Self-Aware Leadership

The self-aware leadership sounds a bit like an oxymoron.

You know what your intentions are when you do what you do and say what you say. So of course you’re self-aware of yourself.

BUT, are you really aware of all that you need to stay on top of to flawlessly execute your business strategy?

Ooh, maybe not, and you wouldn’t be alone. As today’s guest, Robert Courser, author of Line of Sight: The Five Keys for Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty, explains.

What You’ll Discover About Self-Aware Leadership:

* The missing piece of self-aware leadership

* How employee surveys contribute to self-aware leadership

* How self-aware leadership lets you work “on” your business, not just “in” your business

* Why self-aware leadership is essential for strategy alignment and execution

* And much more

Guest: Robert Courser 

Robert Courser is a CEO advisor who has been helping small and medium-sized enterprises scale up for the past twenty years.

In his book, “Line of Sight: The Five Keys for Strategic Execution In An Age of Uncertainty,” Robert draws on stories and anecdotes from his clients to share the simple tools and insights that help free up the growth potential of leaders and their companies.

Classically trained as a culinary chef, Robert knows about delivering excellence in a high-pressure environment.

In his inimitable, no-nonsense voice, Robert emphasizes the importance of internal alignment, of having resources in the right place at the right time, and of self-aware leadership to execute flawlessly.

An avid outdoorsman, he lives outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Risk Management episodes.

Contact Robert and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

Also visit Line of Sight.

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How Self-Aware Leadership Contributes to Strategic Execution

The self-aware leadership sounds a bit like an oxymoron. You know what your intentions are when you do what you do and say what you say. So of course you’re self-aware of you, but are you really aware of all that you need to stay on top of flawlessly execute your business strategy? Ooh, maybe not, and you wouldn’t be alone. As today’s guest explains. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.

I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got another amazing guest for you today. He’s Robert Courser. Robert is a seasoned expert in the fields of strategy, execution, leadership, and business transformation who’s been helping small and medium sized enterprises scale up for the past 20 years. He’s also the coauthor of Line of Sight The Five Keys for Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty.

And a fun fact about Robert is that he’s classically trained as a culinary chef, so he’s well versed in delivering excellence in a high pressure environment. And I’m looking forward to having him serve up some easy to digest, bite size tips on the type of self-aware leadership we need to succeed.

So let’s have him join us now. Welcome to Business Confidential Now Robert.

Hi Hanna, thanks for having me.

It’s good to have you. As a classically trained culinary chef, you’re self-aware of the importance of having the right ingredients in the right amount and introducing them in the right order to create a delicious dish that leaves us wanting more. Now, if we translate that into running a business, what type of self-aware leadership and alignment of ingredients do we need to succeed in order to execute our strategies successfully as business owners?

Well, there are five keys to execution. Before I dive into that though, let’s talk about self-awareness myopically. So 95% of the population believe that they’re self-aware. Do you have any idea what the actual number is?

Something less than 95%?

It’s about 15%. And the gap is that people have a basic understanding of their needs, behaviors, their drives. But that’s only half of self-awareness. The other half is how do those needs, behaviors and drives interact and impact others? And that’s the gap.

And so often the visionary, the CEO, has this goal, this desired outcome. And it tends to be the best kept secret in the organization. They know it so well. They don’t have a tendency not to communicate it. The first thing that we always say is the relentless overcommunication of mission, vision, strategic intent, the goal, and the desired outcome and what we’re going to do to achieve it. Okay.

And what else you need? More than that, right?

You do. When we break it down into the five keys of execution, there’s strategic understanding. Do I understand the strategy? Does my team understand it? Does the company? Is it important for employees to know it? Leadership. Are we credible to lead the execution of strategy? How do we do with change management? Do we always do what we say we’re going to do? Balance metrics are we measuring the right stuff? Are what we measuring prioritizing day to day work for all employees?

Let’s keep it focused on the things that really matter. And then activities and structure I mean, is strategy prioritizing day to day work for all employees? What do we do or not do to deliver on that value prop that pushes the needle across the finish line and then human capital? I mean, do we have the right people? Is learning and developing going on? Are we building bench and depth within the organization? Those are the five keys, the biggest levers that if we execute on them, we achieve that desired outcome, that goal.

Well, I could certainly see how they’re all important and they all make a contribution. But in your experience, what part of self-aware leadership is more challenging now that we, in the title of your book, have an Age of Uncertainty? What makes it worse?

So the fact that it’s uncertain, we have a natural tendency to want to build in nimbleness and agility into that strategy. And I found it as we pivot and Perry on that, the communication of it lacks. The biggest thing is what is the strategy and how are we going to execute it and then communicate it through the organization. That’s the biggest gap that I always see.

And so what do you think the best solutions are? I mean, people think they’re communicating, right?

Well, the science says someone needs to see something at least seventeen times before it sinks in, whether they hear it or it’s sight control signs, that kind of thing. So, I mean, once you’ve solidified the goal, that will dictate everything else, that will dictate the strategy, the human capital strategy. So once the goal, the desired outcome is set, then the mission, the vision and strategic intent will support that.

