John Mattone

Keynote Speaker on Leadership, Talent & Culture: John Mattone

Consensus Building: What Is It and Why Is It Crucial to Leadership?

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Absence of disagreement is not the same thing as consensus. Teams that are intimidated by their leadership may remain silent in the face of a horrendously bad decision by their boss, but that doesn’t mean there’s a consensus (beyond simply “not making waves”).

Just because everyone agrees doesn’t mean they agree for the right reasons. 

Consensus happens when divergent views are brought into the conversation with the outcome of shared goals. Not everyone will get what they first wanted, but the shared goals should meet all relevant interests of the stakeholders.

Executive leadership that values communication and knows how to listen is essential to consensus-building, and some leadership development programs include modules on the topic. There are advantages and disadvantages to consensus-building, and ways to do it to get results that move things forward.

Advantages of Consensus-Building

When true consensus-building takes place, participants agree up front to support the final decision – similar to when mediation is used. When it’s done correctly, participants will all see direct or indirect benefit. It can also result in a unified front, which can be important when, say, a team must make decisions that may not be popular with other teams.

Building consensus among varied stakeholders creates a sense of cohesiveness and a collaborative spirit, which are both important for acting on the decisions that have been made. The process itself attempts to understand different perspectives and solicit ideas from all involved, neither excluding nor condescending to any participants. Ultimately, everyone should feel that they had their say and were heard.

When Consensus-Building Goes Wrong

Perhaps the easiest way for consensus-building to go wrong is for people to make a show of stating their position and then agreeing to maintain the status quo. It’s undemanding and ensures the meeting is over with quickly.

Agreeing for the sake of ending a boring meeting isn’t the same as consensus. 

There are other ways that consensus-building can go wrong, however. Sometimes people don’t take the initiative, or indecisiveness limits progress. Sometimes people give answers that they think others (or their leaders) want to hear. And sometimes groups reach a decision and fail to make an actionable plan for carrying out the decision and its consequences.

And finally, there are occasions when a group is nominally charged with reaching consensus, but they know from past experience with their leaders what the “correct” consensus is, so no new ideas actually get introduced.

Third-Party Facilitators Are a Good Idea

One way that companies avoid stalled-out or ineffective consensus-building is by using a third-party facilitator (someone from a different department, or who is otherwise unaffected by the outcome) to assist in the conversation, lay out the ground rules, and keep the session on track. A facilitator can also help by ensuring that one or two vocal participants don’t drown out others’ contributions. The facilitator may take notes or may bring someone along whose sole purpose is to take notes.

With a facilitator, the cadence of talk, listen, decide can stay on course, and it is less likely that the session will come to an end without the group articulating and recording actionable next steps. And facilitators can be invaluable neutral parties when difficult or contentious issues arise.

Executive Leadership Still Necessary

Even in organizations with outstanding consensus-building performance, executive leadership is as necessary as in any other organization. Executive leadership that understands and supports consensus-building can gain buy-in for changes recommended by consensus groups and helps ensure that the efforts of such groups are not wasted.

Leadership coaching programs that discuss consensus-building or that train participants in the art of third-party facilitation of such efforts are well worthwhile. Consensus-building doesn’t mean there are no disagreements, or that risk has been eliminated, but it does make organizations more cohesive and united, and more likely to deliver on goals that have been developed with fairness and collaboration. If you want to learn more about effective executive leadership, I encourage you to check out my books as well as my speaking and training services. 

Performance Management: Why Honesty and Transparency are Mandatory

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Nobody really likes annual performance evaluations. They’re stressful for both giver and receiver, and leaders responsible for providing evaluations tend to think of them as a chore and a headache.

There are ways to make the evaluation process better and more productive for everyone.

Sometimes it’s enough of a problem that executive coaching is necessary so that top leaders can learn how to tackle this necessary task in ways that benefit everyone involved. Much is asked of both the reviewer and the reviewed, and performance evaluations that aren’t complete, honest, and timely tend to waste time and resources and leave people feeling drained rather than reinvigorated for the new performance period.

Here’s why honesty and transparency are indispensable to an effective performance evaluation program.

Dishonesty in Evaluations Harms the Organization

Dishonesty in performance evaluation usually falls into one of two categories: underrepresenting performance and overrepresenting performance. Both situations ultimately harm the organization.

Underrepresenting performance (i.e. telling people their performance is worse than it really is) causes people to adopt a “Why try?” attitude and can lead valuable employees to leave. Overrepresenting performance (i.e. telling people their performance is better than it really is) can lead some people to “coast” on past performance.

It can also lead to perceptions of “playing favorites” and can make discipline for later infractions tricky. “But you told me I was doing great work!” may be the employee’s answer to criticism.

Key Elements of Good Performance Evaluations

Here are four of the 10 key elements of good performance evaluations outlined in my book Talent Leadership: A Proven Method for Identifying and Developing High-Potential Employees:

  • Employee involvement – because performance objectives should be set with the input of the employee
  • Valid performance criteria – because employees should be evaluated based on criteria that determine success in their role
  • Year-round process – because employees need regular feedback to optimize their performance
  • Preparation – because both leaders and employees need to devote time to preparing for performance evaluations

Include the right elements in performance evaluation and you help your employees create concrete, mutually agreeable goals to work on.

