The Third Turn

My family story is one of holding our household together through my wife's long battle with leiomyosarcoma. Eighteen occurrences in sixteen years is a lot for anyone. We've made it this far, raising our children and now enjoying being grandparents, while building Design Group International, completing research projects related to graduate education, and finding ways to enjoy life, however constricted it might feel.

Let us admit that the temptation in the cartoon at right is faced by executive leaders everywhere!

Whether you are a Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director or interim CEO, you are responsible for the whole of the organization. Nobody else shares the responsibility for the complexity of the whole at the level you do, Even if you are fortunate enough to have a team member who demonstrates potential to perceive the complexity of the whole, they are not responsible for it. Their job does not depend on it. Organizational performance does not ultimately point to them with the intensity that it points to you.

In the executive leader peer-based advising teams I chair, the hardest work is to keep us curious. A CEO's working day is too often conversation after conversation of needing to provide perspective without really being able to listen. CEOs get into telling mode too quickly because of the constant press to move on to the next item.

Tales From the Top

The Human Factor in Top Management: How CEOs Act & React

I was privileged today to work with Kent Wilson (pictured at right) in preparing a new and expanded group of Leader2Leader facilitators--providing executive peer-based advising for nonprofit and ministry leaders.

I'm writing this blog post as I finish my preparations for the next Convene Team meeting I will Chair.

The following repost of Dr. Kent R. Wilson's blog provides insight into why we have partnered to establish a Leader2Leader team in Milwaukee. This material was originally posted in the Christian Leadership Alliance blog, the sponsor of Leader2Leader.