Interpreting Executive Behavior

Interpreting Executive Behavior: Why Your Lens Matters

In a clear, steady voice Sarah, the COO of a healthcare start-up, described her new CEO: “She continually makes claims and promises to the board not backed up with data.  She pings people on the team at all hours, on the weekends, instructing them to do work in direct conflict with our stated priorities.  When given feedback she deflects it blaming other factors or people for situations and outcomes. She’s the #1 issue getting in the way of our success.” 

Sarah shares a common story I hear from leaders in organizations: Our senior executives’ resistance to feedback and their inability to change is derailing our success.  Maybe you’ve been in Sarah’s shoes, and found yourself feeling a bit stuck and powerless. I sure have.

Fortunately, we have more power and options in these situations than we often think.  This article shares one of the playbooks I’ve used to help leaders unblock themselves and their teams when facing similar situations. A key component of this playbook is using a broader lens to interpret executive behavior.

This playbook offers five ways you can increase success and up your executive communication.  But before we dive in, let’s check out contextual factors driving executive behavior.

What is Powering the Pushback?
As a coach, I’ve seen first-hand how a 360-feedback process can help executives see the blind spots limiting their success.  I’ve also witnessed the power of teams sharing brave, quality feedback directly with a senior executive with productive results. But, even when feedback is delivered effectively, the leader may not act on it and shift behaviors.  This can cause team members, like Sarah, to become very frustrated with the executive and attribute their lack of change to personality factors and/or leadership incompetence. This reaction is understandable, but it misses two important contextual factors – the unconscious nature of adult learning and systemic pressures. Let’s take a brief look into both.

The Unconscious Nature of Adult Learning
Receiving feedback does not necessarily mean we are able to immediately apply it. Why? Because what motivates our behaviors and our ability to change them is largely unconscious to us. For example, we may be holding “competing commitments” on stated behavior change goals. In my case, for years I held a hidden competing commitment of wanting to get everything done which often worked against my stated goal of being on time.

Similarly, we’re often unaware of the underlying beliefs we hold related to specific behaviors, and the time and work it takes to shift these deeper “meaning perspectives.”  Earlier in my career I learned my value for maintaining harmony conflicted with my desire to give courageous feedback.  It took intense reflection and experimentation to put this feedback effectively into practice.

In coaching senior executives, part of our work often involves helping them uncover these unconscious ways of operating. An executive may state a goal to trust the strong bench of their team, but also be driven to accomplish initiatives at all costs. The latter commitment may look like  “getting in the weeds” (like Sarah’s CEO) during times of stress, which pushes against their goal of team empowerment.

It takes deliberate focus and work to uncover, test, and reframe assumptions that can facilitate a leader’s ability to think and act in new ways. But an executive may still decide not to change. Maybe they are fighting perceived risks or ego. Perhaps they don’t fully understand their impact on others, which new studies define as lacking “externalized awareness.” All this to say, sharing feedback does not mean the leader has the capacity to take it on.

Systemic Pressures
Early in my career, a young manager shared a pearl of wisdom : “When observing negative behavior in organizations instead of judging them, ask yourself why an ordinary person would act this way?”  Consider this question and think about all of the systemic pressures surrounding an executive.  

  • Internal politics and pressures from varying stakeholders 
  • Market pressures 
  • Financial conditions
  • External regulations and compliance 
  • Organizational culture reinforcing and rewarding certain behaviors

Imagine the CEO who is made aware of “stepping into the weeds too much” on a product launch and vows to empower their team.  A few days later, the board holds an emergency call to address why the company’s not hitting revenue goals via this very product launch.  The next day the CEO orders a daily stand up with the team to examine the problems.  Without using a broader lens it’s easy to assume the CEO is ignoring the feedback – when in essence they are choosing to take up their authority and solve a priority issue.

Sharpening Your Interpretation for Better Results Effective upwards communication is a crucial leadership skill set.  It requires a broader perspective accounting for the contextual factors influencing a senior executive’s behavior and can sharpen your interpretation and create more robust solutions. Here are five ways you can increase success and amp up your executive communication.

  • Pan out for perspective.  
    Step 1: On a piece of paper, draw two circles, one small in the center of the page, then a large circle around the small one.  In the small circle – write the person’s name/individual factors, then label the large circle “systemic pressures”. Set a timer for ten minutes and fill in all the systemic pressures you can think of; clients or partners, board expectations, reorgs, layoffs, new product offering, market conditions, legislation changes, etc. 
    Step 2: Set a timer for ten minutes and think about individual factors for this person. Points to consider could include potential identity bias (race, gender, sexual preference, ableism, ageism), tenure in their role, their strengths and growth areas, leadership style, unstated goals/motivations you perceive, and their performance in their role.

  • Clarify success outcomes.
    Put the two circles aside. Step away from this individual. Note down, what does the organization and your team need right now to be successful? Maybe it is product focused such as launching a successful pilot platform. Perhaps it focuses on talent and bench targets like hiring 25 engineers, or developing 20 junior sales reps to generate revenue by the end of Q2.
  • Create broader solutions.
    Step 1: Use this broader lens to design solutions which are independent of the executive changing behavior. Review your two circles and the individual factors and systemic pressures. What stands out in the larger circle of systemic pressures?  What might any person in this role feel under these systemic pressures?
    Step 2: Next, focusing on the smaller circle, what individual factors were not taken into account before this exercise? What does this broader lens open up for you, clarify, get you curious about? What ideas come to mind based on this broader lens to support success outcomes?
  • Practice self-reflection.
    Assess your own behavior, as well as your team’s, to identify changes needed to support success.  For example, holding daily stand-ups on a current SEV, providing more proactive status updates to senior leaders, or facilitating team meetings in a way that acknowledges the executive’s concerns,  ensuring they feel heard, and while keeping the focus on key outcomes to drive the conversation forward. Build leadership capacity across your team to handle the heat. Coach them to avoid taking performance critiques from executives personally.  I like these two bits of short, actionable advice!

  • Collaborate courageously.
    Hold a conversation with your executive to check out some of your assumptions regarding pressure points. Empathize with them. Offer some suggestions on how to support them – .e.g prep for board calls, a status update on and ask them what support they could use? This collaboration may likely include realigning on priorities and what current deliverables need to drop for better focus. And note: you may not be able to solve problems, but you can hold space to think and collaborate together.

Navigating senior executive behavior is a key part of the landscape in organizations.  Building a practice of refining your interpretation of this behavior is essential to the design of robust solutions that lower risk and increase successful outcomes for the organization, the executive, your team, and of course, you.

Leadership Action Step:
 Using a current situation you are facing with a senior executive, apply the Pan out for perspective exercise outlined on the first bullet above and see what it yields for you and your team. 

I’d love to hear what you learn and also your best practices or tools to sharpen your lens.

Sources: