Categories
Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Onboarding New Leaders: 5 Common Mistakes To Avoid

Onboarding New Leaders: 5 Common Mistakes To Avoid

When starting in a leadership role, knowing what mistakes to avoid can be challenging. After all, you are still learning the ropes and figuring out how everything works. Many leaders in transition get caught in the excitement of a new position, but fail to anticipate ways that they can derail.

Based on my experience as an executive coach working with newly hired leaders who nearly derailed, here’s a list of some common mistakes that can easily be avoided.

1: Assuming support for their vision

Leaders are often hired based on a compelling vision they have to transform their organizations. However, implementing a vision without engaging key stakeholders and building trust can result in a failed change agenda and a damaged reputation. It is critical when onboarding new leaders to help them understand the cultural context and adapt their vision based on the vested interests of stakeholders. In essence, new leaders have to earn the right to create change by demonstrating appreciation for an organization’s history.

2: Not building alignment with the boss

Perhaps the most critical relationship for a new leader is with their boss. A new leader’s manager plays an instrumental role as a sponsor, helping to open doors to social networks. Therefore it is essential to build alignment with one’s manager on a change agenda, key priorities, communication protocols, and authority. Alignment with one’s new boss is a top priority when onboarding new leaders.

3: Setting the wrong tone

How a leader behaves from the start will strongly influence their reputation and likelihood of success in their new role. Most organizations have well-understood unwritten rules for how a new leader should balance an assertive style with a cooperative approach. The key is to enlist well-regarded mentors to determine this balance.  

4: Attempting to do too much

One of the biggest mistakes a new leader can make is trying to do too much. They often have grand plans and want to implement them all at once. However, this can be overwhelming for both the leader and their team. New leaders who burn out by attempting too much or focusing on the wrong priorities can damage their reputations. The solution is to prioritize and align with the boss on critical priorities early in their tenure. 

5: Not being visible enough

A newly hired healthcare executive, Susan had a naturally introverted style and jumped into her new role with gusto. Her comfort zone associated with this approach nearly derailed her since she largely remained in her office or the executive suite. Her direct reports assumed she didn’t care about them because she made little effort to engage in person. Building trust with followers through visible, real-time interactions is vital for newly hired leaders. Susan realized this and made a point to attend department meetings in her division to discuss her vision, experience, personal interests, and appreciation for what each department had achieved before her arrival. 

Starting a new leadership role is an exciting time filled with promise and opportunity. However, it can also be fraught with the potential for derailing setbacks if the process of onboarding new leaders is not well-designed. By being conscious of five familiar sources of derailment, new leaders can prevent lapses and thrive in their new roles. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Development

Supercharge Your Strengths or Fix Your Flaws?

strengths and weaknesses

I just kicked off a year-long leadership development academy for a group of 20 physicians members of an international medical academy. As part of the program, I administered an emotional intelligence self-assessment that opened many participants’ eyes to their skills and development needs. A number of the participants asked me whether they should focus on developing their strengths or fixing their flaws.

Developing Your Strengths

The strengths approach to leadership development, popularized by writers Rath and Conchie, is anchored in positive psychology. Their foundational ideas assume that most people are not aware of their strengths. When people develop this awareness and invest time in enhancing them, it enhances their abilities, confidence, and satisfaction. By extension, this approach suggests focusing on fixing weaknesses and does not translate to a sustainable performance improvement. A critical aspect of this approach is leveraging others’ strengths – recognizing that leaders cannot be good at everything. 

Steve, a chief operations officer in a health system, is highly skilled as a project manager and ensures no detail slips through the cracks. However, because he is very good at this competency and enjoys doing it, he rarely thinks strategically about his organization, including longer-term planning and visioning. Given his level in his organization, Steve needs strategic thinking capabilities to perform his role. In developing his project management strengths, Steve might want to consider how he might become more aware of when to tap this strength. For example, a project management perspective might not be the best choice when identifying strategic opportunities and a new initiative vision. He could also consider tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of his second in charge, Maria.

Developing Your Flaws

The more traditional approach to leadership development emphasizes developing flaws or weaknesses. Leaders often identify the gap between their actual and desired behavior to determine what to grow. The leadership development plan then focuses on filling the gap by increasing your skill and confidence. In many cases, these deficits are created by overusing one’s strengths. Overusing strengths can create lopsided leaders with substantial gaps in their knowledge or skill set. Often, the best way to identify these weaknesses is through developmental coaching and a 360-degree assessment.

