Insights

Sustainability is one of today’s buzzwords. We all have it on our minds, individually and collectively.

It is the issue of our time. It is the issue of businesses and organizations, ensuring that their strategy and culture balance people, planet, and profit. At its core, sustainability is about empowering all life within our ecosphere, human, animal and plant, to coexist, sustain and thrive. Organizations play a significant role as key contributors and participants in society. Addressing sustainability is on the agenda, but we know our pace of change is simply not fast enough to meet the timelines needed to truly turn things around.Some argue that we are already too late. This week, Sir David Attenborough said, “It’s up to us to put before the nations of the world what needs to be done. Now is the moment” (BBC News). However, at this moment, the sustainability strategy is simply not being executed at the level we need. And for a while now, this word – sustainability, and what it represents, has been on my mind.

The Four Greatest Coaching Conversations can be read in many ways. It carries insights that prevail and transcend arguably all contexts. One that needs to be acknowledged right now is sustainability. This book isn’t the answer to the world’s sustainability issues, but it does provide the fundamental insights necessary to find an answer, your answer, to shifting mindsets that will successfully drive sustainability in your world.

At BTS, whilst we have a sustainability agenda, I am guilty of ignoring it in my day-to-day work. Most recently, one of my direct reports asked me if she could deliver a pro-bono workshop, which she previously ran for our team at a local school during work time. I remember my immediate reactive thoughts: “aah, that is a good cause. But this is going to cost time and money. It is going to be too hard to sign this off. It will set a precedent for the rest of the team. I need time to think this through.” It was too easy to simply ignore the heart and mind in front of me, wishing to express her social responsibility. Our social responsibility. Why was this happening?

Taking a step back, many organizations are still working out their sustainability strategy. Others have one, like we do. It doesn’t seep through all levels of the business at all times.

To deliver a strategy successfully, we believe that an organization must consider each of the following elements of the equation:

Execution of strategy = Alignment x Mindset x Capability

To create a sustainable business culture, we need to align the business at all levels (people, structures, processes, including aligning with outside institutions and influencing the political arena). In speaking with our clients, when the sustainability agenda is not aligned nor embedded into the business strategy across all levels, it fails to have any concrete impact. We must shift mindsets, individually and culturally. We must develop the capabilities (the roles and skills needed to make it happen).

But how do we shift these mindsets, both on an individual and cultural level?

Well, this is the heart of The 4 Greatest Coaching Conversations. Based on research from thousands of coaching conversations, we identified the four types of mindsets that are the most important for unlocking leadership and action:

• Be-mindsets: These are conversations about getting over your limiting beliefs and acting from an empowered place
• Inspire-mindsets: These are conversations about releasing your sense of meaning, values and purpose
• Relate-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about empathizing and connecting, in order to overcome barriers that stop you from engaging hearts and minds
• Think-mindsets: These are coaching conversations about releasing your creativity when adapting to and solving business challenges that you face today

When researching the mindsets that can inhibit a sustainable strategy within businesses, we found these mindsets appearing most often (and in brackets, some truths from current studies):

• Apathy – I feel like giving up when experiencing the reality, a sense of powerlessness (instead of owning your power to influence change within and beyond)
• Abdication of responsibility – the real responsibility belongs to others, other leaders in the business, other organizations or other countries (as opposed to each person and organization taking their responsibility as a citizen of the world)
• Uninspired – I don’t feel I can make a difference, demotivated, especially when I see the real solutions are not in my capacity to solve (as opposed to seeing the reality that ‘no one person can solve it all, but a significant amount could be solved if each person were inspired to do at least one thing’)
• Meaningless – there’s no point (as opposed to seeing the change we can meaningfully make)
• Avoidance or denial – it’s too much/overwhelming when I think about it or it’s not really that bad, and I end up avoiding (instead of allowing your heart to be impacted and touched, and acting on your compassion)
• Separation – I see myself or the business as separate from the environment (as opposed to seeing them as an interconnected participant)
• Too busy – I haven’t got time/it’s too much effort, my job is already at risk (instead of thinking how the job can sustainably adapt to the changes and how to create win-win)
• Too costly – it’s too costly to seriously consider (as opposed to thinking about creative solutions that already exist that reduce cost)

Each one of these mindsets above falls into the four groupings that we refer to in the book: Be, Inspire, Relate and Think. For each mindset, we share researched and tested coaching methodologies that help you to shift your mindset and release leadership. The intention of the book is to share this research and methodology with the world, which is targeted towards line managers, businesses and coaches, who can then unlock leadership in a variety of contexts: sustainability, diversity, and work-life balance.

In the example with my direct report, my Think mindset got in the way – my limiting ‘cost’ mindset didn’t see the creative win-win for business and people. Thankfully I caught it. My direct report is delivering the workshop. The cost to the business? Three hours of time. The benefit? We impact a local school with some of our work, we touch their hearts and minds, our people are inspired by the difference that one person can make, my direct report will develop her skills, we honor our responsibility and act on our care for the society we operate in and are part of…the list goes on. A true win-win-win for people, planet and profit.

We can bring change, just one conversation at a time.

Old habits die hard, and that’s especially true for senior leaders who hold top roles inside their companies. Sam is a good example of this. Despite running one of the largest business units for his organization, he is the first to acknowledge that his own leadership style has held him back from advancing into even higher executive levels. His perspective? “I’m in a senior role and should be focusing on the strategy of my business. The reality is that I am still putting out fires and too involved in the day-to-day execution.”

Successful transitions are part of any leader’s career journey, and experienced leaders know adopting new behaviors and ways of leading as each role requires it are requirements for advancement. They also know that it isn’t enough to adopt new habits, but they must also remove the old ones. If this sounds like you, consider two habits that can hold great leaders back.

The Habit of Hiding

Paul is a leader who hides in plain sight. In meetings with his new executive peers, he struggles to get a word in edgewise and primarily plays the role of listener. Paul’s view is that he’s new to his role and this team and needs to be learning more. He wants a bit more time under his belt before speaking up. He’s also a self-described introvert and someone who doesn't like interrupting or jumping into conversation. The problem is that his CEO has a very different expectation of how he wants Paul to engage and interact. “Paul needs to find his leadership voice and I expect him to weigh in. I know he has good ideas, but by not sharing them, he’s losing credibility with his new peer group.”

Leaders hide, even very experienced ones. We hide when:

• We are unwilling to raise concerns in a group setting
• We are reluctant to challenge up
• We hunker down, spend too much time in our office, and prioritize getting our stuff done over building relationships
• We pretend we’re OK with something when we aren’t
• We use email instead of having a conversation
• We avoid or delay making tough decisions
• We get other people to deliver our difficult messages
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The Habit of Drifting

Drifting is easy to do. The reason for this is simple. Senior leaders tend to be spread incredibly thin and pulled into many different directions. The result is drifting away from those key areas that move the needle and matter, and instead, putting too much time and energy into areas that don’t create value. Do that too often, you lose momentum and waste days or weeks with nothing to show for it.

Lisa ran into this challenge when she was up for the CFO role at her global company. Despite being on the succession plan and her years of experience as Treasurer, she didn’t land the role. The feedback? She hadn’t done enough to move the needle in key areas within the finance function and there were questions about whether she would really be able to influence and have an impact at an enterprise level. Lisa doesn’t disagree: “As a finance leader, I should know better than anyone about the importance of paying myself first. But as I look back on it, I majored in the minors. I lost focus and got too caught up in responding to everyone’s requests, answering emails, and sitting in on meetings I didn’t need to attend. Certain priorities wound up taking a back seat.”

Here’s how to stop drifting:Build more focus into your day and week.

