The 5 essential skills of a CEO…

Much has been written about what makes a successful CEOs. Put simply, the skills of a CEO can be distilled down to 5 essential skills. They need to be able to:

 1.Judge where the world and company’s markets are heading and framing a vision of how the company should reposition itself

2.Identify (and if needed recruit) the talent that can turn that vision into reality

3.Understand in a deep and substantive way the problems that the company faces

4.Know comprehensively how the company really works and know the key players well

5.Take the difficult decisions necessary to remove the barriers to success

TalentInvest helps companies build their CEO pipelines and strengthen CEO succession. For help with this contact meena@talentinvest.com.au

 

 

 

 

 

Predicting talent flows…..

Accenture’s session at Davos on Growth, pointed to compelling data on the rapid growth in trade flows between Emerging Markets, as opposed to the often quoted trade flows data between developed economies and emerging economies.  This along with the proportion of people earning more than USD 50,000 per annum in places like Turkey and Indonesia, and the internal demand that fuels, global companies need not just focus on India and China as engines of growth.

Talent flows tend to reflect trade flows and if Accenture’s projections for emerging market to emerging market trade flows holds true, talent will follow.

In Asia for example MNCs and large Asian conglomerates are starting to provide ‘in-region’ developmental experiences between major Asian ‘hubs’ – South Asia, North Asia, and South East Asia – and ‘sub-hubs’ between those. With the progress Asia has made especially in the last 5 years, there is now a granularity and depth of market (not there previously) that provides interesting experiences for young emerging Asian leaders to learn and grow from and companies to better exploit.  The ‘head office posting’ is no longer the only game in town.

TalentInvest consults for many global companies operating in Asia

Unconscious Bias training for leaders: All the rage! But does it really pay off?

Today, many companies invest heavily in unconscious bias training for leaders targeted at building awareness about bias. But unless the skill of ‘thinking about your thinking’ is applied to core organisational people processes, it is unlikely to make any material mindset shift in how inclusive leaders become of others’ ideas and contribution.

For example unless the ideas around bias, its occurence and its dangers are applied to day to day people processes such as determining who is talent and who is not (talent management), or who is performing or who is not (performance management) or who is worth investing in and who is not (succession planning and development), it will remain at an awareness level.

It is one thing to be aware of bias but quite another to become skilled at spotting it. We can all spot the biases of others but rarely our own! To ensure a payback for such training, companies have to go beyond just providing awareness training and shift their focus to skill building: for example building the skill associated with making intelligent choice and balanced judgements not only about people but also about the business.

Sponsoring and promoting talent, without adding ‘program fatigue’

Written by Meena Thuraisingham, Director & Principal, TalentInvest, June 2011 

 Introduction

A number of organisations went into over-drive following the publishing of Hermina Ibarra’s article in the HBR in October 2010 which asserted that women were over-mentored and under-sponsored, citing it as the reason why men are promoted more often than women.

Even though the issues were well covered in her article, it was based on a relatively small sample of 40 people studied over 2 years in a single company.  This did not therefore allow for the criticality of organisational culture to be explored as a part of the sponsorship process. It also did not create a real understanding of how organisations could actually improve their mentoring efforts especially in relation to the capability of line leaders who champion such efforts.

Having said this, in this article we are not suggesting more research or more data for something that has its roots and has produced tangible benefits from as far back as human history goes. We would not be enjoying the genius of Michelangelo today had it not been for his sponsor Lorenzo de’Medici.  We also don’t need to add yet another program in organisations that are already suffering from ‘program fatigue’.

So let’s get to the questions most asked of us by our clients and perhaps put some perspective in the debate about sponsorship brought on not just by Hebbara’s article. Following on from many major reviews (the Lord Davis review in the UK into under-representation of women on FTSE boards, being only one of many) and as well as new SEC, FTSE and ASX rules around disclosure of director nominations, organisations that have not made much progress with minority representation at senior levels will be starting to worry.

Is mentoring dead and sponsorship the new best thing?

There is a definite place for mentoring and in our view an even bigger role for good mentoring. If you consider that mentoring is a proxy for experience (providing talent with access to experiences  that they could not ordinarily gain as quickly themselves), then the wisdom, insight and understanding that comes from a mentoring relationship cannot be replaced. The most successful leaders have mentors (several), some of whom advocate actively for them i.e. have been converted into sponsors. However organisations already suffering from ‘program fatigue’ have rushed to create sponsorship programs alongside mentoring programs that are not working.