And then it’s the relentless communication of it from town halls, from manager meetings, starting off every meeting with the strategic intent of the organization, every employee should be able to tell you the strategy throughout an entire organization.

How do you know it’s really getting through? Town halls are one thing, but how are you going to make every employee repeat that? I mean, I’m a little bit at a loss for the communication strategy. Let’s go dive a little bit deeper into that.

Sure. So we leverage a tool called the Line of Sight. And the line of sight is a survey that we send out to every stratum in the organization the executive team, the managers, the employees, the board, the sales engine. And it asks them twenty-nine questions, around five keys of execution. And we get a baseline of where the company is and the gaps between that. And then we target our communication.

So we do corrective action and then we pulse check and pulse checks. Take thirties. It’s one, three five questions. And we actually get live optics. So whether or not our efforts are actually moving the needle if the communication strategy is working if they’re hearing it.

Well, could you give me an example? I mean, that’s pretty high level stuff. But in terms of implementation, can you give me an example of how this was put into action without naming company names? We don’t need to go into something confidential like that. But sure, an example of where your survey identified a gap, the type of gap, and then specifically how you went about bridging it.

Absolutely. So we were working with a large boat builder, and we administered the Line of sight survey, and we got a snapshot of where they currently were. When we looked at the leadership team, 60% of the leadership team were confident that they didn’t know what the strategy was. And when I saw it, I was like, whoa, um, let me investigate this.

So I talked to them and I got him on a zoom and turns out they didn’t have a strategy. Their strategy was to grow. We need to hit a thousand boats a year. And that’s not a strategy. That’s a goal. That’s a desired outcome. Some of the corrective action was we held a two day strategic offsite where we set mission, vision, strategic intent.

We actually changed the go to market strategy on four other boat lines. And then we held a town hall. We had management meetings where the mission vision, strategic intent was discussed and on a monthly cadence, we did pulse checks to see those efforts were actually moving the needle. It uncovered some other problems.

And what we found was people weren’t showing ownership of the work that they were doing. Everything was getting pushed down the line. And what we kind of uncovered was we needed to do a boat show. We held a friends and family boat show set up the same way they would participate in any boat show, and they got to the pride that came out of that corrective action. And the fact that they saw them there were ladders on them. They get up, they can look at them. They were lit.

What we saw was there was a reduction of pushing rework down the line. They’re like, I’m not sending this out of my spot until it’s completely perfect. And that meant quality control at the end of the line, much fewer reworks and quicker to market with their boats built better.

So if we put that in terms of self-aware leadership, how would you describe that?

The entire leadership team wasn’t aware that they had a strategy. They were so bogged down with rapid growth and meeting demand that it was just we had to hit a number. There wasn’t a strategic thought behind that. They didn’t have time to work on their business. They were stuck working in it and they lost sight of the strategy.

And do you find that that’s a typical hiccup if you will. It’s so.

Very common.

Yes. Is that the most common one?

I mean, when you look at a founder led business or, kind of a startup, that founder CEO builds that company to be ran the way they want to run it. They tend to be very strategic, big picture, not extremely detail oriented. So you lose a lot of those things. And, if they could continue to scale their business, they would.

That’s why majority of companies, once they get to a certain level and they start experiencing some atrophy they sell the company, whether it’s the private equity or to another business group. If they could continue to scale it, they would. And the gap is they’re not working on the business. They’re working in it. They’re not being strategic about the allocation of resources and time. They don’t achieve what they’re trying to achieve.

Well, how do they snap out of it?

First, they got to admit there’s a problem. They have to. You know what? They’re what they want to have happening isn’t happening. And they don’t know why. It’s not. That’s the first thing. It’s letting go of the rope and some of the other tools that are out there and then doing a diagnostic, taking an objective look on where the gaps are.

So often when I sit down with the leadership team, I ask them where the gaps are. I get twelve different responses. It’s all their opinions. When you leverage data and tools, you get an objective look on where the gaps are.

And that’s where you come in. You have some tools that can be deployed here.

We do.

You do okay.

The line of sight tool and methodology itself.

All right. And The Line of Sight is the book The Five Keys to Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty. You’ve got these tools. What prompted you to write the book?

Some of the work that we’ve been done with clients and stuff and we wanted to own the category of execution. I want execution to be taught with the same vigor as strategy. And it’s currently not. When we scale businesses and we help our clients scale and achieve their goals, it’s all about execution.

And execution boils down to alignment. And that’s what that’s what the book is all about. I mean, it’s getting the word out there and then driving interest to use these types of tools to solve problems.

Well, what seems to be the biggest problem with the alignment?

Well, it’s all of the five keys. I mean, it’s leadership doing what they’re saying they’re going to do. It’s, you know, the work prioritizing. Doing the right things. It’s do we have the right people to execute on this. And we’re measuring the right stuff that drives the behavior we’re trying to achieve. So it’s more of a holistic approach.

It’s a holistic approach. Yeah. Well, what happens when you find out that you don’t have the right people?