• Build more focus into your day and week.
• Watch for a tendency to please everyone.
• Count how often you say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’
• Cut your time responding to email in half.
• Pay yourself first. Each week identify 3 top priorities. Take action each day to advance.
• Get discipline over your distractions. Use your phone for purpose. Less scroll time.
• Identify decisions to make now and just make them.
• Remind yourself: It isn’t about intention, it’s about execution.
• Get honest about why you’re drifting: is it a lack of time or something else?

Getting promoted into a senior role is an achievement, but it will take more than past performance to deliver success now. Evaluate which new habits and behaviors you’ll need to be effective now and resist the temptation to fall back into the old behaviors that may be convenient or comfortable, but don’t reflect who you are anymore.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

BTS Sales Index January 2020 Update: -0.3

BTS Sales Index January 2020: 109.3 (-0.3%)December 2019* in the Economy

• Aggregate revenue of BTS 1000 decreased $10 billion, from $3.41 trillion in November to $3.40 in December
• The US added 145,000 jobs in December. Retail contributed 41,000 jobs during the holiday season
• Despite the end-of-year surge in retail shopping, Pier 1 Imports and Macy’s both announced store closures
• The unemployment rate held steady at 3.5 percent, marking the third record-low month of 2019
• Although this decade started and ended without a recession, growth during the past 10 years has been slower compared to previous booms
• The US and China reached a trade deal that will be signed by mid-January

*the January update is reflective of December 2019 data

Why

Line of business and sales leaders tasked with making strategic decisions don’t have a good measure of confidence when deciding to ramp up production or invest in customer relationships. Quarterly GDP numbers and the S&P 500 paint two different pictures of economic performance, the former too slow to incorporate new data and the latter too likely to overreact to investor sentiment.

We created the BTS Sales Index to give a simple and easy-to-understand predictive monthly metric that gives enterprise leaders the right vantage point by which to view their critical business decisions.

What

The BTS Sales Index represents the aggregate total revenue of the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the US in one simple to understand number.

How

As mentioned above, the BTS Sales Index is comprised of the total revenue of the largest 1,000 publicly traded companies incorporated in the US. Every month, we collect the total revenue reported by these companies and run the data through our custom-built indexing tool. The index uses the total revenue of the BTS 1,000 companies at the end of the second quarter of 2013 as its baseline because the economy showed signs of stable recovery. Unemployment was back to normal rates, housing prices remained steady, and stock prices were back to record levels.

Leading with Purpose, Part 1

Most CEOs I speak with are not 100% at peace with their company’s purpose. As the market, their people and their business evolve, so will their purpose. As some of the best companies of past and present show us, there is strength, and even magic, in a great company purpose. What is also clear, however, is that this magic does not come from just having a “purpose” or “vision,” but rather from how well a company is executing against their purpose.

When Southwest Airlines (which has been profitable for 45 consecutive years, and on FORTUNE’s list of World’s Most Admired Companies for 24 straight years) was first starting out, their mission was to make flying affordable.¹ They rallied their people on the idea that a grandmother should be able to affordably buy a ticket, at the drop of a hat, to get on a flight to see her new grandchild. This simple mission led to the “Southwest Effect,” which transformed the airline industry, and continued to be a lens with which the Southwest leadership team made key decisions.

Today, Southwest’s vision has evolved: “To become the world’s most loved, most flown, and most profitable airline.” And they are executing on this vision. They continue to drive superior shareholder returns against all industries on the S&P 500 (as they have for the past 44 years), and in 2018 were named the top low-cost airline in JD Powers customer survey reports for the second year in a row.

As the Southwest example highlights, great company purpose combined with a leadership team who will build the work-flows, culture, processes and metrics to live up to it can be an enormous employee motivator. But we have also experienced, both at BTS and with our global clients, that a good company vision and purpose on their own are not sufficient – employees need them to be even more personal to them as an individual. I remember a lunch I had twelve years ago with a 24-year old new hire who was my direct report. After some small talk he looked at me and said, “Why are you here? Why have you spent seven years with the same company?”

I’ll never forget that lunch. It was the first time I had been asked the question, and it was the beginning of a new decade where our employees were much louder and more active about wanting to reflect and spend time on our mission and purpose, linking it to their personal values and the impact they strived to have in the world. Luke, that 24-year old new hire, has made me and our company better as a result of his question.

In the last decade, there has been a growing emphasis in the business world on finding a deeper motivation to unlock greater meaning at work. For some this may sound ‘fluffy,’ or as one executive we spoke to commented, “Is this just the next version of the pursuit of vision and values? It sounds great on paper but too often makes little real difference as it tends to stay on the wall, rather than live in your heart.”

Yet your people spend the majority of their life at work and with colleagues. At its best, a sense of purpose is a way of bringing meaning to their work and understanding the contributions they are making to the company, as well as greater society. It makes sense, then, that employees who are clear on their personal and professional purpose end their work day invigorated and proud of what they’re doing instead of exhausted by mindless work that is bereft of real meaning.

According to a recent PWC study, 79% of business leaders believe that purpose is central to business success – but only 34% use their organization’s purpose as a guidepost for their leadership team’s decision-making. Signs that your workplace may be lacking organizational purpose are distracted employees and a lack of comradery. These are significant factors – so why don’t more organizations devote time to developing clear purpose and values? Well, developing organizational purpose is no easy task, and much of it starts with your own personal purpose. If you’re unsure of what exactly your own personal purpose is, have no fear – in the next two installments of this blog series, we will offer simple steps to help you uncover your personal and organizational purposes and get closer to leading through the lens of purpose.

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Leading with Purpose, Part 2

As we discussed in the first post of this blog series, purpose is an essential ingredient for business success and employee engagement today. Yet purpose is a nebulous concept, and often difficult to pinpoint. I know this firsthand. Around twelve years ago, a consultant in his early 20s joined the BTS San Francisco office where I was working, and I took him out to lunch. Within ten minutes of sitting down to lunch, he asked me, “So what’s your purpose? Why have you been at the firm for so long?” I’ll never forget it. I’d been at the company over six years, and that was the first time somebody asked me that. I felt it was a fair question, and yet I didn’t have an eloquent answer at the ready.

Coming up with a response, I started to talk about some of my guiding principles, things like learning and having fun, how I’m proud of the impact our work has on clients, and how I love building a team of leaders (or a business) that grows every year. The question from this new hire, though, who was probably ten years younger than me, put me on the spot and made me feel a bit inadequate as a leader. At first I did not have a crisp, compelling answer.

Since then I’ve been in many dinners with other executives from Fortune 500 companies to tech startups, who more and more frequently are being expected to lead their organizations with a clear purpose… and at the same time understand that each employee’s purpose and what motivates them is going to be slightly different than theirs, the firm’s and their peers’, and that’s okay. Once a leader or a firm has clarity of purpose it can be a beautiful energy and driving force, and should be the first lens with which leaders run their business.

So, how does one find a sense of purpose?

In truth, many people assume that only those who follow a vocation like medicine, teaching or work in the charitable sectors can have a true sense of purpose at work. Our experience, as well as much current research and writing, would suggest otherwise.

One simple way of looking at this is captured elegantly by the Japanese concept of Ikigai, or ‘The reason for being.’ The idea of Ikigai is that one’s sense of purpose lies at the intersection of the answer to four questions:

1. What do I love?
2. What am I good at?
3. What can I get paid for?
4. What does the world need?

Image from Forbes.com

Take these four questions and look at the organization you are already a part of. Use them to see if you are in touching distance of doing more purposeful work, whether it be at the core of what you do or as a part of work that sits slightly outside the current definition of your job. Whilst we may not get the ultimate answer to the purpose question from our current work, once we have identified our own Ikigai we can go in search of the more meaningful elements of our jobs and start shaping the agenda at work in a new way. In the next installment in this blog series, we will discuss how to use your personal purpose to shape your organizational purpose and lead with meaning.

