When leaders embrace paradoxes, greatness follows.

Great leaders need a malleable mindset that can embrace paradoxes in thinking. Over the past year I have experienced many paradoxes throughout the growth and development of my own team, and seen them with many clients.

The balance between humility and going-it-alone confidence is an area of struggle for many C-Suite leaders. The insatiable belief that the C-Suite “have to know it all” leads many leaders to the idea that there is no middle ground between group contributions and making independent decisions. The more the Awesome Journey teams grows, the more I see the value and distinction between the two and how each benefits the company.

Innovation and operational excellence is another area commonly seen as one or the other. How does a company foster and encourage an innovative culture while still maintaining operational excellence in day to day operations?

An excellent example of a CEO who has embraced paradoxes through the mindset of “And/Both” is Suzanne West, as seen her in her TEDx talk “The Power of AND”

In the Harvard Business Review article, “Both/And” Leadership, it speaks to paradoxical leadership requiring managing today while preparing for tomorrow, maintaining boundaries versus the need to cross them in the quest for innovation, and how to create real value while also keeping shareholders happy through monetary means. The ability to align and connect separate opposing forces is how companies create a culture of and/both (opens possibilities) versus either/or (closing the potential for possibilities).

Common Paradoxes:

Leadership Challenge:

Which leadership paradoxes do you embrace and which ones could you embrace to continue your leadership journey?

Innovation is a powerful, but often overused word and concept. Every company strives for innovation, but few truly understand how to create a culture that drives it.

In my 20 plus years of experience with industry-leading companies and leaders, I have found that innovation does not just happen, it is intentionally designed and nurtured to grow in a company. Innovation requires intentionality and design.

Over the years I have supported companies that are truly innovative and what I see is a culture where individuals feel safe to speak their mind, and an openness within the team to embrace tension and conflict and learn from it.

As companies make it safer for their staff to share their ideas and to learn from their mistakes, innovation will shine through. New ideas & insights will emerge creating an “Innovation Mindset” within the company.

In a great video called, Why Your Organization Isn’t Really Serious About Innovation, global innovation expert, Gary Hamel, speaks to the competitive advantages a company gains through innovation and the 3 key questions that all frontline staff need to answer to see how truly serious your company is about developing a “Culture of Innovation”.

Is your company serious about innovation? Ask these 3 key questions to your frontline staff:

1. Have you been given training on how to be a business innovator?

Frontline staff do not automatically know how to be innovators. Training and a listening strategy is needed to capture possibilities.

2. Do you have access to experimental funding?

Do frontline staff have access to time outside their daily responsibilities and money to experiment for innovation?

3. Is management held accountable for innovation by measurable metrics?

If you are serious about building a culture of innovation, there must be systems in place for tracking and measuring innovation within the organization.

Your Challenge:

Answer the 3 Gary Hamel questions to see how serious your company is about innovation. Determine a new conversation you could start with your staff to begin developing a “Culture of Innovation”?

What does being mentally tough mean? What is a mentally tough leader and why is it important to long-term success?

Mental toughness in business is the same as mental toughness in professional sports. You need to be able to manage the good, great and inspirational days with the bad, terrible or disastrous days – and not give up.

Leaders in the C- Suite are constantly faced with a variety of internal and external challenges that require the ability to access mental toughness with mindsets of perseverance and determination to support them as they lead their organizations through downturns, business growth and risk, team or client conflicts, and controlling the emotions and stress that come with negotiating a large strategic business deal.

When emotions are running high, you need to be able to bring yourself and your organization back to stable ground and find solutions to move forward.

Top 6 Practices to Being Mentally Tough:

Focus combined with a solid game plan and key measurables are great starting points for practicing the art of mental focus. When you have a plan and targets, you have something to focus on. As an athlete, when you are focused you can be very self-aware of what your body is telling you during training and live performances so you can make adjustments in the moment and not be distracted.

