This brief comes from two disparate worlds that offer an important lesson for CEOs. First, in listening to Ron Carter, the eminent jazz bassist, discuss what made a music producer brilliant at getting the most from musicians and producing notable music, he said the producer “wouldn’t know a note if it hit him in the head but he knew the [right] sound when he heard it”. Carter goes on to note that this producer would both direct the shape of the music and suggest musicians that were right for each session.
The second was a conversation I was having with a English Premier League coach who said the two interconnected things that he does that drive the team’s success is having empathy for his players and staff, and thinking about what team to deploy on the pitch each week. He actually said that he and his staff think about team makeup “every two hours”.
Knowing your team and having the right people in the right roles for where your organization is in the moment is both critical and hard and a necessary function of the CEO. Put in different terms, the CEO needs to be the casting director, producer and coach at all times. Let’s briefly look at these two pieces, the team and empathy…
Team Membership—be it a music producer, a sports team coach or a casting director, WHO is on the team, playing what part in what role is key to making great music, producing an amazing play or film, or winning the game. The CEO has to be thinking about, to paraphrase Jim Collins in Good to Great, having the right person in the right seat on the right bus. Needs change in organizations and what might have been right at one stage may not be right at another. Having a flexible mindset to adjust resources over time, having a strategy for succession for key roles, helping members think about their fit, openly discussing the talent strategy that supports the business strategy are all the CEO’s responsibility.
Empathy, commonly defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is the adjacent function and a cornerstone trait of emotional intelligence and thus leadership. When further queried on why empathy, the Premier League Coach responded, I need to understand the emotional state of my players at all times. Is someone troubled by something at home, not fully present, and so on, all of which will impact how they perform on the pitch. Leaders need to be able to understand and relate to their team members to be able to motivate and get them to perform at their best.
At Hoola Hoop we coach CEOs develop the capacity to know their team while thinking about the team’s shape as it progresses. Successful strategies are as much about what you are doing as who is doing it!
Marc Maltz
Elevate your executive potential with executive coaching that empowers leaders. Hoop-on!
#ceocoaching, #executivecoaching, #hoolahoop, #emotionalintelligence
