Learning to be a CEO

“No one is born a CEO, this is an acquired skill”, says Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston. Furthermore he says, you learn the skills on the job.
So what are the key skills in the journey to learning to be a CEO? The journey has three stages to it:
Stage 1: Followership
This stage calls for reflection on one's personal values and belief systems and attempt to bring about congruence between them and those of the immediate boss and the organization.
This stage can very often call for great soul-searching and can be quite tortuous.

Stage 2: Managership
This stage calls for learning  new execution skills - trusting others to deliver just as well as you, building collaborative teams and learning to balance between giving too much control and too much leeway to team members

Stage 3: Leadership
As a CEO one has to graduate from managing people to managing ideas. Not only does one need come up with one's own Ideas that inspire people,  but also to encourage your people to think and to come up with ideas of their own. This means learning the key skills of empathy and listening.

Navigating Emotions

To navigate something as intangible and changeable as cologne, industry “noses” require a vocabulary of sorts. But the key among all the nomenclature is the ”family” to which the fragrance belongs (eg ‘floral’, ’aquatic’, woody’). Like human families, these boxes often bleed into another and you can end up with unusual hybrids. - Bloomberg

CoachConnect
Human emotions, like fragrances, are just as intangible and changeable, and they too can end up as unusual hybrids. The coach, by helping the client give appropriate labels to his emotions provides a handle to better deal with them. 

Acts of Kindness

#LivingStories
“If you are unemployed and need an outfit cleaned for an interview, we will clean it for free”, says a sign outside the establishment of In The Bag cleaners. Below this is a personally signed note from Team Leader Dave Coyle, which says,  “When times are tough, we will help you look your best.”

#MyLearning
Reading the sign aroused a mixture of emotions in me - a slight constriction of the throat followed by a sunny feeling which Wodehouse would have described as, “The bird’s on the wing, the snail's on the thorn,  God’s in his heaven, all's right with the world“. If those my emotions, one can only imagine the feelings of the receiver of the act and the giver.

Each of us, whether In business or employed, have the capacity to do an act of kindness to those who are less privileged than us. It does not cost much, but can be immensely gratifying and emotionally rewarding to both the giver and the receiver of the act.

Leaders Lead the Way

Both Actor Salman Khan and film director Sooraj Barjatya are the same age, yet the actor addresses the latter as Sooraj babu. Asked why, Salman say he realized (Sooraj’s) calibre right from the time of their first film together, when both were 19-year-olds. He had then noticed that people were taking Sooraj for granted, and he had not liked it. So he’d started calling him Sooraj babu so others would respect him.

#MyLearning
Every action and communication of a leader has the power to shape the perceptions,as well as behavior of his people. Use the power well.

Picture source: brettlsimmons. com