Be an observer (look, listen and sense) of your surroundings so you can learn to focus on what is important versus what is noise.

Self-Talk is a very powerful tool. Self-talk are the internal conversations you have with yourself all day and therefore the most powerful messages you receive. Self-talk, whether positive or negative, can highly affect your mindset and performance. Self-talk is the biggest influence on your mindset and perception of your world experiences.

Being aware of negative self-talk can help you to shift your mindset to positive self-talk.

Mental practices are used as a form of visualization practice. Mental practice involves creating images in your mind where you experience your performance before it is created. You imagine how it looks, feels, feels and tastes in the visualization

Developing a deep breathing practice is also a mental practice as it can increase your quality of attention/concentration.

Trust is very important in mental toughness. You need to trust your support team and be open to their feedback and their teachings. This creates trust within the team and allows for different perspectives and ideas to come to the surface. Trust that your training program and performance preparation has sufficiently prepared you for success; this breeds confidence in yourself and your process.

Plan for challenging scenarios to be present and create contingency plans so that you are mentally prepared to deal with them in the moment. This will help to alleviate unnecessary stress.

Embrace setbacks and learn to capture what the experience is teaching you. Learn to view all setbacks as an opportunity to learn, rather than a frustration. This practice will reduce stress and move you forward, rather than keeping you locked in the past.

For example, when a project is faced with many challenges, change your state of mind quickly by leveraging the Power of a Pause – 5 deep breathes and ask yourself this empowering question – “Is this a threat or opportunity”. This mindset shift will provide an opening for new thoughts ideas and solutions.

De-brief every performance by asking yourself:

• What went well?
• What do I need to improve?
• What do I need to stop doing?

Challenge your comfort zone by being bold and doing something that makes pushes your boundaries and takes you into new ways of being (new behaviors, new thoughts, new mindsets, new actions). Greatness tends to lie just outside of most people’s comfort zone. Be open and willing to explore new experiences and challenge your current mindsets.

Great leaders understand the power of mental toughness and when to access it. Professional athletes also rely on mental toughness to achieve their goals.

The #1 Secret to Success for 28 Medal – Olympic Champion Michael Phelps is Mental Strength

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=873NJ76wSeA

Leadership Challenge

Take 10 – 20 minutes and evaluate your leadership performance from the past 7 days and assess which of the 6 mental toughness practices you need to strengthen.

Congratulations to STEP Energy for winning the E&Y Entrepreneurs of the Year Award in the Oil and Gas category for the prairie region, and Rosso Coffee for winning the ATB Small Business of the Year Award (Calgary Chamber of Commerce).

Awesome Journey is extremely proud to be the coaching partners of these exceptional companies and thrilled at their accomplishments.

These accomplishments display tremendous leadership and show the power of creating a leadership culture within an organization.

What is a leadership culture and what does it look like?

A leadership culture is a mindset within an organization that everyone, regardless of title and position is a leader and everyone has a role to play in the development and ultimate success of the company.

Leadership cultures emerge when an organization leverages their listening to co-create and connect with each other and their clients.

A leadership culture supports an organization’s way of being and can be seen through the following behaviors that lead to action.

• Being Accountable and holding others accountable (leads to trust)
• Ability to create quality agreements that lead to action (clear requests and promises)
• Being vulnerable and open, and able to embrace breakdowns as learning opportunities to get to breakthroughs that create quality learning (breakdowns come from tension or conflict)
• Transparent real feedback (open to improvements)
• Willing to challenge and be challenged (courageous)
• Embracing level 3 listening (listening to connect and co-create with others, not “fix”)

When leadership cultures are being lived, through intentional conversations, throughout the organization, there is a higher level of performance which sets the stage for providing a unique client experience that differentiates them in the marketplace.

Recent winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year Award in Oil and Gas Category for Prairie Region

“Not only are we very honored to be selected as a finalist and winner, we are humbled to be a second-time category recipient in the EY program,” said Steve Glanville, chief operating officer, and operations vice president. “STEP has experienced a tremendous amount of growth the last couple of years and we wouldn’t be where we are today without the passionate dedication from each of our professionals. They are the bedrock of our success and what drives us to be an energy services leader.”

