685: How to Start a Top Job, with Ty Wiggins

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Taking on a top job is unique in many ways. In this episode, how to hear more of the truth and where to begin with easy wins and early moves. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 685. Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:34]:
And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the realities that many of us face in our careers is starting a top job. And when we get into the role, it’s exciting, can be nerve wracking, and often, it’s hard to know where to start, what to do, and what not to do. Today, a conversation that will help us all to do a better job at starting that top job. I’m so pleased to welcome Ty Wiggins to the show. He’s a leadership expert who’s passionate about setting up new CEOs for success. As the global lead of Russell Reynolds Associates CEO and executive transition practice, he helps world leading CEOs successfully transition into their new roles, guiding them through their 1st 12 to 18 months as their trusted adviser. He is the author of The New CEO: Lessons from CEOs on How to Start Well and Perform Quickly Minus the Common Mistakes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:33]:
Ty, what a pleasure to have you.

Ty Wiggins [00:01:35]:
Thank you very much for having me, Dave. It’s great to be here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:38]:
You have a really beautiful quote at the start of one of the chapters of the book that’s so true. It says, “as the well known saying adapted for the business world goes, as CEO, you can count on 2 things. You will never be given a cold coffee, and you will never hear the whole truth.” And I read that, and I thought, wow, how true that is. Things really are different when you’re the top person in a job. Aren’t they?

Ty Wiggins [00:02:05]:
Yeah. Once you’ve become CEO or or even in other roles that are very senior, there’s this change that happens in terms of how people see you and how people treat you and especially around what people tell you. So this is one of the areas where new CEOs and new senior leaders really need to quickly adjust their thinking and almost accept that this has changed. And sometimes you find senior leaders really resisting that acceptance.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:38]:
What is it that you see people when you’re working with them tend to resist?

Ty Wiggins [00:02:44]:
I think a lot of people come through the ranks with a, you know, emerging ideas of what type of senior leader they’ll be, or when I’m CEO, I’m going to be like this and I’m not gonna be like that. So when you come out of the c suite, especially, there is sometimes a resistance to really step fully into the role of the CEO. You still want to be part of the team. These are people at your level. They may have been peers if you came internally, and you don’t want to lose that connection, and you don’t want to suddenly become this sort of all powerful leader. But the reality is that becoming CEO changes the dynamics of the relationship. You just can’t have the same candor. You can’t have the same exchanges.

Ty Wiggins [00:03:30]:
And you are increasingly watched and scrutinized in terms of what you say and what you do. So the quicker that the CEO accepts this, the easier it is for everyone else to perform. Because the challenge on the senior leadership team is they need to accept this as well, which they generally do far faster. But if you hold them in this in between period, it can make it quite difficult for you to really lead and perform.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:58]:
One of the realities you highlight in your work is that when you’re in the top job, you see more, but you hear less. And you say that this is particularly difficult for people who were promoted internally. What is it that’s more difficult for someone that’s come up through the ranks inside the organization?

Ty Wiggins [00:04:20]:
It is a comfort level with a a status quo. So if you’re an externally recruited CEO, you come in accepting that people will take time to get to know you, take time to trust you, and so, your information flow will be restricted. So you have this sort of cognitive understanding of what that’s going to be like. When you’re promoted internally, you’re sort of led into this false perception of the information flow that you’ve already been used to. And, you know, if it was me, I’d be saying, they know me. They’ve known me for a long time. Me becoming CEO, nothing’s going to change. I’m still going to be close to the front line.

Ty Wiggins [00:05:04]:
I’m still going to get the same level of information. And so they can be blindsided. And, you know, there’s a couple of examples in the book. Mark Bitzer is 1. When he became CEO of Whirlpool, he was disappointed that the information that he was receiving was suddenly filtered at such a greater level. And one of the things that I say to to CEOs regularly is that, you know, the same way senior management filters information going down, people at the front line filter information coming up. And I argue, in many cases, the thickest filter is the c suite. They’re the ones, usually with good intentions, who are the last packages of the narrative, who are the last adjusters of the decks.

Ty Wiggins [00:05:52]:
They’re the ones that iron out any of the wrinkles. So you have to be really, really careful that you aren’t assuming the same level of transparency of information that you were relying on as a c suite member because you now have bigger, more difficult problems to solve and decisions to make. You need more information, and in fact, you are getting less.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:14]:
You say in the book that “if you don’t believe this is happening to you in the top job, it’s one of your blind spots.” And I think about that and, like, part of this is mindset. Right? Understanding that that is happening, that when you’re in a top job, you are getting filtered information. And the sooner you make peace with that reality, the more you can do to actually find and surface the information that you need. Am I hearing that well?

Ty Wiggins [00:06:43]:
Absolutely. You you you have to acknowledge it. If you if you kid yourself that nothing’s changed and you’ve got your finger on the pulse and then everyone from the front line to the senior executive telling you the bare honest truth, that is absolutely a blind spot because that is not what happens. And again, it’s not necessarily people wanting to deceive you, but people want to look good in your eyes. They want to please you. They don’t wanna tell you things that you don’t wanna hear. They want to try and fix problems before it gets to you. There’s a lot of aspects of good intended behavior.

Ty Wiggins [00:07:19]:
But what it does mean is that you are not getting the information that you think you’re getting. So, as a new CEO, you really have to think about, a, identifying those rare people that will tell you the blatant truth regardless of repercussions, and hold them close and encourage that. But you’ll see a lot of CEOs, internal and external, doing lots of frontline meetings, listening tours, lunches with the CEO, breakfast, and things like that. Where and not only in the early stages, but consistently to make sure that they’re at least fostering the opportunity for people to tell them what’s really important. One of the questions that I encourage CEOs to ask when they become CEO is to go at all levels of the organization, but especially at the front line, and ask people, tell me some of the workarounds that you have in place. And what this fosters is there are workarounds that people have around processes, or policies, or structure, or systems because it just doesn’t work. And they’ve probably tried to get it changed unsuccessfully, so they create this workaround. If you can get people talking about their workarounds, you’ll get a really good understanding of what is getting between them and successfully executing their role, and you’re in a position then where you can actually make some early changes that really engages the workforce.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:42]:
One of the distinctions that I’m thinking about is that as the top person, you really have to be intentional to open those doors for the conversation and lead it, and you call it finding your espresso machine. Like, the discourse, the debate that you may have been used to in your last role or on a senior team or in the c suite just doesn’t happen naturally to all the things you just mentioned. And so being the person who actually leads that opens the door is key because if you don’t, no one else will.

Ty Wiggins [00:09:15]:
Yeah. You you have to be so careful. And this is one of the key changes between being a c suite executive and the CEO. When you’re a c suite executive, you are encouraged to give your opinion at at all manner of things. And there isn’t really a timing issue because when you’re in the c suite, if there’s a discussion at the c suite level with the CEO, then you’re lobbying for something. Then it’s everything you can do to get that best outcome. So you introduce your opinion upfront, you know, you can be a little bit more sharp in terms of your responses and challenges. You’re trying to sway people.

Ty Wiggins [00:09:53]:
You’re trying to influence them to your way of thinking. When you’re the CEO, your ability to influence is significantly increased. So there’s always that funny sort of, analogy that comes around on places like LinkedIn, where the leader walks into the room and says, okay, here’s the problem, here’s what I think we should do, but I’m really interested in your opinion, so tell me what you think. And, of course, we know that it’s done at that point. The the way, as a CEO, you frame up a discussion can also end the discussion. So in the book, I talk about that Nelson Mandela quote around leaders should speak last. Because as CEO, once you’ve framed it, outlined it, set up the discussion, dealt with the silence in the room because you felt the obligation to lead, you have led the witness in such a way that you will now only hear back, basically, what you have put out.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:53]:
And you invite us to get out of the bubble that just naturally forms in the top job. And one way to do that actually comes back to something you mentioned a a minute ago, but I’d love to dive in on that more is spending more time with middle managers and frontline employees and you write in the book in our RA’s research 49% of CEOs said they spent too little time with middle managers and frontline employees. But those who do, it can be an invaluable way to get a feel for what’s really going on. I love that question that you asked about, tell me some of the workarounds you have in place talking to middle managers, frontline folks. Of the folks you’ve worked with and observed who you’ve seen really do that well to get connected with middle management, front line employees. What is it they do to actually connect and open up those conversations?

