Leader to Leader Webinar Series: Leading with Vision. Inspiring with Action.

Vistage CEO Sam Reese recently spoke with Tom Athenour, CEO of the StarQuest Group and host of the Leader to Leader Webinar Series. During their hour-long conversation, the two discussed the direction of leadership and the actions that great leaders are taking to inspire engagement.

Here are a few key takeaways from their discussion:

1. Develop your people and then work hard to keep them. Early in his career, Sam received some great advice: A leader’s primary job is to develop others so that they become so capable and talented that your competition wants to recruit them away. Then, we have to work hard to keep them by creating environments where they can continue to grow and develop into better versions of themselves.

2. Lead with vision, mission and purpose while keeping “purpose” out front and center every day. Purpose (or why companies do what they do) drives engagement and helps employees connect their contributions to the bigger agenda. Sam shared an example of keeping purpose out front. To this day, he starts his team meetings by asking his team members to share a story of how they helped their customers.

3. Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s easy for leaders to get pulled away from their vision when they think their job is to remove all ambiguity. Things are changing so quickly that they need to be okay with not having all the answers

4. Command-and-control leadership is dead. People don’t want to be led by leaders who direct and control every aspect of the business. Leaders need to hear from team members and learn to listen intently, put egos aside and avoid driving their own agendas.

5. Lead with the right question rather than the right answer. Many leaders were promoted because they knew the right answers. As they take on bigger roles, they have to realize they won’t know everything and must rely more heavily on those closest to the action.

6. Practice vulnerability and transparency. Vulnerability can be seen as weak, even risky when leaders are with other leaders or in a competitive situation. When leaders don’t open up about what’s really going on, they create cultures where it’s not safe to address the real issues. This leads to even bigger headaches later on.

7. Hold people accountable and jump into the details when needed. One way to hold people accountable is to have regularly scheduled weekly one-to-one meetings with each team member. Sam recommends starting these meetings with these 3 simple questions: “What’s going well?” “What’s not going well?” and “Where do you need my help?”

Related Resources

A Life of Climb: The CEO’s Journey Podcast

Learning Leader: The Power of Mastermind Groups

0 views