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Leading with Purpose, Part 3

As we discussed in the first two posts in this blog series, finding your personal purpose is an essential ingredient of finding meaning in what you do. Once you start looking at your profession through a purposeful perspective, you very well may start to see business opportunities that you did not see before. As one executive we worked with in this space said “Once I realized that what I wanted was to help people live healthy and fulfilling lives, I started to see just how much potential there was in the work we do, even if it wasn’t driving the short-term numbers. Knowing what I stood for and seeing the need in the world meant that I was prepared to back new market opportunities because I knew it was the right thing, as well as ultimately good business. I was no longer prepared to live with the conventional wisdom inside the organization. Now we have opened up a whole new segment that is one of our most promising. Being more purposeful unlocked my courage and my creativity in ways that not much else could.”

Today, most executives agree that purpose is important. According to EY and HBR’s “A Business Case for Purpose,” 89% of executives say that an organization with a shared purpose will have higher employee satisfaction, and 84% say that business transformation efforts will have greater success if integrated with purpose. Despite this, only 39% say that their purpose is clearly articulated and understood in the organization. But for Millennials and the majority of employees these days, the expectation of a clear purpose is now the norm. If you don’t have it, they notice right away.

So, what can you do about this organizational purpose gap as a leader? Once you’ve uncovered your own sense of purpose, there are two next steps that you can immediately apply:

1. Reflect on the last time you talked to your team about purpose and what your purpose is. What motivates you the most? If it’s been more than a couple quarters (or longer) since you shared that, perhaps use an end of quarter celebration or a memo or some other upcoming communication to reflect. It could be along the lines of, “Many of you have asked me why I spend my time on X, why I’m still here, why I’ve spent so many years here…. So I just wanted to share what motivates me, what I’m passionate about, etc.” and welcome people to share for themselves what motivates them. It’s critical that you define it in your own words, and are completely authentic in it. Purpose is a double-edged sword – if it doesn’t feel authentic, it can create cynicism, but if it is genuine, it can be very inspiring.
2. Create a series of senior team conversations where people prepare and reflect on some of the recent moments they’re most proud of, the moments when they’re happiest at work and with the team. By doing this, people will uncover what truly motivates them – and you’ll find out a number of things about your team. To get the conversation started, sometimes it’s helpful to share your personal purpose as well as a few different purposes that have come from your peers to allow people to warm up to some of their reflections.

The Pursuit of Organizational and Personal Purpose in Parallel

Bridging the purpose gap and finding a way to pursue both organizational and personal purpose in parallel is where the power of finding meaning at work can drive true impact. If we look for strategic opportunities that present themselves as we try to tackle the worlds big challenges, there are suddenly thousands of ways that businesses can make a lasting difference and set themselves apart. Those businesses who are in pursuit of finding their purposeful advantage are fertile breeding grounds for meaningful careers and the delivery on the aspirational dream of great work doing great things.

We see reason for hope here. But only by looking at the purpose question as a driver of organizational advantage as well as by focusing on finding our own personal ‘Ikigai’ are we likely to avoid the search for purpose becoming another well intended promise that never quite delivers.

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Regardless of whether you’re presenting a business case internally or looking to sell a product or service to folks beyond your walls, it can be daunting to walk into these high-stakes scenarios. Senior leaders are notoriously busy and impatient, and you need succinct, targeted messages to win them over.

In the course of the work we do with senior leaders to help them communicate more persuasively, we find one somewhat surprising habit that can get them into trouble when communicating upwards with a call to action.

Take one example – a set of leaders we worked with from a global technology firm.  These leaders typically call on CIOs and other very senior leaders in the technology function to make the case to buy their products and services. In helping this group to prepare and practice their approach to presenting to this important audience, we found that they all started their presentations this way.

• “Thanks, everyone, for taking time out of your busy schedules to meet with me today.”
• “First of all, I wanted to say how very much I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to meet today.”

As we walked through the initial feedback session, the group felt this was a fine way to start – and one they often rely on in the room. But what stood out to me was the fact that their tone and language was overly deferential. It wasn’t engaging their audience as equals. As I shared with the group, “All of you need to be seen as trusted advisors, strategic partners, and peers to these leaders—rather than as deferential vendors.”

Being overly deferential can show up in a variety of ways. In many “communicating up” situations, high-potential leaders speak way too fast. This comes across as saying, “I know I’m not really worthy of your time, so I will hurry through my content as fast as I can to underscore that fact.” The problem highlighted above – thanking the audience too much – is very common across many different situations.

Some of the leaders we work with push back that this is a problem – they share comments along these lines: “I don’t see anything wrong with this. You need to be courteous.”

This is true, but there’s a big difference between being polite and professional, and using language that highlights the fact that the other party is more powerful and important. In the case of this group of technology leaders, they are all calling on very powerful folks—people who know more about being a CIO and more about their own company than these leaders do.

But what I suggested to them is that they need to remember that they’re the experts in their field and know way more than their prospects do about how to solve the types of problems that their products and services can solve. Furthermore, they know far more than their prospects do about how their fellow CIOs are dealing with these same issues. As I pointed out, “You are in a great position to come across as a strategic partner and peer.”

Being too deferential can hurt your business impact in so many ways. When you’re selling ideas internally or externally, you may not only lose the deal—you may lose future opportunities to have a seat at the table because you aren’t seen as a peer and a partner. You also show that you really don’t know how to communicate up. You can be branded as “not ready” for the next promotion, the next collaboration, or the next deal.

Keeping your deference at bay

Here are six steps to keep your deference in check:

• Don’t fawn over people for taking the time to meet with you. Your time is valuable too.
• Avoid the temptation to give a lengthy history or background. Remember that the best way to be courteous is by being ready to focus on the problems and opportunities that matter to them more than on your own agenda.
• Make the time worth their while by being concise. In just a few minutes, you should be able to cover what the problem or opportunity is, why THIS is the right thing to tackle NOW, and what your idea is for handling it.
• Allow ample time for questions and be ready to go where your audience wants you to go.
• Control your speaking pace. The more important the point you’re making is, the slower you should go.
• Limit your use of PowerPoint slides. Over-reliance on a deck will make it harder to connect personally and may send the message that you don’t really know your stuff.

This peer-to-peer approach literally levels the playing field, making it easier for you to score big when it comes to driving business results.

Only 9% percent of people who set New Year's goals actually achieve them, according to research by the University of Scranton. According to U.S. News, approximately 80% of resolutions fail by the second week of February. Whichever source you believe, the odds are not in favor of sticking to New Year’s Resolutions.

Whether it’s time, resources, competing priorities, or over-committing, there are plenty of challenges that get in the way of sticking to plans to advance or to improve aspects of your life over the course of the year. It’s not surprising that many of the leaders we work with fall prey to these same obstacles when it comes to finding the time and energy to invest consistently in their own growth and development when they have so much on their plates.

With that in mind, here are a handful of ideas to help you stick to your goals and maintain your focus for the next 12 months -tips that have resonated with the leaders I coached last year:

‍Make sure your goals are not an unsustainable death march

‍Every January, my wife and I chuckle about how crowded the gym is. “Just wait,” we’ll say. “All of the New Year’s Resolution people will drop off within a month or so.” And they do. Why? My view is that people tend to make unrealistic, unsustainable goals for themselves. If you start off the year vowing that you’re going to work out an hour every day or eat nothing but salad for lunch and dinner without fail, you’ve probably set out on a death march. And if that’s how it feels, you’ll give it up pretty fast. Instead, decide what’s realistic, and then stick to it, barring something as extreme as a hospitalization or an overseas flight.

‍Commit to trying out new behaviors for two months

‍Research suggests that it takes a while for a new habit to stick. I met with a mentee the other day who really needs to change up some habits around exercise and work breaks. My advice was to set that realistic goal and commit to it 100%--but only through February. At that point, she could allow herself to reflect on tweaking her routines… and in the meantime, she’s probably done some things long enough to turn them into habits.

