so I’ll drop you an email in a couple of days with a bit of a wrap-up and some extra thoughts about how to dive deeper into these ideas. Do hit REPLY and let me know what’s been your #1 insight from the material so far. I’d genuinely appreciate it.
Richard