– Steve Glanville, Chief Operating Officer & Operations Vice President

Recent winner of ATB Small Business of the Year Award (Calgary Chamber of Commerce) and Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40.

Last night we had the absolute pleasure of attending #SWBYYC as a team of 16 from Rosso. We were awarded the ATB Small Business of the Year and had the surreal feeling of walking onto the stage as a team of 16, infront of a room of inspiring entrepreneurs, visionaries, mentors, influencers and diplomats. We are so honored to have been selected as the Small Business of the Year and we promise not to disappoint you Calgary. Lets keep learning and growing together • A huge thanks to @calgarychamber @atbfinancial and @cityofcalgary for making it all possible. Also, to @3to2 and @2creativeco for always putting together the best visual imagery we could ever imagine. Cheers to you all, to our team at Rosso and seriously, thanks a million. #YYCyousoon

A post shared by Rosso Coffee Roasters (@rossocoffeeroasters) on Oct 20, 2017 at 9:47am PDT

I was recently in Toronto for a family visit, and on the way home I experienced a very cool leadership moment on my WestJet flight.

The flight attendant had just finished the Safety Presentation, then another person got on the microphone and introduced himself as Harry Taylor the CFO of WestJet. That got my attention! It is not typical for the CFO of a company to be on the front lines directly interacting with clients.

His comments went something like this,

“As a member of the executive team of WestJet, I would like to thank-you personally for choosing to fly with us at WestJet. I know that you have options and we really appreciate your choice to fly with us. I am seated in 11F if you would like to come by and say hello and give me any feedback about your experiences of flying with WestJet. I will also be working with the flight attendants to serve you on today’s flight, so please forgive me if I spill anything on you as I am a rookie, but the team on your flight today are true professionals, so trust me you are in good hands for this flight. Enjoy your flight!”

This was a great leadership moment. Having a member of the C-Suite from WestJet introduce himself, thank everyone on the flight for choosing to fly with WestJet, and then taking an active role in the front-line work activities of serving told me a lot about the culture and listening strategy at WestJet.

Here is what I experienced about the WestJet Culture:

Accountability to your colleagues and your clients for delivering an “Extraordinary Service Experience” to them.

Responsibility for seeking client feedback to continue to improve the “Client Experience”.

Deep Listening by seeking feedback from others about how you are supporting them.

Intentional about designing a listening strategy and generative conversations (action-oriented language) with clients by creating opportunities to be on the front lines.

Courageous by stepping into “The Unknown” to engage in possibility conversations with your clients for ideas to improve on the “Client Experience”.

Another great example of the WestJet Culture is shown in their “Christmas Miracle Video”. This was an extraordinary client experience!

Your Leadership Challenge:

How can you create an Extraordinary Client Experience in your organization?

What front line conversations can you put yourself into?

How well do you really know what goes on in your company?

In “Bursting the CEO Bubble” by Hal Gregerson (Harvard Business Review), Hal speaks to one of the biggest challenges that CEOs and Executives face – the CEO bubble.

The CEO Bubble is the insulation of the role of being an executive. The CEO Bubble comes in two forms, people telling you what they think you want to hear and people being fearful to tell you things they believe you don’t want to hear. Both of these situations occur because people are trying to avoid confrontation and negative reactions from a person who is in a powerful position. This can be very isolating and lead to blind spots where you miss opportunities or threats to your business due to lack of real, on-the-court information and feedback.

To avoid creating a CEO Bubble, executives must intentionally seek out different situations where you are likely to experience the unexpected. You need to design what we call a “Listening Strategy”. A “Listening Strategy” is a plan that will take you outside your bubble and allow you to get access to real information about your company and the market without the filter people attach to the title of CEO.

