Author: Alina Aronova, Founder of Almax Executive Advisory and “Go to Executive Coach for High Achievers”
Leadership roles are hard to achieve because you have to work hard for many years, learn a lot, prove yourself, deliver results, relentlessly compete with the performance of others, manage and mentor teams, deal with stress and corporate politics while taking on more and more responsibility and trying to create some sort of work/life balance. We tell ourselves that if it were easy anyone could do it... We are in the big leagues now, we need to persevere, fake it until we make it... Our competitive spirit and ambition fuel us with energy and we push even harder.... We take pride in our "fighter spirit" but what if we have been doing it all WRONG? My Limitless Leadership Framework is grounded in over two decades of personal experience of coming into the country as a first-generation immigrant, creating a 100% self-made life for myself and my family, self-funding two higher education degrees and numerous continuing education certifications, starting from the most juror corporate role out of college and climbing to the top of the corporate ladder in the industry I do not really have natural talents in while experiencing every possible self-inflicted internal and external obstacle possible.
Looking back I feel proud of what I was able to accomplish. I did it leveraging my brains, my relentless grit, my competitive spirit, my wiliness to do difficult and scary things, and my ability to persevere. As a natural-born overachiever, I leveraged all my overachiever's qualities to pull myself up but I also suffered from "the dark side" of the Overachiever's personality too. But that is a topic for a whole new article. As a result of my journey and experiences, I challenged conventional thinking to create and prove a hypothesis that there is a BETTER WAY to truly achieve Limitless Leadership for You, your Team, and your Organization.
YOU The core of the framework is anchored to you as an individual and as a leader. It is based on mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive elements, specifically focusing on what you can control within yourself, what happens around you in your ecosystem, and how you can tap into the power of relationships around you. it is critical to think about infinite self-improvement as a deeply personalized and honest look at yourself. First of all, there is always something to improve in ourselves so that journey truly should be infinite, which is a counterintuitive thought for us, the overachievers. We always strive to finish something and move to the next challenge. So you will need to get over that feeling. Second of all, we all have a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses grounded in our personality traits, learned habits, and life experiences, as I refer to it, our Unique Professional DNA. By discovering ad understanding what is a true make-up of your unique professional DNA you can start focusing on the areas of your infinite self-improvement. Some of us could be lacking executive presence, clarity in career vision, communication skills, could have limiting beliefs that need to be challenged or limiting behaviors that need to be changed, some might need to set themselves for success in a new role, create effective tactics to deal with stress and burnout or build a succession plan and an exit strategy. As I mentioned, there is no "one fits all" recipe. This part of the journey is deeply personal. As we move up in the framework we start to focus on the environment around us. One thing that is always certain is the fact that everything is always changing in your professional environment. It can be reorganizations, changes in strategy and leadership appointments, M&A, divestiture transactions, transformations, etc. A key change in your thinking paradigm should be that these changes do not make you a pawn in a larger chess game. There are ALWAYS ways to influence your situation in any environment. You might just have to think creatively and be intentional in your decisions and actions. Creating buy-in, building strong relationships and alliances, effectively managing up, being able to create and articulate your vision, learning how to influence and negotiate effectively, look for ways to create new opportunities for yourself are just some tactics that can be employed in the times of change. Fostering strong relationships, while doing it authentically and intentionally is the last element of the "You" pillar. The key here is to find a format that works for you and your personality and create a cadence that works both ways. It is not only about getting something but also about giving something and paying forward. Understanding who your true champions are, how to leverage the power of mentorships and advisors, how to engage in your professional network community are important tactics to explore and develop for yourself.
TEAM
As a leader of leaders, it is your responsibility to be cognizant of the negative dynamics happening in your leadership teams. Is the team performing to its full collective potential or do you see personality clashes of strong-minded people, different philological approaches to leadership, conflicting objectives, people talking past each other, or engaging in never-ending negotiations and arguments? Another strong evidence is passive-aggressive behavior, no visual signs of conflict but lack of motivation to work together. Even if each member of your team has a good understanding of their professional DNA how do you get them to work together? Do you need to do a team assessment and alignment? Is it time for impactful leadership off-site? Do you feel that your team could benefit from a shared learning experience or team-building event? Sometimes teams with no conflict and no issues on the surface still can not get things done. Ultimately, as leaders and leaders or leaders, we are expected to deliver results. That is why they pay us big bucks, right? How can you wire your team to be able to deliver results intentionally and predictably? Execution is a king! Do you feel you have the right levers in place to ensure your teams' performance? Some of the common "show stoppers" are the inability to articulate vision/mission/strategy or "reasons to believe" for your teams to rally around or the inability to create an executable and realistic plan. Think about engaging an independent master facilitator who can work with your leadership team to build these foundations that can be brought to the rest of the team to execute on. Probably the most controversial and counter-intuitive point in this framework is Leadership as a Team Sport. Even if you get each member of your leadership team to improve themselves, and you address all negative team dynamics and blockers, you improve your team's ability to execute, there is more they can do collectively to become a high-functioning leadership team. Imagine what your leadership team would be capable to achieve if they envisioned and embraced a version of a greater good. Imagine the impact they can make if you reframe their definition of success and give them incentives that focus on a collective success of failure rather than an individual one. Think about what we can learn from professional team sports and from industries where people truly have to make 'life and death decisions, such as military, medicine, high-risk engineering, and manufacturing.
ORGANIZATION
We are finally approaching the last pillar of the framework. The reason we are going in this order is very simple. You will not be able to fix problems in your team and your organization if you are not willing to start with yourself. You can not expect to see changes in others if you do not hold yourself against the same set of expectations. By showing that you are willing to change and improve yourself you will earn trust and respect, which will open doors to future buy-in and willingness to do things differently by your organization.
I am not saying that healthy culture is about rainbows and butterflies. It is not about making every single person happy. A culture of trust and healthy dialog allows for different voices, different points of view but in a contractive and a positive way. The environment where there is enough respect for each other, even in situations of different opinions, is the environment people want to be a part of.
Is your organization ready to embrace the growth-minded culture and do it at scale? You can not just say it, you have to show it with actions and meaningful investments. There is also no standard recipe for an organization. The key is to find what is appropriate for your company. Do you have Employee Resource Groups (ERG), robust Learning and Development programs, a strong tuition reimbursement program just to name a few? There are a lot of different solutions but you should start with listening to your employees and understanding what they want and need and how they want to engage in the process. Do you know how well your organization is doing by capturing their sentiment in employee engagement surveys? Do you have data or only anecdotal evidence? Do you know what actions you need to take to elevate the levels of engagement? People's learning styles are different from their needs and aspirations. Showing that you can hear them and create solutions for them would be a great win for any organization.
Finally, the last element of the third pillar is believing and living the mantra that your people are your competitive differentiator. This is the time to be truly selfless. Look for ways to invest in your people that mean the most to them. Do not give them benefits that serve them but are also good for the business. Do not offer training that will make them better employees of your organization. Take a huge leap of faith and offer them resources that will make them more marketable, more competitive, will take them furthest in their careers, and see what happens. Will they take an opportunity to leave your organization to capitalize on their learnings and experiences or will they stay and amplify the success of your organization to limitless horizons? The plot thickens...
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Alina Aronova, Founder of Almax Executive Advisory and “ The Go-to Executive Coach for High Achievers”
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