Stepping up to the Exec Team and the need for ‘undoing’.

I coach many leaders who have recently joined an Executive team for the first time. They are new C-somethings. One subset of these leaders are those who are moving up the hierarchy within the organisation. These clients have been reporting into the Exec Team that they now find themselves upon. Arguably this is a harder move than joining as a new hire. This is because internal hires don’t just have to carve out their new role, but they have to undo the pre-existing dynamics.

Here are five experiences from clients in this situation:

In my Finance Director role I was all over the details but in my CFO role I can’t be. I need to rely on my team for that. Unfortunately my team still expect me to micro-manage them and harder still, my CEO still expects me to know every number she asks about off the top of my head.

In my new role on the Executive team I would expect to present direct to the Board. However my CEO still likes to present the sales numbers. The first time I presented direct, he looked visibly uncomfortable and kept interrupting me.

I know that in my new Exec role I am expected to have a view on matters outside my functional area. This is hard for me because I don’t feel confident to speak up unless I am directly asked. Even then I can feel like an imposter.

It’s not something I can put my finger on but there are alliances on the Exec that I just can’t seem to penetrate. Three of my Exec colleagues are like the ‘inner circle’ and I just don’t know how to influence things.

My colleagues on the Exec are all nearly a decade older than me. Many have older kids who have left home or have a difference work/life balance than me. Am I now expected to match them or can I really still have a family life with my little kids and do this job at the same time?

These clients need to find new ways to influence whilst deconstructing old relationship patterns. This takes presence of mind, discipline and the willingness to have some tricky conversations. Some of these conversations need to be had with colleagues, some need to be had with oneself!

Here are some ways that I work with clients who are in this situation.

1. Create some intentions about the kind of leader you are setting out to be, what values you want to stand for and where your boundaries lie. What are you moving away from and towards? What does your inner-critic have to say about this? What does your inner-cheerleader have to say about this?
2. Make a stakeholder map and explore what you know about the dynamics of power. Analyse your current sources of power in the map and where you have strong and weak links.
3. Analyse your habitual ways of influencing and notice what you need to change or add. For example have you relied on reference power “the CFO wants…” when you now need to own your authority “I want…”? What are some of your internal stories about power? A common one is “I’m not a political animal.”
4. Structure your time so that you actively decrease tactical time and increase strategic time. Plan in the regular time slots that you will need to reflect so that you can bring authoritative clarity to conversations.
5. Make a support map and curate those around you to support the way you want to lead now. Mentors, team members you can delegate to, successors, strategic advisors, ethical sounding boards, diary guardians, personal trainers, devils advocates, frontline and customer truth tellers.
6. Plan some specific ‘undoing’ conversations with key people. Re-contract and ask for help and commitments that you can remind people of when the old patterns start to rear up. Be brave enough in the moment to stop the action and have an ‘undoing’ conversation in the moment where you speak frankly about what you want and don’t want.

This can be a very challenging time and many people find the first 6 months extremely tiring. That’s why taking some time to get support and space to think through the challenges you face is so essential.