The Leadership Vision Podcast

Creating a Successful Executive Environment

• Nathan Freeburg • Season 7 • Episode 36

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In this episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, we discuss our comprehensive and customizable approach to cultivating a successful executive environment. Emphasizing the importance of investing in executive growth, we explore how personalized executive sessions, team coaching, and succession planning can address the unique challenges faced by executive leaders. The conversation dives into the necessity for culturally informed support and highlights the essential role of trust and empathy in fostering effective leadership. Whether you are an aspiring leader or an established executive, this episode offers valuable insights into building a positive team culture and navigating the complex landscape of executive leadership.

15:31 Who Starts this Process?
18:44 There are no Known Answers!
20:51 What does it mean to act like an executive?
26:39 Why this Focus Now?

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The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.

Speaker 1:

I want to be able to show someone that I may have the same fear, that they have to walk with them into the spaces that they're going, but I want them to know, fundamentally and without question, I am there with them. I'll respond to your text, I'll take your call, I'll answer your questions on the weekend, I'll meet with you one-on-one while on vacation. These are all things that happen because you care, and when people know that you genuinely care, they'll tell you anything because they want the help.

Speaker 2:

An executive environment is a professional setting that focuses on the development and growth of executives within an organization. It encompasses various activities and strategies to enhance executives' effectiveness and performance. When executives are developed and empowered, they're better equipped to lead others, inspire innovation and drive the organization's success. By investing in the growth of executives, organizations create a ripple effect that positively impacts the entire workforce, fostering a culture of leadership excellence and increasing the likelihood of achieving organizational goals. As you can imagine, trust and high expectations are placed on executive leaders due to their titles. Despite their capabilities, executives have the same core needs, fears and dreams as others. However, they require a different type of intentional and culturally informed attention. At Leadership Vision, we've honed a comprehensive and customizable approach to cultivating a successful executive environment, centered around six core elements. These services cater specifically to the unique needs of executive leaders, acknowledging that each layer of leadership has its own distinct needs.

Speaker 2:

In this episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, we are going to share our comprehensive and customizable approach to creating a thriving executive environment. We emphasize the importance of investing in the growth of executives to drive organizational success. A couple of key things that we talk about here is the executive session, team coaching and succession planning. This conversation dives into executives' unique challenges and highlights the need for intentional and culturally informed support. This episode offers valuable insights for leaders at all levels on building a positive team culture and achieving excellence. You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Now, even if you're not an executive or C-suite level leader, we can all learn some universal principles for success when the stakes are high. So whether you're an aspiring leader, a seasoned executive or simply interested in leadership development in general, this episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast has a little something for you, so keep listening.

Speaker 1:

We all, at times, need someone to talk to that has an objective perspective, someone that's going to listen to us, help us understand and navigate what it is that we think that we're seeing. All of us need help from our team members, that we need to learn how to rely on other people and how we can support others as we're going through really tough environments. All of us can benefit from coaching or mentorship or some kind of ongoing human-based learning. And you know what? One of the greatest places to look for this kind of connection, relationships and perhaps some level of objectivity is maybe a leader that we're mentoring or someone that we work with that can help us reflect back on how it is that we're leading, because they see us from a different way than somebody else, and they may be the one that the one that could do our job in ways that we may not have thought of and can help really influence who we are. And also to remember that, when it comes to culture transformation, everyone has a hand in that. We've seen very, very simple and very complex cultures, and one thing is predominant in every culture that we work with, and that is everyone has a shaping influence on that culture. So to receive feedback and influence from other people on what your effect actually is. That's also helpful. We all have something to learn on how it is that we can show up in a different way, in a more supportive and open way, through this conversation we had about what's happening at that executive level. There's something here for everybody Because, like all of today, I've been thinking about why this conversation is so important and I look at each of these six elements that we provide at the executive level and all I said well, why?

Speaker 1:

And the first one is executive sessions, and that's just a session with the executive, like the chief executive officer, linda and myself. And why is that session so important? Because we have found that that singular executive doesn't really have many opportunities to just sit and talk with someone about their business and about their pressures. That's just one-on-one. That's protected, it's private, no one knows what's going on. That's just one-on-one. That's protected, it's private, no one knows what's going on.

