Social media offer leaders opportunity to engage employees in conversation, executive coach says
Rosie Steeves has spent 35 years dispensing advice to senior corporate executives, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small startups, on topics like leadership and organizational development. Recently, the Vancouver-based executive leadership coach took some of her own advice to heart and left the Refinery Leadership Partners Inc., where she was co-founder and principal, to start a new enterprise called Executive Works so that she could do more hands-on work with clients.
She has written a new book, Breaking the Leadership Mold, An Executive's Guide to Achieving Organizational Excellence, which focuses on the challenges faced by senior executives in developing and sustaining healthy and successful corporations.
This is an edited version of a recent question-and-answer session with Steeves.
Why write the book?
I guess because I felt I had something to say, and to say what I really feel strongly isn't being said -- "Hey, look, I think there's a problem at the top of organizations. By the way, executives, you may not know because your employees won't tell you."
Just about every book that I know of on this topic doesn't address the unique situation that's at the top. They tend to be generic leadership books. Things are different when you are running organizations. The book really is for those who are faced with those challenges, where they have to fly around the world, and deal with shareholders and regulators and everything else.
Give us a key point from your book.
I asked a colleague once if he knew of one highly performing executive team, and he didn't know of one. I didn't know of one. I know of a few individual executives who are doing great things, but as a team is anybody spending the time? No, they are not.
It's not bad intent. They think if they spend time on themselves that it's a luxury, that they've got to take care of the organization first. That's the wrong way around.
They've got to spend time on themselves and develop their leadership. Simply because they are at the top doesn't mean that we should expect them to be perfect.
The corporate communications sphere is changing very rapidly, thanks to social media. Are executives really ready for the challenges that this presents to them? You have some that are great, but for the most part, no.
Let's not assume that what has been happening in the past was effective. The way that executives particularly have got their message out to employees is through such things as a communications department. It crafts this beautiful message and out it goes. There is a lack of real, honest dialogue and conversation.
I think what can happen now, and we are seeing it in some organizations with social media, with blogs and whatever, is that there is an opportunity for those at the top to truly engage their employees in a conversation.
You suggest in the book that executives end up working too hard and taking on too much responsibility. What warning signs do you have if there's too much on your plate?
Clearly, it's the time [you spend on work]. I think more than that, increasingly we are seeing a trend not toward time management, but towards energy management. They can't get the energy unless they are sleeping properly, unless they are eating properly, they're exercising, they're having some times where they actually don't do anything.
There are going to be times when it's going to be nuts and they're going to be living on planes. It's actually okay, I think, to have those times as long as there is a time when that stops.
Veteran senior executives risk falling into a trap of believing they don't need more training. How do you figure out that might be the problem and how do you explain to people what they need to do?
Well, I'm very direct. But many aren't, and therein lies the problem. I find it fascinating to go into organizations and see how those at the top see themselves and how those in the rest of the organization see them.
I did an informal poll on one of these LinkedIn networks of executives only, just kind of senior executives. Somebody put a question up there: What one word would you use to describe your leadership? You wouldn't believe this was executives responding. They are "visionary," "empowering," "inspiring," all these kinds of things.
Those are not the words that I hear when employees describe their leaders. I put a question up there: What one word do you think your employees would use to describe your leadership?
We got exactly the same answers, these beautiful wonderful words that did not describe what employees were experiencing -- The leaders are absent, distracted, distant, they don't understand their employees, their employees are not important to them.
Occasionally we get some of the real dysfunction, that the leaders are arrogant and all those things, but we don't get that very often.
Leaders are so busying trying to manage their external environment that they are not paying attention to employees. The No. 1 driver of engagement is the extent to which senior leaders care about their employees.
What things can aspiring
executives do to make sure they are ready to move up to that next level when the opportunity arises?
The most important thing is that they get to know themselves, that they grow and mature as people, that they become feedback junkies. That can happen in the workplace, but it can also happen outside the workplace. Some of the best leaders I've seen are young people that have taken on something in their community, or decided they are going to head up the strata council, or run the soccer club, those kinds of things.
It's doing whatever they can in terms of personal development. I don't mean going to do a course on Leadership 101 -- but doing things they've never done before, things that scare them. It could be going on a hiking trip or jumping out of an airplane -- things that cause them to look in the mirror.
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Rosie Steeves's bio
Rosie Steeves is a founder and president of Vancouver-based executive coaching firm Executive Works. She has a PhD in human development from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, Calif., and an MA in engineering from Cambridge University, England. She has written a new book, Breaking the Leadership Mold, based on 35 years of experience working with local, national and international companies.
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