When annual performance evaluations happen to fall during unexpectedly busy times, it’s all too easy for both evaluators and those being evaluated to give the process short shrift. Nonetheless, it’s important for all parties to take the necessary time to ensure that the effort that goes into performance evaluations isn’t wasted.

Leadership Coaching in Performance Evaluations 

Though team leaders don’t usually have “coaching” as a formal part of their responsibilities, basic coaching principles can be applied to help team members improve their performance and maintain good performance levels. Team leaders can apply the following coaching principles without taking on undue burden:

  • Describing what effective performance involves
  • Communicating the importance of effective performance
  • Listening to employee concerns and feedback
  • Offering to help with specific skills and goals
  • Thanking employees for their efforts to improve their performance, citing specific examples where it has worked

The principles of coaching aren’t just for executives undergoing executive coaching. They work for leaders at all levels – and particularly for leaders at the team level who are responsible for evaluating the performance of team members. While this type of leadership coaching is less formal and less intensive than the type of leadership coaching high-level executives engage in, it gets results that ripple outward throughout the organization.

Employee performance evaluations may be one of the less-liked aspects of professional life, but when they are done in an honest and timely manner, using specific, evidence-backed assessment, they can lead to better performance and achievement of goals. Don’t be tempted to tackle performance evaluations as a distraction or simply as a box that must be checked off. Put the proper effort into it, and it can be a prime learning endeavor for leaders and team members alike.

If you would like to learn more, I encourage you to check out my books, especially Talent Leadership: A Proven Method for Identifying and Developing High-Potential Employees, which goes into depth on the process of evaluating employees and coaching them to greater achievements.

How Leaders Can Cope with ‘Crab Mentality’ in the Workplace

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The status quo can be comforting. In fact, it can be so reassuring for things to remain the same that people will actively work to preserve the status quo, even when it goes against their best interests.

Sometimes people block out reality and cling to the status quo – even when it’s to their own long-term detriment.

So-called “crab mentality” is based on the concept of crabs in a bucket. Put a single crab into a bucket without a lid, and eventually, it will escape. But put multiple crabs in a bucket and you don’t even need a lid, because when one tries to escape, another will grab onto it and pull it back in.

In the workplace, crab mentality manifests in people who don’t like others excelling, and who will covertly or overtly do things to prevent that from happening. As you may guess, crab mentality is detrimental to a team or a business.

Why Does Crab Mentality Take Hold?

People are “wired” to find safety in numbers as a protective measure against predators. Our brains reward us with “happy” chemicals (oxytocin, dopamine) when we have social support, but give us “unhappy” chemicals (cortisol) when social support is threatened. And this feeling of being threatened can happen even when the network we want to “protect” is not an especially happy one.

In the workplace, people can be threatened by the success of their peers. What’s more, they can become rattled when a peer makes a breakthrough or discovers a way to raise their productivity, because this can make everyone else look worse by comparison. As a result, sometimes co-workers undermine others’ efforts, discourage innovation, or underplay others’ successes.

How Can Leaders Recognize Crab Mentality in Teams?

If your team has a chronic complainer, you will often find that person is mired in crab mentality. Some other signs that someone has fallen into crab mentality include:

  • Inordinate pride over their own accomplishments
  • Negative comments or attitudes when others succeed
  • All their positivity is designated for themselves, not others
  • They blame others for their failures, never themselves
  • They view colleagues as competition
  • They rarely or never show compassion
  • They’d rather talk about people than ideas or solutions

The “crabs” on your team have a hard time being happy for other people’s successes.

If overall team morale falls and there’s no obvious reason for it, explore the possibility that someone on the team is displaying crab mentality. Discreetly get to the bottom of it if it’s there, so you can fix the problem at its root.

What Can Leaders Do About Crab Mentality?

Recognizing crab mentality is the first step to addressing it. If there is evidence of this phenomenon on your team, trace the problem to its root. If you can identify the culprit, speak with them confidentially one on one to try to get to the bottom of the issue.

There are many other things you can do as a leader too. Sometimes rearranging or splitting teams works. Whatever tactics you use, make it clear to your team that crab mentality won’t be tolerated. Help your team members see the big picture, not the “bucket.” Make clear that success isn’t a zero-sum game where one person “winning” means that someone else has to “lose.” And set an example: call out others’ successes and show that you’re happy for them while addressing shortcomings in private, one on one.

Many leadership development programs help leaders recognize systemic problems like crab mentality and help leaders develop techniques to deal with it. Leadership coaching may also help leaders address issues like awareness of corporate culture, and how to identify problems before they can grow and become unwieldy.

Professional leadership coaching isn’t about teaching people how to lead but helping them unleash their potential and lead as effectively as possible. That’s hard to do when some team members try to hold everyone back. I encourage you to contact me if you would like to learn more about my leadership coaching services.

From Potential to Performance: How to Bridge the Gap

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Not all high performing individuals are high-potential people.

High-potential individuals tend to be high performers, but not all high-performing individuals are high-potential people.

Sometimes people are taken aback when I say that, but it’s true. By the same token, not all high-potential people are high performers, but most of them are. Being able to identify both high-performing individuals and high-potential individuals is tremendously valuable. Finding the high-potential people who are also high performers is especially important because these tend to be the people with a clear leadership trajectory in front of them – if they’re willing to pursue it.

