My last blog was titled, “What I Do.” I got a lot of comments and several people asked me to elaborate on some of the points. One of the things I mentioned that I do, is CEO Coaching. Don’t confuse this with joining a CEO Peer Group with a facilitator, which I often recommend because I think it can be extremely helpful. The biggest local provider of these CEO Peer Groups is Dave Shapiro’s Excell Puget Sound. The biggest national company in this space is Vistage.
For me, this is one-on-one coaching for someone in a company where I usually have an existing relationship. It is often a younger person being trained to take over the CEO role. Sometimes it is a family member of the current owner, sometimes not, but always it has been an insider.
What this typically means is the person is a Millennial, while I’m a Baby Boomer. I’ve found that many Boomers have a poor opinion of Millennials; after all, they were originally referred to as Generation Me. But they’ve matured nicely, and I think they are, by and large, wonderful. I’ve got a daughter and two stepchildren who fit the Millennial timeframe (generally considered birth years of 1981 through 1996).
For the budding top management-potential Millennials I work with, I’ve found them to be better balanced than my generation, putting more importance on the things that really matter, having strong values and being less greedy. These are broad generalizations about a big group of people, I understand. But, to tell you the truth, I like them better than I like my generation. There, I said it.
While coaching Millennials, their sense of priorities, balance and values is really helpful. But the big challenges that comes with becoming a CEO, COO or the like, are just as tough for Millennials as those who came before them.
The biggest challenges, in my view, include learning to delegate, managing people, and becoming an effective leader. I’ve borrowed from EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) the phrase, “Delegate and Elevate.” If they can’t do this, they are going to be very limited in what they can accomplish. Organizational Theory says no one can effectively manage more than eight direct reports.
I’ll repeat something I’ve written before—the best advice I’ve ever received is, “Everything you accomplish, you will accomplish through others.” The corollary is that once you delegate everything you currently do, your job will change radically. Further, that means that you, future CEO/COO, must learn to redefine what you consider work. When people say things like, “I keep getting bothered by my employees; I can’t get any work done,” they are missing the point.
Millennials aren’t any better at this that Boomers. Or are they? They seem to be better at having the hard conversations, rather than just keeping it bottled up. But redefining what is “work” seems to be hard for everyone.
When we add leadership, usually that isn’t easy for anyone of any age. True, some people are natural leaders, but combining management of people with vision and the ability to inspire others to work towards that vision isn’t easy. Fortunately, it can be taught, and that’s where I can help.
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