To do this you need to develop a “Probing Mindset” which means to design questions and make observations that provide insight and intel into how well your organization is really doing. You will use this “Probing Mindset” with various stakeholders such as staff, clients, suppliers, bankers, other executives and entrepreneurs inside and outside your company.

As part of your “Probing Mindset” you need to develop the skill of listening and observing what is being communicated, but not being said such as body language, vagueness, and reactions to situations.

1. Closed body language

Example: People don’t look at you when they talk to you or they look away or they are fidgety

2. People are giving you vague answers

Example: You ask a question to get an update on a key project and the other person’s response is, “Everything is on track, no issues.”

3. People exhibit hesitation or are nervous

Example: When you ask someone a question and you hear hesitation or nervousness in their voice ask them to pause and explain their point again. If the hesitation or nervousness gets worst you have a red flag.

4. People are speaking in non-accountable language

Example: When you ask a question and you hear non-accountable language like – I think, we should be able to, I assume, or I tried, it is time to ask clarification questions by asking, “What do you mean by you assume that data in the report is accurate?”

Get out of the CEO Bubble with these 6 questions:

1. “If you were in my job, what would you be focusing on?”
2. “How is your project doing – what is working and not working?”
3. “What is one challenge you are currently working on that has you stuck?”
4. “What is a key trend in the industry that you see could impact our business in the next two years – positive or negative?”
5. “What do you think our company should be exploring that could impact our business over the next 18 months?”
6. “What is one thing you think I need to hear that people in the company are too afraid to tell me?”

Leadership Challenge:

Take the CEO Bubble Challenge. Click on the link below and answer the 10 questions under “Are you trapped in a CEO Bubble?” (Click the Read More link).

Bursting the CEO Bubble

The ideas from this article come from a HBR article entitled, “Bursting the CEO Bubble”, March/April 2017

As an Executive, how prepared are you for the workforce of the future?

By 2025 millennials will account for 75% of the workforce, which will have a significant impact on the corporate world. Millennials are a generation driven by the need for purpose and crave making a real impact on the world. They are seeking something bigger than themselves. They desire being apart of communities with shared purpose, making a difference in society, a sense of contribution and real action on issues that matter to them.

As leaders of companies today, are you preparing now of how to support your up and coming workforce?

In this insightful video, “Millennials haven’t forgotten spirituality, they’re just looking for new venues”, it discusses an important trend happening with millennials and provides some foresight for the business leaders about the demographic shift and changes that millennials bring to society.

Millennials are abandoning the traditional church and what it used to provide, and seeking to fulfill their needs elsewhere. Why is this and why should leaders of businesses today care about this trend?

In the past, the church was the primary arena for community building, finding your purpose and making an impact in society. As time moved on, the institution of the church has struggled to adapt and progress with the needs of an expanding demographic with ever-changing needs and ways of being in the world.

Millennials have grown up in a society designed by the baby boomers, and many leaders struggle with the millennial mindset – independent thinking, openness to change and confident at challenging authority’s ideas and decision-making. An institution that is currently feeling the effects of the millennial mindset are traditional churches.

Most churches have been designed to preach and monologue to their congregations, whereas millennials are seeking to engage in dialogue and work together in collaboration for new ideas and ways of putting their ideas into action.

Monologue and dialogue conversations are vastly different.

In a monologue, someone is telling you what to do versus a dialogue is a conversation with a high level of transparency (open and honest) and the intention to connect and co-create and be collaborative.

As millennials are turning their backs on traditional churches, they are seeking direction, guidance, connection, and purpose from other sources such as community groups, online social networks, and their workplaces to support their needs.

This millennial mindset is creating a huge gap and a huge opportunity for leaders of business today to be listening to their younger staff to develop support structures that will engage and attract the millennial mindset to your company.