I discuss the phenomenon of high-performing and high-potential individuals in the following short video:

Knowing the difference between high performers and high-potential people is essential to top leadership because it can maximize the chances of putting the right people into the right roles, and it helps leaders know who will benefit most from things like leadership development programs and leadership coaching.

Identifying High-Potential People Can Be Challenging

Finding high performers is easy because it’s easy to see who is meeting or exceeding performance metrics. Ask anyone in any department, and they can probably tell you who the high performers are. But identifying high-potential people is harder. Potential doesn’t necessarily tick the KPI boxes, but these individuals may be diamonds in the rough that can help your organization achieve bigger goals than you might have imagined.

High-potential people generally deliver good results. They also continually strive to master new skills, and they often have strong emotional intelligence – knowing the right words, behaviors, and attitudes for the given situation. Often, high-potential individuals aspire to greater responsibility. They’re good with autonomy and demonstrate flexibility. They know how to make good decisions and innovate. You may not notice these characteristics unless you’re specifically looking for them.

Helping Everyone Fulfill Their Potential        

Understanding people’s performance and potential helps leaders manage individuals better. 

Most organizations have people who fall into these categories:

  • High performance / high potential
  • High performance / low potential
  • Low performance / high potential
  • Low performance / low potential

It’s important to engage with people in each category in particular ways to maximize their performance and make use of their potential. Low-performance / low-potential people can sometimes show measurable improvement with the help of an actionable performance plan. Low-performance / high-potential employees may do better with training, or by being mentored by a high performer.

High-performance / low-potential individuals can excel when offered encouragement, challenging assignments, and training that makes sense in their role.

Your high-performance / high-potential people should know about and understand their opportunities for advancement. They should also be offered the training and autonomy they need to make the most of both their performance and potential.

Risks of Failing to Identify High-Potential People

High-potential individuals – especially if they also demonstrate high performance – require engagement and communication. They know they have potential and that they deliver results, and if they feel they are not being given opportunities to develop in their current roles or rise to new ones, they are likely to disengage further and leave for greener pastures.

In other words, recognizing those with great potential is important so you can help them align their goals with company goals and give them the resources and training they need to do exactly that. The benefits that accrue from consistently doing so can be tremendous.

Leadership development programs and leadership coaching can be astoundingly effective with those who demonstrate both high potential and high performance. Think of the physical properties of potential and kinetic energy. Potential energy is stored until a force is applied to it. Apply the force and the potential energy changes into kinetic energy – motion. Know your high-potential individuals and be ready with “forces” like training and coaching, and watch the potential unleash itself.

Please feel free to learn more about my leadership coaching services and how leadership coaching is designed to unlock and unleash full potential.

How and Why CEOs Are So Powerful at Influencing Company Culture

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One of the most important – if not the most important – things CEOs do is shape and reinforce corporate culture.

The words, and more importantly the actions of the CEO affect every aspect of corporate culture.

The shaping of corporate culture is something every CEO must “own” and must pay attention to every day. CEOs do this through their words, but more importantly through their behavior. How a CEO behaves demonstrates what he or she believes about company culture. When actions and words match up, the workforce is more likely to fulfill its potential and the company is more likely to reach its goals.

When there is a mismatch, however, major problems can follow. Shaping corporate culture and practicing the values of that culture consistently are two of the most important things a CEO can do.

Ways in Which CEOs Influence Corporate Culture

Culture is based on a set of ideals, beliefs, and values, and when they are demonstrated day in and day out, the culture grows stronger. Here are a few of the most important ways that CEOs influence the culture of the workplace.

  • They set the tone for creativity and innovation. CEOs encourage innovation by not only listening to great ideas but also shifting resources to bring the best of them to fruition.
  • They demonstrate how communication is used. Promoting open communication within and between teams requires trusting employees and giving them the tools that they need to communicate easily.
  • They influence brand values and brand enthusiasm. A CEO who is unenthused about the brand will create a lackluster, indifferent culture. Enthusiastic CEOs build enthusiastic teams.
  • They manage expectations. CEOs who invest in employee skills and development show that employees can be excited about the possibilities and confident about growth.

Practices for Embedding Responsibility and Ethical Behaviors into Culture

Corporate culture is often thought of as “how we do things,” and how the CEO does things carries a lot of weight. Instilling cultural values begins with defining and articulating them, often through a company code of conduct.

But simply having a code of conduct isn’t enough. It must be communicated and discussed throughout the company, as part of new employee onboarding, and at regular intervals. It’s all too easy to forget about company values when they’re communicated once and never revisited.

It’s not enough to give new employees a copy of the code of conduct and then never mention it again.

Perhaps most importantly, the CEO and all executive leaders must behave in accordance with communicated company values. And they must hold themselves to account, regularly surveying employees on how leadership is perceived to uphold company values.