Although Steve may never be an expert in strategic thinking, he could develop some necessary capabilities in this area to mitigate his weaknesses, enabling him to speak strategy to his boss, the CEO. To achieve this, he could allow his second in charge, Maria, to mentor him, read a good book on the topic, or engage trusted colleagues in practicing this skill.

Hybrid Approach: Striking a Balance

I subscribe to a hybrid approach to development that embraces both methods. This approach assumes the importance of using your strengths and developing substantial weaknesses that could derail your career and limit your success. Further, it entails leveraging the talents of your leadership team to augment your weaker skills. In constructing their development plans, I often recommend that leaders identify one strength and one weakness.

Moving into Action: 7 Key Strategies

Here are seven useful leadership development strategies to consider that combine the strength-based and deficit perspectives:

  • Ask five trusted colleagues to identify your top 3 strengths and their impact, along with specific situations when they are most helpful. 
  • Reflect on conditions where your interactions with others did not succeed and assess the extent to which you may have overused your strengths.
  • Reflect on peak experiences or achievements and determine how your strengths contributed to the successful outcomes. 
  • Consider mentoring others who are interested in developing skills you would consider to be your key strengths.
  • Reflect on your job role and determine the extent to which you can enlist your strengths; consider negotiating a change in your job role with your boss to find ways to align better with your strengths.
  • Identify role models; interview them to find out how they think and behave.
  • Consider how you can leverage the strengths of others on your team to mitigate your weaknesses.

Successful leaders are intentional about their development and take consistent action over time to optimize their potential. Well-crafted leadership development plans include a balance of developing both strengths and weaknesses. By taking a balanced approach, leaders can ensure they are well-prepared for future roles. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Leadership Transition Plans: Core Elements

Leadership Transitions
an plans are a critical element in helping new leaders transition into their role

Leadership transitions into new roles and organizations can be fraught with hidden landmines and potential career derailers. A surprisingly number of newly hired leaders don’t survive in their roles beyond 18 months. To ease this transition, forward-thinking organizations establish onboarding programs that include three critical elements including a leadership transition plan, internal mentors, and executive coaching. 

What is a transition plan?

A leadership transition plan is a valuable document that outlines success outcomes and other factors that could impact a leader’s ability to function well in their new role. As an executive coach, I have partnered with clients to help them create a draft plan.

Once developed, it is critical for a new leader to align the plan with their boss initially and throughout the following 6-9 months. In essence, the plan becomes a working document revised as conditions change and the new leader becomes more grounded in their new role.

Elements of a transition plan

There are seven components of a well-considered leadership transition plan. 

1. Key priorities and success outcomes for a new leader 

New leaders must clearly understand and align priorities and associated success outcomes with their bosses. Steven, a new Chief Financial Officer, is accountable for implementing a new financial accounting system and upgrading key business processes. 

2. Time-bound goals and milestones

Time-bound goals delineate expectations for 30, 60, 90, and 120 days that map to the new leader’s key priorities. This element for a leadership transition plan helps ensure a new manager is on-track. Steven set the 30-day goal of assessing his organization’s readiness for transformational change. 

3. Decision authority

New leaders need to understand their authority to make decisions. This authority could consist of decisions they can make unilaterally and those where they must consult their boss or peers. With Steven, he ultimately owns many decisions but is expected to engage a steering committee, including some of his peers, given the far-reaching impact of a new financial system.

4. Risk factors

Risk factors include issues new leaders face that could derail their efforts to achieve their priorities. For example, Steven’s efforts to implement a new financial system could fail based on a series of failed software implementations in the past ten years in his organization. His new organization is in the process of launching three other change efforts that could distract his stakeholders from supporting the new financial system implementation.  

5. Leader strengths and weaknesses

A well-designed leadership transition plan also identifies the skills needed by a leader in light of their risk factors and goals, along with their strengths and weaknesses. Steven realized that his priority in implementing a new financial system would require him to manage resistance and make presentations. His aversion to public speaking and tendency to become overly directive when faced with opposition represented developmental opportunities for him. He and his new boss talked this through, including developmental actions he could take to function more effectively.

6. Key stakeholders 

Key stakeholders represent important people a new leader must engage to achieve success. In consultation with his manager, Steven identified ten key stakeholders that could significantly impact the success of his system implementation efforts. They discussed the personalities and interests of each stakeholder, along with strategies to engage each.

7. Mentors and other resources

A vital component of a transition plan is a list of supportive resources available to a new leader. Steven identified several needed resources, and his boss helped him identify individuals who could play a role in his success. For example, Steven’s resource list included well-regarded cultural mentors who understood how to implement change in his organization and various organizational process experts. 

