#28 - Mistaken Identity

Over and over again—with increasing frequency.

An executive leadership team is meeting. The team may be newly constituted or refreshed. Maybe they were reorganized because of a company commitment to?scaling up, using an?entrepreneurial operating system, or an operational system of their own making. But the CEO or owner who appointed them shakes their head as the meeting ends, incredulous that team members fail to comprehend their role requirements.

Two mistakes are in play.

Both the CEO and the team members are making them.

Going Deeper: Enterprise Leadership—what is needed in the Executive Team

Here are those two mistakes:

(1)?Thinking previous achievements correllate to future achievements.?Truthfully, previous success often forms a roadblock.?

• An appointment to an executive role is not a coronation. Yes, Prince Charles was a recent exception.
• An executive role is not a reward for past success. It is an opportunity to share in the rewards of future success.
• Lifelong learning implies lifelong admission that one is ignorant and enjoys growing and making it possible for others to succeed.

(2)?Believing executive leadership is a performance.?As an executive, payment is for the ability to think and problem solve and thereby for the business to perform.

• Your performance is now the building up of others, removing obstacles to their ability to perform.
• Your role now encompasses the whole enterprise, with the areas you lead as part of that whole.
• So that the overall throughput of the enterprise is constantly improved, including those areas under your leadership, you must understand your teammates and their perspective, perhaps better than they do,

These mistakes handicap executive leadership teams. The team ends up with poor scope and calibration for their agenda. They end up holding management conversations, and often far worse than that—descending into refereeing petty wrestling matches as everyone preens and performs, not wanting to look foolish. They end up resisting the natural mistake-making process on the leadership journey to learning and future value.

Let's keep risking looking foolish now so that insight and wisdom can follow, . Then future generations can rise and bless our memory.

In my backpack: A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Leopold's book is hymn-like in his descriptions of the natural world's rhythms and how utterly silly humans are at thinking we can improve things without bringing downstream harm, literally and figuratively.

A true classic! I wish I had read this earlier in my life and been more willing to incorporate its artful insight.

An Executive Advisor walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers, Mark L. Vincent, Ph.D., EPC, loves leaders who love leaders.

In his own third turn, Mark continues to grow his capacity for wise advising, artful facilitation, and public presentation.

Mark has founded?Maestro-level leaders,?Design Group International,?and the?Society for Process Consulting and authored a number of books, including Listening Helping Learning. He now partners with Mygrow to build an emotionally intelligent world.

Executive Thinking is a? source for being and thinking as an executive who links the world's future to their enterprise mission and its profitable operations. Here you will find some of the soul-searching, middle-of-the-night, honest reflections at the core of who we are becoming as leaders.