Leadership Teams: The Elephant in the Boardroom.
What every leadership team knows but doesn’t want to hear, and how Whitecap is working to fix it.
The qualities of strength and assertiveness that get people into the board room are not always so helpful once they’re actually there. In fact, it could be what’s stopping the wider success of many companies today.
Why? The short answer is skewed perspectives. The belief that nothing has changed, you’re the same person as you were when you started out. It’s easy to forget that everyone is not only judging your decisions but assessing, mimicking and rejecting your behaviour too. And Whitecap has some answers to offer for solving this challenge.
Leadership Team Development is one of Whitecap’s key service offerings. We’ve already worked with a significant UK investment fund to assess and benchmark a leading digital business, In this case, the challenge was focussed on balancing the need for honesty around the ambitions of the businesses leaders within a rigorous due diligence process.
Our work was to ensure that everyone was heading in the same direction without feeling the need to hide what they wished to get out of the process themselves.
The elephant in this particular boardroom proved to be that even then, the expectations on either side did not match, and it was decided better for members of both parties to pursue alternative strategies. But broaching that conversation could have taken months of wasted money and time had it not been brought to the fore via an objective third party - honest an open conversation was the only path forward; however difficult those conversations might have appeared at the time.
This is a great example of how, more often than not, a desire to hide our desires from that of the wider business must be a challenge for leadership teams to take on. However, this kind of attitudinal shift can be a tough one to promote, especially when tried and tested ways of progressing have proved successful in the past.
Which brings us onto the value of the personal pivot – how changing your mind at any level is fundamentally okay but bound to our willingness for openness and honesty when it comes to doing so.
Whitecap was able to help a startup CEO sure that staying steadfast was the answer, even in the lightning-fast world of finance and blockchain. And though his ideas were flying high and the conventional wisdom would suggest rocking the boat a bad idea, a different route was required.
The sheer range of opportunities open to a fast growing challenger fin-tech company meant chasing every opening, discussion, call and proposal would burn out the entire team, putting them into a state of constant short-term-determinism with no time to even look ahead, let alone pause for a course reset along the way. Whitecap challenged this, and it proved the right thing to do.
“Steven’s advice has continuously inspired me on my entrepreneurial journey over the past years and I would certainly not be where I am now without him. Steven’s thoughtful and reflective approach is also an extremely welcome contrast to a lot of the help out there. I could not wish for a better mentor and can highly recommend Steven to anyone out there looking to start or grow a company.”
Sometimes it’s smart to stop and think, other times forging ahead will be the money move. So the real skill comes in being sensitive enough to following either a change in direction or a change in approach. Really being there.
“During our sessions I feel confident that I can share my thoughts and challenges freely and in confidence. Often, he just listens, and his attention is sincere. He genuinely cares about entrepreneurs. As a first time founder the challenges, I come across daily are a steep learning curve for me. As Steven listens, I invariably begin to see my challenges from a less invested or emotional perspective. Often this is enough to get back into good place and face the next day with renewed enthusiasm. At other times Steve draws on his own experience, or that of the many start-up success and failure stories he has witnessed. More important than any direct advice itself is his approach. He questions intelligently around my challenge or frustration, helping me see more clearly the issue and possible navigable routes. I might not leave our session with some “3-step strategy” to any particular point (that is not what mentorship is about), but I always find myself more resilient, clearer thinking and better equipped to face the challenges head on and feel I make better decisions. For me, having a trusted mentor and friend, who also has the experience and knowledge that is relevant to me is incredibly valuable.”