The decision needs to be made. I will do everything in our power to give tools, training, and support to bridge gaps. And maybe we have to put someone in a different role where they don’t have to behave so differently. That comes natural to them.

So I mean, say you have a great person and they’re in the wrong role. I mean, you want to get rid of them. They have the tribal knowledge of the organization. It’s how do we put them in a role where they don’t need to behave any differently. That comes naturally to them. How do we free them up for their highest and best use?

What kind of pushback do you get from senior management when you come in with these concepts and ideas? I would imagine it’s not the easiest thing for them to accept and to develop more self-aware leadership if they think they already are. I mean, the one thing about the founders and business owners, especially as they get larger, I mean, there’s a lot of ego and sometimes hubris involved, and it’s really difficult to overcome that.

It is. And I mean, might not be the right client for us to work with. I mean if someone has zero self-awareness, they’re extremely dominant. They’re going to do it this way, even if it’s not working. I don’t know how to fix that. There will come a time when they accept what they’re doing, isn’t achieving what they want to achieve, and then they tend to be more receptive.

So how would people find you if they were looking for your expertise? What type of factors would they be looking for in terms of a consultant or an advisor? What characteristics?

They’re looking for someone that can solve their problem. I mean, they can take an objective look at where the gaps are and then give them prescriptions and the tools and training and support to solve them. Our methodology is all about helping them create an environment of self-inspection and self-correction.

I like that phrase self inspection and self-correction. So tell me more about the type of systems you put in place.

So I leverage two tools. I leverage a behavioral analytic called predictive index. And we use it to put the right people in the right role. And once you have them, how do you keep them? How do you use it to lead and manage them and communicate best? We use it for teams, departments, divisions and then the line of sight assessment. It’s not episodic.

We get that baseline of where they’re at and then it’s the continuous. Here’s the gap. Let’s do this corrective action and then let’s measure to see if it works. So on a monthly cadence they will run pulse checks to see if their efforts are actually moving the needle and gaining more alignment around their desired outcome.

So any suggestions to keep people from backsliding into old habits?

Accountability. Holding accountable. So we’re not going to do what we used to do because it’s easy.

Robert, what’s the most important thing you’d like people to take away from your book, Line of Sight the five Keys for Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty.

We have to measure. You have to take the subjectivity out of the decision making process, and you have to use data to make those decisions. It’s a mindset. It’s pivoting away from. This is what my gut’s telling me to here’s the data. Here’s what makes sense. This is what we need to do to achieve our goals.

Are all the people factors really subject to reducing to numbers?

So we use the people deal people data analytics to do that. You’re familiar with the golden rule treat people the way you want to be treated.

Yeah, well, there’s a platinum rule, too.

Yeah. The platinum rule is treat people the way they need to be treated. We leverage this human capital data to treat people the way they need to be treated. And when you do it for 30, 60, 90 days, that changes the culture. That person will walk through a wall for you. Be like best boss ever. Being led exactly how I need to be led.

It’s our responsibility as leaders and managers to tailor our approach to our direct reports, and it will pay off in spades. And it’s not a huge lift. It’s spending one, three, five minutes before you’re going to interact with them. Take a look at the way they’re wired, see how you are different. How do you convey this message differently?

So basically it’s about building some trust correct.

If there’s no trust in that leadership team, whether they can execute and manage the strategy, whether they do change management, it’s going to stall out the process and the trust building has to begin. I see this a lot in post-acquisition integration. A company gets bought. The employees aren’t aware that it’s going to happen. They feel done on to. And then there’s a rebuilding process of the trust that was eroded.

Well, definitely, because I mean in those kinds of acquisitions, typically they’re not given a whole lot of information up front until the deal is done. And then when it is, it’s like jumping off a high dive. They’re not sure really where they’re going to land, how much water is in the pool, or is there even water in the pool, or are they going to be restructured out? So yes, there’s a lot of fear.

And it’s easy to talk about trust and wanting it. Needing it. Absolutely. You need it. But there may not have been a lot of trust to begin with. And so that’s easier said than done, is, I guess, what I, what I’m trying to get across here, but . . .

100%.

I can definitely see where these five keys, the making sure people really understand the strategy and differentiating between a strategy and a goal, and having leadership that is credible, which is a lot where a lot of the trust comes in because they’re not going to trust you if you don’t trust them.

Having the relevant metrics, which in itself can be a challenge, making sure you’re measuring the right things because it’s easy to measure just for fun, measuring to say, look, we got all these stats, data, this, and that, but is it meaningful, is it relevant? And then to prioritize so we get the right ingredients in the right order. And then the human capital part that the continuous development. So those are all really, really important factors.

And I thank you for sharing them with us. It’s been insightful and I appreciate your time and thoughts about the need for self-aware leadership to succeed, because without that, you like you said, you get to a certain level and then and then no more. You just keep spinning your wheels, could still be very profitable and successful, but not necessarily growing the business the way you would like or scaling it to its fullest potential.

So if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Robert Courser, his work, and especially his book Line of Sight The Five Keys for Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty, that information, along with a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode of Business Confidential Now. So until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

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