The Executive
Assessment Survey
This survey will reveal the "emotional intelligence"
and give some general indication of your company's chances for
massive success.
The Executive Assessment Survey
This survey will reveal the "emotional intelligence"
level in your team and give some general indication of your
company's chance for massive success. Honestly answer the
ten questions below. Read the question only once, and answer
according to your first intuitive response. After you have
finished the survey, you will find training dialogue for each
of the numbered items below which can help you improve your
team's performance, productivity, and profit.
Do you feel authentic passion for a specific vision for
your company, and does your executive team have the same
passion for the same vision?
First, are you and your executive team clear about what
needs to be done next, but more importantly, are you collectively
taking bold and consistent action toward your short-term
primary goals?
When your company faces a crossroads of two paths, are
you and your team able to make a timely decision and aggressively
move forward with agreement?
Are you and your entire executive team completely "sold
out", totally committed, "going for broke"
toward your vision as if they were "Cortez conquering
Mexico" and burning the ship of retreat?
Is your executive team free from pointing a finger of
blame at each other, and backbiting behind closed doors?
Do you hear total honesty with full disclosure from your
team?
Do you have a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" (as
the Harvard Business Review proposes) toward a huge dream?
During your "Monday morning" executive team
meetings, are more minutes of the meeting spent focusing
on opportunities than on challenges?
Does your executive team act more like friends than they
do colleagues?
Is your team always more interested in the company winning
than they are about "being right"?
Take a moment and count the
number of "Yes" and "No" responses.
If you scored more than three "No" responses you
will find it challenging to achieve massive success without
leadership work inside the team. If you scored more than five,
you will find it nearly impossible to achieve your corporate
vision without dramatic adjustment to the synergy of the executive
team.
Training Dialogue for the Assessment Survey:
Do you feel authentic passion for a clear vision for
your company, and does your executive team have a burning
passion for the same vision?
Behind every successful company, and I have coached hundreds,
there is a leader that has a clear and personally powerful
vision for the company. Look at some examples of successful
leaders and see if this is true: Bill Gates of Microsoft,
Larry Ellison of Oracle, Walt Disney, Ray Croc of McDonalds.
The common dilemma for most CEOs is of course how to uncover
personal passion again when they are inundated with business
challenges. When I say "passion", I am not referring
to motivation, which extinguishes with time. I am writing
of the kind of passion that is on fire, you feel in your
heart, and is rekindled fresh by you on a regular basis.
This is one of the tools that CatalystCoach brings to its
clients.
Are you and your executive team clear about what needs
to be done next, AND are you collectively taking bold and
consistent action toward your short-term primary milestones?
Not only with challenges, but also with opportunities, it
can be difficult to identify exactly which action items
to tackle first, as well as which ones supersede all others
until accomplished. Without a clear vision, with articulated
milestones, it becomes easy to tackle the urgent, and not
the important. It becomes crystal clear what to do when
you are able to overlay your bold action items onto the
primary vision. You begin to see what is imperative and
what is ancillary. The vision is first developed by the
CEO, and then transmitted to the team, inviting their input
so they will adopt the vision as their own, then the whole
team can work and agree on what to do next. When the CEO
AND the team has a heart aflame for the common vision, then
and only then do you see consistent action working in harmony
by the entire team, seamlessly, and automatically. The accomplishment
of this requires special tools we have developed for the
CEO and the Team.
When you come to a "fork in the road", are
you and your team able to make a timely decision, and aggressively
move forward with agreement?
Often, making a decision to take one path involves the risk
of lost opportunity from the other path. Facing a "Y"
in the road can be fraught with fear. It often means putting
the company's future at risk, because you must place one
"bet" on a specific path. You know a decision
must be made. When you choose a path, it usually means that
someone on the E-Team is going to inevitably feel you took
the wrong path. Fear is one of the largest obstacles, which
stand in the way of success. This is where your leadership
is critical to create alignment for synergistic traction.
There are several steps to take to ensure this. I will show
you how.
How is your resolve? Are you and your entire executive
team completely "sold out" to the vision? Are
you committed, "going for broke", like "Cortez
conquering Mexico," burning the ship of retreat?
We see the ugly head of fear again in this scenario. Of
the tens of thousands of companies in America, there is
only a relative handful that achieves massive success. The
largest single reason is that most people are willing to
work at 90%, 95%, or even 100% to achieve their vision.
However, since most people work at 90 to 95% then they are
all "average" on the bell curve. It is the rare
handful of massively successful companies that work at 110%.
(Here I am referring to intensity, not long hours) They
achieve greatness in spite of the odds, obstacles, and fear.
They take bold, creative and consistent daily action toward
their dreams. They NEVER give up. The answer begins with
passion, then understanding that only the zealots in life
succeed, and then that while your company is serious business,
it is also a game to be won, so why not go for it. This
work takes about three months with CatalystCoach, and there
are several steps to reaching this kind of commitment. But
it is one of the most important pieces of work that Catalyst
does for its clients'.
