Evolution not revolution...

Before you read this post, I want you to take a second to think about how much you’ve changed in the last 5 years.

What have you learned? What have you overcome? How have you surprised yourself?

We are evolving all the time. But how often do you this actively?

Or to put it another way, how much of your growth is on purpose.

In busy roles, especially in fast growth businesses, it’s so easy to get caught up in a cycle of reactivity, rarely stopping to think about whether you’re growing into the kind of leader you need to be to run the kind of business you want to run.

With failure rates of first time CEOs stated as anywhere between 50% and 70% and an alarming 42% failing in their first 18 months, it is crucial to work out who you are as a leader and how you intend to lead your team for growth.

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Especially as it’s estimated that only 14% of CEOs have the skills they need to do the role.

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My new leadership development programme Elevate and Evolve helps you quickly understand the things you need to focus on to evolve quickly and meaningfully.

Your business is such a reflection of you that it goes without saying we kick off with a big dose of self awareness. Knowing yourself is a huge part of understanding the impact you have but it’s also phenomenally important to understand what the challenges are going to be.

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Taking the time to step back and think deeply about the kind of leader your business and team needs to continue to grow and evolve, meet challenges head on and stay motivated is a crucial piece of work. But how often do any of us take the time to do just that?

Think of it like packing for a holiday. More often than not, the leaders I work with are almost exclusively focussed on the here and now – in terms of their leadership style at least.

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But when you’re thinking about how you can develop quickly enough to stay ahead of the curve, that’s the metaphorical equivalent of packing for a holiday based on the weather at home today.

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In elevate and evolve, a large chunk of our time is spent thinking about what’s to come. What the challenges might be. The sort of business you want to create. The values you want your team to live by and the things you want to be able to say are true about what you’ve created. We think about what’s going to be important to you. And often, and almost more importantly, what’s not…. After all if you’re going to the Caribbean you can probably leave the ski boots at home.

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When you shift your internal dialogue from being about what’s worked for you in the past to what’s going to be needed of you in the future, you can very quickly shift the focus onto what sort of leader you will need to be to achieve everything you want.

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It’s my experience that the biggest barrier to leaders stepping up and fulfilling the potential of their role is being able to step back from the detail often enough to do this thinking.

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The knock on effect of that is that they rarely give themselves the chance to get the perspective they need to be confident they’ve made the right decisions.

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With 45% of business success being contingent on the decision making of the CEO it’s crucial that you’re able to focus on getting decisions right. But all too often I see the CEOs I work with diving deeper and deeper into the detail to make this happen.

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When you can find a way to stay out of the detail you provide what your business really needs, especially in times of high growth and change - cut through and strategic, mission aligned decision making.

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And it’s on that point that we linger. Taking the time, away from the day to day to internalise that mission and own it.

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That’s the only way to foster mission aligned decision making. It needs to be sealed in, deep in your psyche so that you can think mission first ALL THE TIME, even under pressure.

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We’ll zone in on the what and the how to get clear on not just what you want to achieve but also how you want to be known for achieving it.

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We’ll take the time to go deep on the kind of leader you need to be to make that happen.

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The strengths you can leverage and the gaps you need to close.

You’ll create a meaningful and motivating roadmap to take control of the next stage of your evolution.

And you’ll have the support of a strong group of peers who really get it to see you through making sure it happens!

If you’d like to find out more about Elevate and Evolve click here or book a call to see if it’s for you…