The imperative for organisations is to create a culture of personal sponsorship that is not divorced from their mentoring initiatives, but instead is very much part of their mentoring efforts and find ways to provide their mentors with the skills to operate like advocates and sponsors of their protégés.

Should sponsors be picked or emerge?

Sponsors and mentors that actively sponsor their protégés are easy to spot in organisations. These are people that ‘get’ talent i.e. they understand that there are people that have the potential that others don’t, but still need to be provided the right conditions in which to thrive and grow. They understand from their own experiences, how someone’s potential is best unleashed, they understand that exposure and visibility are also a critical part of the ‘testing’ of that potential. We don’t believe for example that someone can be a good sponsor unless they can point to people that have advocated and sponsored them during their career in material ways and deeply understand the process of sponsorship. Most importantly they are extremely skilled in organisational influence. They champion causes and programs within their organisations  – they inspire trust in others, others respect their opinions and will trust their judgment implicitly. Above all they have huge amounts of courage and are willing to place and take bets on others often on the strength of a hunch. Hence if a company goes for the ‘picking the sponsor’ approach it will need to be clear about what makes a good sponsor and what is involved in the process of sponsorship.

Have we lost sight of cause and effect?

Isn’t someone who has been successfully sponsored simply someone who has (themselves) learnt to use their networking skills impactfully? They have connected with people who have organisational influence and have benefited from that influence to promote or progress their impact in the organisation. Yes very much so and as such it is important to consider the real causes for why women and other minorities don’t progress as rapidly.  They lack the access to power and influence in an organisation. But on the principle that it is better to ‘teach a man to fish than give him fish’, the focus should be on how we help women and minorities identify and leverage the relationships around them to develop their own impact and influence proactively, which includes learning to ask! This goes well beyond running networking or affinity groups for minorities, which program driven companies have tried but have found not to have yielded the hoped for outcomes.

Does a sponsorship program run foul of efforts to make women more self reliant?

Yes it potentially does because it can inadvertently move the responsibility for career advancement to someone else. Creating a culture of sponsorship through investing in line leader attitudes and skills solves only half the problem. Minorities need to be given development in what is essentially a life skill and one that will have lasting career impact. This approach delivers more sustainable outcomes than contriving a program that is focused only on progressing the protégé to the next organisational level. Providing talented women or minorities with the skills required to powerfully create, deepen and extend their relationship networks is critical to long term success of the protégé and to healthier talent pipelines for the organisation over time.

How do you pick sponsors?

Using their own influence and connections inside and outside the company, sponsors take active and personal responsibility to showcase their protégés.  This will only come from someone who themselves have been sponsored along the way, understand how leaders will learn and grow, have huge personal and professional credibility inside and outside the organisation and whose judgment is trusted implicitly.  They are also often a ‘go to person’ on major organisational change i.e. they know how the organisation works. Organisations that ask for mentors to volunteer for mentoring programs should think again and consider how they might identify using a ‘heat map’ methodology to determine who in the organisation are best able to sponsor and advocate for the most talented people in the organisation.

Can sponsorship programs fall into the trap of perpetuating the current culture?

Some reflective voices have raised the potential for sponsorship programs perpetuating the worst of a current culture. That is to say that those that end up getting sponsored are those that echo the views of their sponsors, toe the line and generally reflect the current cultural biases of the organisation. To avoid this trap, organisations need to take a long hard look at their talent identification processes. As part of this we would recommend a formal process be undertaken to develop a ‘fit for future’ talent lens through which not only are talent identified but all sponsorship and mentoring efforts are re-aligned.

How to assess if sponsorship is really working?

Organisations who have sponsorship programs in place will tell you that not all are producing the results that were intended. The often quoted examples like IBM where sponsors are held accountable for the advancement of their protégés may feel a bit too much like ‘carrot and stick’. The question organisations have to ask is whether sponsorship of young emerging ‘out of the box’ talent is actually supported culturally and if the messages its leaders send about the culture are aligned. A culture that operates with an unconscious bias (at a collective level) towards tenure and experience is unlikely to encourage would-be sponsors to take a punt on someone who is untested. A culture where its leaders are driven more by individual achievement/purpose is less likely to grow leaders who care about collective achievement/purpose and their responsibilities for developing others.