Ty Wiggins [00:11:50]:
Well, this is an interesting aspect because I often get asked, do I see differences between 1st time and second time CEOs? And I’ve had the opportunity to support second, 3rd, and 4th time CEOs. And the answer is yes. And one of the differences is the amount of time they spent with people early on. So a first time CEO would be more inclined to spend time on the financials and the operating model and the physical infrastructure and the things that they feel they need to get their head around. 2nd and third time CEOs spend their first month to 2 months out in the field talking to people. And they don’t do rapid fire half an hour discussions. They actually get into these discussions because what they understand intrinsically is, if I want to, do well with this organization, if I want to move this organization forward, then everything I really need to understand about what is performing and stopping it from performing is locked in the people. It’s not in the decks.

Ty Wiggins [00:12:50]:
It’s not in the reports. So they spend this disproportionate time with people. And I think the people that do it really, really well, they come back with great information. They then feed that information back to the organization. So one of the suggestions I make to clients is, when you’re a new CEO, people are really fixated on what you’re learning and what you’re thinking. So share that. So I had one CEO in the UK. She did a fantastic job of writing a email to the organization every week for the 1st 10 weeks, saying, here’s where I went.

Ty Wiggins [00:13:23]:
Here’s what I’m hearing. Here’s what I’m learning, and here’s what I’m starting to sort of understand. And wrote it very much in the present tense. And this fostered this enormous information flow because people would say, oh, wow. So if you’ve heard if you’ve learned that, now you need to actually know this because that’s the next level. Or they were able to challenge what she was understanding. So what it did was it really brought her forward to the organization in a way that the organization felt like they knew her at a much faster rate than you would normally see.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:55]:
And it’s a little different than some of the traditional advice that we hear about the first 90 days, the first 100 days as a measure of success. And you say that the the focus on the first 90, first 100 days depending on the model is a bit overstated sometimes. What is it that’s overstated about it?

Ty Wiggins [00:14:17]:
I think the the emphasis on your transition lasts 90 days is overstated. At junior levels as leaders, yes, maybe you can get a lot of stuff done in your 1st 90 days because it’s very basic. But as a CEO, by the end of 90 or a 100 days, you’re still really coming to grips with the organization, understanding your team, you’re starting to get a real sense of the culture. Cultures are one of those things that you can’t really understand externally, and even if you’re internal, there’s a big difference between being part of the culture and being responsible for it. So at the end of 90 days or a 100 days, I think the CEO needs to be really measured and think about how he or she will score their progress. You will unlikely, to have moved the needle significantly in that period of time. There will always be some things, you know, I talk to clients about. You know, these early actions are really important.

Ty Wiggins [00:15:14]:
You can be very discerning where you put your time and energy. It can make a big difference. I talk a lot about finding some of the things that are frustrating the organization, finding some of the things that are important to people at various levels, but have been ignored or left alone, and really getting to the end of that 100 days with a sense of, you know, what have I learned? What have I understood? And, obviously, if something is on fire, then you need to put it out. But if something’s been smoldering and been smoldering for some time, you can probably leave it for a little while longer because the biggest risk you have as the new CEO is making decisions or judgments without the proper context or information, and then finding yourself having to change that down the track. You know, sort of the Amazon two way doors, I guess. You know, making decisions on a one way door really early that is quite restrictive to your ability to perform longer term.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:12]:
Yeah. Indeed. And not being able to go back on that decision. But this reminds me of an exchange you write in the book that just really I think captures the complexity of this. You say, “I have had conversations with every CEO I’ve worked with and often several times over hear things like this. Should I take my time and learn the organization? Yes. But if I move too slowly, do I run the risk of get the board getting rid of me? Yes. Do people need to feel the impact of a new CEO? Yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:44]:
But do I run the risk of losing people because I move too fast? Yes. So what should I do? Be patient or go fast? Yes.” And I just I I was reading through that and thinking, like, it really does illustrate the complexity and the art of trying to know what to move on and not. And the distinction you just highlighted, I think, is, like, such a helpful one. If it’s on fire, fix it. But if it’s smoldering, leave it alone until you have more context. And I guess that begs the question, how do you know the difference sometimes? Because it’s sometimes hard to know in the moment.

