The biggest challenge any CEO faces in the long run is their ego and I’m going to explain what you can do about it.
Firstly, ego. Our ego isn’t a negative force. It describes our sense of self. To understand it gives us leverage to change our behaviour and how well we do this is referred to as our level of emotional intelligence or “EQ”.
There’s no more impactful factor than EQ to predict how you will behave and communicate, and so how effective you are as a leader.
Higher EQ leaders inspire loyalty, respect and engagement to a vision. They retain top talent, create firmer actions, motivate investment, radiate security and confidence. They make stronger and more concise communicators.
Also, they are commonly more forgiving of themselves, less self-critical, better able to handle stressful situations and conflicts. EQ is 100% malleable. It can be changed and even a small amount of work can yield results.
For further reading, consider this article as well as it delves further into the CEO mindset and would be a natural addition to the concepts discussed here.
Here are my top 5 EQ traits that I’ve seen best support a CEO’s development in their role.
1. Consistency
How do you feel when a new barista makes your coffee? There’s that uneasy sense of dread that it just won’t be as good. It might, but we don’t trust it. We like what we like and our ego LOVES consistency. So how can our consistency be an asset as opposed to a challenge?
Investors love predictable results, your team trust consistent action, your market loves a consistent message. Don’t confuse this with stubbornness, resourceful consistency (read actions that serve the greater good) is a very attractive and useful quality.
Consider your organisations objectives for this year. A great many people will have to do many things to reach them, yourself included. As you set the tone for everyone’s behaviour, what does your behaviour say about you? Are you resourcefully consistent with your message, actions, language or results?
Does the word consistent fit as a positive descriptor of you? I mention positive, because well, consistency can be detrimental.
Ask your EA. They know you well enough. Would they describe you as “consistent” in a positive way?
Clue – if they hesitate, look away or pause, they’ve already answered the question.
If you suspect you’re not exactly Captain Reliable here, fret not. Try this exercise.
Pick the objective or challenge this year that’s more important than the others. Yes, you can only choose one.
Now open your diary for next week and look at one way you can put an action in there that will help someone else be more consistent towards that outcome. Helping someone else focus towards a target can help us understand how we can do it better.
It’s a small thing, but being consistent isn’t about grand gestures, it’s about well, consistent ones. And in your position it is consistent behaviours, values and standards in conduct, not tasks, that matter. When reflecting here, ask yourself if this is the case as otherwise consistency is easily confused with being in a ‘high performing rut’.
2. Awareness
I know, move to a small subject right? Awareness is pretty broad, even in the confines of a CEO’s role. So when I use it here, I mean your awareness only around the “stuff” that directly impacts the dial by which you measure progress towards an outcome.
Are you aware of what behavioural attributes you have to bring to a task that will ensure it has the best chance of being achieved? So not “what do I have to do?” but “who do I have to be?” to get this accomplished.
Try it out. Let’s use something low key, say ordering a coffee.
Stay with me here…
How you behave and communicate directly impacts the quality of the outcome, your enjoyment of a much needed caffeine hit. But it can be so easy to screw it up simply by not being aware of how our behaviour is impacting the chain of causality. Eg;
Let’s say you called through the order, did you decide to pause and say ‘good morning’ to the guy/girl who picked up the phone and even if you did, could your tone have implied that you didn’t mean it?
Or worse, did you perhaps blurt out the order because you were in a rush? Did you cut them off, talk down to them?
My point is that it’s VERY easy for our mind to downplay the seemingly mundane in our world. In this context our awareness is a challenge to our outcome. Now I don’t need to tell you that how said coffee shop worker felt about you after that phone call DIRECTLY impacts the enjoyment of your coffee.
Speed, quality and consistency, just to start.
Much as it can be with our people. They have the ability to deliver, much as the coffee shop worker does. But HOW they deliver, HOW they engage, HOW they choose to play the longer game, all of it comes down to how you “order your coffee” as that sets their opinion of you.
Awareness of how effective they are is nothing any CEO can flick a switch to master, but it begins not by slowing down, but by choosing to appreciate how we are feeling and acting in a given situation.
Try it once a day before you do something.
Decide to appreciate what’s actually happening in the moment, however trivial or routine it may be. Ask yourself;
- How do I feel right now?
- What is the other person saying with their body language?
- What might they want to say to me if I weren’t the boss?
It doesn’t need to be those questions per se, but have a stab at appreciating the fullness and diversity of the moment. Both internal and external awareness has its roots in appreciation. Choose to value the time invested here and your perspective will start to shift.
3. Inspirational Focus
A personal favourite of mine. Every CEO wants an engaged, inspired and committed team, slaying results and loving every minute of it. And they want to feel that way about themselves.
It starts with us. One way to approach this is to remember that our people are only ever a reflection of our lowest standard. If there is a loophole in our value set, they will find it. Think I’m wrong? Go and argue with a child over when you said they could have dessert.