‍Remember that energy starts with great sleep habits

‍Due to one obstacle described to me often by leaders trying to elevate their effectiveness, I read a good book this year called The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix it? by W. Chris Winter, MD. I used to get sick a couple of times a year, and finally realized that it happened when I overdid it at work, got a little ill… and then kept overdoing it. I stopped, learned to get extra sleep when I got run down, and I haven’t had a sick day in my seven years at Bates.

Here are some great tips from that book:

• Try to wake up at the same time every day to get in a good sleep rhythm
• Exercise in the morning: It’s best for most people’s energy
• Avoid looking at screens an hour before bed time—or use a blue light filter if you must
• Make your room as dark as possible, and, especially, don’t sleep with the TV on!
• Commit to the number of hours of sleep you need each night: Catching up on the weekend doesn’t really work

Stop deciding every day whether or not you will exercise

‍This one changed my life about 18 months ago. My wife and I wanted to lose some weight, so we started with a sustainable micro-goal: “Let’s do what it takes to not GAIN any weight each week!” To make sure I could hit that goal, I vowed to work out six days a week, 30 minutes minimum. Through this schedule and a few dietary tweaks, I lost 18 pounds in six months.

The key was I realized that I had developed a terrible habit: lying in bed each morning, deciding if I would go to the gym. I would mull how well I slept… whether I had a tickle in my throat, and so on, and then I was sunk. Instead, I now put my gym clothes, keys, and gym ID in the bathroom before I go to sleep.  When I wake up, I just get dressed and get out the door, and before you know it I’m done with my daily commitment.

‍Load the deck in your favor when planning when to do what each day

‍Everyone’s energy is a little different over the course of the day. Some start the day with a full tank of energy, and it depletes as the day goes on. I start out strong, wane in the early afternoon, and bounce back energetically from 3 until 6 PM. As a result, I try to be intentional about when I do various kinds of work. If I have some cognitive heavy lifting to do, I try to do it early or late. In the early afternoon, I may opt for a walking meeting, answering emails, or building a program in PowerPoint—things that I can do without a high level of energy.

Give some thought to what works best at whatever time of the day, and schedule yourself accordingly.

‍Periodically review what you should keep doing and what you should give up

‍Frequently, leaders continue doing tasks and attending meetings long after they should have delegated the work or opted out of participating. Periodically, make two lists: the stuff that you should continue doing and the stuff that you should consider giving up or giving away. As you rise in the organization, you will get noticed for having more of an enterprise-wide view. To have that, you need to get out of the weeds.

‍Determine what you need to do to bring your best self to work every day

‍Everyone varies when it comes to how many hours they can work and how much downtime they need—as well as what they need to do during that time away from work. Every quarter or so, evaluate how energized you feel and keep tabs on what’s happening in weeks when your energy is high or low. If you’re starting off Monday morning feeling tired and stressed, something’s wrong.

So, what do you need to do to bring your best self to work each day? That’s something that only you can figure out.

For me, it’s helpful to think of Saturday as a “no work day,” and I try to limit work on Sundays too. From making all sorts of energy management mistakes over the years, I also have come to realize that I’m not at my best if:

• I don’t eat a substantial breakfast
• I’m eating carb-heavy lunches
• I’m not making sufficient time for my family, friends, and hobbies outside of work
• I’m consuming more than one drink of alcohol on a night before a workday
• I’m not making sufficient time for my family, friends, and hobbies outside of work

Meaningful, lasting change is never easy. Whether you’re mulling a New Year’s Resolution or a behavioral change at any time of the year, think about what you want to do, why it matters, and how you’re going to sustain it over the long haul.

If you do, you’ll be feeling a lot better by the time the ball drops on another new year.

In this complex era of disruption, changing customer demands and the call for transparency on the part of today’s leaders, much attention has been paid to the need for authenticity in those leaders to respond.

From our research-based Executive Presence model (the ExPI^tm), and our work with thousands of senior leaders, we know first-hand about the importance of authenticity to influence, align, and inspire others to act and engage to create impact.

We also know how challenging it can be to develop and enhance those behaviors that define authenticity. Here are several observations based on what we have learned, for leaders to consider as they build out those skills.

‍What is Authenticity?

‍Authenticity, one of the 15 dimensions of executive presence in our model, means being real, genuine, transparent, and sincere in one’s relations with others, and revealing the experience and beliefs that define oneself. This facet comprises six items, which can be broken into three themes:

• Whether you’re perceived to be sincere—not fake or phony
• Whether others experience you as transparent—inclined to share thoughts and feelings
• Whether you come across as someone who shares personal stories and life lessons

The vast majority of leaders who have taken the Bates Executive Presence Assessment get high scores on that first theme. When leaders get lower ratings on the facet of authenticity, it’s almost always because they are seen as less transparent or less likely to share more of their personal experiences—or both.

‍The Gap You Create When You are Missing Authenticity

‍When we ask leaders if they think it matters to have a lower score in authenticity for these reasons, they usually sense that it does but can’t always explain why.  Our recommendation is to put a three-word reminder up somewhere in their office: Avoid the void!

What does that mean?  There can be any number of situations where leaders may not readily share their thoughts and feelings. Likewise, some leaders aren’t in the habit of sharing many life lessons in the office.

What’s the impact on others if people don’t hear much about your thoughts, emotions, or stories? It creates a void in the minds of others—a big blank. Human beings don’t like voids; they create ambiguity, uncertainty, and anxiety. So what do we do when there’s a void? We tend to fill it with our own assumptions. Unfortunately for all of us, these assumptions almost always turn negative.

How does this play out?  Let’s say you don’t speak up much in meetings or share much of your personal story with others. There may be a whole bunch of valid reasons for that:

• You’re an introvert who likes to think things through before speaking.
• You’re a private person who likes to keep work and home separate.
• You have a role where you need to worry about what you disclose to whom.
• You haven’t been aware of the importance of sharing the why as well as the what.

But if others don’t know what’s going on in your head, they’ll assume far worse of you.  They may think you’re disengaged, distracted, or overwhelmed. They could assume that you don’t have a point of view, that you’re aloof, or that you just don’t care. All of these interpretations may be wildly off base, but the perceptions exist.

‍Six Tips to Avoid the Void – and Still Be You

‍Here are six tips for avoiding the void—while still being true to your authentic self:

1. If you need more processing time prior to sharing your thoughts and feelings, become more intentional and deliberate about preparation—and not just for presentations.

2. If you’re not ready or able to talk about content, you should share why and tell people when and how you will share more.

3. Sharing stories and life lessons from earlier in your career rather than deeply personal stories is usually more comfortable for relatively private leaders.

4. If your job or role requires you to withhold your thoughts and feelings to some degree, reflect on whether you’re overusing this tendency. There may well be times when you need to be more of a consultant and less of an impartial facilitator or coach.

5. Be more deliberate about sharing what you’re feeling as well as what you’re thinking.

6. Be sure to share the intent behind the content—the rationale or the “why behind the what.

When you “avoid the void,” you will no longer be at risk of people assuming the worst of you because you aren’t opening up and sharing what you’re thinking and feeling, or some defining experiences from your career or life. In short, the more you are transparent, the more qualities of executive presence become crystal clear, and the more you will inspire, align, and engage others to act and create impact.

Creating and communicating the vision effectively to engage and inspire the organization is essential to leadership success. In their research on Ascending to the C-Suite, McKinsey found that this is the most important factor for a successful transition into a new C-suite role: 88% of the 1000+ executives they interviewed said it was very or extremely important to create a shared vision and alignment around their strategic direction across the organization. This is also among the most difficult things for leaders to carry out: just 30 percent of all respondents (and 39 percent of those reporting successful transitions) say it was easy to create a shared vision in their new role.