 

An essential component of a comprehensive onboarding process is a leadership transition plan jointly developed between a new leader and their boss. This plan is often a working document revisited periodically in the first six months of a new leader’s tenure. A transition plan as part of a well-designed onboarding process can help new leaders speed their transition to their new roles to feel confident and produce tangible results. 

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Additional resources on leadership transitions and transition plans:

The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded

The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build or Merge Your Team, and Get Immediate

Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

 

Categories
Executive Coaching Leadership Success Time Management

Leadership Effectiveness: Breaking Free of the Shiny Object Trap

Steven, an experienced CEO, was very effective in his role but wanted to explore ways to take his productivity to the next level. Specifically, he described how he was subject to what I refer to as the shiny object trap – losing sight of his daily priorities and getting distracted with a less critical task or time waster. 

He realized the magnitude of the problem when he received feedback from direct reports about their frustration with his reactivity and distracted state of mind, which prevented him from making timely decisions. 

As an executive coach, Steven’s experience is surprisingly common among my leadership clients who are trapped in a reactive mindset and get derailed on advancing strategic priorities. In this era of endless emails, texts, and other social media interactions, there is no lack of distractions that limit leader effectiveness. Neuroscientists have taught us how our nonstop reaction to technological disruptions creates new unproductive habits, similar to Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. 

Building Awareness

The cost of these distractions can be substantial in terms of reduced sense of personal achievement and delayed or mismanaged change efforts. Most managers could easily spend their whole day on their computers or cell phone and not advance any strategic priorities.  

In coaching Steven, I explored the underlying causes and factors that limited his effectiveness as a first step before helping him design experiments to try new behavior.

Steven recently completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, revealing that he was a perceiver on the judging-perceiving scale. As a perceiver personality type, he likes to remain open and flexible in emergent situations. However, it was evident to Steven that his personality strength had become a liability due to being overused. 

Steven tried three strategies to build awareness of the current state before determining how to change it:

  • We explored how Steven’s preference served him and when it did not and clarified what it would feel like if he over-functioned with his perceiving preference. 
  • Steven took notes in his journal when the shiny object phenomenon occurred for two weeks and his emotions; this allowed us to understand better the situational factors that triggered his behavior.  
  • He asked his direct reports to provide feedback about the impact of his unfocused and reactive style on their productivity.

As a result of these awareness-building activities, Steven realized how his reactivity to email and texts triggered an adrenaline rush. This experience, combined with his boredom with strategic planning and visioning, created the perfect conditions for this bad habit to persist. He realized the magnitude of the problem when he received feedback from direct reports about their frustration with his reactivity and distracted state of mind, which prevented him from making timely decisions. 

Moving Into Action

Steven developed four initial strategies in our coaching sessions to manage his distraction. I suggested he frame these options as experiments he could try and upgrade over time.

Clear goals and accountability

Steven began setting clear priorities for each week and communicating these priorities to his team to enhance his accountability. With this accountability and clarity, he reduced his temptation to get caught in distractions, including email, texting, and social media.

Triage the situation

He learned to assess and triage the incoming emails and texts to quickly screen out hot issues associated with critical stakeholders (e.g., an issue raised by a board member) that did need his focus. For those that were not urgent, he added them to a list to review later in the week.

Timeout periods

Steven began experimenting with timeout periods on social media and text messaging, where he closed his email application and muted his cell phone for 30-minute blocks. He let his administrative assistant know about this experiment so that if truly critical situations emerged, she could notify him. This experiment was challenging at first, but he began to establish a useful new habit as he practiced it. 

Weekly reflection

Steven blocked out his calendar on Friday afternoons and revisited the list he created of potential issues and problems during the week. Through this more in-depth review, he chose which topics needed action in the next week and the extent to which he could or should delegate them downward.

He also considered the underlying issues prompting urgent emails and text messages from various stakeholders to assess how to prevent future crises. For example, Steven began scheduling regular informal calls and breakfasts with board members to stay in touch with emergent issues or concerns they had before it became a crisis prompting urgent emails and text messages.  

Many leaders struggle with the shiny object trap, where unanticipated emails and text messages cause them to lose focus on their highest priorities. The secret sauce for improved leadership effectiveness begins by building self-awareness to identify mindsets and habits that diminish your impact and then take action with bold experiments. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Coaching Case Study Executive Coaching Leadership Frameworks Leadership Transition

Case Study: Evolution of a Newly Promoted Leader

Successful executive coaches draw upon evidence-based theories to achieve tangible results for their clients. One helpful framework recognizes how leaders evolve according to predictable stages. Consider the case of a newly promoted leader who nearly derailed and how leadership stage theory informed our coaching approach.