Finally, CEOs must spell out and carry out consequences for when someone violates the code of conduct or otherwise behaves unethically. If employees see top brass breaking rules with no consequences, they have less reason value company culture. Furthermore, if they see leaders getting away with bad behavior, they’re less likely to add discretionary effort to their day-to-day work. Ultimate results can include slower growth, higher employee turnover, and bad morale.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Corporate Culture Change

One clear example of the CEO’s effect on corporate culture is the tenure of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who became Microsoft CEO in 2014. Nadella is a very different type of leader than his predecessor Steve Ballmer, and it shows in everything from product announcements to collaborations to employee evaluation processes.

Nadella has made missteps (including bad form when addressing Microsoft’s 7,500 women engineers), but he has owned them and tried to learn from them. His commitment to changing Microsoft from within (since he was appointed from inside) has delivered impressive results, both in terms of culture and in terms of earnings.

CEO coaching may not be specifically about helping CEOs create a stronger culture, though sometimes it is. But CEO coaching, when done well, indirectly benefits the corporate culture due to stronger leadership. The CEO who has practiced and mastered leadership skills through CEO coaching is one who is more keenly aware of the CEO’s place in shaping corporate culture. And that awareness is fundamental to “walking the talk” of strong corporate culture every day.

If you’re interested in cultural transformation and leadership development, I invite you to check out my books as well as my leadership coaching and executive coaching services.

You’ve Hired an Executive Coach. Now What?

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The executive coaching relationship is unique.

The best coaching relationships are true partnerships.

If you or your company has hired an executive coach for you to work with, you naturally want to get the best possible return on this investment. If you go into your initial meeting with your coach with no preparation whatsoever, you can hold back the process. But if you prepare yourself and commit to certain practices, you can ensure that you learn more from the experience and more importantly, that you reach your most important goals. Here are several things to do once you’ve hired an executive coach to set the stage for success.

Set Realistic Goals

You will work with your coach to define specific goals, but it’s best to have some idea of what these are before you begin the coaching process. If you’re not sure, try to think of three specific goals that you would like to reach. For example, you may want to improve your delegation skills, communicate better, and learn how to resolve conflicts effectively.

Once you work with your coach, those goals will become more specific and will be fleshed out to include specific objectives you can work on from one coaching session to the next so that you won’t feel like you have to accomplish everything at once.

Consume Information

Ask your coach if there are any books you should read before or during the coaching process. During coaching sessions, take notes and ask questions. Ask for helpful resources, or search for them online. Share what you’ve found with your coach. Executive coaching clients who are hungry to learn and who make the effort to inform and educate themselves are better primed to polish their skills and put them to work.

Learn to Be Receptive to Feedback

Just as it’s not easy to give tactful, constructive feedback, it’s not easy to accept it. Learning how can be highly beneficial though.

We all like to think we’re open to feedback, but are we really? Can you remember back to a time when feedback stung, or when you didn’t take it well? It’s important to try to figure out why that was, and to address the underlying issue. Maybe you were just having a bad day and that bit of honest feedback was enough to ruin it thoroughly. Or maybe you’re not as receptive to feedback as you think. Opening yourself up to honest feedback is vulnerable, but it’s how you open yourself up to real change.

Keep a Journal

Get a notebook or set up a document specifically for notes on the coaching process. Coaching sessions can be information-dense, and it’s impossible to remember everything. Make notes as you complete coaching assignments and make notes on coaching sessions. If a coaching assignment touches on a real-world issue, write it down. Simply knowing how your more-developed skills actually affect your performance can be a strong motivator to continue with your best efforts.

Ask for Help

It’s OK to get stuck sometimes. If you’re having trouble with a particular goal and cannot figure out where the problem lies, ask questions. Executive coaches (at least the ones worth the investment) answer questions frequently. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help if you’re having difficulty. A good executive coach wants you to recognize obstacles and help you find the best way to overcome them.

Executive coaches can work wonders, but only if they have clients who are as committed to change and improvement as they are. Coaches aren’t miracle workers or magicians, and it’s only when both coach and client are committed, enthusiastic, and prepared that great things can happen. Taking the first step of hiring a thoroughly vetted coach with a strong track record is a great start.

Taking further preparatory steps, and then committing to certain practices during the executive coaching process itself can turn “good enough” results into superlative results. If you’re interested in learning more, I’d like to invite you to explore my leadership coaching services.

Why Executive Coaching Must Emphasize Self-Awareness

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The saying “Know thyself” has been prominent across multiple civilizations for as long as history has been recorded. Inscribed on temple entrances in ancient Egypt, and known as the most popular Delphic maxim, this fundamental concept is still being espoused well into the twenty-first century.

Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-awareness and all its potential.

Being effective as a human citizen of the world requires self-knowledge. With good self-knowledge, we are able to work with our strengths and find the best ways to overcome our weaknesses. When we know where we tend to fall short, we can use our strengths to work out ways to compensate.

Lack of self-knowledge leads to poor communication, misunderstandings, and time wasted as we stumble around trying different things without regard to whether we’re likely to make them work. Professionally, few people have the luxury of unlimited trial and error, especially when it comes to leading others. It’s one thing to try something new, but quite another to grasp at leadership tactics when the time and talents of other people are at stake.

This is not to say that trying new things is bad. In fact, we should all step out of our comfort zones on occasion. Few things are as satisfying to a mature adult as discovering previously unknown aptitudes! But as we grow as professionals and leaders, understanding our strengths and weaknesses is both invaluable and mandatory. The concept of self-awareness is about knowing oneself and making the most of that knowledge. It is perhaps the most fundamental leadership skill.