This finding comes as no surprise to us.  In our  Executive Presence Index (or ExPI™), of the 15 different facets that we measure that collectively comprise executive presence, the one that gets rated dead last is Vision. The consistency of this finding across the 1,000+ leaders who have taken this assessment is striking and calls out the critical need to address the vision challenge for any leader looking to make an impact.

‍Understanding the Vision Challenge

‍In the ExPI™ model, Vision is equal parts strategic thinking and inspiration. Some leaders get high or low ratings on both elements, while some receive more mixed reviews—relatively high on items related to strategic thinking but much lower on inspiration, for example.

Predictably, this topic of vision comes up very frequently when we conduct ExPI insights conversations with the leaders who take the assessment.  So why is Vision the lowest-rated facet?  Here are four observations we have made in working with leaders to understand their feedback and their behaviors.

1. Leaders may confuse a quantitative goal with an inspiring vision… and most people aren’t inspired by, say, reducing cost of goods sold by 5%.

2. Leaders may believe that articulating a vision is not really a part of their job description unless they’re in the C-suite.

3. Leaders get the idea that they need to be the source of the inspiring vision… and they don’t know how to come up with one.

4. Some leaders do have a good vision but believe that being emotionally inspirational is just not in their DNA.

Tips to Tackle the Vision Challenge

‍How can we as leaders overcome these obstacles?  Here are five tips for amplifying the facet of vision and connecting more effectively to inspire, steer, and motivate others:

1. Go on a “Vision Listening Tour” to get others’ ideas about what an inspiring vision might look like—then synthesize and share what you learned, giving credit where it’s due.

2. Be sure to talk about a powerful purpose or mission regarding where you’re going and why as an organization, function, or team—not just quantitative goals.

3. Share success stories to help make your vision feel more realistic, exciting, and attainable.

4. Remember that you can be inspiring without going against the grain of your authentic voice and style: You can share your vision quietly and calmly if that’s who you are.

5. Remember that articulating a vision is a job for every leader at all levels… and set aside time for creating and communicating it on your calendar.

If articulating a vivid and compelling vision is difficult for you, take some comfort in the fact that you’re in good company! On the ExPI, leaders who get high scores in the facet of Vision are definitely in the minority. To flip that around, though, imagine how much you’ll stand out among other leaders if you can turn this quality from a development theme into a strength! When you bring Vision into focus, your stakeholders will be ready to set their sights on a future that feels like the possible dream.

hroughout her more than 15-year career at BTS, Jessica has pioneered turning strategy into action through the use of customized experiences & simulations for leading Fortune 500 clients and many large and start-up software companies in Silicon Valley. Jessica leads BTS USA with P&L responsibility for offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Phoenix, and Austin.

Although one of the most-discussed topics in business today, meaningful diversity seems to be elusive for most companies. We sat down for a casual and candid conversation with Jessica and uncovered some surprising insights about our clients’ challenges in creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace, and what companies can do about it.

We are lucky to have snagged a few moments of Jessica’s time — squeezed between a flight to New York for a client meeting and her morning school drop-off duties — to hear her perspective.

JENNY JONSSON: We have a lot to cover today, so if it’s ok with you, we’re going to jump right in! First, we would love to hear a little about your journey to becoming a Global Partner (GP) – and of course, it’s hard to conduct research for a paper on diversity and ignore that there’s a gender imbalance at our GP level.

JESSICA SKON: Well first of all, while I may be the only female Global Partner, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that we do have a lot of women leaders at BTS: 35% of our Heads of Office are women. With that said, what I can say about my experience is that it has been fair. I don’t think I would still be here if I didn’t feel the expectations and the performance processes over the last 17 years were fair, and I have never felt like gender has been a factor in performance conversations. When I reflect on that after talking to other female leaders, that’s a pretty big deal.

MJ DOCTORS: Why do you think your experience has been so different from what many other working women encounter?

JS: Before my first Global Partner meeting, where we were looking at candidates for Principal and above, I was told, “This is always the best meeting of the year.” I wondered how it could be so drastically different than any other meeting, but they were right — it is an entirely data-driven, unemotional, and fair process.

It was a simple process and there were no biases. There are three parts to how we evaluate partners up for promotion:

1. The background information on each candidate includes all of the specific promotion criteria and supporting data.
2. The leader recommending the promotion gives a 5-minute summary emphasizing their view of the candidate’s weaknesses and areas for growth in the coming years.
3. A fellow partner who has done due diligence against the facts acts as the “inquisitor” and shares findings.

This approach ensures it isn’t just a pitchfest. And this process is also something that has trickled down to other areas of the business, reducing a lot of the biases in our hiring and promoting.

JJ: Have you been approached by clients asking for guidance on a similar data-driven approach?

JP: Absolutely, clients realize they need to make this shift. I think it’s going to happen really quickly: we already have one client whose CEO has asked us to rebuild their entire performance system so that it’s more data-driven, more accurate, and more fair. In many companies, the way things are now, it’s often gray and you can’t help but rely on relationships and favoritism to guide promotion decisions.

MD: As part of our research, Jenny and I took a look at how BTS USA is performing on diversity metrics. While most publications and companies measure diversity by simply looking at gender and race (such as Fortune’s 50 Most Diverse Companies), we believe diversity is much more than that. Our definition encompasses gender and race, but also age, socioeconomics, gender identity, sexual orientation, education, life experiences, disability status, and personality traits — and the list could go on. However, as we currently only have results across race and gender, that’s what we’ll share here. How do you feel when you look at these charts?

JS: You’re bringing me back to 5 years ago when we had the same color chart for gender as we do now for ethnicity — which was horrifying. I think we all knew it was a problem but we weren’t mature enough in our thinking to solve it. Once we all woke up and clearly defined that we had a gender parity problem across the company, we were persistent and fixed it, and now I am proud of our gender pie chart. That is something I love about BTS: if we can clearly articulate a problem, we tend to be able to solve it. That’s actually the key for leaders across most industries: the art is being able to clearly define the problem.

But I think that we’re at ground zero again for the next phase.  I would love for us to apply the same rigor we used to address gender disparities to other forms of diversity so that in 3 or 4 years we have a better mix, and why wouldn’t we?

JJ: Can you outline specifically how we made progress on our lack of gender diversity?

JS: We took a few major steps:

1. Our Heads of Office decided it was a top priority. Without top leadership’s buy-in, you can’t really make progress.
2. Then we identified the key pain point: for us, it was the entry to the funnel. Then we brainstormed the best ways to attract more female candidates.
3. This led to some “ahas” about the root cause of that pain point. Many people think that consulting is inflexible and it’s difficult for employees with children to succeed. But there’s nothing further from the truth at BTS. Our Global CEO is quite progressive and incredibly flexible and open-minded when it comes to letting employees do what they need for their lives.
4. So then our leaders got on the megaphone: our (now retired) US CEO began flying to each of our offices to talk about it, and I got on the phone with candidates to tell them my story of being a young working mother. A lot changed once we started to focus on it.
5. In reviewing our hiring interview process, we also realized we could be more clear in our criteria, with observable behaviors and a more robust scoring rubric. This change eliminated any unconscious bias and we found that woman were scoring as high as our male candidates. When we looked in the past, they were (on average) scoring lower.

MD: Besides clearly defining the problem, what other factors pushed forward this change?

JS: Clients started noticing and asking for more women consultants, so it became an easy sell to our leadership. Our demographics should match – or even be ahead of – our clients’ demographics. We shouldn’t have to be scrambling every time a client says, “Um… there’s a lot of men here.” Sure, some traditional clients may not have said anything, so for some folks internally it was more difficult to understand the impetus behind the huge investment we were making in changing our recruitment process. But we also had enough examples of women starting at BTS who didn’t have many female role models. And we realized, we have to change this or some of our best people are going to leave.

