634: Four Marks That An Owner Is Turning To A Leader

“It’s just easier if I do it myself.” “No one does it as good as I do it” “They just don’t care as much as I do.” These are all statements that I have heard you make, and they are all statements that will sabotage your Executive Leadership. The leader could drive the tractor, could fulfill the order, could supervise the build, could execute the transaction, could meet with the client, and could negotiate the material pricing. But the Executive Leader reminds herself that she has “Proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see” The Executive Leader creates proximity.  They receive a phone call from the client and elect not to respond, or to immediately pass it to the trained and capable team member who can respond within the core values. The Executive Leader intentionally withholds their response…even when it is helpful, knowing that their discipline will create an opportunity for their team to get more reps in a crucial part of their business. When an Executive Leader willfully withholds a natural response in a display of self-discipline, it will be misunderstood and will be questioned… and it will create the value of another rep for the leader to whom that response has been delegated. John Maxwell famously stated, “If someone else can do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I give it to them.”  The math of that reasoning tells us that 20% of their work may not hold up to your personal standard… and yet, the 80% that they take from you allows you to be freed up to pursue the highest and best use of your time. Money can always be regenerated… time and attention cannot. An Executive Leader must guard her time because nothing she has dominion over is of more value than how she spends her time.  Yet, we waste it on task management and decisions that others could easily make (even if they don’t perfectly align with our decision).  You might have selected a circle while your leader selected an oval, but either way the decision is done and allows the organization to hit on the mission within the guideline of the values.  That’s a WIN! Starting and building your business required a relentless, red-eyed, sacrificial devotion to doing and seeing it all. Be free from that.  What you have built is good, valuable, helpful, beneficial, and powerful… but not if you are going to insert yourself in every little task and decision thereby sabotaging growth and therefore opportunity. When the growth of a business is stunted so too are the growth opportunities for each team member.  As a business grows, so too the roles required of which existing team members have opportunity for promotion.   Executive Leaders are more like pilots; build the initial systems to operate the plane, and then set the GPS coordinates and allow the people and systems to get you there.  What are the indicators that you are moving in the right direction of Executive Leadership? First, You will spend far more time on vision and people, than you will on process and task. The executive leader will have multiple calendared times throughout each year they gather the entire company together in person or virtual and read back through their written vision story, mission, and values followed by a self-evaluation of “Green/Yellow/Red” flags in the business.  These vision days with the added addition of flag-reflections offers the executive leader and the team a sobering, in-the-moment consideration of where they think they stand in a number of business and personnel areas. The executive leader will be in a continual state of learning and understanding the art and science of human psychology and personality.  They will take seriously the objective insights of profiles and assessments while pursuing acumen into generational diversity, trends, and norms while training their leaders on what they see and hear..   Second, you will have a defined and published group of tapped leaders in place, and those leaders will begin showing evidence of building and refining the team to carry the heavy loads of business.   In this case, published means a visual org chart, formally communicated to the team, while you make space in team meetings and check ins for investing time and attention through line item training and with the culture calendar review.   Published is public and the Latin root “pub” means a collection of people.  If the people have confusion about who is leading, then your leadership is not published.    The third indicator of executive leadership is revealed when you begin having greater proximity to your leaders; both close and far away. Proximity towards your leaders comes by way of the RPMs of great leadership that we talk about frequently. Repetitious proximity is an engagement that happens over and over realizing that once is never enough. Predictable proximity is an engagement that happens without surprise allowing for clarity and sobriety in thoughtful and timely conversation.  The micro-manager asks the wrong question at the wrong time, whereas the executive leader asks the right question at the right time. You will also need to prioritize meaningful proximity which will welcome the skill of intentionality…a deliberateness the way a skilled surgeon navigates a robotic arm into a space unseen by the naked eye.  Not hurried but targeted, slow, seeing and hearing what is in front of you, not allowing your mind to be pulled apart to the worthless things screaming for your limited attention.   When you have well-communicated time away from the “office”, defined meetings structure, and a more closely aligned weekly schedule they offer an unrestrained path to the bull’s eye of what is most valuable in that moment.   A fourth indicator of executive leadership is when you are making time to pursue the wisdom of 3rd party voices OUTSIDE of your business.  Your internal leaders cannot serve this function in full, they are overseeing the management of the business…they will soon be in desperate need for new inspiration and updated motives to lead. For some, this 3rd party wisdom will reveal themselves in nature walking, hiking, biking, swimming, or jogging alone outside. For others, it may be in silent and unruffled stillness; a quiet room with a small chair and a window, or the edge of a wooded park in the middle of a workday when no one is around. Books are a magical merging of the rustling of words without a sound.  Books are the perpetually evergreen wisdom of the years encapsulated in the products of our earth; the pages, the glue, the string, the binding, the ink all creating a quiet symphony upending our norms and reclassifying our most closely held beliefs.  As Thomas Jefferson was sending books as a gift to the US Library of Congress, he wrote in a note to John Adams saying “I cannot live without books”, neither should the executive leader. Many times those books are penned by the hand of a sage, which draws its root from the sophists; a Greek term that doubles for wisdom. Wisdom from a sage, a wisdom-dispenser brings nuance, clarity, brilliance, and sturdiness.  Like a battered book in an antique shop, a sage presents its attractiveness precisely by their brokenness and scars.  The executive leader has sages, plural, multiple. The uncoordinated team of sages offers a teaspoon of fresh strategy in favor of a full cup of tested perspective.  The sage is rarely interested in solving a problem that will last a week…they wish to help transform the soul of a person or a business for a lifetime. At least four elements revealing the growth of an executive leader: Investing more time and attention on vision, mission, and values…purpose. A published group of defined leaders in place. A proximity to those leaders both close and far. A symphony of sages. None of these will be purchased in the pre-packaging of modern products, allowing you to “hack” the system.  The elements of executive leadership are only obtained through adventure and pioneering…creating ruts of repetition, predictability, and meaning.