As newly appointed CEO of a leading hospital, Stephen had taken on the challenge of defining, mobilising and delivering transformation. The scale and depth of the required change was such that at times he doubted whether he was doing the right thing. A focus of the coaching was personal support for dealing with the heavy burden of these private and personal doubts. How can you lead when you are not sure yourself?
Stephen,
After several attempts to do so, I find that I am not drawn to comment on the specific issues we discussed last week. At one level everything is moving right along:
- The Finance leadership question may be starting to move towards a conclusion
- You might have attracted a strong Medical Research Director
- Your new appointments appear to be getting into their stride and doing good things, albeit with a tinge of trepidation
- The pharmacy/GP issue is moving to centre stage and no means of resolution is yet apparent
- Estates, communications and your away day are each consuming some attention.
Your business life is full and is, I argue, all going rather well. The change you are driving necessarily throws up a continuous stream of challenge and I am minded of the phrase, ‘the road to obsolescence is quiet and uneventful’. You did not seek the quiet life.
So what am I moved to say?
I know that the way you are with me in our conversations may not be a good indicator of how you are with your direct reports. Yet last Friday you seemed particularly preoccupied, your thoughts appeared to revolve even faster than usual and you seemed somehow locked away in your internal turmoil. I did not feel that we particularly connected and you left me with the impression that you were worrying. Maybe the worrying was more of the form in which a dog worries at a bone rather than a manifestation of anxiety but I came away with a sense that you were not sure about how this was all going to turn out. If that is true then you need to be aware that that is how you came across.
What is surely important is that how you are inside will determine how you come across to your team. The question that keeps coming back to me is, what are your new appointees likely to need from their CEO? And in the light of some answers to that question, what are the ideas that you might keep in your awareness leading up to and then through the offsite you have planned for next month?
Having sat with these questions for a while, the emergent ideas are few:
- Be solid.
- Be confident.
- Don’t allow yourself to be pulled down into being a protagonist in the development of their thinking.
- Talk less.
A few words on each.
Not having met your new appointees I may be flat wrong in these observations on their likely needs, yet I suspect I am not wrong. As they wind into their responsibilities and begin to formulate their plans (you tabled one such preliminary list on Friday) it is not surprising that they feel daunted by the sheer scale and depth of necessary change. What will help them is the sense that you are there to defend and support them. Grown up and senior as they are they may still have some unconscious need for a father figure to reassure when they are working at or beyond the limit of their experience or competence. Hence there is a need for you to demonstrate unwavering commitment and absolute confidence that collectively you will pull this off, whatever private feelings or doubts you may have. This may seem strange but it is entirely apparent to me that you have already delivered the hardest part of the transformation – GP/pharmacy issue notwithstanding. The hard part was getting started and mobilising the change. You will acknowledge how that has defeated all previous incumbents of your job. In comparison with fixing that problem, the rest will just follow. Your role is to manage what is to come. You do not have to do it. In managing, your solidity and confidence will constitute the foundation on which your staff can ground their individual contributions.
As part of that consider your role carefully and stay within the appropriate space when working with them. Your appointees are the experts on medical management, business development or whatever, you are not. It is their job to invent the answers within the frame of ambition that you have set and they have to come up with the answers, not you. When you are down in the detail with them grappling for the answer you are not being the CEO and operating at the appropriate level of the argument – remember the thermostat illustration? Let me try another analogy. You are the conductor of an orchestra. Would you expect to be an expert in playing each instrument? Of course not. Would you expect to have a quick word with the third trombone – “look old son, try to keep your hand squarer on the slide in the middle eight”? I think not. Reflect on this and perhaps let me know what emerges in terms of guidelines for how you should work with your senior team.
And finally, we have talked before about the possibility of you saying less. Easily said but hard to break such a deeply rooted habit. Perhaps you need a reminding factor. Put a small stone in one of your shoes when you reach the office. Each time you feel its irritating presence use that to remind you to say less to whomever you are talking at the time. Sound weird? Yeah, but it will work. Try it.
As ever, if it would be helpful to explore any of this then please do just call me. And don’t forget the small stone!
Best wishes,
Simon
