Tip of the Spear Ventures

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Leadership Challenge – Is It Possible to Emerge From the Darkest Hell Healed and Restored?

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We recently participated in a leadership roundtable discussion.  The focus was on the many leadership challenge moments that leaders face running their organizations.  Whether the leader is in charge of a startup, with its many ups/downs associated with daily (sometimes hourly) survival or the leadership challenge of running an existing organization (sometimes no easy feat regardless of how long they’ve been in business!)  There were many topics considered for discussion:

  • What’s the best way to develop the strategic plan (and how to get that strategic plan implemented)?
  • Best practices when it comes to dealing with moments of change
  • How to ensure that all (both leaders and team members) have the same organizational vision through communication
  • Implementing recruiting strategies for A+ candidates (A version of the Top Grading methodology)
  • Ensuring that the organization continues to be agile/innovative
  • Creating a “High Potential” program for future organizational leaders

As you can tell, the topics were those most pressing to the leaders gathered.  Questions were asked/answered, and an overall tone of satisfaction permeated the meeting room. That tone though shifted abruptly when one of the leaders in attendance asked the following question:

“Here’s a leadership challenge for you… Is it possible to emerge from the darkest hell healed and restored?”

If you’ve read Malcom Gladwell’s recently released book, David & Goliath, then you know the story presented in Chapter 5 – Emil “Jay” Freireich. The story is of Dr. Freireich and his tumultuous search for a cancer cure for cancer. There is also presented in this chapter a theory regarding direct hits, near misses and overall misses (Think the London bombing that occurred during World War 2 . The theory being that those who received direct hits, as morbid as it sounds, don’t really count for “after bombing” feedback.  Those that achieved overall misses still laid in wait/fear for future bombings (a very small minority).  Finally, those that achieved near misses and lived to tell the tale found that they were not only resilient, but encouraged and grew in their resolve to overcome successfully future bombings!

With this knowledge in mind, we shared the story and similar story that those leaders who have experienced truly dark spaces (The ones they don’t tell you about in MBA school) often times have similar resiliency and resolve to overcome! The pressing leadership challenge therefore doesn’t really appear to present itself of much of a challenge at all (albeit those effected might tell a slightly different tale!)

What’s the Point?  So what’s the point? Can it be as simple as “that which does not kill us only makes us stronger!” Based on the research of Malcom Gladwell adn Dr. Freireich, we think that not only is there a high resiliency that would allow one to overcome obstacles but also succeed.

Leadership Challenge: Change Management Success Factors

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We see study after study talking about what are those magical three elements that are going to magically make your leadership challenge of change initiatives successful.  What are those top three things that could be considered Change Management Success Factors? In our minds, they are:

  1. Leaders – Leaders sponsor and champion the change effort. Leaders are behind change management publicly.  Leaders are behind the change initiative in their communications, in their actions and in their behaviors. Leaders are out in front championing the change.
  2. Vision – A clear and compelling vision and case for change, and a strong communication plan in place behind that change management vision. People anymore are not like sheep going off to do their job.  People today are interested in knowing that what they do is in service of the greater good of the company. That means that in any change management initiative, a leader is going to have to stand up and have a clear and compelling case for who are we, what are we about, and why are we doing this.
  3. Engagement – So if you have leaders standing up and saying “This is why we’re doing this… This is what we’re doing… This is how you can be a part of this journey” this will invite people to come and be a part of the change.

That engagement becomes the platform, along with leadership alignment and the clear case for change that really becomes the platform for making change stick at the end of the day. When it’s all said and done, change that sticks and achieves desired results is what you should be after (No magic there, right?)

Are Your Leadership Beliefs Limiting Your Success?

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We had an executive coaching conversation with a client recently.  The leader in the conversation was a highly successful 30-something that grew his Inc 500 organization from scratch, but was now in position to realize that his leadership beliefs were limiting growth.  He realized the following two business aspects were present now that he achieved lift-off for his organization:

  1.  PLATEAU – The organization wasn’t a startup anymore. He had successfully grown from thought/ideation, creation, implementation, launch pad to lift off, but now the organization had achieved a plateau.
  2. POTENTIAL – The organization (or a leader therein) had achieved growth, but he realized that they’d only achieved Point A results (When Point B is where they should be).

We asked several questions to him, with the majority revolving around “How will you push through that plateau and/or achieve full potential?”  That’s why we created Tip of the Spear’s Centered Executive Coaching programs for leaders just like him to solve exactly those challenges.

In our experience as Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaches we’ve seen leaders behave in dramatically different ways, and several facets of leadership belief modification that have made Centered Executive Coaching so impactful for leaders and their organizations.

It’s a paradox for most leaders… What made them successful might be limiting them from achieving their full future potential. As Marshall Goldsmith said, “What got you here won’t get you there!” At the heart of this is a “core” leadership belief system which accounts for much of their success:

  • I am successful
  • I choose to succeed
  • I will succeed

At risk is something akin to implementing a change initiative… You might get worse before you get better! Most leaders are not willing to risk getting worse, and therefore continue to go to the well they know.

What’s the Point? The next time you’re not pushing through those plateaus, or achieving full potential your beliefs just might be limiting your success. How you modify those beliefs will spell the difference between future success and failure.

If you’d like to learn more about our Centered Executive Coaching programs, and how they can help you/your organization achieve results in less time contact us.