What Is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness begins with self-knowledge. It is taking our self-knowledge and using it to monitor our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. The self is what makes each of us unique, with our own exclusive collection of experiences, beliefs, and abilities. Self-awareness allows us to evaluate ourselves with a degree of objectivity, and it is a primary driver of self-control.

Self-awareness is closely related to the concept of emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence can only develop in a context of honest self-awareness. The two main components of self-awareness are the things we notice about ourselves and the way we monitor our inner world. It isn’t necessarily about judging ourselves but more about honestly assessing ourselves in a non-judgmental way. Self-awareness is open-hearted and willing to learn.

The human brain is highly adept at storing information about how we react to certain stimuli, triggers, and situations so we’re ready when they reoccur. While the self-conditioning that naturally occurs due to prior experience is valuable, it is even more valuable when we become aware of it and learn to recognize our preconceptions. This is precisely what allows us to step out of our comfort zone and grow.

When we develop our self-awareness, we’re able to come to peace with who we are and manage our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions proactively rather than reactively. In other words, we are able to act consciously and increase our depth of life experiences.

The Difference Between Being Self-Aware and Self-Absorbed

Self-awareness isn’t the same thing as self-absorption. Being preoccupied with oneself is a sure path to egotistical behavior and selfishness. Self-absorption isn’t so much about knowing oneself as it is about being preoccupied with oneself or one’s own situation to the exclusion of other people or the outside world.

A person who is self-absorbed doesn’t show much concern or appreciation about anyone or anything outside their self-interest. They tend not to make the effort to understand other people’s points of view or their feelings. Self-absorption works strongly against the qualities of empathy and compassion – two qualities that are essential for effective leadership. Self-absorption, in fact, is almost the polar opposite of altruism.

Self-awareness looks inward, but it does so as a way of learning to relate to the world better. Self-absorption looks inward only to ensure that one’s own needs are met with little to no regard to the needs of others. Self-awareness recognizes traits that hold us back and looks for ways to compensate or work around them. Self-absorption is too busy focusing on the self to honestly assess ways that certain character traits may be maladaptive or hold us back.

Self-awareness is ultimately a selfless endeavor, while self-absorption is selfish.

When psychologists help people dig deeper into self-absorption, they often find that self-absorbed people are actually afraid of feeling powerless, out of control, or unworthy. Self-absorption is often an effective cover for feelings of vulnerability and insecurity. By contrast, self-awareness recognizes feelings of inadequacy or vulnerability and strives to address them rather than hide them.

How Can You Increase Your Self-Awareness?

One of the best ways to increase self-awareness, perhaps ironically, is learning how to really listen to other people. Hearing what someone says isn’t the same as listening to what someone says. When you learn to listen, you learn to tune into others’ emotions, body language, and choice of words. Learning to do this without constant judgment increases empathy and can help you learn to listen to your own inner voice – without judgment or evaluation.

Another outer-focused practice that’s good for increasing self-awareness is gaining new perspectives. It can be eye-opening to realize that other people don’t view situations the same way we do! Learning to appreciate other people’s viewpoints is a great first step in learning to ask for and listen to honest feedback.

Any executive coach will tell you that gathering 360-degree feedback on a client is tremendously valuable to the coaching process. And when individuals learn to recognize their blind spots and accept feedback, they are rewarded with a fuller picture of themselves and greater self-awareness.

Some people find that maintaining a journal is an excellent way to increase self-awareness. Letting thoughts flow onto paper and then reviewing them later can give us great insight into how certain situations trigger certain thoughts and behaviors.

Most people find that carving out “down time” every day is essential to developing better self-awareness. It’s not always easy being alone with our thoughts without our phones or computers to distract us, but it’s a great way to connect with ourselves.

What Habits Help You Maintain Good Self-Awareness?

The human brain shows remarkable plasticity, well into adulthood. Scientists used to think that changes in the brain only happened during childhood and that by early adulthood, the brain’s makeup was fixed. But more modern research has shown that the brain continues to alter existing neural pathways and create new ones, helping us adapt to new experiences, learn new things, and create new memories.

In the late twentieth century, researchers began to study cases where people who suffered massive strokes were able to regain function – major confirmation of the brain’s continuing ability to change. Typical adults with healthy brains can, in fact, create new neural connections, reorganize neurological pathways, and even create new neurons.

But adult brains often operate on autopilot. This can be tremendously important for activities that require hard-wired “muscle memory” like driving a car, typing, or performing brain surgery. The brain operates in this way to conserve energy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change even deeply entrenched habits. You can, but it requires consistent long-term practice.

Your brain creates new connections based on what you do repeatedly, and that’s one of the reasons it can be so hard to break out of a bad habit or create a new habit. Commitment is the key. The skills you use for building self-awareness must be practiced consistently over the long term so that new thinking patterns and new habits become ingrained. It’s easier said than done, but you can actually use mobile apps to help you strengthen new habits if traditional methods like calendars and reminders aren’t enough.

How Does Self-Awareness Make Leaders More Effective?

Self-aware leaders are better than non-self-aware leaders in virtually every way.

