CEO Today - July 2022

THE DISRUPTORS www.ceotodaymagazine.com 30 Over the past two decades, I have conducted hundreds of interviews with leaders and led workshops with organisations around the world across a wide range of sectors and industries. At the organisational level, there has been a change in the traditional markers of success. Market growth, shareholder wealth, and increased profitability are no longer the only determinants of sustained company prosperity. With today’s formidable challenges, human improvement, stakeholder enrichment, and enhanced societal value creation have become critical business success factors. At the individual level, the interviews revealed characteristics associated with top performance, which were then grouped into meta-themes I call the Five Ambassadors. Rather than being a role or title, the Five Ambassadors are the laudable behaviours of top-performing professionals, which is “a person who consistently exceeds expectations, leads by example, and whose behaviours are admirable and worthy of emulation, thereby representing the very best of society.” Incidentally, a strong ethical and moral compass was a common ingredient across top performers, so it is not called out separately. Logically, one cannot be unethical and immoral and still be considered representative of the very best of society. A person might be a worldclass leader of abhorrent behaviours, but societal antibodies would ultimately reject reprehensible characters to ensure a healthy body politic. Rising to the top of the analysis were people who demonstrated all Five Ambassadors. They distinguished themselves from other high-calibre people because of the breadth of their competence. This does not mean that those who were good at fewer than Five Ambassadors were somehow deficient, or incompetent, or horrible. In fact, applying the Five Ambassadors to many of our most celebrated leaders would reveal that some fall well short of excellence in all five, yet have had notably successful careers. It was the rarer performers who excelled in all Five Ambassadors that offer inspiring lessons. Like top athletes, they worked hard to improve to gain this high level of competence and capability. Encouragingly, their dedicated efforts suggest that anybody has the potential to become a top performer if they practice. The Five Ambassadors Top performers prepared by developing and using routines prior to important professional situations. The repetition of practice strengthened their behaviour muscle and self-confidence which, in turn, carried into their daily work. Of course, things rarely go as planned or scripted when amid an actual challenge or opportunity. But the very act of preparing built an inventory of potential responses to help them navigate conditions as they occurred in real-time. The Five Ambassadors are not a sequence, nor a role where you consciously say, ‘now I am in my curiosity ambassador mindset’. Instead, they occur organically given the specific context, a natural outcome of learning by doing. The following highlights key elements of the Five Ambassadors, including a selection of common mistakes people make and suggested ways to overcome them. Curiosity Ambassador Top performers relish gaining deep knowledge of markets and trends, integrating these evidence-based insights into their work. Mistakes to overcome: • Misinterpreting information or relying on overly narrow sources • Ignoring difficult questions, jumping to conclusions, letting dominant voices drive discussions • Seeking affirmation of your existing perceptions Suggestions for improvement: • Seek out broader information sources, even if they contradict your perspective • Become a detector of ‘weak signals’ (early indicators of In fact, applying the Five Ambassadors to many of our most celebrated leaders would reveal that some fall well short of excellence in all five, yet have had notably successful careers. “ “

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