JJ: So what about our clients? You have spent significant time over the past 20 years with CEOs and senior leaders of some of the world’s top companies. What aspects of diversity are they discussing the most?

JS: In the last couple of months, I have heard many top executives discussing how to change the paradigm of their leaders to promote and move people around who don’t necessarily fit the makeup of the candidates from the past. So for example, one client said that they have been really good at keeping people for life, but realize that they might not be able to maintain that with millennials, unless they can keep having great careers for them.

Also, companies still tend to focus on “the résumé”: did the applicant go to an Ivy League school, did she have a fancy job, how long did he work in this department, etc. All of this has been the formula for success over the last 50 years. But if we don’t crack that mindset, there will be amazing people who don’t get put in the right positions, because unconsciously our leaders are not seeing them or they are not open-minded enough to realize that this candidate might be better suited than that more traditional-looking candidate.

MD: What is some advice you would give clients to change that mindset?

JS: You and all your leaders have to first recognize your beliefs and own them before any mindset change can happen. That may be kind of obvious, but getting yourself and your senior leaders to fully own their beliefs is hard. You have to be both very self-aware and constantly striving to improve. It’s a battle every single day.

So when an executive comes to me and says, “This is weighing on my mind at the company-wide level,” I don’t say, “Well there’s a diversity training that we can do.” I do say, “You’re talking about changing deeply rooted mindsets: this requires getting leaders to articulate, own, and put those issues on the table, and commit to changing their beliefs moving forward.”

This is crucial to making sure you have the right people in the right jobs and you’re retaining the people that you want, which ultimately enables you to make the company successful. That is an immense amount of work, including interventions, working sessions, and sometimes coaching. It’s sometimes getting the most skeptical leaders to become the owners of this and driving these change management efforts. It’s deeper than just a training class.

JJ: If it’s not just a training class, what do you see as the platform?

JS: Any time you’re trying to drive large scale transformation, it’s a good idea to run experiments. And once they get some momentum and prove to be successful, you should shine a really big light on them to get broad adoption and then begin the comprehensive change management process.

So even though it’s out of our core services, I try to give clients ideas on small stuff they can do that is totally different than anything they have done before, to shake up people’s way of thinking about how they recruit, hire, train, promote, and think about people. I think a strong example of an initiative a company has experimented with is a leading software company and their strategic partnerships with nonprofits who help them access more and different talent pools.

So – once those initiatives have gained that momentum, it would be fun for us to do some consulting with their executives first around owning the beliefs, the history (it’s important to honor the history and not just break it), what worked in the past, what beliefs do you now hold as a result, and what are you going to do moving forward. All of this can be built around an experience that shifts people’s mindsets. It’s not so much diversity training… it’s a mindset shift process that starts at top leadership.

MD: Are there any companies that are beginning to successfully make this mindset shift and use more data-driven approaches to evaluation?

JS: Not really… that’s what’s tough about this. It’s bizarrely new. The more BTS is asked to provide broader talent services, the more surprised I am. We’re basically back in the Stone Age. It’s not pretty.

But we’re starting to work on something internally to track an individual’s acquisition of skills in a moment-based approach. At the beginning of a project the individual comes up with specific skills that she wants to work on. Then, during critical milestones and at the completion of the project, the rest of the team gives feedback on those specific areas. That’s real curation of a skillset, where the individual can own her career progress, people can validate it, and the company can say, “oh, she’s telling us she’s ready for a promotion, look, she’s actually done all of these things and demonstrated she can be successful.”

JJ: So really it’s democratizing the job application and promotion process.

JS: Yes! That’s exactly why many of our clients have turned to selection and assessment solutions. Assessments enable our clients to reduce unconscious bias in the hiring and promotion processes and ensure that a candidate has the actual skills necessary for the role, as opposed to a particular degree from a particular university, which is, at best, only a moderate proxy for job fit. Through these solutions, our clients effectively expand their talent pool and improve the likelihood that the candidates they hire have both skill and culture fit, which can lead to increased cognitive diversity – that is, team members who have different backgrounds and thus approach problems in different ways – improved retention, and reduced recruiting costs.

MD: We are seeing some progress from expanded talent pools, but the critical question is, once a female or a non-white employee has joined a company, why aren’t they moving up as fast as white men?

JS: I think maybe it goes back to the issue that I heard from one of our clients: there’s a history of certain roles looking and acting a certain way. It’s hard to overcome the unconscious bias of hiring and promoting people who fit that perception.

It could also be that people aren’t putting their hat in the ring for those promotions. Women and people from certain cultures aren’t oriented toward self-promotion and won’t put their hat in the ring if they are only 10% confident they’ll be successful. So in that case, you really have to focus on the current leaders: it’s so important that they understand this dynamic. Even at BTS, there are so many outstanding individuals who don’t self-promote, and you have to be the megaphone for them.

JJ: When running our leadership development simulation experiences, BTS has always encouraged participants to form the most diverse teams possible (gender, culture, geography, role, tenure, etc.). What’s the origin behind why we ask our clients to create diverse simulation teams?

JS: Initially, this was primarily because our clients value enabling leaders to create networks across the company, more so than because of any inherent desire for cognitive diversity. Clients often come to us when they need a push toward a “one company” mindset, so simulation teams are built to bring people out of their silos and align around a single company goal.

But, nowadays, people recognize that cognitive diversity is a good thing. That being said, at BTS, we are very protective of our culture and team environment, and sometimes we’re guilty of mistaking like-minded people as a proxy for “I think I’ll get along with you”. So you have to have two heads when hiring: we want someone different who will shake us up, but we also want to be at peace and have fun and a strong culture fit.

MD: If you could leave one piece of advice for leaders hoping to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, what would it be?

JS: In alignment with Liz Wiseman‘s book, “Rookie Smarts,” I’m trying to get leaders to crave being rookies again. If you’re going to learn as fast as the pace of change, and be able to transform yourself, you have to be a bit of an adrenaline junkie with a “rookie mindset”. I want people to realize that it’s not scary to do something different and new – it’s exciting. And, if you put yourself in an uncomfortable role, you get humbled, become curious, and seek advice from the best around you. As a result, you will most likely do the best work of your life.

There is a correlation between the “rookie mindset” and shifting beliefs in support of a more diverse team: we need leaders who crave differences. That has to be the overarching mindset when you’re recruiting and looking to add members to your team. If you crave differences in skills and personal history and combine that with culture-fit, then innovative ideas, high performance, and fun should follow. Others will notice the benefits of the diverse team and follow, assuming the appropriate recruitment and performance systems are in place. That’s how you start to shift mindsets at the top and eventually throughout the company.

About the Authors

Diversity has been a passion area for both MJ Doctors and Jenny Jonsson, both of whom have spent significant time – prior to and while at BTS – working to improve economic opportunities for women, immigrants, and individuals of varying socioeconomic backgrounds.

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To be an impactful leader, you need to build trust, establish credibility, and be able to mobilize teams. Sounds easy, but it's not. It's not just about making a business case and expecting teams to do what needs to be done. It requires honing a number of specifically developed skills to embody the executive presence of a leader who can make a real difference.

“Tom,” a leader within a Fortune 50 technology company, was challenged with some big concerns at work. One of his newly inherited departments had been significantly downsized. Those left in the organization were severely overworked and afraid they’d lose their jobs. They were spinning their wheels due to the pressure and creating waves throughout the organization.

Tom was under other pressures— his boss was pushing him to meet a very challenging revenue goal, and Tom needed another team to make significant progress on three large projects. Because of his tendency to be hot headed, especially under pressure, he often came away from internal and external conversations regretting things he said.

Tom wasn’t hitting the mark with his communication style.  As a result, his style stifled creativity, caused fear, and slowed issue resolution. Tom cared deeply about his organization; he felt personally responsible for each person’s success. However, his actions didn’t reflect his concern. His staff didn’t feel much of a connection to him.