Twenty years ago, two Cornell University psychology professors named Dunning and Kruger published a paper titled, “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” You’ve undoubtedly heard of the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, where people think they are more competent than they actually are. Ignorance of oneself and one’s limitations paradoxically often increases confidence – sometimes with disastrous results.

Without strong self-awareness, we’re quick to fool ourselves into thinking we know what we’re doing when we don’t. In a leader, this can cause projects to fail, people to quit, and revenues to fall. Self-awareness keeps us apprised of our strengths and our weaknesses and knowing both is essential to leading effectively.

The self-aware leader is in tune not only with their own inner world, thoughts, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses but also has better situational awareness (due to stronger empathy). Self-awareness strengthens the individual leader’s performance while helping them elicit the best performance from everyone on the team. Self-awareness, trust, and wisdom go together, and in a leader, those qualities lead to teams that are loyal and hard-working.

Because the self-aware leader is aware of their own limitations, they’re far more likely to continue to strive for improvement. They’re more likely to ask for feedback and to genuinely listen to team members and trust them to contribute to project, team, and organizational success. Furthermore, teams led by self-aware leaders are less likely to be plagued by internal team conflict. In other words, a leader’s self-awareness helps promote self-awareness and its benefits in others.

How Can Non-Self-Aware Leaders Fall Short?

Most of us have encountered leaders who think they excel at a given skill when they don’t. Or leaders who think they’re great to work for, despite driving off the best people on the team. Just about everyone has worked with people who, despite sterling qualifications lack insight on how they are perceived by others. People who lack self-awareness are more than just frustrating: they can severely undermine team success.

While not all workplace conflict is due to lack of self-awareness, much of it is, and it may be based on ill-informed training or not having been led with self-awareness. The good news is that in many cases, people who lack self-awareness may actually want to be effective, but they don’t realize that they’re not.

There’s no question that personality shapes leadership style, which in turns shapes leadership culture, which strongly influences organizational culture. Negative behavioral traits in leaders are often based on ingrained personality traits that may have gone unexamined for a lifetime. A leader who gets results (perhaps through intimidation or other questionable tactics) despite lack of self-awareness rarely is able to sustain success.

Team members – particularly team members with outstanding potential – don’t stick with leaders who employ techniques that are uninformed by self-awareness. Seeing a toxic culture in the making, they’re often the first to leave.

This is not to say that leadership has to be touchy-feely, or that no one should ever have their feelings hurt. It simply means that self-awareness helps leaders develop the leadership skills that get lasting results and that build a strong team and corporate culture, which are necessary for lasting success.

What Are the Personal and Professional Benefits of Self-Awareness?

Developing self-awareness benefits both personal and professional life.

In an ideal world, everyone would experience the benefits of heightened self-awareness. These benefits make both professional and personal life better. When you take the time to develop self-awareness, you can expect the following benefits:

  • Better decision-making and priority setting, based on better self-understanding
  • The joy of taking an active role in life rather than just reacting to things that happen
  • Less tendency to take things too personally – a major time and energy waster!
  • Ability to see missteps and mistakes as opportunities for positive change
  • Understanding of why you do what you do
  • Stronger personal and professional relationships
  • A better foundation on which to set goals and build dreams
  • Better ability to forgive and let go of past wrongdoings
  • Healthier personal boundaries
  • Stronger ability to live in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or future

Whether or not you pursue top leadership positions, self-awareness serves you well. And if you do achieve positions of leadership, it will help you lead more effectively. In fact, self-awareness is so essential to strong leadership that executive coaches regularly work with clients on improving their self-awareness.

Conclusion

Executive coaching today usually focuses on working with high-potential leaders and helping them fulfill their great potential. The ability to lead is based on much more than industry expertise, job experience, or a specific set of skills. Executive coaching is about recognizing strengths, understanding where there is opportunity for improvement, setting goals, and regularly working on the skills that lead to overall excellence.

As an executive coach, I regularly work with clients on skills like communication, delegation, and conflict resolution. All of these skills benefit from a foundation of strong self-awareness. The self-aware person doesn’t assume that people can read their mind, or that team members will naturally know which tasks to tackle. Self-aware leaders can also recognize conflict earlier on and understand that conflicts tend not to go away by themselves but must be addressed with tact and fairness.

In fact, if I could only work on one skill with the leaders I coach, it would be self-awareness, because so many essential leadership skills depend on it. Great athletic coaches want to work with players who have a strong foundation of athleticism because it makes it so much easier to teach them specific game skills. Likewise, executive coaches get the best results when they work with clients who have a strong foundation of self-awareness, because self-awareness powers so many positive thought patterns and actions.

As an executive coach, I can attest to the value of self-awareness in leadership.

If you are interested in delving deeper into how self-awareness powers effective leadership, I encourage you to check out my books, especially Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential. Just as you can’t slap a coat of paint onto an unsound structure and make a home, neither can you turn the person who lacks self-awareness into a great leader by teaching them specific techniques. The most important leadership qualifications come from within, and self-awareness is the key to unlocking those qualifications.