Susan is a newly promoted healthcare leader to her role in revenue reporting with four staff members. As a new manager, she felt overwhelmed trying to learn all she needed to know about her role, manage her team, and respond to her boss’s demands. In her role only a couple of months, Susan damaged many key relationships because of her overly assertive communication style. Her manager, the CFO, voiced his desire for her to delegate more downward to join his strategic planning meetings with the CEO. Susan started to doubt the wisdom of taking the promotion and feels exhausted as she works most weekends trying to learn more about the technical aspects of her direct reports roles.

Overview of Stage Theory

Numerous theories explain the process of how one becomes an effective change leader. Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs developed an agility framework that explores leader evolution based on developmental stages. This type of model provides a valuable roadmap for executive coaches support the growth of their clients based on predictable stages of development. As leaders evolve through these stages, they are better able to lead increasingly complex change initiatives successfully.

The five stages include expert, achiever, catalyst, co-creator, and synergist.

  • Expert level managers focus on the subject-matter competence and solo efforts to get things done. As a result, they are generally capable of leading simple change projects. Approximately 45% of managers are functioning at this level.
  • Achiever-level managers are attuned to strategic views of their role and organization, as well as producing results. Research suggests that 35% of managers function at this level.
  • Catalyst-level managers can build capacity by developing and empowering people, building innovative organizational cultures, and adaptive communication capabilities. Approximately 5% of managers function at this level.
  • Co-creators are skilled at building shared purpose, collaborative relationships, and service to others. Researchers estimate that only 4% of managers function at this level.
  • Synergists embrace a holistic perspective that integrates their life purpose with their vocation. Only 1% of managers reach this stage of development. Synergists are capable of navigating the most complex types of organizational change and transformation.

Susan as an Expert Stage Manager

Through initial conversations with Susan it became apparent she was functioning at the expert stage of leader development. Susan experienced limits to her ability to lead change projects – mostly incremental process improvements. These limitations stem from her limited ability to think strategically, over-reliance on her capabilities versus leveraging others’ talents, and limited self-awareness.

Coaching Approach with Susan

As her executive coach, I began with a 360-degree assessment to help Susan understand how others perceived her. We then created a development plan and met with her manager to align on coaching’s successful outcomes. Our goal was to help Susan begin advancing toward the next stage of development: Synergist.

My approach to working with Susan included:

  • Enhancing self-awareness, including her assumptions, self-beliefs, emotional triggers, and unproductive patterns.
  • Reframing what it means to be a leader from subject-matter expert to building relationships with others and leveraging their talents to augment her weaknesses.
  • Building her skills in learning how to enlist and engage her stakeholders instead of overusing assertive advocacy skills and talking at them.
  • Adopting a broader view of her role to examine interdependencies with peers and the organization’s broader direction, including strategic priorities that could influence her focus.
  • Leveraging her talent better by explaining her expectations, providing feedback, and helping team members step up more so she could delegate more.

Coaching Outcomes

After working with Susan for six months, she achieved some notable improvements:

  • She became more aware of her emotional triggers and learned to avoid reacting at the moment, helping improve trust with others.
  • Focusing her efforts more on creating successful outcomes instead of overemphasizing her technical expertise.
  • Developing trusting relationships with her peers and building greater alignment, enabling her to break down silos that limited her department’s effectiveness.
  • More successful outcomes from change projects she was managing since she leveraged others’ talent and skills to augment her capabilities.

Stage theory is a valuable way for executive coaches to support leader growth by defining critical developmental milestones on the journey to the top. These frameworks can be a big difference in helping new managers accelerate their growth and impact as highly effective leaders.


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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or info@nourseleadership.com.

(c) 2021 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Healthcare Leadership Success Leadership Transition Onboarding Leaders

Three Strategies for Preventing New Leader Derailment

Leaders can derail with support to integrate into an organization's culture

By Kevin Nourse, PhD

When new leaders join a new organization, it’s a time of great excitement and promise – as well as potential for costly career-limiting mistakes and derailment. The key is a new leader onboarding process that helps accelerate an executive’s integration into a culture, enabling them to create impact and achieve results quickly. 

The Case of Simon

Consider the case of Simon, a highly skilled physician leader whom a major medical center hired based on his experience and compelling vision for improving patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. Excited by his new role, he started his new job with gusto. His organization provided little new leader onboarding guidance other than a standard new hire orientation. 

