If you lead a company or a team in a company, your executive skill may be what put you in that position. Now, however, you are frustrated and looking for answers to continue the forward momentum. You want to develop and grow your business and achieve increased personal success and satisfaction. Here are some areas where increased executive skill of a particular kind will help you to make giant leaps forward.
Executive’s Skill #1: People can be the most confusing part of being an executive.
People skills are a dime a dozen, but knowledge of people is harder to come by. Executive skill requires a knowledge of people beyond “people skills.”
People frustrate us at times and we don’t want to admit that we don’t know them. Experience should teach us, shouldn’t it? Some can’t see what we see as the obvious path forward. Some approach decision making differently. Simple, straight forward communications don’t seem to arrive with the same meaning that we intended. In puzzlement, we ask, “With whom am I communicating?” We wonder why people don’t even get the same meaning out of words that we do? Many of them don’t even seem to think in the same way. Are we always going to encounter difficulties like this with people?
“I know people differ,” you say, “but the only way I see that leadership can be effective is for everyone to follow the same rules.” Oh yes, we know all the usual control answers to these daily dilemmas. But is there something missing in your bag of executive skills that will give you a better understanding?
Executive Skill #2: Unfortunately, the board is made up of people, too.
Have you ever thought, “My board can be an obstacle at times, rather than a help in achieving company goals and objectives. They come with perspectives that are the opposite of mine. Persuading them or simply presenting my perspective seems to run into too many buzzsaws.”
You may not have noticed that you are up against a temperament that operates with a different kind of intelligence. If only you knew how they think and feel and what differences there really are in the types of intelligence. If you did, you could prepare yourself for a presentation and speak directly to their way of thinking. You could avoid unnecessary and irritating clashes, delays, heated arguments, and stalemates, to say the least.
Executive Skill #3: Save time and effort
Can we even do this? Yes, yes, and yes — and you can do so for all three temperaments different from our own. Time, effort and frustration can be saved with effective communication. A reputation for achieving penetrating and successful communications can be yours. An executive’s edge is built on the skills of leadership that arise from the knowledge of each person’s temperament: why they think, feel and act the way they do. This knowledge provides an understanding of which arguments reach them individually, which don’t, and how to speak their language — not just our own. This executive skill can be yours.
Executive Skill #4: People are emotional beings.
Have you ever noticed that emotions are present at all meetings and consultations — even when they are thought to be absent? All board members, leaders, staff and managers are emotional beings.
Have you ever asked yourself, “How do I approach some of my people without triggering negative and unhelpful emotions? Who are the ones I need to be most aware of?” Experience will teach the executive a lot, but knowledge of temperament will teach much more and it will teach it quickly. The interactions between leaders and staff are the cause of most of the conflicts in the workplace. To know what those interactions are going to be before they happen is to be forewarned and prepared for a more effective exchange.
Executive Skill #5: InnerKinetics provides the answers.
Not only is decision making an issue of temperament, many other factors are directly related to temperament, such as: how we view work, if we are best suited for strategy or logistics, how to handle people when they are off kilter or stubbornly negative, and the unseen but strongly felt effects of the person’s preferred lifestyle in the workplace.
Here’s a valuable step forward: Start by identifying those who want to make a decision and move on from those who put off decisions, wanting to keep all options open. These represent two different lifestyles. One wants to settle a decision, while the other waits interminably, chasing every option and, seemingly, can only be made to decide by immovable, enforced deadlines. Knowing the InnerKinetics of each person you deal with is the executive’s edge. And starting with an understanding of your own InnerKinetics will give you a giant leap forward.