Why Every Leader Needs a Trusted Advisor

You have a fantastic leadership team, rock start employees, and soaring profits; but, you spend enormous amounts of time processing the day-to-day commotion, your next big moves, reconfiguring costly lessons learned; all the while squeezing in moments to ensure your decisions and next steps align with your mission and vision priorities. 

That’s a lot of mental judo. In fact, my guess it runs rampant in your head like the karate kid’s worst enemy. All that mental judo is time and time is money. Your time is money and you know you can’t ignore all of it; because you also know ignorance is not bliss.

As a business owner and the daughter of two business owners AND a trusted advisor for many executives during my 26-year tenure in corporate, I’ve seen it all. I sat through more chaos and witnessed more heads in hands and deep, soul searching sighs and verbal mental judo sessions than I will ever have enough fingers and toes to count on.

Growing up, my dad's trusted advisor was the kitchen table during our (mostly silent) family dinners. We were only to speak when granted permission or to respond to a question. Occasionally, a random swear word emerged from my dad’s mouth and he quickly went quiet again. Thinking back on it; I know I had a grin on my face (trying desperately not to laugh) and my eyes were wide open. Many moments were quite perplexing as it looked and felt like my dad had turrets AND was crazy. You couldn’t predict the words that would spill from his mouth; you were fearful of crossing him and unsure what of your next step as it was crucial not to disrupt his moment of peace.

I’ve since learned, it’s lonely at the top. I’ve also learned he is a good man, with a kind heart, and a big laugh. For my entire childhood, he was a very stressed out human with a lot of lives and their future he held in his hands. 

What I didn’t know then; but have since learned was that dinner time was reflection time. He processed his day, the lessons learned, and calculated what future days would look like; including, how quickly he would collect payment when work was complete, how quickly he could pay his employees (and their families), how long it would be before our cupboards were once again full or what new shoes and clothes we might need in the near future. 

While his business was small, the challenges were as loud and large as he allowed them to be while floating around in his head. 

As a coach, I call this self-coaching 101. Not a bad idea when you need to start; but not a long-term solution.

His self-coaching time extended well beyond dinner and into the evening. It was mental work. His physical and emotional work day started at 5am and ended at 10pm or when he fell asleep in his chair watching the news. As a family; there was little laughter or general conversation; but very little emotional prescence.

That mental work and emotional prescence is just as expensive as the physical work. It takes time to process the mental judo, the commotion, the finite details, the next set of decisions. Fatigue kicks in and the spillover takes a toll on your personal life; following you all the way to the bedroom. 

I’m certain you already know this, but I’ll call it out. The bigger your business, the bigger the problems, the bigger risk. You also have more overhead, more employees, more emotion to navigate, and more overall pressure to perform.

I also understand that a problem is only as big as you make it. When you make it big; it will play out big. The opposite is ignorance and you already know ignorance is not bliss.

Let me ask you, how big are your problems? How much time does it cost you? What does the emotional and financial impact look like at home?

You might say that it ebbs and flows. The point is, I know the mental judo happens in your business. I’ve actively participated in countless closed-door meetings in businesses as large as Fortune 4 to 40 person companies with similar stories and problems at the top levels.

The stories most often go like this….I would walk into a meeting with the department CEO. Meeting purpose: inform him, get what I need, and steer the conversation to make decisions, and get sh*t did. That shouldn’t be a surprise; since your business is likely the same. It’s all about speed to market, happy clients and employees, making money, navigating ambiguity, and mitigating risks. 

You know as well as I do that getting da’ sh*t done isn’t that easy. Or sometimes you make it harder than it really is...

Back to the meeting. He would call me into his office for our one on one, ask if he could close the door, then sit down in his chair behind his desk, take a deep sigh and put his hands in his head, and shake his head. I call this the “hands in head syndrome”.

My response was silence, at least for a minute. Then he would look up to speak, ask a question, sigh again, roll his eyes, express his thoughts that may or may not be applicable to the meeting and we may (or may not) get what I needed to get done while we were together.

Frankly, that's no way to live. There are better ways to navigate the mental judo and stress of a day, week, or month.

Why? Your time is precious and valuable. How you manage the mental judo at work is the same way you will manage the mental judo at home. Hence the reason for a trusted advisor beyond your hands in head or the silent kitchen table conversations.

What is a trusted advisor?

A trusted advisor is an experienced coach who creates an environment for you to process your mental judo in a non-judgmental space. rusted advisors ask you the hard questions that get you to the root of your business challenges, identify potential solutions, and provide recommendations. Trusted advisors help you reclaim time and money. Trusted advisors help you get out of your head and into an executable plan (or one that can be delegated). Trusted advisors also redirect you back to your strengths and work through identified blind spots that impact your business or company and ultimately your personal life.

One last thought. How you lead your business is how you will lead your home. What you do and how you do it doesn’t stop when you walk out of your office door and into your front door. What will you do to make it better for yourself, your business, and your family?

Need a Trusted Advisor? Book a Call! Let's talk.

Stacy works with small-medium size biz owners, entrepreneurs, executives, leaders around the globe as the voice of reason to ask them the hard questions that save them 6 to 9 figures a year.

#leadership #ceolife #communication #trustedadvisor #executivecoach