A Key Challenge
A key challenge for my clients is that the pursuit of fast growth requires a series of transformations in their business. By definition we can’t dramatically drive up performance without making a number of changes: perhaps some different roles and people, a new strategy, a switch of emphasis in the client/product mix, some new execution disciplines and so on. But this puts an added load on the leaders, so what can we do? Executive coach Alexia Vernon has some suggestions in her recent Forbes article:
- Drop from head to heart – slow down, connect with your intuition and feelings to bring out the honesty, openness and energy of our personal experience (aka vulnerability)
- Be curious and playful – constantly ask questions of your people and of yourself, and avoid getting stuck with either the status quo assumptions or the first answers that emerge
- Tell relevant stories – surface and use stories to connect with people and stir their action. Help the audience sees themselves in the story, awakening their own capacity for change.
So … could you be more clear and congruent in yourself? At your next meeting, could you ask more curious questions and make fewer statements? Could you present in stories rather than statistics?
Check out Vernon’s piece here: FORBES.
So … could you be more clear and congruent in yourself? At your next meeting, could you ask more curious questions and make fewer statements? Could you present in stories rather than statistics?
Published January 12, 2018