Ideas for engaging millennials:

• Create committees people can join to collaborate on new ideas and possibilities as a team
• Develop Mentorship Programs
• Create co-leadership roles where millennials can have the opportunity to work with experienced leaders to gain knowledge and expertise
• Organize social events to promote and encourage Team Spirit
• Develop learning programs where people can sign up to learn specialized skill sets

The purpose of the structures above is to tap into millennials’ curiosity and creativity to unlock future trends and ideas that will add value for your business.

At Awesome Journey, we challenge the leaders of business today to find ways to create authentic communities for collaboration, learning, mentoring and desiring to challenge the status quo so that their voices can be used to make a difference for good that will support people, planet, and profits.

Your Leadership Challenge:

Over the next 2 weeks connect with Millennials within your organization and seek their feedback and input.

References:

59 Percent of Millennials Raised in a Church Have Dropped Out—And They’re Trying to Tell Us Why

What Millennial Employees Really Want

Every now and then a great book comes along talking about the importance of business culture. Business culture is the environment a company creates for how they do business and how they treat people. Culture is a set of collective beliefs, values, and attitudes that influence management, high-level decisions, and all business functions.

In the book “Everyone Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for your People like Family”, by Bob Chapman, he outlines how developing your people is the cornerstone of a sustainable and successful culture.

Bob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a private company with over 5,000 employees and revenues north of $1.5 Billion. The company specializes in manufacturing packaging equipment in the US for clients all over the world.

In the book, Bob highlights the importance of developing your people and how a company’s performance is directly linked to how they care for their people. Bob and his senior leadership team built their culture on a key mindset – Truly Human Leadership, where they believe in sky-high morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance.

This book is a great real-life example of a company living, breathing, and being their culture.

From the CEO down, they are committed to a strategic direction that is intentionally designed around their beliefs and values that caring for their people like family is great for business. This culture is the driving force for employee retention, strong bottom-line profitability, employee engagement, productivity, high morale, growth, and development.

They have successfully differentiated themselves in the marketplace by leveraging the power culture.

Being the CEO of a company brings with it a level of prestige that other positions do not have. You are in a position with power, but surprisingly your power is tempered by many factors internally and externally.

In Harvard Business Review – Seven Surprises for New CEOs by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Orsch and Nitin Nohria, it speaks to the seven things new CEOs learn while on the job.

Here are the 7 Surprises that CEOs learn on the job:

1. You can’t run the company

Most CEOs have climbed the corporate ladder from an operational/managerial level, to a CEO – visionary and strategic level. The first requires deep involvement in the day to day of the company, while the other requires a 10-story view with strategic leadership and strong direction. As CEO, your role is one of influencing and articulating a clear strategy, establishing guiding structures and processes, setting values and culture, and hiring the right people to run the company.

2. Giving orders is costly

Trust will become a key component of your world now. As the CEO, your job is to ensure that the right people are in the right seats, so you can trust them to run the company while you attend to the strategic direction and overall vision. Dictating and overruling thoughtful decisions made at lower organizational levels erodes senior manager’s confidence and creates a culture of “check before do anything” that will stall decision making and bring progress to a halt.

3. It’s hard to know what’s really going on

Once you’re CEO, others withhold bad news and speak through a filter to not upset you fearing you’ll shoot the messenger. The questions now become – how to get solid information? How to keep a pulse on the true morale and culture of the company? You can consult customers, other CEOs, industry associations, and engage with independent advisers from various industries and make it safe for them to criticize your thinking and challenge your ideas to get out of the “yes” bubble.

4. You’re always sending a message

Being at the top of the food chain means that all eyes are on you. Your every move – inside and outside the organization – is scrutinized and interpreted. To minimize misinterpretation, be self-aware and understand what signals you’re sending and how your words and actions are being perceived. Carefully consider how different audiences might interpret your actions and communications. Use simple, clear, and often repeated messages illustrated with memorable stories.