Speaker 1:

The executive team sessions that is just for the executive leadership team or the senior level leadership team. And what is that session about? It's a session where the CEO can say this is my chief concern. He or she may have shared that with Linda and I, and that executive team session is topical, real time, in the real moment. It's nothing off the shelf and it's what the CEO thinks. This is what we need right now and it's super highly catered, and I think that every executive team has very, very specific needs that need addressing and the CEO just doesn't know where to turn to ask for help, and that's where you provide help.

Speaker 3:

Well, because they see what the end state is, but they don't necessarily know the steps to get there. And sometimes, providing a framework for the conversation with an outside entity like ourselves, we start to bend and flex the conversation and allow, you know, certain, certain people to talk to each other, certain teaming to happen.

Speaker 1:

Well, ask the executive what is your concern. He or she will say it. Then we will help facilitate the conversation around what that executive really wants to have happen or really, or what kind of conversation he wants to have, and that we have found is extremely important, because the executive feels that they're heard by us and when we create a curriculum for the discussion, then they can see right then and there that there is something here that they can actually work with, that creates a conversation that couldn't have happened without our intervention, which leads to our executive coaching, and that came out as a result of people wanting to talk more about what they were hearing, what they were seeing, their perspectives, and so then we will meet with the variety of executives.

Speaker 3:

Brian and I will usually divide and conquer, if you will, and when we start to meet with some of these executives, we're hearing the pressure points, and then we are challenging them to reach even further or be more courageous, or some of them just need a little bit of space to be heard and to just sit with someone as they are looking around their own space and discovering the answers for themselves.

Speaker 1:

And because we don't bring a specific coaching model to the table. This executive coaching model is highly adaptable. It could be to the topics that we're discussing as a group, or it could be specifically focused on the individual exclusively, without really any integration back in to the organization. The model is adaptable.

Speaker 3:

That is the model. The model begins with the end in mind, and then we lean into bending and flexing to allow the answers to emerge not from us but from the real time needs that these leaders are facing, which also then leads to a lot of times in executive teams there is some shifting and there are people that leave or go on to their next opportunity, and one of the ways that we've been sought after is to help with succession planning.

Speaker 1:

And one of the reasons why this is important is when we get immersed into an executive culture, we gain a great awareness of what that culture is like, what it feels like, how it operates, how it functions. We're often involved in the company as well, so we understand the company culture. And succession planning, as everyone knows, isn't just a plug and play. It's not a simple decision. It oftentimes takes a very, very long time, and the advice or the advisory service that we can provide with succession planning is that depth of knowledge of culture and the individuals on the team and the assistance in helping integrate someone as easily as possible into the executive environment. I think is a very, very important strategy.

Speaker 3:

Yeah we were hired by our leader once and she was charged she was an executive, charged by her CEO to hire someone, hire her replacement before she retired, hire her replacement from within, and there were some, you know, maybe obvious choices, and it was our work with the team, in the team sessions and the team coaching that allowed the you know, the heir apparent to emerge. So there's a lot of examples that way which then point to, at the same time as all the succession planning is happening, the investment in the teams as well as the individuals. One of the things that we do is we empower a culture transformation, meaning what we challenge the executives to think about. What kind of things do they want to embed in their culture to make it more positive, to make it more, maybe even attractive to other employees that might be joining the team or the organization at some point? And a lot of times this isn't our job. We don't come in and fix the culture. We're trying to shape, shift. We are trying to help them weed out certain pieces and add in others.

Speaker 1:

And this is really important because when culture transformation is happening, those that are in the midst of the cultural transformation aren't always attentive to the landscape that they're transforming into or like where they're going. They maybe lose a sense of navigation, and part of our role in cultural transformation is to come in with a very observatory kind of posture and an intentional integration of what we know with the people so that the cultural transformation can be sustained over a longer period of time. In organizations where we are there for like six or nine months, we can actually see the changes, we can see where the place is drifting, and our assistance is in keeping people aligned to the different anchor points that they set down to mark how transformation is happening over a longer period of time.

Speaker 3:

But any executive that's spending money on this will say things like well, how do we know? And a lot of times our 360 evaluation process really begins to allow the themes to emerge, the things that need to be worked on, the things that need to be rooted out of the culture to add it into, and we've seen just environments grow and become better and more positive, sometimes with a dip at first and then it becomes more positive.

