If you believe that your past or current success preordains future success, you are in deep trouble! Executives who sustain enduring professional success are those who can balance their confidence with a suspicion of their own success and potential–enough to keep themselves honest, reasonably objective, and sufficiently paranoid.
THE LIE – “I am successful because I am intelligent, insightful, and competent about all things. If the people who criticize me or volunteer feedback were as capable as I am, they’d be as successful as I am. They’re not, ergo…”
THE NAKED TRUTH – You got where you are because of your assets and in spite of your liabilities. Additionally, attributes that may have comprised the strengths required for previous success may now be the liabilities keeping you from future success. For example, your early success may have occurred because it required brilliant strategy and superior analytics – two of your personal strengths. You now run a more mature enterprise with a requirement for superior operating management. If the voice in your head provides rationale for sustaining a status quo that has outlived its usefulness, you and your company are headed for problems.
THE LIE – “Every personal exchange, whether one-on-one or in larger meetings, must give everyone an ‘a-ha!’ moment. My comments must demonstrate that I am omniscient; that I have command of all of the relevant dimensions of the business and that I am ‘the man’.”
THE NAKED TRUTH – Get over yourself. In an executive chair, you get paid to ask great questions, not to have all of the answers. If you want to create a lasting, productive impression and do some real good, the next time you critique a presentation, instead of saying, “that’s wrong; do this,” ask “what were the options you considered and what motivated you to make the recommendation you did?” In lieu of saying, “your recommendation doesn’t comport with our strategy,” ask, “how does your recommendation drive our strategic success?”
Second, when you have nothing of real value to add, don’t add it. Before making a comment, ask yourself, “does what I intend to say contribute to fulfilling my conditions of satisfaction; the success and development of the other person/people, our customers’ satisfaction, and our shareholders’ value?”
THE LIE – “I’m in charge, the grand poobah, the great and powerful Oz. I can do whatever I want to! I’ve earned that right!”
THE NAKED TRUTH – Exercising your prerogatives has nothing to do with creating organizational success. Over time, if you depend on the job title on your business card to move people to do what you want them to do, you are dead! If, however, you believe that enthusiastic, voluntary contribution is a better road to success than indentured servitude, you’ll take another route.
THE LIE – “I know what our people are thinking. I’m an ‘open’ guy. My people know that they can come to me with any concern, issue or problem and that they’ll get an open hearing.”
THE NAKED TRUTH – No you don’t and no they don’t. You MUST create and exploit formal feedback mechanisms to get a valid, ongoing sense of what people are thinking. Employee surveys are great, but they’re inadequate because they don’t convey emotion. They don’t allow for probing, and they don’t allow you to “peel the onion” to get an explicit sense of deep truth. One CEO I know (an executive who runs a Fortune 100) spends about 10 hours a month talking one-on-one with people at all levels of his company. At first, it made people uncomfortable. Now, they REALLY get into it. He learned an important lesson along the way: Nothing beats nose-to-nose contact.
THE LIE – “People understand my motives; they’ll forgive my idiosyncratic behavior.”
THE NAKED TRUTH – No they don’t, and no they won’t. As early as five years old, we have a good idea of the impact that other people’s behavior has on us. Most of us, however, never fully appreciate the impact that our behavior has on others. We assume that they know what we’re thinking and feeling, and what our motives are.
I call it “CEO disease” for a reason. Although the heads of companies do not lay exclusive claim to the issues outlined, they are extraordinarily susceptible to them. If you are a business leader or aspire to be, you’ll be wise to be mindful of the following:
WHY SELECTING THE RIGHT EXECUTIVE COACH IS CRITICAL TO YOUR SUCCESS...
Working with a skilled executive coach can go a long way toward propelling you to your potential. The problem is, what kind of coach should you select?
As a distinct discipline, executive coaching evolved in the 1990s out of a number of other types of coaching – life coaching, career counseling, and public speaking skill development. Distinguishing executive coaching from other types is its purpose, which is to help business people produce business results.
From the ’90s to the present, professionals with many diverse backgrounds have become executive coaches. They come from the ranks of corporate HR, psychotherapy, and the clergy. Many of these people are empathetic listeners and adroit questioners who can help their clients discover purpose and develop and execute plans to achieve results. So the good news is, there’s no shortage of qualified coaches.
The real question… the "BIG" question… is this:
My executive experience delivers something indispensable for clients: an obsession with results and
an aversion to excuses.
Are you creating enduring success, exceeding planned results, 