They’re masters and some of life’s lessons are never updated.
Loopholes in standards are very real and remember, we are mostly water and water follows the path of least resistance. If you want to feel that next level of inspired focused and have your team follow suit, you have to lead the way. This starts with uncovering how they see you. I covered this point more fully in my recent article about engagement.
If I were to ask 5 people close to you to ‘describe your CEO?’ and ‘focused’ wasn’t one of the words they used, then whatever you may think, they probably don’t think that of you, at least, not in a good way.
To level yourself up, give this a shot.
Ask someone else that you want to be an inspiring force of focus in your company – “how would you define someone who embodies inspirational focus?” You’re going to need to listen hard here, because the next stage is the tricky bit.
Take their language and sit on it for a few days. Let it mull around in your head and I want you to try and see the gaps. What are the gaps between what they believe about someone who’s focused in that way and how YOU act. You might even find their definition of this type of focus was different from yours.
Reflection here is valuable.
Take one of their major points and see how you can perhaps trial behaving differently to fulfil it. This not only stands to change how you are seen by them, but by approaching this from a new perspective you might find you’re very capable of being that focused, you just needed it framed differently in your head.
One thing that also often happens here is that the person you quizzed about focus will come back to you a week later with a comment like;
“That was a good question you asked me the other day, I thought about it and I’m going to give a new approach a go. I’ve always wanted to be more focused, just didn’t know how. So yeah, thanks for the nudge”.
Life, it’s a funny old game.
4. Decisiveness
You have already made a number of decisions just in reading this article. You’re making one right now, to keep reading it. Every second we are making choices, many of them off our conscious radar. But when the stakes go up, we can freeze.
Being a great CEO requires understanding where your ‘sweet spot‘ is between reckless impulsivity and casual abandon when making decisions. The place where you can make those hung calls in a timeframe that works. Too slow and nothing happens, too fast and you risk making the wrong choice. Who can forget this famous decision point?
Development of this skill comes down to ongoing development and refinement of your value set, as when decisions need to happen, it is this we fall back on.
For instance, if you got a call right now and someone you love had been in an accident, you’d be out the door.
Why?
Yes, the situation is extreme, but what’s happened is a decision has been made based on a value. You value this persons well-being and so that value has trumped the current task.
If you want to make faster and higher quality decisions, become crystal clear with your personal, organisational and moral values. The clearer you are on these, the easer they are to language for you, the clearer every decision path will become and the more decisive you will feel.
You can further understand your value set now. Currently, you’re reading this. It has (flatteringly of course) managed to resonate some value in your mind. But what is it you value that’s decided it’s is a good idea?
Do you value professional development? Do you enjoy broadening your mind? Being challenged or questioned? Could it also be you value wasting time online or avoiding meetings? Values can be both useful and not, the reason you’re here need not be resourceful.
Close your eyes for a second, take a breath and ask yourself, ‘what can be said about me that I am reading this article?’ trust the first few words your subconscious coughs up. They may or may not make sense, but whatever they say, it’s reflective of something you value.
When we know what and who we stand for, decisions aren’t then always easy to follow-through on, but they become much clearer as to which path serves the greater good.
Any CEO that can demonstrate a willingness and track record of being decisive, even if they were wrong, becomes highly sought-after.
5. Adaptability
Being adaptable has much to do with how open our mind is to something new. How willing are you to try a new restaurant or experience? Or even better, something you repeat often – a new coffee shop, favourite meal or author?
How open would you be to exploring something different when that something has worked for you for a very long time?
Wherever you feel your level of openness is here, it will likely be a good reflection of how you approach decisions when the stakes are higher.
We are often approached in the big chair to try new things, or asked to adapt to changing conditions. They can be as diverse as they are complex, but oftentimes it is our own beliefs about change or the unknown that colour our perception. The larger the new ‘thing’ is, the more our own ego can in fact work against us.
Try asking yourself this the next time someone suggests something new to you – doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, a rep, anyone.
“If I ran with this idea, what might I think about it a month from now?”
We can often see more opportunities (and potholes) when we visualise ourselves reflecting back on the change, rather than being the one in the moment needing to making it.
To practice being open to considering options from different perspectives, even the ones we decline, will make us more willing to see avenues and possibilities that we would have otherwise missed.
Conclusion
All of these traits (plus many more) play out as part of our ego, our psyche. They are neither positive nor negative, simply assets or challenges depending how we engage and develop them.
It is entirely up to us to either do the work to understand and master them, or allow the randomness of the subconscious to influence and sway our decisions.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it and I’d welcome the conversation, feedback and experiences you’ve had furthering yourself as a leader.
Thank you for reading!
Paul
Paul Charter is a specialty CEO coach helping leaders reach target metrics by mastering self-awareness and interpersonal communication.