Glossary of Terms

Brain plasticity – the remarkable ability of the human brain to modify its own structure and function based on changes to the external environment, such as the learning of new skills or consistent practice of habits. Though scientists used to think plasticity was all but gone by adulthood, modern researchers have shown that the adult brain has an extraordinary capacity for change improvement.

Cognitive bias – mistakes in reasoning, evaluating, and other cognitive processes that are often the result of clinging to preferences or beliefs despite contradictory information

Corporate culture – the collection of beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes that shape how a company’s employees interact with each other and with management, and how they handle transactions with outsiders.

Dunning-Kruger effect – a type of cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly think that their abilities are greater than they actually are. Self-awareness is the key to avoiding this type of cognitive bias.

Emotional intelligence – a person’s ability to be self-aware and to understand, regulate, and express emotions so as to handle personal and professional relationships with empathy, fairness, and judiciousness

Self-absorption – a person’s excessive preoccupation with their own interests, emotions, and needs at the expense of those of others

Self-awareness – a person’s clear understanding of their own personality, including their strengths, weaknesses, motivations, emotions, beliefs, and thought patterns. Good self-awareness allows for greater understanding of others and of situations, and a better ability to initiate and respond to situations.

Why Company Buy-In Is Critical to Executive Coaching Success

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By the time someone hires me as an executive coach, company buy-in usually isn’t an issue.

Most companies that hire executive coaches know that it is an investment that can have an impressive return.

After all, it is typically the company that is paying for executive coaching, and they wouldn’t do so unless they believed it was an investment with a healthy return.

But getting the company to sign off on payment for executive coaching isn’t necessarily enough to ensure that the coaching client’s supervisors are truly supportive of the coaching process. When clients go the extra mile to ensure that leaders higher up understand what the coaching process involves and to ask for their support, the results of the coaching engagement tend to be better.

Buy-in involves recognizing potential schedule conflicts, a thorough understanding of the potential ROI of executive coaching, and if possible, a direct meeting between the coach and the client’s supervisor before the coaching process begins.

Coaching May Occasionally Clash with Day-to-Day Business Operations

Though coaches and clients work together to create a schedule that causes minimal disruption to ordinary business activities, there may be times when a coach-client meeting interferes with some other scheduled activity such as a departmental meeting.

The coaching client who makes it a point to discuss the specifics of the coaching engagement with superiors right from the beginning can prevent surprises and help come up with workarounds and alternative arrangements to minimize the impact of the coaching process on scheduling matters.

Understanding of Executive Coaching ROI Creates a More Supportive Environment

Most top-level executives understand that coaching has a strong and positive return on investment, but not all of them do. Usually, educating leaders about coaching ROI happens before a coach is hired, but it’s a good idea for the coaching client to be prepared to talk about the specifics of coaching ROI with those who may still be skeptical.

For maximum support for the coaching process, top leaders should thoroughly understand the process, and exactly how it will benefit the organization.

For example, the client could explain to her supervisor that by working with an executive coach on communication skills, she will ultimately prevent misunderstandings, increase business transparency, and do a better job at representing the company and the brand in all types of business interactions.

The client whose goal is to build more effective teams can explain to his boss that coaching will improve company culture, prevent misaligned objectives, and ultimately deliver higher quality and shorter time to market.

Pre-Coaching Conference with Supervisor Can Boost Results

The opportunity to spend about an hour prior to the formal start of the coaching process talking with the client’s direct supervisor is one no coach should pass up. Not only can I learn about the supervisor’s understanding of the coaching process and clear up any misconceptions, but I can also answer questions and help them realize that they have a real stake in the success of the coaching process.

While my interactions with my client are confidential, that doesn’t prevent the client and their supervisor from discussing goals and objectives. In fact, when the client’s supervisor is curious about the process, they are more willing to provide additional support, such as more flexible scheduling on coaching days. Supervisors who are invested in the process from the outside, often indirectly help the client get more out of their work with me.

Company buy-in is fundamental to executive coaching success, and not just because they sign the checks. When those higher up the ladder than my leadership coaching clients genuinely support the coaching process, it tends to help the client maintain their commitment and enthusiasm as well.

Building company buy-in takes time and requires making a solid business case for executive coaching, complete with goals, milestones, and specific projections of how the process will help the organization as well as the individual.

How Effective Is Your Leadership Team? Here’s How to Find Out.

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Leadership should get results, or else what is the point of having it?

Achieving excellence in today’s business world requires teamwork.

It stands to reason that the team with a strong leader would perform better than the same team would without a strong leader. Leaders help ensure everything that needs to get done, gets done, and that people’s skills are being put to their best use.

But how can you measure a team’s effectiveness? It’s certainly not as straightforward as measuring quarterly earnings, but it can be done. It’s helpful to think of teams as balancing results and culture, which is what Google found to be the best combination in its quest to determine what makes up the “ideal” team.

The Best Teams Balance Results and Culture

Teams are expected to get results, whether they’re playing basketball or landing a new client. The goal, of course, is to get the best results possible from the team, by ensuring they have the goals, training, and resources they need. Even the team with the greatest interactional chemistry won’t hold together long if it doesn’t get results or consistently fails to reach goals.

At the same time, teams that get stupendous results can implode if the team culture is toxic. If team dynamics are unhealthy, there’s no way to sustain great results over time. Someone will snap, or quit, or deliberately sabotage others’ work, and the results will quickly reflect that toxicity.

