What Is The One Thing You Need To Learn?

Every year I interview successful executives and entrepreneurs to learn what’s important to them. If I understand what’s important to them, I can better understand their hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and by doing so, do something to help make their lives more rewarding or successful.

During one interview, I asked a question that made the conversation come alive. The question was, “what is the one thing you need to learn to lead your company to heightened levels of success?”

The question wasn’t about what the company needed to do; such as update their strategy, develop a new sales compensation plan or change banking relationships. Yes, each of these is important and can have a positive impact on results, but the question I asked was rooted in what the individual needed to learn as a leader. The most common response I heard to my question was, “that’s a great question,” followed by “do you mind if I take a minute and think about that?” When I heard this, I knew what I heard next was going to be truly important.

The answer from this one leader, along with other interviews, led me to hear four concerns and four correlated things leaders want to learn.

1. Leaders are starved for time. Leaders lament that they feel rushed. They rush to work, rush from meeting to meeting, and then rush home. Many days feel like a blur for successful leaders and leave them to feel like a human doing versus a human being. One leader said, “I have 25 books on my bedside table that I want to read, but feel starved for the time to do what’s really important to me.” 

Leaders repeatedly said that what they want to learn is how to prioritize their calendar as opposed to have their calendar prioritize them.

2. Leaders must be relationship builders. In matrix driven organizations having high-quality relationships with multiple stakeholders is not a nice to have; it’s a must-have. Leaders recognize that having the ear and attention of stakeholders is essential, and uniformly said that high-quality relationships are essential to their success. But, while this was important, because of being starved for time, they weren’t intentional about building relationships. 

The leaders I spoke with wanted help building high-quality strategic relationships and selling their ideas to people with differing priorities. 

3. Building teams is the gateway to higher performance. The leaders I spoke with described team building in the following terms: “building teams gives me great joy,” “it is my single greatest pleasure,” “I love seeing people succeed in ways they never imagined,” and “taking underperforming teams and transforming them into high-performance teams is exhilarating.” 

Leaders want to learn how to shift the building of high-performance teams away from something they do and have employees raise the bar on their performance without being asked by the leader.

4. Leaders love strategy and value execution. Successful executives and entrepreneurs recognize that strategy without excellent execution is a recipe in futility. They also recognize that excellent execution without a highly differentiated strategy ensures long-term underperformance. 

Each leader wanted to learn how to reduce the time it takes to formulate a compelling strategy as well as how to accelerate its effective execution from six months to six weeks.

I learned a lot from the leaders I spoke with. After digesting the insights, I created a new offering called the Team Alchemy Process. It specifically addresses each of the four items outlined above.

But, as is often the case, I also learned there was another powerful idea embedded in the interviews. The more compelling idea has me forget about each person’s answers. The message hidden in plain sight is that the simple act of connecting with someone, valuing their perspective, asking thought-provoking questions, listening, and then helping to address their concerns in real-time is in itself transformational. 

If leaders are starved for time, are relationship builders who want to build teams and execute more effectively, how can I help them do that on their own and starting today? 

Your Challenge

If you are a leader who wants the same things as the leaders above, here is one idea that takes less than 15 minutes to structure and that can transform your work. 

1. Create a list of your most important relationships. Identify the top ten or twenty most important relationships to your individual and team success and commit to interviewing them.

2. Involve your team. Divide your list and ensure that every team member has the opportunity to interview at least one person. 

3. Interview your list. Ask questions such as: what are your most important business priorities, how are we helping or hurting your success, what do we need to learn to serve you better, what four words would you use to describe working with us? 

4. Review your insights. What have you learned from the interviews? What was said, and what was not said? What do the interviews say about your ability to create high value and lasting impact?

5. Learn daily and act boldly. Embedded in your insights are strategic priorities as well as actions to be taken. Do not wait. Have your team identify one action that can be taken immediately. Do it and then evaluate your success. 

Albert Einstein said the eighth wonder of the world was compound interest. Compound interest is the adding of interest on interest on interest over long periods of time. Using the principle of compound interest as a metaphor, think about learning daily as the building of learning on top of learning daily. At the end of 72 days you can be 100% better at the activity you choose than when you started. To pursue that type of growth though is a bold act.

Are you willing to be twice as good at one aspect of your business over the next 72 days? If not, I promise you that there is a competitor of yours that is. And that is something you need to learn how to address.

Hugh Blane is the President of Claris Consulting and is the go-to expert for converting human potential into accelerated business results. His work centers on helping executives and entrepreneurs build relationships that ignite passion, enable partnerships, and accelerate profits. He is the author of 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership: Create A Mindset of Passion Innovation and Growth and his clients include Sony Pictures, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Microsoft, Pepperdine University, KPMG and Costco. He publishes a top blog on leadership and mindset at www.clarisconsulting.net and is an in demand speaker.