Do You Have Executive Balance?

It started with grey cells and IQ , then there was talk about EQ – the measure of emotional intelligence. Emotional balance does play a key role it seems in building relationships, managing conflict situations and maintaining composure in stressful situations. But is this enough and is it the whole story? Is there another way to look at behavior as an indicator of success. I believe there are some other distinct patterns of behavior and experience that contribute to success and constitute what I call EXECUTIVE BALANCE…

I first started thinking about this when I moved from a junior employee position to  a manager then senior management and later starting my own company. I noticed with colleagues and those I recruited how common it was to see people with noticeable strengths in some areas but with severe handicaps in others, somehow diluting their overall impact. I also noticed how some really effective executives who did not have these disconnects seemed to have some kind of “balance” or “composure” that added to their impact.

Over the years, my personal experience has been that there are some distinct traits in executives that help to create this “balance”. I feel this balance includes quite a few abilities but here are two that are particularly necessary:

a) Time Composure

Some tasks have deadlines, some projects require more time and some objectives require huge patience. Not everyone can scale well in these dimensions but the ones that do have what I call time composure. They are comfortable working with deadlines; at the same time, they appreciate that some things will not happen overnight and will wait and persevere. They recognize that creating ownership takes consensus and more time than individual action.

I learned this bit about being more comfortable with the time elements of various activities within an organization when I setup a new company. I realized the hard way that success is usually a function of a timescale very different from the one I had envisaged. I also started to appreciate that doing something slower so everyone had time to be on board leads to better – and sometimes faster -results than trying to rush your agenda along.

b) Scale Composure

Some folks are really good with details, others are only good with the big picture. Some cannot appreciate that looking at detail can be imperative while others do not see the benefits of a long-range or strategic approach. This may be partly due to individual inclination and aptitude but it is also because in many organizations, people tend to work within narrow job descriptions or in compartments.

Once again, it is the small company entrepreneurial experience of working nearer the coalface, in a multitasking role that educated my mind about the need to scale from the micro-view to the macro-view many times daily. I found that in order to gain scale composure, two things were needed. First, a strong need to have to do this frequently (in my case sometimes there wasn’t anyone else doing this so I had to) and second, having to be near the coalface to experience the importance of detail. Notice how those who are not very good at detail are generally also those who will not roll up their shirt sleeves and get involved in the action.  It may be worth noting here that appreciating the importance of detail is not micro-management rather a key ingredient for effective leadership and decision making.

So now you have a map for assessing whether you have Executive Balance. Ask yourself, can you handle the immediate and the strategic with equal ease and can you handle both detail and the big picture  in your stride.