Ty Wiggins [00:17:19]:
Yeah. That that’s probably one of the key challenges is that when you come in, you need to be prepared to be heavily lobbied. People will try to catch you off balance and push through things that they want done because you haven’t got full context or bring things to your attention because it’s really important to them. And as CEO, everybody else is urgent and important will come towards you, but you need to be really clear about what is actually important for you. So this determining whether it’s on fire or smoldering, yeah, it’s gonna be challenging. This balance between learning and listening and moving has a couple of factors. One of them is you as the CEO. There’s a high bias to action.

Ty Wiggins [00:18:03]:
If this is your 1st CEO role, there is pressure. And a lot of the pressure that you feel will actually come from yourself. So I’ve worked with a lot of CEOs where we’ve gotten to 3 months, and they’ve said things like, like, I haven’t done anything yet. I need to do something really quickly. And I’ve been able to point out that they have done a lot of things, and that the board’s expectation is that these things take 6 to 9 months, so that there’s an opportunity to exceed the expectation, but there’s very little win in running down a path, sort of, quickly just to satisfy your own, sort of, concern about your ability to do this. So it is a real challenge. And I think, these early actions and the shifting into action is where you need to be asking the right questions. This is where you need to be patient.

Ty Wiggins [00:18:50]:
This is where you need to be really clever with your language that you don’t say something that people latch onto and go, hey, Dave’s focus is this, so let’s bring all the information to him on this matter. And, you know, you need to be very aware of some of the biases that you Dave. Like the you know, there’s an availability bias, which is the more available the information, the more I trust it. So the more people lobby me or talk to me about something, the more I’m gonna lean into that. And then the big bias that I see people coming in that really affects them early is their own confirmation bias. It feels really good to find things that you expect to find because it reinforces to you that you’re the right person.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:32]:
Mhmm.

Ty Wiggins [00:19:32]:
So this adage of inspect what you expect is really valuable early because you can run down a series of pathways because you wanted to find something. And lo and behold, you find it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:45]:
Yeah. You mentioned a moment ago that it’s helpful to ask the right questions and this of course changes contextually everywhere and yet I’m wondering if you have stumbled across a question or 2 as someone struggling with the you know, what’s on fire, what’s smoldering, what is confirmation bias, that sometimes helps just to separate that a little bit.

Ty Wiggins [00:20:10]:
There’s a number of really great questions that I think and I encourage leaders at all levels to adopt. 1 is when you are doing early rounds of 1 on ones and group meetings. That at some point in the in the discussion, you ask a version of the question, what didn’t I ask about but should have? Mhmm. And I find this because working across the world, most of the cultures are fairly compliant. If you ask me about something, then I’ll answer. But if you don’t raise it, I won’t necessarily raise it. So this is the sort of unconscious incompetence, the the concept that you don’t know what you don’t know. So as new CEO, you don’t know necessarily what to ask.

Ty Wiggins [00:20:54]:
So you need to create an environment which puts people a bit on the spot. And I’ve seen this personally where people, they fidget and they go, oh, that’s a good question. You really should Dave asked about the audit. You really should have asked about the regulatory body. You should have asked about the issue we had 4 years ago, because that led to this. And so if you can start to ask a question like that and do it consistently for a number of months, what it says to the organization is that I am truly committed to learning and understanding what’s going on. I need to understand what got us to this point, and I’m doing that in the desire to serve. So the faster you can bring me up to speed, the more effective I can be for you.

Ty Wiggins [00:21:36]:
So that’s one of the questions that I really encourage people to use in these early meetings.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:41]:
When you decide to start doing something that moves forward in some way, There’s a distinction you make between early wins and early moves, and I’m wondering if you could tell me about that distinction and then what is it that’s critical about early wins?

Ty Wiggins [00:22:04]:
There’s a lot of focus on early wins or quick wins. The distinction is that you need to be sure about who this is a win for. And so, as a new CEO, your early actions will send really clear messages to the organization about your focus. So one of the areas where I see new CEOs do really well is where some of these easy wins are directed towards the employees, to the staff, to the things that demotivate. You know, you’ve got a good group of people. Most organizations have people that are are fairly well motivated, but there are demotivators along the way. There are things that are problematic. So how do you, as a new CEO, as you’re moving around, work out what is what is really frustrating people? Some people would use it as a a magic wand type question, you know.