Some concluding thoughts

We advocate that before organisations create sponsorship programs, they should take another look at how talented people are mentored and exposed in their organisations, as this will point to how it can better build a culture of sponsorship. The challenge is ultimately about the culture and if its leaders care enough about pulling through the next generation of talent.

To find out more about these ideas contact meena@talentinvest.com.au

The future of Localisation Plans in a globalised talent market: a policy oxymoron or a paradox that needs an integrated response?

Written by Meena Thuraisingham, Director & Principal, TalentInvest, Jan 2012 

There are too few Asian leaders in MNCs. Is this a simple issue of supply and demand or are there some complexities that underpin this issue and prevent us from finding solutions?

In fact many organisations operating in Asia have had localisation plans in place for some years now and yet these plans have not produced a strong pipeline of Asian leaders.  Why is this so?

This short essay challenges the approach taken to date with localisation strategies and reframes the issue in a way that gets us on the path to generating sustainable solutions to best resource our Asian businesses in a globalised world.

The challenge

Close to 30% of professionals below the age of 30 now work in a country other than their country of birth. These career mobile Gen Ys are not on expatriate packages, going simply where the best job opportunities are, even when these opportunities are cross-border – in fact increasingly because the opportunities are cross border. This level of globalisation of talent pools suggests that the notion of an Asian talent pool vs. non Asian talent may in fact be outdated and merely reflect the binary thinking trap we fall into when thinking about such challenges.

Driven by commercial purpose organisations will gravitate to talent and talent pools that generate the best performance outcomes and return, wherever they may be located. But globalisation of the talent market has an unintended consequence – in that those not willing to work globally, (including promising Asian talent who do not wish to leave their home countries) will effectively be severely limiting their career options in a globalised world. The localisation plans of MNCs must therefore be grounded in this new reality for real progress to occur. Rather than focusing on localisation plans we should be focused on strategies that will best help us build a generation of diverse and globally skilled leaders to run our Asian businesses.

The strategies for change

There are 3 challenges that MNCs will have to address in their search for a more integrated solution for a healthier pipeline of Asian leaders:

1. The all too narrow home country driven definition of what successful leadership looks like is clearly not ‘fit for purpose’ for a changed globalised world, and will continue to result in the appointment of  home country look alikes
2. Local talent in countries that are emerging with growing economic confidence are not learning rapidly enough to operate more skilfully in global settings, including getting more comfortable taking assignments outside their local markets to prove their adaptiveness
3. Leaders running  MNCs in Asia are not engaging and building a new generation of diverse talent better suited for a globally connected world because their skills in working with difference are largely under-developed

Until these issues are addressed in an integrated way, and targeted strategies put in place in operating units in Asia, we will continue to see a pipeline of promising but under-developed successors to key leadership roles in MNCs operating in Asia.

These strategies will need to challenge some of the paradigms that we continue to use in host countries that were built for a world that has already passed. These strategies will need to better prepare both promising leaders and successful leaders in both home country and host country to learn to lead, grow and perform in a profoundly different world.

The propensity for discernment and distinction & what drives balanced judgement & wise decisions

Written by Meena Thuraisingham, Director and Principal TalentInvest, Nov 2010  

Wisdom about people or situations is not a product of knowledge and experience per se but of how that knowledge and experience is put to use in making a decision.  In some circumstances too much knowledge and experience may even be a liability – one of the reasons why you may have witnessed the most knowledgeable and experienced people making dumb decisions about people or situations.

Judgement is balance – the ability to balance the more deductive elements of a given scenario e.g. logic, facts, data of a given situation and the more intuitive elements e.g. emotions, attitudes, feelings such as empathy, pride, fear, courage and so on

A wise judgment is one where a good balance is struck between these 2 dimensions and this is only possible through choice that comes from reflection eg balancing with facts presented with the more intuitive elements. That is to say the very essence of wisdom is observed in one’s ability to make an explicit choice about balancing these 2 factors:

• Balance of interests = intrapersonal (one’s own conflicted interests), inter-personal (one’s interests relative to the interests of others), and extra-personal (the competing interests of others)
• Balance of responses = adapting, shaping and selecting from a range of possible responses often underpinned by one’s set of values.