Simon’s excessively blunt analytical style did not mesh well with the medical center’s culture

However, after two months on the job, things began to unravel. Simon’s excessively blunt analytical style did not mesh well with the medical center’s culture. He shared his vision for the center with the managers and staff but was not transparent about the underlying rationale for the reorganization. In addition, his combative style of debating issues and ideas came across as attacking staff. As a result, he grew more frustrated with the unspoken resistance to his reorganization and the lack of engagement during staff meetings. 

I began coaching Simon to salvage his career and improve the likelihood of implementing his vision. Initially, this involved collecting feedback from critical stakeholders, clarifying his priorities, end enlisting the support of his boss. While Simon ultimately recovered from nearly derailing in his role, I have seen many leaders who do not.  

What is a leader transition?

A leader transition is a significant shift in a leader’s role due to a promotion, expansion of their role, or joining a new organization. One of the most critical factors impacting the success of a transition into a new organization is the ability of a leader to understand and adapt to the culture so that they can gain support for their efforts and achieve results quickly.  Many researchers have argued that understanding an organization’s culture is an essential element of a new leader onboarding process.

Consider these examples of culture clashes impacting leaders:

  • A newly hired leader in a healthcare organization tried who enhance his power by frequently citing his achievements in past jobs but was instead perceived as arrogant. 
  • A newly promoted medical director in a pharmaceutical company edited documents shared by peers without being asked, thereby damaging these relationships.
  • A senior leader who used an iPad to capture notes in meetings was unaware that this practice was taboo in the eyes of his boss, who automatically assumed he was checking emails.

Cost of new leader derailment 

Recent research suggests that 40% of new leaders do not last more than eight months in their roles, primarily due to cultural missteps. There are far-reaching implications of newly hired leader derailment and turnover. The most obvious impacts are hard costs associated with turnover, including recruiting costs. The less apparent consequences include:

  • Lost organizational opportunities associated with change efforts that go unfulfilled by new executives. 
  • Poor decisions. 
  • Front-line staff and other stakeholders lost confidence in the senior leadership team.
  • Senior leaders who take on the responsibilities of derailed senior leaders and risk burning out. 

Despite the frequency of derailment and high cost, many organizations provide only a basic new hire orientation that is inadequate in addressing the onboarding needs of new leaders. While these sessions help new leaders understand the mechanics of functioning as a manager, they don’t address the unique challenges associated with integrating into an organization’s culture. 

Preventing derailment

The ideal solution to prevent derailment and turnover among newly hired executives consists of three parts:

  1. An onboarding plan that outlines specific time-bound outcomes for a new leader and has the support of a newly hired manager’s boss
  2. Executive coaching provided by a professional coach to provide external support during the transition, including a 360-degree assessment at the end of 90 days
  3. An internal network of mentors with a positive reputation based on a track history of peak performance

Onboarding Plan

An onboarding plan, jointly developed between a new leader and their direct supervisor, creates an informal agreement outlining success. Well-developed plans include:

  • An assessment of risks faced by the new leader such as negative impacts the by former leader in their position or challenges in their organizational portfolio
  • Success outcomes for the first six months, such as execution of crucial initiatives or development of an organizational assessment
  • Critical supports for the new leader such as an executive coach and internal mentors.

There are a couple books that address the elements of a onboarding plan I really like: The New Leader’s 100 Day Action Plan and The First 90 Days.

Executive Coaching

An executive coach can provide valuable insight for supporting a newly hired executive in a confidential setting, including: 

  • Navigating crucial conversations with their manager
  • Making sense of cultural norms, taboos, and patterns
  • Navigating setbacks 
  • Enhancing their grit and resilience to navigate the overwhelming challenges they face in their new role
  • Gathering feedback from organizational stakeholders in the form of a 360-degree report to help surface perceived strengths and weaknesses

Internal Mentors

Mentors internal to the organization can play a crucial role in supporting the successful integration of a newly hired executive. Ideally, these mentors are formally selected and have positive reputations in the organization. Internal mentors can provide critical support for a new leader:

  • Insights on cultural norms among the senior leadership team, such as navigating conflicts, decision-making, and power 
  • Insider perspectives on various parts of the organization such as their key priorities, personalities, historical perspectives, and relationships with organizational units
  • Support for building relationships throughout the organization by making introductions and sharing feedback with a new leader

Landing a new leadership position is filled with excitement and opportunity. Unfortunately, many new managers never successfully integrate into a new culture because of deficient methods for leader onboarding. However, with a new leader onboarding process that includes three key elements, new leaders can survive and thrive in their roles.  