Ty Wiggins [00:22:58]:
If I had a a small wand and a large wand, I could make small changes and big changes, what would I change? You know, another question might be, if you were in the CEO role, what would you do to make the roles of people in the organization better? What are the things that really annoyed? So some of these easy wins are things that are just, sort of, sitting there. And in the book, I use the example from the show Ted Lasso, where he has his suggestion box. And most of the suggestions aren’t very helpful, but one of them is around fixing the water pressure in the showers. And it’s a small fix. It’s clearly not a big issue to have someone come and fix that. But the fact that people hadn’t fixed it spoke volumes to the players about the care factor. And so the fact that Ted fixed it early, even though it was very small, made a big difference. And I’ve seen that with organizations.

Ty Wiggins [00:23:50]:
You know, one CEO had people in 2 buildings on different floors, and no one could communicate. And in the 3rd week, he moved everybody. Movers come in and move it around. So that was a clear indication of something that wasn’t a massive win for the organization, but a clear action saying, I’m interested, I’m listening, and I care. And so I put those type of things in the easy win category. For the early moves, that’s where you’re starting to make bigger, broader decisions. And, again, it takes time to really start to change the direction of the organization. You will start forming views really early.

Ty Wiggins [00:24:27]:
And so when I talk about early news, I’m thinking about things that are usually sitting just below the surface. When you step into the CEO role, there’s inevitably a number of projects or initiatives that are part completed or have been considered. But the former CEO or management team hasn’t done it. And some of these things are because there’s the political reward is so far down the track that the current CEO or current leadership team don’t want to do it. So, I’m not going to invest in this because it’s going to take x amount of capital, and we’re not going to see benefits for 4 years, and I need stuff now. So there are some things that will always be there that you’ll be able to find. And so identifying those and making those early moves, whether it’s settling a dispute legally, whether it’s getting rid of a business that everyone knows should have been gone a long time ago, whether it’s finally making the decision on the CRM system or the IT infrastructure, things that have been hanging around for a while. You know, good early moves to make.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:28]:
This goes back to our conversation about the 90 days, a 100 days that the early moves, especially, you’re probably not gonna be doing that in the first 90 or a 100 days because you’re not gonna have the context of what are those moves that are going to really help the organization over the next 5 to 10 years.

Ty Wiggins [00:25:47]:
Correct. These are things that you need to the easy wins, yes, maybe. The early moves, this is really a sort of 3 to 9 month process where you’ve got enough information. And for some CEOs, it’s identifying the board’s alignment to these as well. You know, some of the things that CEOs come into change or want to change fairly early, I encourage them to work out who the original sponsor was. And if it’s the chair or if it’s the board, that needs to be dealt with as well. So it does take time to understand these. But once you do have some of these in front of you, and you can see that the organization is frustrated by a lack of decision or a lack of action, you can sometimes make these decisions quite quickly because you will have a degree of objectivity around the fact that this decision has been hanging around for 2 years.

Ty Wiggins [00:26:42]:
And it’s very common for organizations to have these things in place. So deal with them if you can. As, also, you should deal with any of the external challenges. It’s not unusual for CEOs to come into roles and then understand that there are legal, challenges or disputes in place. These can be enormously distracting. So these are, you know, sort of cleaning up some of the initial messes is also something that CEOs need to focus on. And this can be quite a derailer. You know, you come in thinking you’re gonna do all of the positive shiny activities, and you spend your 1st couple of months in the trenches with the lawyers trying to settle cases that, I should never have been in place and shouldn’t have been dragged out as long as they were.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:26]:
Thinking about the example that you mentioned in the book of the, and I don’t remember the organization, but the CEO came in and so much of their business was reliant on a connection with Russia or Ukraine and, you know, a week in the job, all of a sudden, there’s a war. And the whole plan for the next few years was kinda thrown out the window. And I think it just really speaks to what you just said of the importance of taking the time, the context, and also knowing that things are going to change. You’re not gonna come in and things be exactly as you thought. You’ve gotta reserve time and space to know that, you’re gonna discover things as you go that are gonna change what you decide to do as those early moves.