 

To illustrate this point about balance consider these scenarios.   An executive driven by personal loyalty (the emotional dimension) but confronted with a loyal but under-performing team member may still apply objective and balanced assessment of the performance consequences on the business and all its stakeholders and recognise that, despite being loyal, this under-performing team member has to go.  Similarly an executive who recognises the pain that a major but necessary restructuring will have on her people may make a balanced choice to press ahead, but will handle the change process sensitively.  An executive who chooses to only engage with the business logic/case for change is unlikely to tune into the fears and anxieties of the people most affected by the change. By inference, poor or unwise judgment occurs when  balance is not applied.

In our research this lack of balance manifested itself in who the derailed executive chose to rely on or trust or take counsel from. Instead they allowed themselves to be hijacked by one set of interests (sometimes the loudest or most insistent voice) or ignored the existence of others whose interests did not align with their own.

The consequence of not recognising the interests of all stakeholders was often that the person’s judgements about the appropriate responses to a given situation became clouded. This caused them to be seen by others as partial or one-sided in their judgements.  In other examples we found executives focused primarily on their own tasks and priorities, and thus unable to connect to something other than their own needs.

Our research confirmed that executives making wise decisions (in the face of complex challenges) showed not only the ability to connect to something bigger than themselves but also showed a propensity for discernment and distinction – being able to look at situational clues and make a judgement that, for example, in this particular case a different response and a different balancing of interests and responses were required.  Executives who demonstrate this ability are comfortable with complexity and all the challenges that come with it.

Myths about Mentors & Mentoring

Written by Meena Thuraisingham, BSc Hons (Psych),

Author of Careers Unplugged; Director and Principal, TalentInvest

Despite being rated among the top 5 most powerful development experiences by successful leaders (in a seminal study by the Corporate Leadership Council), mentoring remains largely misunderstood.

Through time, mentors have played profound roles and had significant impact on the careers and lives and careers of those they mentored – this is as true of the corridors of political power, on the sports field, the entertainment industry as it is in the boardroom.

Mentoring relationships should work better than they do. This is largely a consequence of our narrow understanding of the nature and process of mentoring.  There are 5 common myths that stand in the way of impactful  mentoring relationships.

In order to uncover these myths, it will be useful to start with a common defintion.  A Mentor is anyone who provides non-judgmental support and encouragement in one’s career or personal life on either a one-off or continuing basis. They are typically a person with greater experience, expertise, insight and wisdom, counselling, teaching and guiding another person. It can be found in the personal as well as professional arena. In fact a mentor could be a parent or even a trusted friend. It can be anyone in your life who, through his/her deeds and work with you, helps you to move towards fulfilling your potential.

A mentor engages in empathetic listening – even ‘walking’ in your shoes for a while to develop deeper understanding of your context.  A good mentor will challenge as much as support – challenging views of life and career, testing assumptions about goals and barriers, and stretching one’s thinking, beyond where one would typically go. They often provide important insight such as an ‘aha’ experience which allows you to understand properly the meaning of an event, a person or something inside yourself or provide you a quote or metaphor that has great significance for you and influences your thinking or behaviour.

 The 5 Myths

Myth #1 Mentoring is best company initiated and organised

It is increasingly common for companies to develop a formal mentoring program and designate mentors for their talented employees.  While companies do play a role in facilitating critical relationships to form, in general mentoring relationships initiated by you are likely to be better targeted than those organized for you by your company for a couple of reasons. Such programs will have limited longer term value if you are paired with a mentor that you do not believe you can learn from.  First you know your signature strengths and development needs better and second you are likely to have a sense of how you best learn from others. The difference in learning preferences of individuals makes a mentor good for one individual but not necessarily for another.

Whatever the structure, really effective mentoring comes from the giving nature of the mentor and the receptiveness of the mentee to absorb, digest and use the lessons of experience.  Some of the best mentoring relationships are those that have evolved over time as the mentee slowly becomes aware of how important a given intervention has become in his/her life. In such a situation you may want to insert some structure into the relationship, so that discussions are front-ended by clear learning goals and back-ended with a review of progress (understanding, insights and skills you have gained) to ensure that best use is made of the time spent together.  Overly structured mentoring programs do not generally work well.

Myth # 2: It is important that there is personal chemistry with a mentor

The best mentor may not be someone you may feel fully comfortable with or who thinks like you.  Most people nevertheless gravitate to mentors that are similar to them.  The problem with this, however, is that it does not necessarily result in your thinking being challenged or at least provide you an opportunity to expose yourself to a different ‘world view’. The best mentors are those who regularly challenge your thinking and judgements in order to help you build better solutions to the challenges you face, including providing you with messages you may not want to hear.

