Introduction
Remember the first day you supervised a group of people? It was a bit overwhelming. There was so much to do and you felt like every one needed your time and attention to solve their problems. Now, you are a new senior leader within the organization. You have come a long way since that first day,
And along the way, you have experienced many complicated challenges and complex problems. You also have learned many important lessons. You have survived where others did not. You rose through the ranks and now are considered one of the more knowledgeable and experienced professionals within the company.
First, congratulations. You have accomplished something that not a lot of people achieve in the course of their career. You have worked hard to get here.
Second, the tendency to frame up this moment as a reward for all of your hard work is common. But now that you have the job, do not define it as a reward. Instead, choose the more honorable path and define this moment as a unique and important opportunity to serve more people in a responsible and ethical manner. Act from a place of integrity and seek to make your company a better place to work and to serve others. Do not get caught in the trap of focusing on the status, power, and money that comes with the position.
Finally, think back to your early days when you were not a supervisor, manager or leader. Do you remember how much your first supervisor impacted the quality of your work day? Do you remember the days when you received good supervision and the days when you did not? This is still the case today for many people in your organization. Their immediate supervisor is the person who is impacting their life and work the most on a daily basis.
As a new senior leader, you matter more than you think. Your actions and your words impact the lives of many people across the organization. Do not forget this as you move forward from here.
But always remember that the person doing the job of serving customers is where the products and services you offer as an organization become real and tangible. Most customers or persons served do not know the senior leaders of the company, but they do know how they felt when they interacted with a front line employee. Make that moment of truth the focus of all you do. That is where the company comes alive. That is where success or failure becomes real.
Focus On Your Team
As a new senior leader, it is mission critical for you to create a healthy leadership team. You need this team to be cohesive and effective. They need to engage in constructive ideological conflict, hold one another accountable for their behaviors and actions, and commit to group decisions.
Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (Jossey-Bass, 2012), writes: ““Becoming a real team requires an intentional decision on the part of its members…. teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice - and a strategic one.” I think many new senior leaders miss this key point. They do not grasp the importance of creating a leadership team, who are collectively responsible for achieving the agreed to goals for the entire organization.
The first step in this process is to clearly define who is and who is not on the team, and why. People have to know who is on the team and who is not. They also need to grasp that this was a strategic choice, not just an operational default to status quo.
The second step is to define the purpose, goals, and metrics of the team. Through strategic level dialogue all involved need to know why team work matters, and what is the level of urgency related to the agreed to goals. Finally, everyone needs to understand how progress will be measured.
The third step is to clarify your expectations with the team. In particular, you need to know what the individuals of the team need from the team in order for them to be successful. And the team needs to know from you what you need from the team in order for you to be successful.
The fourth step, is to regularly build capacity and understanding through on-going strategic level dialogue, and shared learning. This creates a foundation of shared, common language, perspective and understanding which always improves communication and problem solving. One element of this step is to create an annual team development plan to increase this desired level of shared understanding.
The fifth step is to receive routine leadership coaching, and to participate in leadership team level coaching. When we role model the importance of being coached at the individual level and at the team level, we send a message that everyone can and should get better at their job.
Remember: Teamwork is a strategic choice. And every successful senior leader I have ever met has always been successful because they had a healthy and cohesive leadership team.
Define Your Strategic Nexus
At the heart of every successful company is a strategic nexus. The term nexus comes from the Latin word, nectere, which means to bind as in to hold something together. This nexus is the sum of two important components namely a core ideology, which is the union of the organizational vision, mission, and core values, plus a strategic plan with its’ typical goals, objectives, and metrics.
As a new senior leader, you want all involved to own and to understand this strategic nexus. You want it to guide people in the decisions they make and the actions they take, be it at the operational level or the strategic level.
The thing we need to understand about the strategic nexus is that the amount of time and energy needed to create clarity about the nexus within a company is an order of magnitude greater than the time and energy it takes to create and maintain the nexus. Therefore, we need to recognize that creating clarity about the nexus is not a linear process. Instead, it is a dynamic process involving dialogue, repetition, and exceptional listening.
The goal of this sharing, which will result in a deep understanding, is for all employees to feel connected to the nexus. In particular, we want people to feel connected to the core ideology, i.e. the mission, vision and core values. We also want them to feel connected to the strategy of the company and the related operational goals and priorities. Finally, we want people to feel connected to their supervisor, their team, their department, and to the company as a whole. In short, we want people to feel proud of where they work and proud of the work they are doing.
To accomplish this level of connection, we must recognize that clarity, connection, and communication, i.e. strategic dialogue about the nexus, creates commitment. A healthy and well-understood nexus centers the organization around purpose and progress more than egos or personalities of the leaders.