Ty Wiggins [00:28:02]:
Yeah. The flow of information is, obviously, enormous. But, also, the development of that information. So, what you know at week 2 is far more than double what you knew at week 1. And Dave with week 4 to week 2. It’s exponential in those early months, which is why by the time you get to the end of the 90 days, you’re still in this exponential curve. It hasn’t even started to flatten out yet. And the example that you mentioned came from Sanjeev Lamba, who is the CEO of Lindy.

Ty Wiggins [00:28:34]:
And he was an internal successor. It was a very, very smooth succession process. He is a fantastic CEO. And he had written this perfect plan based on the advice you’ve read in books. And I think planning for your transition is very beneficial. And you should definitely do that. You also need to be able to adapt. And that was his example.

Ty Wiggins [00:28:58]:
I think 3 or 4 days into his being CEO, Russia invaded Ukraine, and he had to throw his plan out and write another one. So there is this constant, sort of, you know, dealing with the changes and being able to adapt while still holding that broad direction that you want to through your transition and then longer term for the organization.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:18]:
You invite us to think about, tactic as well. I think this is under the category of early wins, but tell me if I’m wrong, or easy wins rather. The addressing a common pain point. And you make the point. It doesn’t have to be enormous, but it does have to be deliberate. And I’m curious what a common pain point is and what do you mean by deliberate?

Ty Wiggins [00:29:42]:
A common pain point is, you know, in all organizations, there tends to be things that people talk about quite openly at various levels that is not great, is not working. Often, it’s related to IT systems or reporting structures or the physical location I mentioned before was 1 in that organization was just how silly it was that half of this department was here and half of the department were across the street because certain individuals wanted this office because of the view and etcetera, etcetera. So a common pain point of these things that, again, the organization is frustrated with, but they’ve almost become a little bit dull too because no one’s changed it. So as you move around as the CEO or a senior leader, asking questions about what frustrates people, What demotivates? What makes the job harder than it needs to be? What are the things that we used to do really well, but no longer do? Or what are the things that we do that we should no longer do? And where are these things where, you know, as a leadership team, we have failed to either remove the blockage or enable you or unlock the challenges that you’ve got to be successful and to make things easy. And there’s generally a bunch of stuff. And it’s often really, really small. So if you can catch on to this early, verify it as you need to, and make some of these smaller changes, it speaks volumes to the organization. So when you start to move the organization and start to ask the organization to change, and to accelerate, or to perform at a different level, if you have first engaged them by removing some of the things that make their day to day job difficult, you’ll have a greater chance of them coming with you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:37]:
As I read the book, there was so much that I thought, wow, this would be such a useful guide for someone who’s moving into the top role. And I think, you know, we’ve all heard the models on 90 days, 100 days of starting a new role. Those are really useful models. And oftentimes, they’re more general of all kinds of different roles. What I love about your book is that it’s so focused on the top role. And maybe it is the CEO or maybe it’s executive director or maybe it’s general manager or maybe it’s a regional VP, but it’s a role that is a senior role that you’re moving into. And there’s there’s a lot of folks looking at you. And what a great step by step guide this is.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:16]:
And I think also really helpful even if you’re not in that role yet. Maybe you’re supporting someone who’s making that trans transition. Maybe you’re on the board. I mean, what a useful guide for being able to help folks do that well in such a concise way. So, Ty, I’m so glad that you have brought this into the world and we will be linking this of course in the notes and the weekly leadership guide for everyone. Ty, I’ve got one last question for you. As you have put together the book, as you’ve been talking with folks about it over recent months and supporting the CEOs you’re working with today. I’m curious, you know, leaders are always learning and growing themselves.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:54]:
What if anything hae you changed your mind on in the last year or 2 as you’ve put this together?

Ty Wiggins [00:32:59]:
The aspect that I think really was reinforced to me through doing the interviews around the book And and as a blind spot for myself, I think I had become a little blase about the impact on CEOs of how lonely the role is. And I think that’s in part because I’m a solution to part of that problem. When I work with CEOs, I provide that sense of confidential sounding board and adviser. So I step into that. So I had undervalued a little bit over time by watching it too often. And so, to have people like Ramon Laguarta and Carole Toomey and Mark Bitzer and Mark Klaus talk about this loneliness is a thing and it really takes some getting used to. And it’s quite challenging to be at the top of the house in terms of the organization. And I describe it as feeling like you’re alone in a crowd.