Is your executive team free from a heightened level
of politics, pointing a finger of blame at each other, and
backbiting behind closed doors?
When people dream of success, then find that it is taking
longer than they suspected to achieve, or when the company
suffers a setback, then they feel pain. This pain is often
coupled with the internal questioning of whether the company,
the product, or the team is "enough" to achieve
success. The fear of falling short of massive success causes
pain. Often the fruit of pain is anger. When we feel anger,
it is likely we need to "take it out on someone".
Frustration which causes pain is a main root cause of politics,
pointing a finger of blame, and backbiting. If not stopped,
it usually ends in near mutiny, and the firing of the CEO.
Do you enjoy real honesty with full disclosure from
your team?
In order to effectively lead people on your team, you need
to hear the whole truth, with all the honest detail about
every issue. If you make decisions based on bad information,
you are innocently making bad decisions. In order to hear
the truth, there must be an environment where the truth
can be spoken without retribution. This brings up the question,
how do you hear that someone made a critical mistake, without
taking action against them. "You may be saying: "If
I can't make someone pay for major mistakes, then I will
have no power to reprimand!" This is one of the more
common attitudes. But where is the focus? Is it on "making
someone pay"? The massively successful company looks
for opportunities to learn from mistakes, instead of making
someone pay for the mistake. If you have someone who makes
major errors more than just once or twice, you may need
to upgrade the person to someone more capable. Firing an
E-Team member is the most difficult thing a CEO can do.
I know from personal experience. But it is also probably
the most important action for a CEO to take when appropriate.
Do you have a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal"
(as the Harvard Business Review proposes) toward a huge
dream?
Most companies do not earn massive success, because they
do not dare to dream massive dreams. If you want to inspire
your people to great passion, in order to drive commitment,
then paint a brilliant picture of the future for them. Give
them a "Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal". Most people
don't dream big, because of our old nemesis . . . FEAR.
Can you tell me right now what your plan is for M/A or IPO?
Can you tell me the market cap at liquidity? Can you tell
me the date it will occur? You may be thinking it's out
of your control. But without a concrete plan with a date,
how do we build a plan, and take actions to get there?
During your "Monday morning" executive team
meetings, are more minutes of the meeting spent focusing
on opportunities than on challenges, or do they spend most
of their time reporting progress on the past?
As executives, yourself and your team, you usually find
your days filled "putting out fires". If you face
problems every day, and put out fires all day, is it any
wonder there is no inspiration or passion left in our hearts?
You certainly can't avoid being faced with challenges. But
challenges can be minimized by effective delegating. It's
all in how we look at problems. Do we focus on solving today's
problems, to reach our corporate vision . . . Or do we focus
on our corporate vision, while understanding that challenges
are just things we work through to get to where we want
to be? If you golf, you probably understand that there are
bunkers and water hazards between where you are on the fairway
and the green to which you are aiming. Standing over the
ball, do you focus on the hazards, or the green? You focus
on the green of course. Golfers understand that if they
focus on the hazard, they are likely to hit their ball right
into one. Besides, if we focus on problems all day, then
our work life can never be fun. If it is not fun, then we
are likely to be less creative. Without creativity, passion,
boldness, confidence, and a light heart, we are not likely
to succeed. If we are only burdened by problems, and are
not going to succeed, they why are we doing this? There
are two other parts to this answer. It involves, your team
and the problems they bring, and the nature and significance
of your goals.
Does your executive team respect each other as colleagues
more than they argue like siblings?
You might be saying: "I don't care if my team likes
each other; I want them to achieve their goals." We
are people with logical, analytical minds, as well as emotions
from the subconscious. The same place we find anger, fear,
and resentment, we also find, passion, confidence, self-esteem,
and loyalty. We hire the whole person, emotions and all.
We don't hire heartless robots. When your team respects
each other they stop pointing a finger of blame and sabotaging
each other at the cost of the company. They will not backbite.
They will instead find new and creative ways to help and
support each other. This makes the Game of winning more
rewarding and fun. There are several steps to achieve alignment
and harmony, and I will show you how. It's not easy to accomplish,
but if you are not successful with this issue, it can quickly
unravel an entire team.
Is your team always more committed to the company
winning than they are about "being personally right"
about their position on a topic?
Simple question. Obvious answer. However, when most CEOs
look at their team, they find that they are vested in "being
right" as more important. Arguing can be healthy. But
it is not healthy between members of the same team, in the
middle of a play, if the conflict stands in the way of aligned
action! If your meetings, which should take 30 minutes,
are actually taking three hours, then it is likely that
someone wants "to be right". There can be no team
synergy toward a common goal, when someone is going to be
proved right, and someone proved wrong. CatalystCoach has
specific steps and proven techniques to eliminate this challenge
from your team. We can show you how to eliminate it forever.