Speaker 1:

And in these evaluations, I think it's important to know that we start with basically a blank screen. On this one, we will spend time interviewing the chief executive or the senior director. We'll understand what they're looking for. We may be consulting with board members, and then we create the 360 evaluation, and it is conducted in one-to-one conversations with people that are actually on the ground. So that's something that we have found that we've done multiple times. We enjoy the work. It is heavy lifting, but the need for feedback is essential in understanding how it is that people are actually leading the organization.

Speaker 2:

I don't know why, but I'm thinking of Microsoft Office or the Google suite of Google Docs, whatever it's. What do we call the suite of services, of products and it's maybe a nerdy comparison, but I'm thinking of all the different things you have to do in an office or an education setting. Sometimes you need this, sometimes you need this, sometimes you need that. They all need to be able to talk to each other at leadership vision. What do we call all of the things that you're describing here? Do we have a clever name for it?

Speaker 1:

I think our generic name is our executive services. Um, it's just, it is what we're doing specifically at that level. We don't do this anywhere else. These six elements really have, you know, surfaced just at that level. The way that we facilitate doesn't necessarily change at the executive level. The goal of creating positive team culture, that's still the goal at the executive level. We still coach at the executive level. But what's different is how extremely customized what we're talking about is to the culture. I believe that most environments that we're working with, we are writing all the content for that specific environment. It's custom and that's what I think makes it very, very unique.

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, and the part of why it's custom is, we've learned so much in the last four years and some of the executive teams that we were working with just didn't need necessarily another off-the-shelf offering. They wanted to go much deeper, much faster, much broader, and we began to respond to a need and it just all of a sudden, the Google suite emerged, and we call it executive investment, or Even if a team wants to talk about change management, which is a general catch-all it's a huge net phrase we still need to know what that specific executive environment means by change management.

Speaker 1:

That's right, because we don't know. We don't assume that even they know when they ask us to help them navigate change. We don't know if it's cultural change or if it's integrative issues that they're speaking about. If it's change with the economy, we have no idea if it's changed with the economy.

Speaker 2:

we have no idea. What I'm curious to know, I think, is where does this fit in with, like, what we do, consulting wise? And what I mean by that is is you know an executive calls up and say I need, you know, help with this, that and the other thing? Do we? We work with a team in some capacity around strengths or team engagement series or whatever it is, and then realize, oh, this needs to be rolled out and rolled up to like an executive leader and work on that. I'm curious how this idea of our executive environment or executive suite of services comes to be in an organization.

Speaker 3:

And it begins with the mover and shaker. Oftentimes we find someone that is passionate about the leaders, the talent pool, the investment that needs to be made as the stakes get higher and higher. What we're noticing in executive teams as the stakes are so high, they feel almost like life and death. How that rolls down and trickles down is that some people put in even more hours, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and they start talking to us all of a sudden. It's like yes, and then we need this and a little bit of that and a little bit of coaching on the side.

Speaker 1:

And that ask is consistent. The ask is singularly focused. The executive sees one thing, they've been asked to focus on one thing and that's what their laser vision is focused on, and the services that we are talking about have expanded over time because we have seen the need to augment whatever that executive originally asked us to do. It always is a problem that they want help with. They don't understand, maybe, the different components of it and how long that might take.

Speaker 2:

How does this differ? Cause I'm thinking about you're talking about executives and wanting their team and not silos. How does this different than like our other work that we do with teams or other team engagement stuff? Here's the difference.

Speaker 1:

This just happened recently.

Speaker 1:

The executive said okay, this team needs to act like executives.

Speaker 1:

So the complaint was that the team was not meeting the expectations of the executive and it was almost like this simplistic question like, why aren't they acting as executives?

Speaker 1:

And I think that organizations ask that question of their executive teams and executive leaders ask that of their executive teams, of their executive teams, and executive leaders ask that of their executive teams. That there's an assumption that once you've been invited to that table, you would somehow automatically know how to act as an executive and how to act as an executive team. That's the conflict is that people have these unspoken, silent expectations of what executive leadership looks like for individuals and how this team should function, without really understanding or without ever surfacing the question does the individual understand what's expected of them as an executive, understand if their capacities that they currently have can meet that expectation or fulfill the expectation? Because once the pressure increases, like Linda was saying earlier, once those stakes get really high, then those capacities get tested and most likely that individual is going to be surprised that they don't have that quote unquote executive presence or that executive skill set that they were assumed to already have.

