As you strive to develop your executive mindset, keep aware of the obstacles.
Then you will have more opportunity to mitigate them, and critically, you will be able to take action now to avoid them troubling you.
This will prime you for success, reduce your risks and in all probability, help you to develop faster.
It will also help to reduce the stresses and strains that usually accompany a rising level of responsibility.
Seven Obstacles to an Executive Mindset
- Functional Pressure: The day job never goes away. Regardless of your level, the function you are responsible for will have challenges to meet and overcome. And you are expected to deliver. Your peers and boss will apply as much pressure as they deem necessary, or wish to, to keep you worrying about making sure your own house is in order.
- Lack of Encouragement: Even the CEO is under pressure to perform and will not want you to drop your functional ball, and will have a million other things to do. So if nobody else is wants you to adopt an executive mindset, it will take even more discipline to do what needs to be done to evolve as an elite executive.
- Time Pressures: Make sure you put time aside to develop your thinking and become more accustomed to acting like an executive. Enough said.
- Functional Habits: As you’ve made your way up the ladder, your predominate paradigm will be aligned to your function. Thinking and acting in accordance to this paradigm will be habitual. Consequently you need to reform your behavioural and thought habits to align to the executive paradigm.
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- Political Vulnerability: When you deploy an executive mindset, you will be exposed to additional political risks: Your peers (competitors) will not want you to be more executive than they are. They’ll likely drive you down your functional rabbit hole every time you attempt to raise broader issues. They could also move against you to make sure you continue to have functional problems.
- Thinking Skills: The mindset requires a different mode of thought to the one you are most familiar with. You have probably won your career progress on problem-solving, driving implementation and overcoming problems. Very tactical. Executive mindset requires higher level strategic thinking which quite literally requires a different brain. Swapping between tactical and strategic thinking takes practice and neurological development.
- Isolation: Yes, you are already paid well and the expectations of others, and yourself, will be that you should already be able to do the job. Asking for help, seeking coaching, revealing that you are not confident well, cannon fodder for your political adversaries.
In a well run top team, many of these will be minor obstacles as the whole team will be rooting for you. In a well run team.
Don’t just nod and agree.
Make sure you do something to begin covering these, because any one of them could cause a career interrupt – and you wouldn’t want that would you?
If you found this interesting, make sure to look at: The Influential Executive: Nine Critical Capabilities
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
Ready to take the next step? Discover how personalised coaching can ignite your full potential and accelerate your success. When you’re ready, let’s talk about how we can work together to turn your vision into a reality.
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