One thing that is common to all good mentoring relationships, whether or not you feel entirely comfortable, is that the mentor cares deeply about your success.  It wont take you long to work this out yourself.

The mentor should be cognizant of how you normally learn.  This is best done by sharing with your mentor insights you have about yourself (self perception), beliefs that have shaped how you approach business issues and your learning preferences. If you have a recent 360 feedback report take the opportunity to share that with the mentor.

Myth #3: Mentoring is a one on one relationship

Contrary to the common view, mentoring need not be a one-on-one intervention; it can take place in a group setting.  For example, an interesting variation on the idea of mentoring is to use an advisory or a personal board of directors.  People making up this board will have one thing in common: wanting you to succeed but more importantly they provide you a 360 degree view of the world.

Such an advisory board may be made up of:

• A customer or client perspective that is unbiased
• A regulator’s advice that is sound
• A peer whom you can trust and admire and who has travelled the road that you are now travelling
• A personal coach, or someone with a professional understanding of how a leader learns and grows
• A peer within the company who has strengths you feel you will need going forward and who takes the role of your mentor.

In particular, when you find yourself in a new or different setting (new industry, new sector, new geography etc) where past knowledge and expertise may not be enough, creating an advisory board and meeting regularly with all or some can be of significant help in keeping you grounded during a challenging time. You will be able to draw from the collective wisdom and experience of those who have navigated successfully through complex and ambiguous environments before you.

 Myth # 4: Mentors help you open doors to advance your career

Most people think of mentors as people who can open doors for them.  If this is what you need, then it is not a mentor you need. You need someone who is networked well who provides you with useful connections.

Mentors play a more profound role. A good mentor may do nothing more than put a mirror up to you and show you clearly what is holding you back. Here are some of the ways in which mentors have made a difference to those who have used them:

• Providing knowledge of to navigate complex political terrain
• Helping to clarify your values and what matters most to you
• Adding technical competence
• Enabling growth in your character strengths and development of your moral compass
• Supplying knowledge of how to behave in a social setting that is unfamiliar to you
• Assisting in understanding the world around you
• Helping to recognize what may be holding you back from living to your full potential
• Providing support in making some choices about work-life balance
• Helping to understand how to get things done in or through the organization, or through others.

Your career advancement is your responsibility not the responsibility of mentors. Over-relying on a mentor to help advance your career is unwise.

Myth #5: Mentors have more seniority than the people they mentor

Mentors can come from the most unlikely places. Early in your career as a plant engineer you may find an experienced maintenance operator a reliable source of on-going information about where the major safety vulnerabilities are. As a sales manager you may find the fresh insights of a ‘rookie’ sales rep a source of vital perspectives about the impact of the changing demographic of the customer base. A store manager walking the floor and engaging an experienced check out operator from time to time is a great way of tapping into insights about the market, customers and brands they would ordinarily not have access to through sales reports.

As organisations gets more complex, knowledge becomes significant an increasingly important commodity and technology becomes obsolete almost as soon as it is embedded, vital learning may come from people who are not more senior to you. In a knowledge economy, expertise, insight and wisdom is everywhere and it is incumbent on us to find innovative ways of connecting to sources of real insight.

Organisations such as BP, Proctor and Gamble, Marriot and Reuters have ‘reverse mentoring’ programs that help executives tap into new insights early and recognise changes before they happen.  These can also be organised as a group session – a facilitated Group Reverse Mentoring session. For example a cross section of diverse junior employees can provide a group of more senior executives some valuable inter-generational insight they may ordinarily not access.

Mentors are also found among trusted and capable peers. If you feel the need to develop strong strategic skills, a peer known for their strategic mind can become a valuable mentor.  Research shows that learning from peers is increasingly the preferred learning style of Gen Y who generally don’t come to the workplace without hang-ups about seniority.

Summary

Eric Hoffer once was quoted as saying “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who survive, the learned find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists”

‘Unfreeze’ your thinking about mentors and mentoring relationships to ensure you better exploit the learning around you. Consider also how you may mentor others. By mentoring others you recognise what makes for a good mentor and the skills that you will need to develop in order to make the best of a good mentoring relationship yourself

These ideas are explored further in chapter 8 of Careers Unplugged, Smart Choices for a Great Career (2008)