He needed to develop resonance quickly within his teams and across the organization. Once Tom saw how the pressures were showing up in his communication style, and how this was affecting his organization, he became determined to make changes.

Within six months, his organization’s creativity skyrocketed. They won company-wide recognition for innovative ideas. They began to solve issues faster and form stronger relationships internally and externally. They successfully brought the projects to fruition, and Tom came very close to hitting his aggressive revenue target.

Most important to Tom, he became a leader who inspired both the hearts and minds of those who work for him.

What are some lessons we can all learn from Tom’s experience?

1. Make a conscious effort to be completely present in each interaction.

Tom focused on what the other person was saying rather than thinking ahead to what he planned to say next. He sought to understand the other person rather than trying to influence an objective or an agenda with the person. He suspended judgement and evaluation in order to actively listen and hear what the other person was saying. This took much practice.  When you take the time to be fully present, people feel valued and empowered.

2. Create a sense of purpose in conversations by making your goal to understand.

Tom paused and reflected on what was being said before responding. He verbalized what he heard to check his understanding. He found he could grasp a better understanding of the other person’s feelings and intent. When you take these steps, your positive intent comes through and others feel safe to correct any misperceptions you may have.

3. Practice these skills in each interaction, both one on one and in meetings.

Tom noticed when he wasn’t fully present and actively listening, learning from each experience. He asked his trusted advisors to let him know when they felt he wasn’t listening. Through repeated practice, you can drive greater understanding and alignment, helping your team work in concert as a more cohesive group.

When you slow down enough to invest time and energy in building resonance with the people you need to influence, you reap a dual benefit: You can liberate yourself from a great deal of micromanaging because there is a much freer two-way flow of communication, and, like Tom, your team will thrive because they have a new sense of ownership and engagement with the team’s direction, goals, and accomplishments.

It’s all about engagement: Once you’re more tuned in to the hearts and minds of those you need to influence, you’ll find others start changing their tune.

Our family of four just got back from a ski vacation in Big Sky, Montana. Skiing out west has been a family tradition for many years, but this trip felt a little more special than usual: My daughter, Hannah, is a senior in high school, so when she goes off to college the kids won’t have the same vacation week anymore. So our thinking is that we just won’t do a ski trip again for at least five years.

When we got to Montana, Hannah announced that she wanted to take a ski lesson on the first day. This was only mildly surprising. Thanks to years of ski school, she’s the best skier in the family—beautiful form. But she hadn’t been on skis for a couple of years and wanted to get comfortable again. So that made sense.

After another day, though, Hannah told me that she wanted to sign up for another lesson. Now I was frankly puzzled. Was this really necessary? I honestly didn’t see the point, but I kept my mouth shut and decided to see what happened when Hannah signed up for a half-day group lesson one afternoon.

When we met up late in the day, Hannah couldn’t wait to tell me about her lesson. What luck! No one else showed up for the group lesson, so Hannah got a private lesson for the same price. Better still, it was a fantastic experience. “We just really clicked,” Hannah told me. Hannah had always hated skiing moguls, and she would shy away from deep powder. The instructor gave her specific, practical advice for tackling both, and she had not only handled some of the toughest trails on the mountain—she enjoyed them, too.

Of course, the success was a two-way street. “The instructor really loved working with me, too,” Hannah said. “Whenever he suggested trying a really tough trail, I just said, ‘Sure! Why not?’ I guess that not everyone is always up for whatever.”

It didn’t stop there. Hannah liked the instructor so much that she signed up again for another lesson the next afternoon. He insisted on meeting my wife and me afterward and talked about what a wonderful time they’d had. I think he actually wanted to set my daughter up with one of his sons! Obviously it was a real lovefest between a talented skiing instructor and a game student.

Sometimes when I meet some of our executive coaching clients here at Bates, I have the same reaction that I had when my daughter wanted to keep taking lessons. All of our coaching clients are extremely successful leaders who are already doing so many things well. So why are they signing up for coaching, going through our executive presence assessment, and attending our programs?

The answer is simple. Like my daughter on the mountain, they may be “good enough” in many ways. But they have the humility to know that they could be better and the desire to tackle greater challenges with that much more skill and confidence.

As you rise in the ranks as an executive, the terrain gets steeper. When it comes to business imperatives, the moguls get bigger, and the powder may get knee deep; a stumble or fall has much greater consequences.

Under the circumstances, reaching out for expert assistance is not a sign of weakness. Quite the opposite: Getting coaching tells your team that you’re determined to keep improving until you reach the summit.

A while back, I heard an anecdote on the radio about cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and it really struck me. Surprisingly, Ma said that once of his biggest inspirations was chef, author, and television personality Julia Child.

Huh?! Well, it turns out that thinking about Julia Child helped him get in the right mindset before a performance. He would think about watching her on television, making a roast chicken that looked beautiful—only to have it fall off the plate and onto the floor. Did she flip out? No, she never stopped smiling.  She just acknowledged what happened and went on with the show.

Reflecting on this, Ma realized that the best mindset he could have as a performer was to ensure that his audience was having a good experience—rather than worrying about being perfect.  Speaking to the St. Louis Post Dispatch last October, he said, “The idea of performing is hosting. It’s like you’re giving a party. You invite people to come to a place and enjoy something special; basically, they’re subject to whatever you dish out. You want them to have a great time, they want to have a great time, and what are you doing to facilitate that?”

In a Malcolm Gladwell article that I read years ago, Yo-Yo Ma also admitted that he used to strive for perfection in performance. When he was 17, he practiced a Brahms sonata for a year with technical perfection in mind.  So what happened when he did that?  “In the middle of the performance I thought, I’m bored. It would have been nothing for me to get up from the stage and walk away. That’s when I decided I would always opt for expression over perfection.

”There is a valuable lesson here for executive presentations. In my experience, many leaders worry too much about precision when they present. Aiming for total accuracy, it’s easy to end up with text-heavy PowerPoint slides—and far too many of them. And once you have a ton of bullets on a slide, you usually feel compelled to read them all. At best, slides still tend to distract the audience’s energy away from you—and the presentation is really all about you, not your visuals.

Think about it: What would you rather be able to say at the end of your presentation?

• I covered every point perfectly and spoke without a single stumble.

• I connected deeply with the audience, and I could sense that they were completely engaged with my presentation.

It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? If you’re able to really connect with your audience’s questions, concerns, and needs, they won’t even notice if the imperfections that jump out to you as the expert.

Of course, there’s a catch here. Connection trumps precision… but the more you master your topic through preparation and practice, the more you’re freed up to focus on connecting with the audience. When you don’t have to work to remember your key points and transitions, you can concentrate more on your eye contact, gestures, and reading the room.

So give some thought to drawing some inspiration from Julia Child, just as Yo-Yo Ma does as a concert performer. When you’re giving a speech, you’re the host, and your job is to set the tone and make sure that everyone has a good experience.

That’s a recipe for a successful presentation.

Last night I started reading a book by Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who has written several novels that I’ve loved. But right now I’m reading something different—a book of short lessons he’s learned from many years of working with patients.

Early in his career, Yalom was inspired by something he read. The gist of it was that all people have a natural tendency to want to grow and become fulfilled—just an acorn will grow up to become an oak—as long as there are no obstacles in the way. So the job of the psychotherapist was to eliminate the obstacles to growth.

This was a eureka moment for Yalom. At the time, he was treating a young widow. Suffering through grief for a long while, she wanted help because she had a “failed heart”—an inability ever to love again.

Yalom had felt overwhelmed.  How could he possibly change someone’s inability to love?  But now he looked at it differently.  He could dedicate himself to identifying and eliminating the obstacles that kept her from loving.

So they worked on that—her feelings of disloyalty to her late husband, her sense that she was somehow responsible for his death, and the fear of loss that falling in love again would mean. Eventually they eliminated all of the obstacles. Then her natural ability to love—and grow—returned. She remarried.