Speaker 3:

There's no known answers. So some people say like well then, what's your quick? You know five things that you would do to help grow an executive. And I think there are so many new pressures that have been introduced as a result of the time in history that we're living, the different contextual pressures and opportunities and innovations, that it almost feels like a flood of like well, am I just supposed to do team building? Am I supposed to invest in the people? Where do I start? Forget it, let's just keep moving ahead and do this thing.

Speaker 1:

And that, to me, is why this conversation is so important is because we are trying to build a close relationship with the members of the executive team so that we get a clear understanding of what is actually happening and what is actually at stake in the conversation. I was coaching an executive just recently and in the conversation these three things popped up and I would never known, I would never have known that the executive team was struggling with this, unless he said it to me in a closed conversation, and that was. He summarized it by saying this is our struggle. Our struggle is with priority focus, priority shifting and priority scrambling and those three elements. I was, you know, I took my notes, I didn't act like I was super surprised, but I was so surprised of how he explained it that priorities, we don't know what priority to focus on Once we're told then the priority shifts and then he said then it feels like they just scramble them all up and I have no idea what to focus on anyways.

Speaker 1:

When someone says something like that, my immediate assumption is that is a present and known or present and unknown reality with every member of the executive team, not just the person that I'm talking to. So now, all of a sudden, that type of issue is risen to the top of our attention and we begin to now listen in a different way. If that's what others are struggling with as well, and when that pressure is high, when you're gaining that altitude in the organization, we all know how important it is to align on priorities, but are we really, and is that clearly?

Speaker 2:

stated. This reminds me a little bit of my days working in higher ed with student leaders and how some student leader would get student body president or whatever, and we would immediately expect them to act as if they knew what they were doing, without any real training around. You know, what is the roles and responsibilities Are you finding? Is that kind of what you're saying with executives? Is that they get this position and just they're expected to act this way, without like. What does that mean? You know you mentioned that one executive wanted the other executives to act like executives and I wonder what our role is in guiding like, because to me it seems like such a nebulous thing or, like you said, it kind of moves and changes and fluctuates. And like, what is leadership vision's role in that process of helping executives act like executives?

Speaker 1:

Surfacing what the actual needs are. And surfacing what the felt needs are, because there are practical, real needs that an executive team is facing and there are those unspoken, unknown, more intuitive needs that people aren't saying, and those are just as important.

Speaker 3:

And those are the pressures from the outside. The pressures from the inside are can I do this job? I've wanted this job forever. Do I have what it takes? Maybe I have the degree, I did all the right training to get this job, but all of a sudden, now I'm in the context and some people they're not recognizable even to themselves right away. They got to get a sense of, well then, how I'm going to be, and we've met with a lot of people who almost do a lessons learned with us.

Speaker 3:

Well, in my first job, the first big job that was I will never do that again. Learn my lesson that way, or you know this one I will always start by understanding who these people are. So there's things that we've learned, and so that's why we root people in the needs and the felt needs and the organizational needs in order to achieve the goals. But then we root people into who they are and then we promote learning of who you can rely on. Who do you go to? How do we facilitate and kind of connect people? And then back away.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes at that executive table people don't feel like they have the opportunity to discuss the pressures that they're feeling from around them For example, additions of new team members, colleagues that they have to work with in different ways than they did before, pressures that they're feeling from the people that they're managing and the team pressures. They don't have a place to talk about those challenges. And when they're asked to be at that executive table, that's certainly not the place to talk about that additional pressure which they may need so much help in that area and that's causing them to be so distracted as an executive because they have all this other unwritten anxiety and the felt tension of what it means to navigate. There's no one to talk to about that, and sure it could be.

Speaker 3:

Yes, let's be vulnerable and sit at the table and share those things where we're really concerned. But what we've learned and witnessed as we have watched executive teams sit at the table and interact with one another, is they have to demonstrate competence and they have to demonstrate resolve, and that they are the right person to do that. And although vulnerability is really important, when those decisions need to be made, there needs to be a tangible result. Yes, there needs to be space for vulnerability. There needs to be space for people to wrestle with their own demons or the things that they keep tripping up on at the same time. Then how do they set those down, put on their courage and step in and do the hard things that the average person, that we don't even have to do on a daily basis?