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Healthcare Leadership Development Leadership Success

Strategic Leadership: Becoming the CEO of Your Department

The increasingly complex and rapidly changing context facing healthcare organizations, especially in an era of global pandemics, translates to a significant burden on CEOs to demonstrate strategic leadership.   Setting aside time to anticipate potential threats and opportunities is tricky for many CEOs who can easily get trapped in tactical firefighting. The key is building their direct reports’ capabilities, enabling them to anticipate the pressures facing the CEO.

I work with several senior healthcare leaders who have indicated their desire for their subordinates to demonstrate strategic leadership in their departments as if they were a CEO. However, in conversations I’ve had with middle managers, this concept is poorly understood.    So what does it mean to think and act like a CEO demonstrating strategic leadership?

A hallmark of CEO functioning is strategic thinking. Strategic thinkers transcend their functional silos and can consider multiple perspectives in facing issues or challenges. CEOs vary their focus directionally in four ways: inward, downward, lateral, and upward/outward. In focusing on these directions, they consider threats, challenges, and opportunities they can exploit.

Inward Focus

Focus inward, consisting of self-awareness and self-management, and taking responsibility for your behavior and development:

  • Building awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, and emotional hot buttons
  • Asking colleagues for feedback on ways you can improve your impact
  • Creating a development plan that identifies weaknesses you want to develop and strengths to better leverage
  • Taking accountability for your words, actions, and commitments

Downward Focus

Focus downward consists of actions you take to lead and motivate your team, both the individuals who report to you and the team dynamic. Important practices include:

  • Mitigating your weaknesses by leveraging the talents of your direct reports
  • Asking your subordinates about their career interests and finding ways to help them realize them
  • Regularly engaging your team to get their input on critical issues
  • Noticing and recognizing peak performance among your direct reports
  • Communicating desired outcomes to your team and inviting them to determine the best way to achieve them

Lateral Focus

A lateral focus consists of your actions to engage and collaborate with your peers:

  • Developing strong, trusting coalitions among your peers
  • Engaging peers to elicit their input on changes in your department that might have downstream impacts
  • Proactively collaborating with your peers to improve core organizational processes
  • Advocating for your peers even if they aren’t present

Upward and Outward Focus

Focus upward and outward to proactively manage the relationship and concerns of your boss and external stakeholders and customers:

  • Understanding your organization’s strategic plan and how your department supports the attainment of critical priorities
  • Assessing and understanding emerging healthcare trends, best practices, and potential future risks
  • Continually improving the functioning of your department without being asked
  • Anticipating the challenges your boss is facing and proactively suggesting solutions
  • Paying regular attention to the needs – both expressed and unexpressed – of your external clients and stakeholders.

The road to becoming a CEO is a long one that takes persistence, resilience, and passion. Few people successfully navigate this journey. However, the essence of a CEO mindset and behavior – strategic leadership – can be incorporated into your leadership toolkit now and pay immediate returns for your career success and advancement.   

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience coaching leaders who are experiencing transitions to thrive in their new or expanded roles. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2022 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Goal Setting Leadership Leadership Development Leadership Success

Stepping it Up: Your First Leadership Role

man giving presentation in front of a crowd of people

Steve is a high-potential analyst in his hospital’s finance department and interested in launching his leadership transition. He was selected for a high potentials leadership program I was facilitating, including 360-degree assessment and executive coaching. With the awareness he gained from the assessment, Steve made great gains in enhancing his performance and addressing the feedback issues. He felt ready for a promotion to a leadership role. However, when I asked Steve what he would say in an interview to promote what kind of leader he wanted to be or his vision for a leadership role, his eyes glazed over.

What can high-potential leaders do to set the stage for a promotion to their first leadership role?

Leadership Platform

A leadership platform consists of clarity about your unique and authentic leadership practices and philosophies. Ideally, these practices are based on your core values. In doing so, you are better equipped to enhance trust with your team by demonstrating authenticity and genuineness.  I recall working with a leader hired to into a large healthcare organization. One of the first things she did was to share her leader platform with her direct reports. Among the elements she identified:

  • The best ideas come from people doing the work.
  • Approach me with solutions, not problems.
  • Transparent communication about our successes and failures.
  • I hold myself accountable to the expectations I have of you.
  • We address conflict directly and openly.