Results Should Map to Goals; Culture Should Contribute to Results

Team effectiveness is partly due to goal achievement, and partly due to team members wanting to be a part of it. Therefore, it’s important for team leaders to ensure everyone knows what team goals and individual objectives are, and to measure the achievement of goals and objectives, holding everyone (including themselves) accountable.

But it’s also critical for team leaders to monitor team culture and honestly assess whether it contributes to or detracts from results. Maybe team culture is generally strong, but one or two people feel they are shouldering too much of the burden. Or maybe a team member feels like they’re not being given enough responsibility. It’s up to team leaders to recognize cultural shortcomings and address them.

It’s up to team leadership to ensure team culture drives results and doesn’t detract from them.

Don’t Try to Measure Everything All at Once

When you’re just starting to measure team effectiveness, start small. Perhaps you could designate a team project as a test case, setting a handful of quantifiable KPIs, taking baseline measurements, and then measuring them again at the conclusion of the project. You must also determine the best ways to convert those KPI results into bottom-line impact. Measuring team effectiveness in terms of dollars and cents isn’t the whole story by a long shot, but it gets the attention of executives and helps ensure strong teams can continue their work.

It’s not easy as a team leader to balance the need for measuring team effectiveness with the need to demonstrate that you trust your team to do their best. If you have access to high-quality leadership development programs, you can learn ways to balance the need to sustain a strong culture with the need to demonstrate bottom-line results to those higher up.

Leadership coaching can also help team leaders learn how to develop meaningful metrics, demonstrate accountability, and hold team members accountable without sacrificing a strong team culture. Great communication skills are the key, and leadership coaches often help their clients with this critical competency.

Strong leadership is what separates teams that perform “well enough” from teams that routinely exceed expectations. Learn to balance accountability for results with cohesive, supportive team culture, and you’re on the road to the latter. Learn how to get outstanding results while building a team that is something greater than the sum of its individual members.

Your Inner Core May Be Outside Your Comfort Zone: An Interview

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In 2017, I worked with business and leadership consulting firm BlewMinds to host the very first leadership coaching program of its type in Delhi.

My time in Delhi motivated me to continue pursuing excellence, and I like to think the other participants benefited too.

It was an illuminating experience for me, and I think it’s safe to say that all the participants (including myself) learned a great deal. While I was there, I participated in an interview with BlewMinds partner Shivani Singh, where we talked about the importance of self-awareness in coaching. I invite you to watch our discussion below.

One theme you’ll notice comes up repeatedly is that of self-awareness, of knowing and understanding our innermost tendencies and strengths. You would think that every CEO is well-tuned to that inner core, but it is not as common as you may think.

Your Inner Core May Be Outside Your Comfort Zone

Self-awareness is insight into your own innermost attributes: your beliefs, emotions, character, and values. Self-awareness is remarkably empowering, because knowing yourself honestly and deeply helps you make the best choices. Yet self-awareness isn’t easy for many people. They may be hamstrung by what they think they should believe or feel, and they may try to build an entire identity around beliefs and values that don’t match up with what’s actually inside their soul. At best, it hinders leadership, and at worst, it can lead to burnout and breakdown.

The truth is, many people’s innermost character remains an unexplored territory, and this is a shame. Knowing oneself thoroughly and honestly is actually the key to building true and unique leadership – leadership that is rock-solid and can withstand the winds of change that are constantly blowing in our world today.

Unleashing Sustainable Leadership Requires Looking Within

Identifying our innermost character requires temporarily tuning out the many distractions of modern life.

One thing I comment on in my interview with Ms. Singh is the tendency of many of today’s leadership development programs to focus on things like planning and decision-making. Of course, these “nuts and bolts” aspects of leadership are important, and executive coaches work on them with clients all the time.

But what’s missing is attention to each person’s innermost core character, which is as unique as their DNA. The executive coach who takes the time to help clients look within, identify their core strengths and values and learn how to use them to lead helps unleash leadership that is both effective and sustainable long term. One book that does an outstanding job of exploring this phenomenon is Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and if you haven’t read it, you should.

Ultimately, Executive Coaches Make Themselves Unnecessary, by Design

If you have ever seen a pair of killdeer plover raising their hatchlings, you may have noticed how closely they hover around their young when they make their first trips out of the nest. The parent birds will go so far as to fake injury to lure potential predators away from their chicks. But as the chicks grow, they gradually pull back, giving them greater range, until the day they realize their offspring are prepared to be independent.

Similarly, the executive coach works very closely with their clients at first, offering helpful tools and helping them look within to discover their strengths and learn how to put them to use. I’ve noticed that around the third or fourth month of a nine-month executive coaching engagement, something changes. It’s not exactly an “Aha!” moment, but a general sense that the client has tapped into their core strengths and is ready to start using them in leadership.

As executive coaching clients make progress, the coach is able to step back, offering guidance as needed, but ultimately helping their client discover they can “fly” on their own. In other words, the executive coach makes him- or herself unnecessary, and that’s by design.

I also hope you’ll check out my books, especially Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential, which gives you the tools you need to explore your own inner core character and understand how it can help you lead with maximum effectiveness.

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