Expand Your Listening Ecosystem
One of the major problems that senior leaders experience is related to communication, namely they are trapped in an information bubble. While they have access to more lines of communication than anybody else in the company, the information that flows to them is suspect and compromised, because people are always wanting to put a positive spin on everything. Often, the result of this information bubble is overconfidence and outdated ideas or information.
Therefore, as Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer note in their article called “Are You Really Listening?” in the March-April 2021 issue of the Harvard Business Review, senior leaders need to expand their “listening ecosystem.” They do this by broadening their network of sources inside and outside the company, listening without judgement or an agenda, and actively seeking input from this network. They call this kind of listening, “a multidimensional practice.”
Furthermore, the best senior leaders grasp an importance insight that Patrick Lencioni explained in his book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (Jossey-Bass, 2012). As he wrote, “The problem is that leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to an audience with the audience’s ability to understand, internalize it, and embrace the message that is being communicated. The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people.” When we speak clearly and listen well as leaders, we are role modeling the importance of understanding what is being said, not just trying to be heard.
Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall build on this concept in their book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019). As they wrote, “Checking in with each person on a team - listening, course-correcting, adjusting, coaching, pinpointing, advising, paying attention to the intersection of the person and the real-world work - is not what you do in addition to the work of leading. This is the work of leading.”
When we choose to expand our listening ecosystem and to engage in active listening, we are building the capacity to adapt to unpredictable times and complex problems.
Create More Leaders
"Toughness, rigor and drive are still important; results count more than ever,” write Alan Webber and William Taylor. “But these days, it's just as important for CEO's to appreciate the links between talent, culture and performance. More than simply giving orders, CEO's today find themselves giving permission - allowing the smart, motivated, and innovative people who work for them to take calculated risks in order to create the future. Perhaps more than anything, the CEO of today is a teacher, working tirelessly to grow the skills and aptitudes of the company's best contributors. The job of the CEO is to create more CEOs, since CEOs who get it seek to populate the company with people who also get it.”
In successful, adaptable, and resilient companies, the role of a senior leader is complicated and complex. We need to act strategically and operationally. We need to balance the present and the future while simultaneously shaping the values and standards within the company.
The pathway to this level of work is to focus on execution and education through regular and productive coaching and mentoring of others. We have to create more people who share a common strategic and operational mindset.
Yet, too many senior leaders focus solely on executing the strategic plan. They do not comprehend that strategy must always be adaptable by nature due to unforeseen variables rather than the presentation of a rigid set of instructions or tactics which has the potential to create organizational vulnerability. Strategy also serves an important function in promoting ongoing, organizational evolution within an ever changing market place.
When we move from focusing on our own individual leadership as a senior leader and create a “leader-full organization,” borrowing a term from Margaret Wheatley, we create the ability within the organization to transfer leadership and ownership to those involved who can translate strategy into practical and realistic progress over time. This gives the company the capacity to adapt and evolve in a proactive and effective manner over time.
The Culture Is The Strategy
When it comes to strategic planning and execution, a senior leader needs to remember one very important point. As Jason Jennings wrote in his book, Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity as a Competitive Tool in Business (Penguin Putnam, 2002.): “In productive companies, the culture is the strategy. Unlike other companies, productive companies know the difference between tactics and strategy. The difference is the foundation that allows them to stay focused and build remarkable companies. They have institutionalized their strategy.”
What Jennings is pointing out is that successful organizations consciously institutionalized their culture. As we know, an organization’s culture is the sum of behavioral norms that are agreed upon, mostly by people in positions of power. This culture is often learned by the way people role model it, i.e. actions speak louder than words. It also is taught by the stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are and what we believe as an organization. And before we forget, most of this role modeling and story telling is happening at the local level more than the corporate office level.
As a new senior leader, it is too easy to forget that on any given day about 80% of the staff report to a front line supervisor and about 80% of the employees work side by side with a small group of co-workers. For these particular staff, their front line supervisor and their co-workers, not you as a senior leader, are their world. For them, these relationships are “the company culture.”
Now, there are four levels of culture happening every day in the company. The first is the interpersonal culture, namely peer to peer. The second is the operational culture, namely the employee to their supervisor. The third level is the strategic culture, namely the supervisor’s relationship with the senior team. The fourth is organizational culture, namely the company as a whole.
When we recognize that culture is the strategy in successful companies, then we need to improve the interpersonal culture and the operational culture. These are the two places that have the most impact on the quality of the customer and employee experience. When employees think and act from clarity about what is and what is not acceptable, they translate the strategy into relationships that yield positive results over time. And this is the ultimate goal that all senior leaders want to see happen year after year.
