ruhler

In every company, there are a few very fast rising executive stars with what I like to refer to as the ‘stallion syndrome.’ Why do I call them stallions? Well, they are people who are very impressive in appearance, very strong in performance results and very hard to manage. These stallions stand out from the crowd. They have extraordinary talents in a few critical areas that result in successfully reaching the number goals. They are driven, ambitious, fearless and cocky, and often disregard failures by not taking responsibility. The stallion usually makes or exceeds all of his numbers, drives followers to high levels of performance and innovates amazing concepts and products. Promotions come fast and the stallion moves up in the organization quickly.

But very often, stallions also have huge blind spots to their deficits.

It is almost as if a well-rounded executive must possess twenty different important traits with a passing grade in each area. These characteristics often include:

Integrity
Sensitivity
Emotional maturity
Competency
Quick intelligence
Great instincts
A team first loyalty
Trustworthiness
Ability to articulate clearly
Kindness, etc.

On the other hand, there is the stallion, which is extraordinary in three or four of these realms, but can be abysmal in many others. It is almost like God said: “If I give you an exceptional talent, it is a zero-sum character game and for every great trait, there is an offset of weak traits.” History has shown that extraordinary talent often comes with significant quirks.

Because the stallion is stroked for their numerical accomplishments, they are uninterested in working on their weak points. They tend to be extremely difficult to coach, and often are in denial that the weaknesses are important to correct, or worse yet, even […]

This last month I received a request from the National Archives Foundation asking me to write down some experiences from my tour of duty in Vietnam combat. Apparently, this is a national effort to gather the stories before they are lost in a disappearing generation. I have dozens of memoirs from my tour of duty, but here I’ve chosen to recall these two, because they describe how fragile life can be.

I served on the front lines of combat in Viet Nam and, in retrospect; Christmas Eve 1970 was the most formative and life-challenging month of my life. It was the first day of the so-called “Christmas truce.”

U.S. soldiers in field operations hated the Christmas Cease Fire truce that was about to start on December 24th at 10pm and go through New Year’s Day. The Christmas truce concept during war, dating from WWI, was created by Christian countries without considering that it made no sense to the non-Christian enemy we were fighting in 1965-1973. The truce was negotiated that both sides would stop all maneuvers and shooting at each other for six days. The U.S. politicians thought is was a great symbolic idea, but the enemy thought of it as an opportunity with one-sided rules of engagement intentions.

Throughout the Viet Nam war, that “Christmas truce” ended up being a most harrowing week for our troops in the field of combat­, and a chance for the enemy to take advantage of static U.S. field positions. In this war, the Americans owned the day with firepower and the Vietnamese owned the nights with surprise and ambush. Successful night ambushes from the enemy were set up by probes and exploration to understand weak spots in our defenses. That took […]

My consulting role exposes me to some great corporate leaders. When you run across an accomplished and talented corporate leader, their uniqueness from the mass of contemporaries is like red lights flashing. They are different, but have common characteristics to one another. Characteristics of individuals who fit in my ‘real and effective leader’ category include the following:

They have a sense of purpose or vision, and have the ability to articulate it in simple concepts. They can visualize the destination. They are consistently dedicated and focused to accomplish the vision, and can avoid the distraction of divided attention. They are often more into creation than maintenance or incremental improvements. They are open to innovation and new ideas as long as they support the accomplishment of the end vision.
They are energetically driven to accomplish something and show progress. They are impatient. Often their greatest fear is not having enough time. They have the ability to translate their frustration of slow action in others into productive inspiration without being demoralizing. They inject energy into organizations.
They have a value-based and intuitive decision-making style that uses analytics only as a supplement. They realize that getting ever more analytical when it comes to decision-making has diminishing returns against the benefit of getting on with it. They are not afraid of making mistakes because they are confident that they can correct their mistakes later. Their value-based foundation gives them protection against unpredictable decisions that causes disorientation and freezes subordinates in similar situations.
They have the amazing tenacity to overcome obstacles. They don’t quit. They see problems as expected potholes on the journey to successful results. They are not afraid of setbacks as long as a learning curve is embedded […]

These days I occasionally have younger professionals say to me: “Bob, you seem to write from the level of the CEO and often it is not applicable to us. Can you give some advice to people in mid-career?”

OK, here it is: Don’t believe the propaganda of your company’s human resource department relative to their interest in your career development. They are there only to serve the immediate needs of the enterprise, not your career. If the two interests coincide, it is accidental. In good times, they might spend some money on their employees’ development, but in any financially stressful times, they will stop all programs. For example, too many times I have seen great corporate universities opened with enormous effort and cost only to quickly close based on temporary economics. Your career development must be tenaciously selfish, not waiting for better economic times.

That means that the best career advisor or developer is YOU. Don’t delegate or expect it. Take charge of your own career. Plan it and work to make it happen regardless of the stop-and-go interest of your employer.

I do recognize that I have a generational gap issue on what is considered “success” today. My generation was taught that success was striving to be the person in charge, so excuse this article if it does not match your goals. I’ll continue with my lessons learned hoping those who don’t want to be the ultimate leaders of an organization will still find ideas to glean.

In any organization I have been associated with, there is a ladder hierarchy. In service organizations the job roles slowly move from content orientation to business process. For instance, the lowest level of an accounting firm is an accountant (content) while […]