So how can you identify your authentic leadership platform? Here are a few strategies:

  • Reflect on effective past leaders you worked for and identify explicit or implicit values they embodied in their leadership.
  • Interview two managers you admire to learn about their core values and how they embody them in their leadership practices. 
  • Consider your deepest core values, and they would be manifest in your leadership practices. 

Leadership Vision

The other element – a leadership vision – is an essential ingredient for any current or future leader. It represents your true north in describing the future you want to create and the strategies you will use to create it. One of the key factors that distinguish a manager from a leader is an authentic vision anchored in one’s sense of purpose and values. One nurse leader I coached identified her vision: Facilitate collaborative interdisciplinary relationships that result in lower cost and higher quality healthcare for lower-income patients. 

A well-constructed vision contains several elements, including your purpose, the future state of what you want to create, and your unique approach to attaining it. Action verbs are essential!

A great way to formulate your vision is to anchor it in peak professional or volunteer experiences:

  • Identify three experiences where you felt a high impact, alive, and engaged; debrief the experiences to identify your impact and the unique skills or strategies you used.
  • Reflect on issues or challenges that trigger anger and frustration in you; these may be great indicators of the kinds of challenges that will inform your vision.
  • Ask four trusted colleagues the following: What are the situations when I am at my very best? 

Successfully advancing into your first leadership role is a combination of timing, sponsorship, having the right skills and experience, as well as demonstrating leadership potential. By proactively clarifying your leadership platform and vision, you will be better positioned to leap from individual contributor to leader. 

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or info@nourseleadership.com.

(c) 2021 Kevin Nourse 

Categories
Leadership Development

Virtual Leadership Development: Preventing the Webinar from Hell

Associations are increasingly using virtual classrooms and webinars to develop volunteer leaders as a means for reducing costs and expanding access to geographically diverse memberships. Having designed and facilitated such programs for nearly a decade, I find that no matter how experienced we are in producing online webinars, stuff happens. Technical glitches can quickly negate all the time and energy we invest in creating the perfect learning environment. In this blog post, I share my recent experiences and lessons learned (and relearned) while producing the webinar from hell.

The challenging webinar was a 90-minute session delivered via Adobe Meeting I produced for a long-time client, a large professional association offering a formal leadership development program for its members. There were two leaders from the client organization as guest speakers based in the Metro DC area. I produced the webinar from my home office in Palm Springs, California.

Twenty minutes into the webinar, the network status indicator in the Adobe session turned red indicating I lost my internet connection. I immediately went into triage mode to assess what was happening and how to fix it. Ultimately, I discovered there was a widespread outage in my geographic area. Fortunately, I had an iPhone with an Internet hotspot, enabling me to sustain an audio connection so that the speakers were able to continue and eventually conclude the session.

What can you do to prevent potentially painful experiences when delivering webinars for your association’s leadership development program?

Establish backup internet access

Fortunately, I purchase Sprint cell phone service that included a hot spot to access the internet. Adobe Meeting requires that the webinar host maintain a live audio connection or the session ends automatically.

Sprint service does not allow access to the internet on a cell phone hotspot while also using the voice service. As a result, I was unable to manage the online Adobe meeting classroom and concurrently have audio access. Ultimately, I chose to use my cell phone to remain connected to the audio which allowed the guest speakers to continue their presentation.

Provide copies of handouts

Without an ability to manage the Adobe classroom experience, the session presenters were unable to advance the program slides. Because participants had access to the webinar handout before the session began, the speakers were able to refer to the detailed webinar guide as a backup.

Maintain access to customer service

During the webinar from hell, I was using my cell phone to keep the classroom live and therefore had no way to contact my internet service provider to find out the extent of the local outage. At one point, I used the cell phone feature to add a call to contact my local cable provider and determine whether the disruption was widespread. Unfortunately, when I ended the call to the cable provider, it also disconnected me from the Adobe Meeting classroom. I had to quickly scramble to dial back in lest the session end prematurely.

By having a second backup internet hotspot, I could have easily contacted my local cable provider through an online chat feature instead of calling. This would have prevented a potential disaster in abruptly ending the webinar session.

Build client capabilities 

One factor that made a huge difference in completing the webinar despite major technical setbacks was an educated client. Two presenters from my client organization seamlessly continued the webinar when it became apparent that technical issues prevented the classroom from functioning. Both individuals had experience presenting via webinar and understood the need to be flexible and creative when faced with technology snafus.

Use two facilitators 

Typically when I facilitate webinars, I have a co-presenter for the session. If we have issues, one of us can troubleshoot while the other can maintain interactions with participants in the virtual classroom. In the case of this webinar, I was flying solo and had to juggle multiple roles.

