An organisation’s board has been revamped. The CEO behind the changes has focused on IQ not EQ, and morale has quickly plummeted. What is the solution?
THE ISSUE
The CEO of a large company has decided that to improve its growth, he needs to refresh his top team. Although the trustees and board think the business and its assets are in safe hands, they are becoming concerned about certain challenges and issues. These include:
- Ineffective and unclear communications resulting in misunderstandings and impacted productivity
- Problems with the CEO understanding and managing the relationships within the team, particularly as team members are struggling to collaborate, communicate and resolve conflicts among themselves
- Increasing evidence of reduced employee morale and engagement, with many unhappy voices
- Customers are giving feedback to the organisation that their needs are not being listened to and the company’s relationships with them are being neglected
- It has also been pointed out to the CEO that the new team leaders are struggling to build, inspire, motivate and lead their own teams
A senior board member says, “The CEO has very high levels of IQ and low levels of EQ. This has been the CEO’s blueprint for hiring his nine new team members and these qualities are being mirrored in them.”
How can coaching help?
- This issue’s Troubleshooter has been curated by Veronica Munro, international C suite executive coach, performance facilitator and author
THE INTERVENTIONS
Peter Young, Leadership coach and supervisor, Bladon Leadership
While the desire to ‘refresh the top team’ sounds well-intentioned, its success or failure will ultimately rely on some heavy-duty contracting. This will be needed to establish the underlying and most critical development objectives, and to ensure buy-in and commitment of all parties.
First, there needs to be careful triangulation of the perspectives of the board and trustees as well as the CEO himself. Given the possibility that one party may be over-deferential to the other to maintain an appearance of harmony, my preference would be to speak with each individually prior to bringing them together for an alignment meeting. In the event that this highlights gaps and mismatches in perspectives, I would recommend using a team diagnostic such as Team Connect 360 (based on Peter Hawkins’ work) to capture a broader systemic view.
Second, there needs to be an exploration with the CEO of his understanding of what will determine success in his role. Performance metrics such as numerical and financial targets represent largely indirect outcomes of the top team’s leadership, and the question I’d want to unpack is what he and his team will need to be good at, in each of their key stakeholder relationships, to deliver these outcomes.
Putting together the outputs of both these conversations will build the start of a broader leadership development agenda for the top team. Out of this, (and out of the CEO’s 360-degree feedback, if available), can be extracted the specific personal leadership challenges he faces.
Sophie McGrath, Executive leadership coach, Engagement Works
High IQ leaders can be highly focused on delivering business results, often favouring control-based management over trust-based leadership. This can result in them spending more time driving the work than inspiring the people that deliver it.
In the first instance I’d invite the CEO to engage in some 360 feedback. This would provide him with some results-based data that would shine a light on his and his team members’ roles in the context of decreasing engagement and productivity. With these new insights and perspectives, the CEO can decide whether an entire team refresh is the right course or whether they can deploy a more connected and trust-based leadership style.
I’d also invite the CEO to develop and practise some EQ habits and build on his existing leadership strengths through:
- Inviting team members for regular informal meetings to find out what’s working well for them, what’s been missed, ways that he/they can improve
- Ensuring new hires/successors have strong EQ skills to lead with connection
- Mobilising EQ leaders to lead company-wide communications through emotionally connected storytelling
- Engaging EQ leader thinking partners to help read situations and work through possible impacts of business decisions
It’s important to support the CEO in his communications with the trustees and board members to reassure them of steps being taken and progress made. More importantly, to share how this progress is immediately resulting in teams re-connecting with their customers, meeting their needs as well as honouring and valuing their relationships.
In these ways the CEO and his team will progress towards higher self-awareness and appropriate ways of operating with each other and customers that will result in improved growth based on strong, sustainable relationships.