COACHES CORNER
“I WAS TOTALLY
BLINDSIDED BY THESE
RESULTS.”—FORMER
BUSINESS OWNER
Coaches Corner: Curing CEO Disease
Y
ou have CEO disease. Yes, you
do! As the leader of your business,
it’s unavoidable. CEO disease is
the information vacuum around
you that is created when people
withhold important (frequently unpleasant)
information from you. That’s right. People
aren’t telling you everything! Either they’re
glossing over important details or shielding
you from stuff you need to know. If you’ve
ever been surprised by problems like
sudden employee turnover or by a good
client withholding payment, you’ve been
stricken by CEO disease. Someone in your
company knew the details but chose not to
tell you. When you think about it, what you’re
missing is candid feedback. Now while you
could ask yourself, “Why didn’t they tell me?”,
I think it’s more productive to simply accept
that CEO disease is a reality for you and
design your meeting framework to ensure
openness and candor.
Yet as prevalent as CEO disease is regarding
“business issues,” it’s nothing compared
to the complete absence of candid
feedback you get on your performance
as a leader. Ever have someone tell you
how uninspiring your last management
“GET THE FACTS
BEFORE THE
FACTS GET YOU.”
—PLAQUE ON OFFICE WALL
OF P. JOHN ALDRED, FOUNDER,
ENERFLEX SYSTEMS
team meeting was? I thought not. How
about how poorly you delegated that last
assignment? Researchers have found this
lack of performance feedback is a huge
impediment to leadership improvement.
How can you become a better leader when
you can’t find out what you should get better
at, or what you should stop doing? Your
position as leader makes you the least likely
person in the company to receive candid
feedback; however, you—more than anyone
else in your company—need this feedback.
Believe you already know what you have to
work on and that you can do it yourself? Not
so. According to the research, CEO disease
is rarely cured through self-diagnosis.
Detailed studies have found most leaders
overrate their own leadership performance.
Not surprising; we all have blind spots,
leaders included.
Another leadership false belief is that the
effort to develop new leadership skills isn’t
worth it because one can’t change. Simply
not true. Leadership is a learned activity, so
if you have the will, you can learn new skills.
In fact, in my experience, a motivated leader
can learn new skills very quickly.
So how do you cure CEO disease? Simply
put, it’s a process that starts by getting
candid feedback from your colleagues,
stakeholders, and direct reports. A well-
conceived,
360-degree
assessment
that preserves the anonymity of the
respondent is essential. Happily, we’ve
found that employees love to be part of this
process. Their feedback, together with an
individualised action plan, will put you on the
road to recovery from CEO disease. u
Richard (Rick) Holbrook is a Trainer and
Certified Coach with Gravitas Impact Premium
Coaches. He works with CEOs to help them
create an executable growth strategy that
everyone in their company understands and
is aligned with. Rick has coached and trained
more than 80 companies in Western Canada
since leaving the corporate world in 2004.
FALL 2018
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