5. You’re not the boss

You may have an entire company of subordinates below you, but you are not the boss. You have ten or twelve bosses; the board of directors. They can set your compensation, evaluate your performance, overturn your strategy, and fire you if they see fit. Boards typically have limited knowledge of your business and scant time to acquire it, so your job will be to educate them and collaborate with them to gain their trust so they trust you to move the company forward.

6. Pleasing shareholders is not the goal

Shareholders tend to be short term focused with immediate results and short-term gains as their primary objective. As the CEO, your role requires long term focus and planning. Work on influencing and shaping their perceptions of your company through constant explanations and reminders of your long-term strategy to develop and build buy-in.

7. You’re still only human

The rewards and adulation that come with being CEO can tempt you into acts of hubris and make you feel untouchable. Make a disciplined effort to stay humble. Revisit your decisions. Find forthright people – and listen to them. Maintain connections to family, friends, your community, and hobbies to avoid being consumed by your job.

Referenced from Harvard Business Review: Seven Surprises for New CEOs – FULL ARTICLE HERE

By: Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria

I was recently chatting with a potential new client and he made the comment that many people make about Executive Coaching – “We have never gotten the quality returns from any Leadership Development program we have invested in, why should we keep investing?”

This comment makes a good point. Many executive leadership programs preach about the unbridled success that will follow after attending their coaching, seminars or programs, but then fail to live up to the expectations of real and genuine change within a person or an organization.

Why?

Many traditional leadership coaching and programs provide the teaching and materials for leadership but fail to provide the real-life, as-lived practices and exercises needed to turn what is learned into reality.

At Awesome Journey, we work with great leaders to develop and continuously maintain their “leadership muscles” through intentional practices. Similar to a diet and exercise regime where a balanced diet and regular exercise are needed for long-term sustainable results, daily practices are needed for leadership development.

Leadership muscles are the practices you do that enable you to be an authentically powerful leader that can bring forth transformation for yourself and your organization.

7 Daily Practices for Leadership Muscles:

1. Breathing Practice: 10 to 20 minutes of deep breathing daily will support building Mental Clarity to reduce stress and improve decision making.
2. Time Mastery Practice: Having a routine for reviewing your schedule at the beginning and end of each day to bring clarity and organization to your priorities to ensure you are focusing on the right things at the right time.
3. Design & Planning Practice: The outcome of each activity or task in your day is a result of how well it was planned and designed to achieve its goals.

What is the purpose and objective of an upcoming meeting/conversation?

How can I prepare to ensure we achieve our objective?

4. Self-Awareness Practice: Being aware of your emotional triggers and having mechanisms to cope, focus and move forward. Being self-aware means you have awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and how you react to certain situations and environments.

• Power of the Pause (taking a few moments to breathe deeply when triggered)
• Journaling
• Working with a Leadership Coach who can provide reflective 3^rd party insights
• Meditation (10-15 minutes per day)

5. Generative (Action-Oriented) Language Practice: Generative language is language that is action-oriented and is supported with commitments, clear requests, promises and quality agreements.
6. Listening Practice: There are 4 levels of listening.

Level 1 – Listening to Protect – We React Mindset

Level 2 – Listening to Facts – We Predict Mindset

Level 3 – Listening to Relate – We Connect Mindset

Level 4 – Listening for Being – We Create Mindset

Great leaders listen at level 3 – 4 – “Listening to Connect and Create”.

When you listen to connect with others, you hear what the other person CAREs about through their complaints/objections/issues and problems. There are hidden requests in all of these.

Eg.  A colleague complains that Adam is always late to meetings. The colleague may view Adam as being less committed to the team and goals, and therefore less likely to work hard to accomplish their goals. This is likely untrue, but this complaint shows that the colleague is highly committed and cares about achieving the goals.

7. Ask Empowering Questions Practice – To support generating action through others, master the skill of asking others empowering questions vs telling others what to do.

Great reading for building Leadership Muscle – Unlocking Human Potential

Your Leadership Challenge:

Create one daily practice that you will commit to doing on a daily basis and watch your Leadership Transformation occur.