Leadership Development
The Challenge
Being a leader is, to say the least, complicated.
The challenges associated with leadership seem to be, at best, ever evolving. At worst, you’re trying to save a business in crisis. What you can learn in an MBA program in terms of technical skills does not compare to the “soft” skills of managing personalities, business partners, and crises. These so-called “Soft skills” and “problem management” skills require a degree of supervised experience, and, to be frank, many people never have a supervisor or manager or CEO role model that helps them learn these skills.
Leadership is not just about a job title, like CEO or COO. Leadership is not about “attitudes” or personality traits. The various challenges leaders face require more than a degree and more than a well-earned title.
Leadership Development,
the Art of Self Management?
Being a person is difficult, being a person in a position of leadership is, normally, particularly difficult. But… Managing complicated information and systems and people is challenging in and of itself from the logistical point of view, but managing the interpersonal side of it and managing yourself is an entirely different story as a leader. When leaders are struggling with managing complicated systems or complicated personalities, the issue is not intellect or training. The issue usually relates to the so-called “soft skills” or “EQ” or whatever trendy concept people are talking about nowadays. But it’s more than that. Often, leaders do not have the kind of support that other staff have. There’s this idea “the curse of competence”:
The more competent you are, the more people give you work to do because you are more competent, the more you get done, the more people see you as competent…and so on, the never ending vicious cycle of excellence.
One problem though, is, just because you’re more competent, doesn’t mean you need less support. In reality, for your sanity, you usually need more support when you have more responsibility…
For example: concepts like “burnout” and the often resulting depression or even coping with drugs/alcohol have been a focus of corporate EAP services. The problem is, the focus is usually on every other kind of employee in a business except for leaders. Which is interesting, given that leaders often have to sit with so many complicated layers and dynamics compared to other staff. Where is the focus on leaders? Who is helping leaders to not only handle financial stress and staffing challenges and interpersonal drama in the office, but also the predictable burnout associated with “keeping the company alive” or navigating complicated market dynamics.
This is what I do, I help leaders get the support they need to maintain and grow their capacities for excellence.