Ty Wiggins [00:33:56]:
You’re very rarely physically alone, but this loneliness aspect is quite a thing and it can become quite isolating. So I now, a, more focused on that as a discussion. I’m especially with boards, I’m more focused on on how we build networks and doing a better job of connecting new CEOs to other CEOs because that’s a network they often don’t have accessible to solve this loneliness challenge.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:24]:
Ty Wiggins is the author of The New CEO: Lessons from CEOs on How to Start Well and Perform Quickly, Minus the Common Mistakes. Ty, thank you so much for your work.

Ty Wiggins [00:34:35]:
Thank you, Dave, for having me. Great.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:43]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, 3 related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 5 90, how to genuinely show up for others. Marshall Goldsmith was my guest on that episode, top executive coach. Marshall and I talked about the reality that is so true for leaders and especially leaders in top jobs, which is you often find yourself going into all kinds of different conversations throughout the day. One conversation may be giving someone very difficult feedback. The next conversation may be celebrating an award at a very visible event. The next conversation may be thinking about the future and being very present and listening to someone. Top leaders are changing context all the time, and yet they’ve learned the best at least how to show up in the moment well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:32]:
Marshall, in that conversation, talks about the concept of singular empathy and how we can do a better job of showing up in the moment regardless of what may have happened before or after that conversation. Episode 590 for a road map for you on how to do that. Also recommend the work of Carol Kauffman, episode 617, another coach of top leaders, how to start a big leadership role. Carol and I talked about, some of the patterns that she sees when executives begin in new roles, top leaders start, and it’s a wonderful compliment to this conversation. We talked about some key concepts that we didn’t talk about today and vice versa. I think it’s a great compliment to this episode 617, especially if you’re taking on a new job or a big role. I think it’s a great one for you to be listening to. And then finally, episode 662.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:20]:
How an executive aligns with a board. Joan Garry was my guest on that episode, a tremendous leader in the nonprofit space. If you’re an executive director on the leadership team of a nonprofit or on the board of a nonprofit, you should absolutely know about Joan’s work. She has just done phenomenal work over years of helping non profit leaders do well. And in that conversation specifically, we talk about how to align well with a board, so many resources, tactics in that conversation, and, of course, many that Joan offers as part of her website and membership as well. That’s episode 662 for that. All of those episodes, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. If you’ve not already, I’m inviting you today to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:06]:
It’s gonna open up access to a whole bunch of benefits inside of the free membership. There’s a bunch of free audio courses, our entire library of episodes searchable by topic, and also access to all of my interview and book notes I did today as I do for many conversations, with Ty. Thought about in advance, what are the kinds of things I wanna be asking him? I got those down on my interview notes. I’ve also pulled a number of relevant quotes from the book that I think that you should probably reflect on thinking about this conversation. Those are all in the interview notes, not only for this conversation, but all of the interviews in recent years. It is part of the free membership. You can look on book and interview notes, or you can just find it on each individual episode, library, inside of the episode notes. All of that’s part of the free membership plus a bunch more.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:58]:
Just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. And I’d also invite you to learn about Coaching for Leaders Plus, especially if you’ve had your free membership for a bit because it’s gonna open up tons more resources for you. And one of those resources is my weekly journal entry. Earlier this month, I wrote a journal about the reality that sometimes we tend to move too quickly on things. You heard echoes of that in this conversation today with Ty that sometimes I find myself giving advice to our members that the best thing to do is nothing, absolutely nothing, at least not beyond what they’ve already done because sometimes we need to wait for things to play out. Sometimes we need more context, and sometimes takes time for things to, affect change inside of an organization. When do you wait and when do you move? It’s a hard question to answer, and I share that perspective in one of the recent journal entries. If you’d like to get that journal entry for me, it’s my writing, my thoughts every single week in your inbox.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:02]:
Coaching for Leaders Plus is a place to look to as one of those key benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. Just go over to coachingforleaders.plus to find out more. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I’ll be back next Monday for our next episode on leadership. Have a great week, and see you back then.