Virtual learning platforms, such as Adobe Meeting, offer significant advantages to associations that are interested in developing future leaders among geographically disperse members. In most cases, the technology works flawlessly. However, the rare instances of major technical glitches can have a negative impact on the quality of these programs. The likelihood of a webinar from hell can be diminished by anticipating the worst and having contingency plans in place.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2020 Kevin Nourse

Categories
Leadership Leadership Success

The Importance of Context and Structure for Leader Success

As an executive coach, I am often invited into organizations to help peak performing leaders get ready for a promotion to transition into a new role. Performance is the result of a leader’s ability as well as the presence of contextual factors that support peak performance. While coaching can help accelerate skill development, learning, and development, it is not very efficient in addressing inadequacies in these contextual factors. Even when there are clear developmental needs among leaders for which coaching can help address, these factors will limit the success of a coaching effort.

What are some of these contextual and structural factors? Consider the case of Barbara, a new senior program manager in a healthcare organization. Her organization embraces a matrix design where she reports to both a clinical and a service line leader, as well as administrative manager responsible for staff management.

Barbara’s managers had widely differing views about the nature and focus of her role as well as outcomes. As a result, she struggled because of the mixed and conflicting messages she often received from each of her managers. Barbara was further disengaged when her two managers decided she needed an executive coach to help her improve her behavior and attitude. While Barbara was open to coaching and achieved some useful insights, it did little to address the lack of alignment between her bosses.

What are some of the structural and contextual factors that impact both executive success and the success of a coaching engagement?

Job Role Design and Success Outcomes

For executives to excel, they should have a well-designed description of their role with a manageable set of responsibilities and performance outcomes. Also, a surprising number of organizations I have worked with are ineffective in communicating to a newly promoted leader about how an executive should achieve the goals of their role – the core competencies and organizational values they should demonstrate in producing results. For example, I recall one leader who faced near derailment because her direct and command-oriented style was incompatible with the norms of her organization’s culture which was highly collaborative.

Clear Accountability

A lack of clear accountability and reporting for a leader can lead to role ambiguity, unnecessary conflict, and diminished career potential. Executives should understand to whom they are accountable. The case of Barbara noted above is an excellent example of consequences of unclear accountability.

Job Fit

Poor executive performance sometimes results from a bad fit with their job role. An executive may have a long list of talents and skills, but if their personality or motivations don’t match the job, coaching won’t make a difference. One typical scenario I see involves individual contributors who are not motivated to be leaders, especially in technical, scientific, and clinical fields. The sad reality is that some organizations continue to embrace the mistaken belief that a successful individual contributor is always an ideal leader. 

In one instance, a technical leader I coached had little interest in managing people but took the role because she did not feel as though she could say no to her boss. As a result, she often ignored performance issues among her direct reports since she was more interested in the technical responsibilities of her job. Moreover, my client did not see herself as a leader, making it exceedingly challenging to help her develop her leadership skills given her self-perception and career interests.

Support from Above

Support comes in many forms – feedback, autonomy, and incentives to perform. I am often surprised at how little quality feedback my leadership coaching clients receive from their managers – to the point that I often wonder whether I should be coaching the boss. Quality feedback is timely and behavioral, whether developmental or positive. It is particularly critical during and after a coaching engagement, where my clients experiment with new behavior and need feedback to reinforce their development.


Autonomy for a leader is also a crucial contextual factor promoting success in an executive. I’ve coached some leaders viewed by others as too passive because they were not proactive in driving change. In some cases, they had the necessary skills to step up but lacked confidence because they were unsure about how much autonomy they had to act.


Incentives to improve performance represent an essential form of support from a boss for an executive undergoing a coaching intervention. For example, incentives like financial and non-financial rewards, greater role autonomy, or recognition. This factor goes hand-in-hand with removing barriers that limit performance improvement. For example, a leader I coached received feedback that she needed to demonstrate greater gravitas or executive presence in meetings with senior leaders. However, her boss limited her access to the CEO and other senior leaders, diminishing the impact of the coaching engagement.

Executive performance is a by-product of a leader’s skills and motivations as well as contextual and structural elements. Executive coaching is an efficient way to accelerate a leader’s ability to perform in a current or future role assuming these elements are in place and functioning well.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse has more than 25 years of experience developing transformational change leaders in healthcare and other sectors. He is the founder of Nourse Leadership Strategies, a coaching and leadership development firm based in Southern California. For more information, contact Kevin at 310.715.8315 or kevin@nourseleadership.com

(c) 2020 Kevin Nourse