Speaker 2:

How do you typically begin working with someone to identify all of those different needs? I know that's very customizable. We've got like six different Microsoft Office type programs we can implement. Does that make sense? Because if a leader has enough self-awareness and understanding to realize I need someone else to bring in to help me with this. Or maybe the other way. The leaders who most need this are the least self-aware and therefore aren't going to call someone. So how?

Speaker 3:

do you?

Speaker 2:

kind of work with leaders to help them understand this, or how do leaders typically arrive at that moment of I need something like this when we're asked to come in.

Speaker 1:

The first conversation we're having is with that chief executive officer, whatever their title is, to let them share with us what their current needs are. We don't second guess, we don't question. We want them to give us that four sided or five sided framework to help us understand what it is that we're looking for or listening for. The very next step is in to talk with the people, talk with the executive leadership team to test to see if that's really the issue, cause oftentimes the executive leader does not have their hand on the right issues. Maybe they do, but oftentimes they aren't seeing what's in between the things that they're concerned about, and that's what we then discover. We can then surface and begin to prioritize. How do you want to discuss these things?

Speaker 2:

Well, brian, linda, thank you so much. I think this is an interesting conversation to be had. This isn't a new thing, like executive environments and needing some investment at the top. It's not a new thing. Problem, whatever you want to call it, but why, in Leadership Vision's 23 years of existence, why are we focusing on it more now, in the last couple of years, than we have previous to that?

Speaker 1:

If I were to answer that and if I knew that no one was listening, this is what I would say.

Speaker 1:

I would say there are two very profound factors that are making this conversation more important, and one is the rise of social polarization, because I have experienced that the workplace is an environment where polarization is also occurring and the need to point fingers and blame is also there, and the executive teams are targets of that, through whatever form it is within that, that culture.

Speaker 1:

So I think that is one key factor that that's being felt. And secondly, I feel that there is just this wave of attention given towards well-being, self-awareness, taking care of yourself, and executives are no different than anybody else. They feel those same pressures and they're asking for help in ways that we've not heard before. So I think there are two very different things that are occurring that are impacting why this conversation is happening with greater frequency and why we're having more executives asking for our help. I also believe that we've been doing this for quite some time and, just to be fair, many of the people that were members of teams that we've worked with are now executives and they want to bring us with them into those levels, so they've grown up into the higher levels of the organization and they want to have that same feeling that they had when they were on the team. They want to bring that to their executive level team now.

Speaker 3:

And the need is there. We have found success in the work that we're doing and we're able to share across industries what is working. Well, hey, this group tried this. Why don't you all try this? And to watch people that have no time?

Speaker 3:

That's true, no time. Stop for just a moment and look around and see who they're doing the work with and what they need to do, even in themselves, to be a better leader, a better person. That time is now. That time is now and we are intersecting at that crossroads and really desiring to help.

Speaker 2:

Well, brian and Linda, thank you so much. This has been a very interesting conversation and I hope it's helpful for our listeners. Even if you're not an executive or in, you know that that suite so I'm Brian Shubring.

Speaker 3:

I'm Linda Shubring.

Speaker 2:

So I thought you guys are going to be like yeah, thank you, nathan.

Speaker 1:

Great, and now we're waiting for the outro. Let's try it again. Let's try it again.

Speaker 2:

Well, brian linda well, brian linda, thank you so much. This is a very interesting conversation, I hope no, thank you, nathan.

Speaker 1:

Our listeners find value.

Speaker 2:

This is about the fourth time we've tried to do this.

Speaker 2:

Found value in this and thank you listeners for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams and culture. For more resources about developing your strengths the strengths of your team or the strengths of your entire organization, click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom, and if you found value from this or any of our other resources, we would appreciate it if you'd share it with someone interested in developing their strengths more the strengths of their team or overhauling the strengths of their entire organization. I'm Nathan Friberg.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Brian Schubert and on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. I'm going to leave all of that nonsense in. It shows our personality and how we are a fun group of folks that are very sleep deprived, run a podcast, all of that.

Speaker 2:

Poor air quality, our lungs aren't working, but we still do our best, and so can't fire outside.

Speaker 1:

It's okay, I'm going to stop.