Reading this story made me think of the responsibility of leaders toward the people they need to develop—and for the growth and learning that leaders themselves require to be the best that they can be.

Many leadership development challenges seem overwhelming—even impossible. The leaders that we coach usually have a list of areas where they want to get better, but how?  How do you “build better relationships with your peers and direct reports”?  How are you supposed to “get out of the weeds and demonstrate enterprise-wide thinking” or “build executive presence”?  All of these goals are as abstract as they are huge.

So the best approach is to not focus on the huge and fuzzy goal.  What we try to do is to break these goals down into concrete actions through working on real-time business problems. To put it simply, though, we do just as Yalom does: We identify the obstacles and work toward knocking them off, one at a time.

Leadership development is not usually a quick fix. You’re not going to develop executive presence through a half-day workshop or a one-time meeting.  If you’re interested in meaningful, lasting growth—whether for yourself or for those who work for you—it’s a commitment.

But don’t ever forget that we’re all capable of growth throughout life and our careers. The trick is to find the right coach or mentor who will guide you through that obstacle course.

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In my work as an executive coach, I meet at least once a month with each of my coaching clients.

I often talk to them on the phone and exchange emails with them as we work on their real-time business challenges. So, what happens in those conversations? Recurring themes start to come up. I find that many leaders  have a “talk track” of words and phrases that they use all the time—without always being aware of the impact. For better or worse, this talk track ends up becoming part of their executive presence and their brand as a leader.

One of my clients had a talk track for many years that led to a reputation for negativity. In one meeting alone, I noticed that he had described about ten different work experiences as “nightmares.” Strong word! So we talked about this talk track. And the next time I heard him lapse into that way of talking, I decided to delve into it. “What I just heard from you was an example of that ‘talk track’ we’ve talked about,” I said. “So let’s talk about this. You say it was a ‘nightmare.’  Okay—why do you call it a nightmare?”

The upshot was that he had made a sales presentation but didn’t get the deal. I said, “Let’s use accurate language to describe the situation.” Was it a nightmare? No. Maybe it was a disappointment. Maybe he could have said, “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the deal” or “They decided to go with another vendor” and state why, objectively. My goal was to get him to stop “catastrophizing” when something didn’t work out.

This leader didn’t want to be defined by that negative “talk track” anymore. So I told him that the only way to do that is to turn up the volume on a very different talk track—one that captures the brand and presence that you want to project.

I’ve had clients who always talked about how difficult or challenging or complex things seemed to them.  You’ve probably had a boss or colleague with any number of talk-track themes:

• “I’m so exhausted/overwhelmed/unhappy/unappreciated….”
• “Everyone here is useless/stupid/incompetent….”
• “It’s such a difficult environment/project/client/travel schedule…”
• “That will never work/We won’t get that deal/It’s a dumb idea/What were they thinking?”

Often people aren’t even aware of how much they harp on a conversational theme and how negatively this lack of executive presence is affecting their professional brand. So what can you do to make sure your talk track is working for you and not against you as a leader? Take these four steps:

1. Identify your talk-track themes.

What are the words and phrases that you find yourself constantly using in conversations at work? Write down the things you seem to say almost every day—or think about what themes come up all the time for you in conversation at work or elsewhere.

2. Consider the impact of your talk track.

As a leader, your words carry more weight than others.  You’re setting the tone for your team or division or organization.  Whether that tone is absurdly optimistic, cynical, critical, upbeat, energized, or overly emotional, it’s going to be the model for others. Make sure that your talk track is consistent with the values and behaviors you want to drive.

3. Challenge the reality of your talk track.

How accurate is your talk track?  Do you have a natural tendency to see the part of the glass that’s empty?  How do you respond to setbacks?  Do you gloss over the pain?  Do you make a mountain out of a molehill?  It’s crucial for leaders to be balanced, objective, and real about what’s happening.  Your language choices need to reflect that.

4. Consider what you could say differently.

It’s easy to lapse into your talk track.  When you catch yourself saying the same old things, try to catch yourself as if an alarm was going off.  Can you find another way to say it—something that’s consistent with the brand and presence you want to project.

Don’t get me wrong.  Leaders do need to be “real” about challenges and setbacks, and a somber tone may be appropriate and even helpful at times.  The goal is to become more aware of your talk track and what it’s doing for you and others.  As a leader, people take their cues from you.  Before you know it, your talk track can dominate or drive the culture.

Changing your talk track is a challenge. Our ways of talking and viewing the world are pretty ingrained through several decades of life experiences. But change is also very possible. Pump up the volume on a more positive talk track for the holidays, and your presence will be viewed as a gift.

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A while back I heard a few people talking about public speaking. Person A was talking about their anxiety about making presentations. Trying to make him feel better, Person B said, “Public speaking is just like riding a bike!”

That got my attention.  It seemed to be a comforting little sound bite. The only problem was that it was wrong.  Public speaking is not like riding a bike. But it got me thinking about leadership communication and learning in general.

What does it mean if we say that something is like learning to ride a bike?  We’re saying that it’s a skill that initially may seem pretty difficult to learn… but once we figure it out, we can do it successfully without thinking—even if we don’t do it at all for years at a time. It’s the reassuring idea that you’ve acquired a skill that you will never lose.

There’s no question that we all learn many skills that are like riding a bike. Driving is a good example. Most of us were white-knuckle drivers when we first got behind the wheel, but what about now? On long highway drives, I sometimes snap out of a daydream and realize I have no memory of anything that happened on the road in the last 15 minutes. That’s because I don’t have to think about driving when I do it—not unless there is intense traffic or some other unusual circumstance.

Many other skills are the same—reading, typing, doing simple math in your head, and so on.   But quite a few sophisticated skills are quite unlike riding a bike.  In other words, there are skills that are definitely learnable and where your level of mastery can improve substantially. However, you’ll probably never be really great at these skills without vigilant, ongoing practice, preparation, reflection, and reinforcement.

Some examples that come to mind with leadership communication: Selling, managing change, inspiring your teams, and, yes, public speaking. What’s so different about these areas?  A few things:

• They involve an audience. If you were making your first speech in several months or years, would you find that you could do it almost unconsciously? I couldn’t. You can never be on auto-pilot when you’re delivering any sort of message to an audience. Just as the saying goes that you can never step in the same river twice, no two audiences are ever the same—even if you’re speaking to your internal teams each quarter. All sorts of circumstances change regularly, and you have to consciously adjust your message to address the ever-evolving needs of your audience.

• To maintain performance at a high level, sophisticated skills require ongoing practice. Yo-Yo Ma may be the world’s best cellist, but he estimates that he still puts in roughly 2,000 hours of practice each year. That’s an average of 5.5 hours daily.  If he stopped practicing altogether, he obviously could still play the cello.  But he wouldn’t be the best cellist for much longer.

• Skill mastery typically requires continual learning and reinforcement over time. Practice is critical, but it’s not sufficient. When you think about areas such as selling, motivating, and public speaking, there is always more to learn. There is evidence now that 90% of what we learn at a workshop, for example, dissipates within one year. To ensure the needle keeps moving in the right direction, you need to be a perpetual student. That may involve reading about the subject, hearing about it, going to a workshop, and getting expert advice. Whether you’re a tennis pro, a psychiatrist, or a VP of Sales, having a coach to help you with your real-time challenges can have an enormous impact to give you that reinforcement over time.

As a leader, you’ll no doubt hear from companies that want to offer you “quick-fix” solutions for perpetual leadership development challenges—areas such as executive presence, employee engagement, and public speaking.

But lasting, meaningful mastery is not a quick fix.  Sophisticated skills need reinforcement: A better motto for these skills would be “use it or lose it.” Because some things are quite unlike riding a bike,

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