Recognize That Every New Beginning Start With An Ending
One of the first things that all new senior leaders want to do is make change happen. They are eager to get started. They want to plan their work and then work their plan. And this laser focus is commendable but not helpful. As an executive coach, I often point out that every new beginning starts with an ending.
When we seek to create organizational change as a new senior leader, we are focusing on new outcomes and new destinations. However, what we forget in our focus on the future is that most employees are just trying to get through their day to day operational checklists, challenges, and problems. They are focused on now. As a senior leader, we are doing the work of change management. Employees, on the other hand, have to do the work of transition management.
William Bridges in his book, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change (Perseuss Books, 1991), explains that “the starting point for a transition is not the [new] outcome but the ending that you will have to make to leave the old situation behind.” Bridges understands that people worked hard to get to the current form of operations. They struggled, solved problems, and created realistic solutions to daily problems in the journey to get to this time and place.
When we as senior leaders introduce change, we have to respect that for many employees this means that they have to let go of the “old way” of doing things to embrace the “new way” of doing things that comes with change. This ending often comes with a loss of clarity, competence, and confidence at the individual and team levels. In realistic terms, change for a new senior leader starts with a new beginning, but for most employees it starts with loss. If we do not respect these losses, we create a wide variety of short and long term problems.
Therefore, I continually remind new senior leaders that during a transition people need very specific information. As Bridges notes in the aforementioned book, people want to know the purpose of the new changes, i.e. the why that drives the change. Next, they want to have a mental picture of what the outcome will be when we all achieve the goals outlined in the changes being initiated. Third, they want to know the plan to get there, i.e. the step-by-step goals and objectives to create the desired picture. Finally, people want to understand what they are responsible for within the plan, namely to have clarity about their role or part in the plan.
Over and over, I have to advise new senior leaders to slow down in order to create successful change. They need to understand how hard people worked to get to this place and to understand whether the culture and the relationships within the organization have the capacity to move to a new level of performance.
Regularly, as an outside consultant, I have discovered that while the proposed changes are good, the people are not ready and do not understand why status quo is not acceptable. Furthermore, when called in as a consultant to figure out why change did not take place successfully, I also discover that the teamwork required to make the new beginnings happen is based on the assumption that all involved, people and teams, are functional. In reality, most teams have a high degree of dsyfunctionality and most people do not have the right knowledge or skills required to execute and achieve the desired new outcomes. Finally, many companies also do not have the right organizational capabilities, e.g. systems or structure, to execute the new business strategy well.
Thus, a new senior leader needs to slow down before they speed up. They need to respect the endings before they engage in the new beginning. In short, they need to build the capacity and the relationships in order to be successful over time and through multiple change cycles.
This is not easy to do, but it is important. As the old African proverb reminds us: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The goal of a senior leader is to go far. Therefore, remember that every new beginning start with an ending.
Your Legacy Matters
We were sitting together in his office on the top floor of the national corporate headquarters building right after he had announced his retirement to the senior team and upper level management. It was a quiet and reflective moment for both of us.
“How did you know now was the right time to do this?”, I inquired.
He paused and then responded, “When I figured out that things outside my office window were starting to be more interesting and important to me than the things on my desk and on my computer screen.” This is an astute observation that I have carried with me for a very long time.
What many people new to senior leadership do not recognize is that the next step after becoming a senior leader is often retirement. They do not grasp that there may not be another hill to climb or next level up from the C suite. This often is it. And then retirement happens.
As the late Stephen Covey wrote: “There’s no way we can escape accountability. We make a difference - one way or the other. We are responsible for the impact of our lives. Whatever we do with whatever we have, we leave behind us a legacy for those who follow.”
The best senior leaders I have met grasp what Covey is saying and recognize that legacy matters. They recognize that they are “stewards of the chair” and stewards of their position. They know that someone some day will follow them and become a new senior leader. With this in mind, the best senior leaders role model integrity, compassion and kindness. These are the leadership actions that transcend time and place. These are the legacy actions that people talk about time and time again.
As James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their book, A Leader’s Legacy (Jossey-Bass, 2006), explain, “When we move on, people do not remember us for what we do for ourselves. They remember us for what we do for them. They are the inheritors of our work.”
As you begin your work as a new senior leader, I encourage you to focus on being a humble leader who is focused on helping as many people as possible to be successful on a day to day basis. When we as leaders help others achieve a meaningful day within the context of a caring and respectful work community, then we have made an authentic and positive difference in the world. And this is the greatest legacy of all.
© Geery Howe 2022
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