1983: Five Fatal Mistakes That Halt High-Performance Leaders by Christine Comaford of Smart Tribes Institute

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1:00That's the sound of a big deal. At Wayfair, that sound happens a lot. Dream sofa for half the price. Big deal. New dining table you've been eyeing for months. Big deal. Finally, picking up those last few pieces and finishing that bedroom. Now that's a really big deal. Whatever your home needs, Wayfair has the selection, the savings, and over millions of five-star reviews to back it up. Shop Wayfair.com today before someone else snags your big deal. Wayfair every style, every home. This is Optimal Work Daily. Five fatal mistakes that halt high-performance leaders by Christine Coma Ford of SmartTribesInstitute.com. Companies rise and fall on leadership. Period. And there are five areas that top leaders tend to focus their attention. It's no surprise that these same areas are where unsuccessful CEOs make fatal mistakes. These are the most fatal mistakes because by the time the CEO, board, or other executives can understand what has happened, there is massive

2:03momentum heading towards a discouraging future. The research. Robert S. Hartman, a Nobel prize nominee, devotes his efforts to helping people maximize their leadership potential, understand their thinking, and prioritize team dynamics. Through his study of the science of axiology, a scientific approach to how people make value judgments in leadership situations, Hartman has developed a valuable assessment tool. Throughout his research, he noted that high-performance leaders selectively place importance on some information while neglecting other information. The result is criteria for decision-making. After surveying and assessing over a thousand top leaders worldwide, he found a pattern of consistent attention and regular lack of attention to vital areas of leadership. What follows are the five most common mistakes of high-performance CEOs, inspired from the research of Robert Hartman and from decades of my consulting, coaching, and leadership training of high-performing CEOs. One, lack of consistency and conformity. Although most top

3:08executives will profess that consistency and conformity are top priorities for the growth and scaling of their company, in practice many CEOs demonstrate and or embody a different message. Conformity is usually a paradox in growing corporations, where thinking outside the box is heavily encouraged, and consistency could even be a joke, depending on how much rapid growth is occurring at an organization. It is not uncommon for a trend of firefighting to take hold as the company culture. To avoid this mistake, messaging how important systems and procedures are to your team even in rapid growth is essential. Systems and procedures maintain brand, product, customer service, and other departmental consistency to the customer. Internal attention to having growth spurts be individual stages that get gelled back into the corporate structure will pay huge dividends. Two, lack of strategy follow through discipline. It is tough to choose a strategic direction, see less than favorable results, and

4:11stay the course. The innate human instinct is to jump ship quickly before the ship goes down. However, more often than not, the problem is not the strategy, but the tactical execution of it. Top leaders often look for the right strategy, and although there are likely stratospheres of probability for strategic outcomes, world-class CEOs focus on execution and course correction of a strategic direction before abandoning ship. Having the discipline to continue the course correction process, particularly through the ability to ask probing questions, results, and solutions. This is how we solve problems that are real versus solving problems that are an extrapolation of a probable outcome. To avoid this mistake, consider the best case, worst case, and possible unexpected forks in the road ahead of time. Work with your team to create the expectation of long-term commitment to a strategy, even through tough times. Focus on the execution of a strategy chosen, and avoid the temptation to keep returning to the drawing board.

5:12Three, lack of mission, vision, values. There are very few companies where one could walk into a random office, ask team members to recite the mission, vision, values of the company, and have them actually recall something even similar to the document prominently displayed in the lobby. Yet, this offers the most compelling barometer for all decision-making and emotional engagement of your team. The number one reason the team is not related to the company mission, vision, values, is because the CEO is not connected to it. When a CEO is disconnected from, not embodying or not presenting, the mission, vision, values of the company frequently, in meetings, emails, and at corporate events, the entire culture begins to slide. Team cohesion and focus wane, perhaps not altogether, but surely from the optimum state, and you end up with disengagement and dissatisfaction in the company. To avoid this mistake, create a daily habit that connects you with

6:14the mission, vision, and values of the company. As the leading beacon for the company, this is the CEO's primary driver, and should be consistently present in both physical and psychological form all day long. If you find that your documented mission, vision, and values no longer ring true, make it a priority to update them to ones that you and your entire company can get behind. Four, lack of instilling responsibility and integrity. These are two common mistakes that thwart the interest in increasing self-ownership and high accountability in companies. The first is leadership by friendship. We all know that a leader who interacts with their team by being the best buddy your friend will often fail to make good judgments, hard decisions, and key shifts at important inflection points. Most CEOs ask themselves, how can I get my team to take higher levels of self-ownership and accountability? But they often sacrifice what they want most in an attempt to avoid upsetting the quote-unquote culture. Once the CEO has allowed accountability to drift and get sloppy, the rest of management

7:20follows and results inevitably suffer. The second common mistake that thwart's instilling responsibility and integrity is leadership by fear. Commonly taking the form of passive aggressive or simply aggressive interaction, communication, and actions, this model requires constant attention and energy by the CEO. This model primarily inputs scarcity into the culture leading to a good enough to not get your head bitten off model. The carrot and the stick are only part of the equation that causes self-ownership and high accountability. Clear expectation plus owner agreement plus rewards and consequences equals ownership and high accountability. To avoid this mistake, setting an example of clear actionable expectations, soliciting agreement from your team, and having a published and clear set of rewards and consequences will instill responsibility. And five, little fostering of innovation, innovative thinking, and change.

8:21How does this jive with mistake number one? Well, along with the need for systems, procedures, conformity, and consistency, a company will also need a high level of innovation, innovative thinkers, and a drive for constant change. From a politically correct standpoint, every CEO will tell you that they encourage out of the box thinking or innovative thinking. In practice, many company cultures instill a sense of fear for stepping too far out, really being a true innovator or creating change. Even if some innovation is allowed, the CEO must decide how far down the chain of command there is willingness for innovation and change. To avoid this mistake, top companies and CEOs have designed systems that support innovation, and for employees and key execs to have the experience of their input actually impacting the company and possibly strategic decisions. A top CEO can avoid a stagnant company by fostering innovation from every person at the company and openly rewarding those that contribute. Are you ready to stop

9:24making fatal mistakes and start making commitments to proven processes that will better your organization? You just listen to the post titled Five Fatal Mistakes That Halt High Performance Leaders by Christine Komafort of SmartTribesInstitute.com. And thanks so much to Christine for letting us share her work here. She is a leadership and culture coach, serial entrepreneur, and New York Times bestselling author of three books, Power Your Tribe, Smart Tribes, and Rules for Renegades. For over 30 years, she's helped leaders navigate growth and change by specializing in applied neuroscience, which helps her clients achieve tremendous results in record time. As an entrepreneur, she built and sold five companies with an average ROI of 700 percent, and she was a software engineer in the early days of Microsoft and Apple. So come by SmartTribesInstitute.com to learn a lot more about Christine and what she does. And I have that

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