Advanced Executive Leadership

It’s safe to say that there’s a lot of noise that leaderships teams are confronted with and a lot of triaging to determine what needs to be stay on the exec’s desk and what can reasonably be delegated somewhere else in the organisation.In today’ podcast I’m joined by two dear friends and colleagues, Bryan Sampson and Pauline Holland as we riff on the challenges that leadership teams are facing and how we best offer help and support to these teams.With more disruption, complexity and noise, we all agree that the quality of conversations that leadership teams are able to have determines how well they’re able to deal with these pressures. But there are also challenges in executive teams being able to take the time to have more expansive, sensemaking conversations. How can this be resolved? If you like to find out more about how Waldencroft could help your executive team, please reach out to us here: https://waldencroft.com/contact/

In Waldencroft, our work with executive and senior leadership teams is based on our Integrative Framework of Team Effectiveness, or the IF-TE for short.It's a powerful framework that provides an overall picture of the components that influence the functioning of senior teams. And it seeks to explore how the connectivity between these impacts how the team are performing.As we engage with new research as it becomes available or as we assimilate our ongoing practical experience working with executive teams, we evolve our understanding of their developmental edge. When this happens, we put the IF-TE under scrutiny and iterate it to make it even better. We’ve just launched IF-TE 2.0 with some significant changes!The biggest change to the Integrative Framework of Team Effectiveness (IF-TE), is that we’ve further developed our idea of the importance of context. By this I mean the authorising environment, organisational culture, how the team reasons and actually does work and its attention to its own performance.That's what I explore in this edition of the podcast.If you'd like to find out more about the IF-TE, or if you would like to set up a call to explore working with Waldencroft, you can contact us on https://waldencroft.com/contact/

Yvon Chouinard, the 84-year-old founder of the billion-dollar outdoor wear company, Patagonia, looks like an unlikely business tycoon. And in a move that sent ripples around the globe late last year, he made a move that proved he isn’t. He gave the company away. The reason: to divert all of Patagonia’s future profits saying: Earth is now our only shareholder. His move is in stark contrast to the ideology of the most influential economist of our time, Milton Friedman, who admonished those interested in corporate social responsibility that the social responsibility of a business, is to make a profit. Who is right, and what does this say about the kinds of challenges that executives are grappling with in a world that may be finally waking up to the need to create just outcomes for all stakeholders?

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Bruno Pinho, Managing Director at TechnipFMC. I’ve just completed a strategic foresight exercise with Bruno, his leadership team and a small group of their ‘leaders of the future’ to create a mechanism to spot emerging trends so that they have an early warning system for events and issues as they are unfolding. So that the team are able to be agile and responsive to issues before they reach the mainstream.

When challenges arise it’s been noticed that two contrasting team types emerge, resilient teams and brittle teams.Resilient teams have each others’ backs. They see adversity as an opportunity to improve: to learn, grow and create better preparedness for future set-backs. As teams grapple with increasing complexity and competition, resilient teams are much better placed to not just survive, but to thrive.So how are resilient teams likely to review the year? The more resilient teams don’t just do this informally. They stake a structured approach to review how they did so that they can augment their capacity to move forward stronger and more resilient.

The future doesn’t stay in the future. It meets us in the present in the form of projects that come to fruition, crises that catch us off guard, and events that upend our plans.You have a choice. Wait and see, scrambling to react as events unfold. Or anticipate what might be ahead. Agile, responsive and ahead of the curve.But how best to do this? Maybe it's time for your company to consider a Chief Future Officer. 

Meet Robbie, a 50-something second-time CEO. He’s values led, competent and trustworthy. And he’s well-liked and respected by his people and his team. But Robbie knows the challenges in his business and industry isn't a one-person job. How does he get his Executive Team ready? Find out in this episode.

Unless you’ve been on holiday to Mars you won’t have missed that we in the UK had a catastrophic ‘mini budget’ that effectively crashed the markets and the Bank of England had to step in to save our pension funds. The people that you rely on to deliver your services are under an enormous amount of stress and pressure as they are squeezed financially from multiple places. With a fuel price and cost of living crisis exacerbated by inflation at over 10%, ordinary people are feeling the pain. The organisation that you lead is nested within a society and that society is currently under strain. That puts the issue into your in-tray. Systemic issues show up as issues. You may already be experiencing it as a pay-demand issue. It seems to me that executive leaders will be tested this season in a subtle but very profound way. If, as an executive leader, you are attuned to the challenges your people face, you have the chance exercise consequential leadership. But if you respond with a lack of attunement, I’d ask, what is your leadership actually for? I mention the 'Still Face' experiment in this episode. You can see a version of it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTTSXc6sARg

It’s usual for me to hear from a client or a potential client that the issues and challenges faced by their executive team are unique. Are they? My two guests, Chief People Officers in very different organisations believe there's one thing that's necessary and consistent in whatever organisation. That is, the centrality of the tone from the top.

You don’t need to be a chess GrandMaster to have heard about the hullabaloo that kicked off last week - at the Champions Chess Tour - between the world chess champion, Norwegian, Magnus Carlsen and 19-year-old Hans Niemann. I listened to another chess GrandMaster make sense of it. And in this episode I explore what this means for the way we make sense of other issues.