We look just like ordinary adults,
but we actually behave a lot more like children, acting out, throwing
tantrums, and generally making life miserable for everyone around us.
It's
pretty much the same thing with executives and business leaders. The
only difference is that, instead of just messing up their own lives like
ordinary people, dysfunctional leaders influence the lives,
livelihoods, and investment portfolios of hoards of employees,
customers, and investors.
If we took a virtual snapshot of all the boardrooms we've been in over the
years, we'd estimate that maybe a quarter of the executives and directors we've worked with have gotten themselves prematurely stuck in one of the
following stages of leadership development:
Stage 1: Sponge. You
listen and learn from everyone and every situation as you try to figure
out how things work in the real business world. Just like a baby
learning to walk, you look really cute stumbling around like the
clueless neophyte you are. The good news is you have no real
responsibility, so you're not in a position to cause any real damage.
You just fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again until
you get it right.
Stage 2: Proof-of-concept. Believing
you're actually capable of accomplishing something besides making a
complete fool of yourself by promising the world and delivering next to
nothing, you set out to prove yourself worthy of the management title
that, in all likelihood, you've already been granted.
Stage 3: Delivery. Congratulations,
you've somehow managed to deliver the goods and succeed in doing
something that can credibly be viewed as a business success. In other
words, you made money for somebody and got rewarded with a nice fat
bonus. You think you've finally arrived. Won't your spouse be thrilled?
Stage 4: Reset.
A little full of yourself, you try a repeat performance using the same
tricks that worked the first time and realize--too late--that you're
going to need a bigger playbook to consistently make it in the big
leagues. Failure doesn't sit well with you. In fact, it's downright
depressing. So you set out to make sure that never happens again.
Stage 5: Maturity. After
a few iterations of the third and fourth stages, you finally begin to
get how the real world works. You realize you're just like everybody
else, meaning you succeed at some things, fail at others, and learn from
everything. It slowly dawns on you that being a mature leader isn't
that much different from the first stage, except experience has given
you confidence and, with any luck, a sense of humor and humility. Win or
lose, you look good doing it -- and deserve that bonus, right?
So, think it over. Are you stuck in one of the stages or know somebody who is? Fill us in.
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