Experience Can Be A Restrictive Default Setting
Most global executives are promoted or recruited into new leadership roles because of the education they completed, the experience they gained and the insights they bring to new business opportunities and challenges.
Experience alone can be a game-changer. Having learned the ropes once before, successful executives can leverage the lessons learned and confidence instilled in them from past employment and parlay these assets into exciting new results for their next employer.
On the whole, experience truly is a gift for those who choose to learn - good and bad - from it, and those who learn how they must adapt in order to recognise how different situations, resources and people fit the current day and potential for tomorrow.
Yet experience can also cut the wrong way when an executive leader uses his or her experience in a past executive role as a crutch for justifying decisions or, worse yet, as a default setting to stifle new ideas and extinguish the flames of innovation that may seem strange, unachievable or simply unfamiliar.
Consider the case of the globally experienced industrial leader who continually reminds his direct reports that, "I've been doing this for 20 years, so believe me when I tell you this is how it should be done."
Over time, this repeated statement rings like a bell of impending disappointment in the ears of those who hear it and, by now, have simply come to expect it whenever the leader doesn't agree with something new. It has become a divisive force within his organisation, yet he remains totally unaware.
In this particular case, experience has become a handicap. It can blind executives to new opportunities and new innovations. And it can also alienate others and polarise the very people he or she needs to mobilise to achieve the company's ambitious growth objectives.
What this particular executive leader fails to recognise is that each of the executives around the table each bring their own unique sets of experience that inform their views, their values and the decisions they make about what's good for the organisation.
In continually reminding everyone of his experience, he unknowingly discounts and devalues theirs. He uses his experience as a bludgeon to cut conversations he doesn't like short and to remind his charges who's really in charge.
Experience, it has been said, can be a tremendous teacher. Yet, in this case, it can also be a divider.
As you continue to grow your own executive career, be careful not to use your own experience as a defensive shield or as a tool for quieting different opinions in your organisation.
If you play it just right, others will recognise your experience and what you've learned from it without you having to remind them of it.
Copyright © TRANSEARCH International
Other Thought Leadership
TRANSEARCH hosted various c-suite executives in 2022 to discuss challenges like high energy costs and supply chain disruptions. The results revealed six key levers for companies to survive these challenges: People, Culture, Leadership, Reputation, Resilience, and Proactive, Empathic Communication. The study will continue in the 3rd quarter of 2023.
Dr. Carlos Davidovich MD. explores the neuroscience of biases and where they are located in our brain, the negative consequences of unconscious cognitive biases and the connection between biases and Diversity and Inclusion.
Ponder long enough and you might recall hearing at a business conference or reading a blog post from a renowned futurist, author or social commentator some time ago that while things to come remained as always unpredictable, it was likely that the pace of change in our times would indeed accelerate. Looking around at the ways our lives and work have been altered in the past 24 months alone,
Breakthrough technology, uncertainty, the increasing speed of change and the redefinition of 'work' demand an organisation that is a fit for the 21st century (built to change). We refer to it as 'succession planning.' A better description would be 'planning for success.'
TRANSEARCH India invited a panel of CEOs and board members, to discuss the topic – 'CEO Conversations: What Boards Expect'. The panellists also debate the importance of agility, culture, succession planning and diversity as key tenets of good governance and purpose-led leadership.
More than anything, agility is a way to think, it’s a mindset, and as such, without 'leadership' you still don't have much. The type of leadership required exudes, encompasses, encourages, and expresses agility in everything the leader does. Which leads us to the 'The Way of the Dolphin'.
One of the reasons a weekend respite from one’s executive leadership responsibilities – or a longer holiday break away from the office – can be so productive for one’s state of mind is because it allows us the time to reflect on our work and absorb important lessons learned by others. There is no shortage of illuminating quotes, allegories and simple epiphanies circulating on the Internet,
While so much of the world around us is changing, there will come a time when people around the world will look for signs, evidence and leaders in whom they can believe and put their trust for better things to come in the future. There is no better economic and social flashpoint to prove this point than the continuing global struggle to contain the spread of COVID-19,