Stephen H Baum Leadership

As the year draws to a close, it seems useful to review the what my CEOs took home from our Group meetings and tried back at the office (see link below). Our group is one of more than 600 worldwide in the largest CEO membership organization.

Vistage Internatonal CEO Membership Organization

This year, as always, some of the techniques introduced into our group meetings by world class expert workshop leaders (and some that have been proven in other Vistage CEO groups) had “take home value.” In fact, individual “bosses” reported success within their organizations with four different exercises.

One of these is Tribal Leadership in which different approaches to leading segments of the workforce differentiated by their world view — levels of negativity or positivity about their own life, the lives of others and how the world works. We highly recommend reading the book by Dave Logan.

Tribal Leadership

Another is “issue processing” in which someone makes himself/herself vulnerable by presenting a real, important and sensitive issue. In round one, others ask questions of fact and clarification. In a second round, listeners provide feedback.  Finally, the facilitator asks the presenter to say and write down their take-aways and the actions to which they are committed. Using this tool focuses more on facts, incents people to prepare more concise issue statements and engage others in substantive discussion. CEOs who took this home found it took the level of meeting up several notches. If you want to know more about this Vistage tool, leave your comment and email address.

A third is the roundtable exercise conducted each meeting that binds us together and keeps continuity in each other’s lives. In our group, I call it “Being in Each Other’s Movie.” It is simply revealing something about themselves that others might not know (a recent event or action or experience)  plus an activity outside of work in which they engaged with another in the room. As my behavior professor in business school said: “You will get a lot more done if you know the motivations and expectations of others in the room And it is harder to demonize someone whom you actually know.”

Finally, some CEOs have taken home an exercise called “Stickman” which accomplished the same growth of understanding others as individual whole people rather than occupants of a job. They have found this applicable in breaking down barriers and building better teams in sales and operations.

Leaders understandably tend to focus on the task at hand and the results. But leadership is about getting others to do what needs to be done, doing it eagerly and doing it well. That means leading the togetherness and motivation as well as the tasks and outcomes. Hugh performing leaders continually look for new tools for doing this. Membership in Vistage involves experience with such tools.

That’s my view. What’s yours?