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Do You Know About the Senior Leadership Disconnection Syndrome?

July 28, 2016

Blog Topic

Let’s call it SLDS for simplicity.Do You Know About the Senior Leadership Disconnection Syndrome

What is SLDS?

It’s when the senior leader is so disconnected from the coalface, where most outcomes occur, that the senior leader becomes ineffectual and the culture, engagement and productivity drift downward.

It’s not the senior leaders’ fault.

It’s the fault of the system and the lack of investment in continuing leadership development for senior leaders.

Example 1

Mary had been an effective leader at middle management level, implementing instructions from above to line leaders below.

She was an excellent communicator and knew the roles beneath her really well.

After the sudden unexpected departure of her direct report above, Mary was elevated to that role.

She had little experience in strategic thinking and interacting with her new peers, the C-level and board.

She kept diving into detail.

Her new peers and the board began to discount her input.

Mary became compliant and avoided challenging her new peers when she could have.

Soon she lost the trust and respect of her direct reports.

Things worsened and eventually Mary was declared ineffectual and removed, her career over.

Mary hadn’t been given appropriate training and transitioning from one level to the other.

Example 2

Barry had been a very successful CEO because of his ability to guide his direct reports.

Elevated to the board and relinquishing his CEO role, Barry had to focus on longer term thinking.

But he couldn’t step away from the tactics and didn’t know how to deal with the financial analysts that kept pressing him for short term profits.

The board thought Barry could do the heavy lifting for them. He couldn’t. He wasn’t equipped.

Frustrated, Barry became disconnected from the board, and also the company’s executive.

Barry resigned due to stress and failing health.

Barry hadn’t been offered transitioning training. He didn’t even know that it was essential.

Example 3

Heather was a brilliant general manager.

When she was promoted to CEO of her public company, she related well with the board and the fund managers who harassed her for results that gave them their quarterly bonuses.

The problem was she lost ability to communicate effectively with the people under her care.

She became too removed from their issues. She became focussed on the demands of being a CEO of a public listed company, attending to shareholder concerns driven by board members, fund managers and politics.

Talent left and the company’s productivity declined.

Heather didn’t recognise the cause. Neither did the board. They were all too disconnected. The company remains languishing with the status quo intact.

Heather hasn’t developed the skills needed to stay in touch and deal with the pressures from above and below.

What’s Going On?

If you ask senior leaders what they are doing to continue their development, they assure you that they are doing their own study and learning. I know – I ask them regularly.

When I ask them what that study might be, I’m told it has to do with strategic thinking, innovation and the latest academic research on leadership and the future.

I don’t deny those topics are important, however, they too often have little to do with what’s happening in their own company right now.

When I ask them “What’s the description of your company’s culture right now”, they are silent for too long.

When I ask them how they’ll improve their company’s performance, they mainly speak of spread sheet results monitoring. Lag indicators!

Lag indicators are for historians!

Current and lead indicators are the domain of smart senior leaders.

That means what’s going on right now on the ground. How people are doing their work, their level of engagement.

When I ask them how they deal effectively with unacceptable behaviour and performance whilst keeping trust and respect, they stay silent or say “I know that’s important, we have trouble with that.”

I repeat, it’s not their fault.

The system assumes that as senior leaders they already know and practice what’s needed. After all that’s why they are senior leaders.

Every study points to the fact that no matter where you are in the leadership chain, lifelong learning is essential.

Because senior leaders are not working at the coalface, that doesn’t mean they can’t stay in realistic touch with it.

Technology could make that easier.

Except it doesn’t. It makes it easier to be remote.

Well, the coalface is still distinctly human and that means: Don’t be remote!

As a senior leader, one needs to be in the helicopter, but also get closer to the ground, and for goodness sake, get on the ground too!

Helicopters can do that!

Senior leaders must stay abreast with the current, what’s happening now on the ground, as well as the future.

They need to continue learning, because what got them to be senior leaders in the first place won’t keep them there, unless they move and learn with the times.

The times are rapidly changing.

Senior leaders who lose touch with the coalface rapidly become useless.

It’s called the Senior Leadership Disconnection Syndrome or SLDS.

Do you know someone suffering from SLDS?

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