The Executive Executive
The Look & Sound of Leadership
Essential Communications - Tom Henschel
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This month’s coaching conversation is between Tom and Courtney, another executive coach. What traits, they wonder, do effective executives share? If rising leaders wanted to reverse engineer what it means to be executives, what would they put in the mix?
The five qualities Tom and Courtney identify are:
Resilience -- get over hurts and setbacks
Influence – build a natural reserve of strong relationships
Organization – create lead-time and eliminate fire drills
Scope – maintain the highest altitude possible; resist the weeds
Speed of Thought – exert alertness and be mentally nimble
At the end of this month’s commentary, Tom lists six books, each one different, but all leading towards personal growth and professional development. They are…
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
Crucial Conversations or Difficult Conversations
Want a free PDF of these titles, including who might prefer which? Click here and put “6 Books” in the subject line. We’ll send you the PDF.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership. |
| 0:04.0 | An ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace |
| 0:09.0 | the way you want to be perceived. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking |
| 0:15.4 | about the executive executive. Courtney, an old friend and fellow executive coach, was exploring an interesting topic with one of her clients, a woman named Divia. |
| 0:31.0 | During her coaching conversations with Courtney, Divia had wondered what did it actually mean |
| 0:36.1 | to be executive. Discounting her company's specific culture and quirks, what, Divia wondered, do great executives share no matter |
| 0:46.7 | the corporation or industry? |
| 0:50.4 | When Courtney reached out to me asking for my thoughts about divious question, I was intrigued. |
| 0:56.0 | Courtney and I have known each other a long time. |
| 0:59.5 | We enjoy talking about most anything, coaching being one topic we visit often. We scheduled a |
| 1:05.1 | Zoom call to share our thoughts. I began by asking her, do you know what Divia's idea is about |
| 1:11.0 | it? What does she think executive looks like? |
| 1:14.1 | She's not sure, said Courtney. |
| 1:16.1 | She's seen a lot of different kinds of executives. She's seen leaders she thought were a hot |
| 1:20.0 | mess but got promoted anyway, and she's seen coworkers who are top-notch who can't |
| 1:24.4 | get noticed. It doesn't look consistent to her, which is what prompted the |
| 1:28.0 | whole conversation in the first place. I asked and what about you? Where's your |
| 1:31.8 | thinking on this? She she said I've been asking |
| 1:35.5 | myself a question which is I asked which is if we could deconstruct what it means to be executive, how would we reverse |
| 1:47.2 | engineer it? What elements, what qualities would I want to be sure went in the |
| 1:52.1 | mix? Oh that's great I said and how are you I want to be sure went in the mix. |
... |
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