Hi everyone
Thank you for being here.
I want to talk today about Chief Executive Officers, CEOs.
CEOs of the past and CEOs of the future.
We are going through a massive shift in consciousness, awakening and an understanding of what's behind the veil in this world. What we will accept and what we won't accept is really changing and I can see that the CEOs of the future are going to be very different from what we have experienced.
I've worked with a number of CEOs, I've coached CEOs and I know quite a few and the CEOs of the past are often very much into status power and money and it's a significant driver for most of the things that they do within an organisation. It drives the behaviours and the purpose often, and I have experienced some things that really made me laugh over the years. One of them being a CEO who had such a huge ego that he got the whole of the organisation involved in a charitable event in the hope that he would be given a knighthood and it's just so interesting that that whole activity was based around that one purpose. It's things like that that are hidden from the rest of the organisation often, but are now becoming clearer to people.
It's often a very masculine role and even when there's a female CEO in place, they can sometimes be more masculine than feminine - every single person has a masculine and feminine side to them, but one can be stronger than the other and certainly in that role, which is often about performance and goal setting, it is a very masculine environment.
One CEO I worked with was very much focused on continuous improvement, which is very masculine and whilst you achieve quite a lot in that environment, it’s exhausting, because if you are continuously improving, then that’s saying this is not enough, this is not good enough. You're always on that treadmill of something better, which initially might be OK, but after a while it is toxic, draining and people just don't have the same energy for that.
Also, some CEOs pretend that they’re collaborative, but often they're not and a great example I have of this is a CEO I worked with who came into a leadership team meeting to talk about the strategy for the organisation and the sheet of paper that he gave to everybody was completely full of words in four quadrants that were about the strategy. At the end of the meeting, that piece of paper had hardly changed - so not really collaborative - talking about it, but not really getting other people's point of view, their contribution, what they want the business to achieve, what they think is important and in that ,the strategy is often about profit over people - over peoples’ experience and then that drives the wrong kind of behaviours.
If it's a company with shareholders, then it's about ticking the box, what do we have to do in order to keep the shareholders on board, which then has quite a negative effect on the employees. It's not really about the service or product that's being provided, it's not a focus on that, it's how do we keep those people happy and again that goes back to the money.
And with the biggest ego of all, is often taking all the credit for achievement which obviously is never possible as an organisation is full of people. So, I've seen a lot of those behaviours that do make things happen, they do achieve things, but the quality of experience for people is not often great.
The CEOs of the future that I see are Guardians of the organisation and the whole leadership team are Guardians of their area of the organisation. They care about people, they care about the service, they care about the product and if it means making a decision that is going to cost the business a lot of money then that's what they do, because if that has a negative impact on employees then ultimately that's going to cost money anyway. With an understanding of that, it is about people enjoying their experience of going to work and that they enjoy their experience. It doesn't mean that it's always easy and they’re floating around on some fluffy cloud, it's about people being able to be creative, being able to deliver, being able to speak their truth and ask questions and give suggestions and it is about true equality.
I was reminded of this when I watched Frasier the other day and if you've watched Frasier you know he has a housekeeper who helps his dad and with physiotherapy. He was talking to Daphne the housekeeper and he said, “Daphne, I see you truly as equal” and she said, “oh thank you” and then the doorbell rang. They both stood there and obviously he expected Daphne to answer the door because that's Daphne's job - this is not true equality.
I'm talking about the opposite of that, and I did hear about a Japanese CEO who actually cleaned the toilets in the company that he ran because it was very grounding, because why shouldn't he clean the toilets. That kind of leadership is the kind of leadership for the future where people really are equal, where you don't look at somebody and think oh that's a junior person so let's just dismiss, maybe pretend to listen to what they're saying, but dismiss their ideas because what do they know. Actually, the people who work in the organisation see a lot, they do hear a lot and they have great ideas so a Guardian CEO is truly collaborative and straight talking. They will tell you when they don't like something, they will tell you something that's difficult to say because that is the only way to build trust in an organisation. I've worked in so many where we talk about trusting each other but people really don't - they talk about each other behind their backs (I know, I joined in) because that's the way it is. But then there really isn’t a level of trust that brings about creativity, collaboration, enjoying being at work, trust and working for a company that is fair inflexible.
People are not on it 100% of the time, they have stuff going on in their lives and being able to rest take time off if that's needed, then it's needed and there's a level of trust around, I'll be really on it when I am, and I won't when I'm not. Again I've got another Japanese example of the contract of employment for females within an organisation – it’s about them being able to be off work when they're having a period, which you know in this country would be unheard of, you struggle in and if you're feeling that you just can't work on that day, there's just a level of trust that is, if you feel you're not up to it, then you're not up to it and that is really powerful and impactful.
Strategy is true collaboration it is getting everybody's goals desires, passion, creativity coming through to a point of: ‘this is what we want to achieve, we really want to hear what our customers think, we really want to hear what people in this company think and what they want’.
I’ve experienced employee surveys in the past where you ask people questions and then you don't change the things that are difficult - often it's to do with pay - I mean can you imagine a world where everyone is paid the same and I'm not talking about communism. I'm talking about true equality, I'm talking about people just doing what they're really good at - some people are good at leading a team of people and some people are really good at coming in every day and doing the accounts, or marketing, or buying, or whatever they really enjoy. It's about spending most of your day doing what you enjoy and then changing it when you want to change it.
A greater sense of purpose for everyone in the organisation and that's ever changing. Ego, status, power, and control of human beings won’t work. We are ever changing ever growing, because we are part of nature and nature is ever changing, ever evolving and that's who we are.
So, when you think about CEOs that you've worked with or are working with now, where do they spend most of their time? Where are they on this scale of control vs guardian? You will see it in their actions, you will know it as I say it.
I’ll see you soon.
Much love
Pauline
In my organisation, I’ve found genuine collaboration leads to ownership of outcomes, a real commitment to any policy changes and resulting inevitable progress. Imposing an undiscussed new initiative usually fails and creates bad feeling.
This makes good sense. It's obvious to most of us that the old way (ego driven, money driven, run by ex public schoolboys) isn't good for us or the planet. You have written an inspiring vision of how things could be so different and so much better.