Leading at the C-Levels

Whether we work for ourselves or work for a Fortune 500 company, we are all essentially the CEO of our own business unit. We are each responsible for making money, saving money, turning a company around or executing growth. We are paid well when we deliver outsized results. As I got to thinking about these C-level leadership qualities, I quickly realized how many critical business skills actually begin with the letter C!  So join me in charting a course through a list of C-level characteristics that will help leaders at any level deliver optimal results like a champion. 

The Foundation:

Clarity. Everything begins with being able to articulate a clear vision and mission. Mission statements are often overthought and complicated. Can you articulate your current leadership goals in one concise statement? Can your team members articulate the same vision concisely and with confidence? Look across all of your communication channels and find the opportunities to simplify, synchronize, and succeed!

Commitment. Commitment is heading into a challenge knowing you’re going to have successes and failures along the way, and having the resilience to see the mission through. Think of the most committed leaders you know in any walk of life. They have resolve and resilience in part because they have seen firsthand the results of failure, mistakes and inaction. They are also relentless in dusting themselves off, standing up and getting back into the ring. 

Character.  Character is one defining quality that you can never compromise. You can have days in your career where your creativity wanes or your collaboration isn’t world-class, but when you put others in a position to question your credibility you can’t win them back. Always do the right thing and build your personal brand on an uncompromising foundation of trust. No temporary setback is worth the cost of your character. 

The Accelerators:

Curiosity. Curiosity is what breaks the status quo and drives innovation. Writer and Futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” Great leaders ask questions and inspire curiosity. They realize the value of a whiteboard without limits. Curiosity is like a gym for our brains, a way to build and grow our mental muscles. 

Creativity. Next time you play fetch with a dog, notice how every time they turn to bring the ball back, they will turn back towards you in the same direction! Creativity is about going right instead of left. It is about taking a new route home. Trying a new food. Experiencing a different culture. It is about changing the lens on your camera to see wide-angle instead of close-up. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it perfectly, “A man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” 

Collaboration. Leadership is often described as the art of getting work done through people. Collaboration is about creating the space to create, challenge, compromise and congeal around progress on common goals. People are much more supportive of ideas they had a hand in creating. Great leaders surround themselves with teammates who balance and celebrate each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and the results are nearly always compounded through collaboration.

The Milestones:

Cadence. Cadence is about the consistency and metrics of moving your project forward. Creativity and curiosity may take you off the beaten path. Cadence is where you check back in with a compass. It is the consistency that provides confirmation that the team is moving confidently in the direction of your goals. Without a map and guideposts, you are just explorers. Cadence ensures your diverse efforts stay true to your collaborative mission and vision. 

Candor.  Candor helps bring a sense of urgency and clarity to confusion. As leaders we know intuitively where the roadblocks and challenges are coming from. When we prioritize avoiding conflict over candor, we add complexity and we cheat our team members from having the opportunity to get feedback, adapt and improve. The best leaders I have worked for not only give frequent feedback, but also proactively embrace receiving it from others. Showing your own openness to feedback also gives you more credibility to speak and lead with candor, which accelerates the pace of progress for all involved.

Countdown. Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec once stated, “A goal without a deadline is just a dream.” If there’s one thing great leaders do best, they rally around a public and aggressive timeline. The timeline drives and accelerates the cadence, and candor helps minimize any detours. Sometimes a deadline is set in days, other times, decades. A great example of this was JFK’s bold commitment to Congress in 1961 of the United States goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth by the end of the decade. Little of the technology had even been conceived. This public proclamation led to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Projects which met the national goal on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. One year later, when disaster struck the oxygen systems of Apollo 13, the deadline to execute a safe return shifted to hours and days. What are your moonshots?  How can you accelerate? How will you and your team adapt for the unexpected?

Fine-Tuning:

Consolidation: You’ve dreamed big and have a whiteboard full of concepts. Now is the time to consolidate your focus on the key elements of execution. What will you say yes to, and equally important, what will you say no to so you have the bandwidth to focus on your chosen paths. Indecision is the downfall of most projects, so it’s best to clear the table with a decision to move forward or free up resources. Derek Sivers has a great book titled, “Hell Yeah or No - What’s worth doing.” His theory is there is no such choice between yes or no. If you can’t say Hell Yeah to something, it’s a no. Hell Yeah gives you the energy and momentum to rise above the obstacles, to be resilient, and ultimately to have the best shot at success.

Challenge:  Once you’ve consolidated your short list of options, it is time to challenge the assumptions. Claudia Gray summarized this masterfully. “It’s not the things you don’t know that trip you up. It’s the things you think you know, but you don’t. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be a very tricky business.” Avoid making assumptions by asking questions.  Good questions empower people, and are often the catalyst for allowing people to consider completely new approaches to the challenges you are solving for. 

Catapult: Every so often, a new product, service or category comes to light which doesn’t just incrementally move business forward but rather revolutionizes it. We used to have a Blockbuster Video on every corner until Netflix reinvented home media. Uber upended the taxi business and is now taking on freight delivery. Tesla reinvented and reinvigorated the automobile category. Think of it as a catapult. Companies like these didn’t see a 5X or 10X increase, they see 100X or 1000X. What are the moonshot ideas on your whiteboard that can lead to incrementally massive results by changing a paradigm, challenging the status quo or reinventing a category? 

Checking In:

Coaching. Leadership has many components. For newer team members or rookie managers there may be more of an emphasis on directing or delegating. To function at optimal levels, shift the emphasis to development. Great leaders model excellence, and then get out of the way so their team members can do their best work. Coaching focuses on conversations that help the coachee self-discover and own their personal path to success. Commitment and consistency is increased because the coachee has crafted their own game-plan. 

Counsel.  Being coachable yourself is also critical. Consider your own personal board of Directors. Build a team of experts who you trust to share ideas and give you advice.  Former bosses and mentors, spiritual leaders, family and community members are all great sounding boards.  Even the greatest athletes of all time have coaches. Find those independent people who can guide you and have only your greater good as a guiding star. 

Change. Differentiate yourself by seeing change as an opportunity versus an adversity. Many team members are great at what they do and are challenged by change, so a key success factor in leadership is the ability to embrace change and be agile. “There is no such thing as staying the same. You are either striving to make yourself better or allowing yourself to get worse.”  

The End Game:

Complete.  In the end, success in business isn’t about hours or effort or intent, it is about results. We are paid to get exceptional results. You can hit singles and doubles all day long, but no team ever won an award for men left on base. Your success will be measured by your ability to compete and ultimately complete the transaction. 

Celebrate.  When you win, take the time to celebrate! A tremendous amount of effort went into getting across the finish line. Tomorrow is a new day with new audacious goals, but tonight, take stock in the people who helped achieve your milestone win and celebrate their efforts!

Culture. Culture brings your leadership back full circle. Where are the opportunities to embrace our diversity and our differences? What are the opportunities to build elements in our mission that are bigger than ourselves and our companies? How can your product or service be engaged or leveraged to help enrich your community, country or charitable cause? 

That brings us full circle on the 18 C's. A circle is a great analogy because the path on a circle never ends. You can come up with so many more examples. Ultimately this list is just one example of white boarding and brainstorming with a focus on just one tool in our arsenal, a single letter of the alphabet. You could take a similar approach with any of the 25 other letters and have equally compelling results. For me these exercises start by firing up the creative channels in my mind, which inevitably lead to clearer thinking and strategy on solving the bigger tactical challenges we face every day. Feel free to share this post and your insights. I welcome your comments below!