Executive Team Questions

Time to think…

Strategic & People Consultancy

  • Strategy: Do you have one? Is it fit for purpose? Do you even know what fit for purpose is next year given market conditions? To what extent is it lived? Does each function and team have aligned strategies? How do you know that your leaders are engaged to deliver their best performance?
  • Culture: What is the silent language around here? Are you thriving or surviving? Do the re-told stories inspire this generation of talent? How is your culture responding to the current ‘state of the world’? Which parts of your underbelly are you least proud of? How does the culture inspire ‘high performance’? What are the frequent blockers to greatness in your business?
  • Employee Engagement: How proactively and robustly are you considering employee engagement as as a strategic performance lever? What is in / out of scope for your business?
  • High Performing Teams: What are the repeat critical behaviours that your team rely on to deliver high performance? What is missing from the ingredients for ‘high performance’ in your sector? What are the levels of trust, communication, ‘good’ conflict, collaboration, innovation and accountability?
  • Leading & Managing Change: Are you still relying mostly on A to B models of change? To what extent have you embraced ‘emergent change’ into your Leading & Managing Change methodologies? How many Change projects have failed to deliver on goals during the last 3 years?

Executive & Leadership Effectiveness, Support & Development

  • Board Effectiveness:  Are your Board asking the sorts of questions shown in this list?  Is the Board having the right impact on the the business?  In what ways are your Board members similar / different?  How effective are Board meetings?  How accountable does each Board member feel for the performance of this business?  How often is there high challenge in your Board meeting?  From where do Board members resource their support?
  • Executive Coaching: Are you leaders effectively challenged and supported to be their best?  Where does your executive talent go to engage in confidential, non judgemental conversation that releases, supports and develops their thinking?  How do you know that the executive coaches you’re hiring have the right level of skills, experience and qualification to support your top talent?
  • Board & Leadership Meeting Facilitation:  Are you too busy leading and chairing the meeting as opposed to thinking, reflecting, navigating and co-creating?  Given the amount of payroll invested in this critical time together, is the meeting being effectively organised and chaired to maximise its outputs and impact?
  • Crisis Comms & Executive Presence: If your business were caught off guard or a media moment emerged would you be ready to handle the journalists and speak confidently with authority?
  • Executive Mentoring: To what extent would you or your top team benefit from confidential conversations with someone who has been in your place before?
  • Leadership Development: How would your describe the prevailing leadership style across your business?  Are your leaders trained and supported to be the type of leader your business needs today and tomorrow?
  • Leading During Times of Disruption:  As the market conditions have changed… what strategy, leadership focus, team behaviours are required to align with your new business reality?
  • Women in Leadership: To what extent have you taken inclusive action to diversity your Boardroom?  Is it time to proactively understand the systemic challenges to female progression across your business?  Might it be possible to do this in a positive, fun and dynamic way?
  • Financial Awareness for Board Members: Do all of your Board members and understand and take responsibility of the commercial and financial aspects of the business or is this left to the CFO?  Might it be possible that the non-financial colleagues are a little rusty on these aspects of business life?
  • Agile Leadership: In what ways does your business benefit from the possibilities of ‘agile thinking and leadership’?  Are your competitors embracing it?
  • One to One & Group Supervision: If you’re HR, Talent or OD people coach and consult for change, how are ’they’ being supported to release, reflect and grow?
  • Governance:  Could your corporate governance do with a critical friend’s eyes and a possible refresh?

Capability Development Programmes

  • Leaders as Coaches:  Were you aware that ‘coaching’ is widely recognised as the leadership style that maximises performance and morale?  Have you prioritised this and up-skilled your leaders and managers?
  • Inspiring Performance:  In what ways do your leaders inspire people to give their best performance?  Is it left to chance or have you mastered a way of crafting and delivering great conversations that adds to the DNA of your successful business? 
  • Collaborative Leadership:  Are complex projects being delivered with ease?  Have you supported your managers and leaders by equipping them with knowledge and skills on collaborative working?
  • Negotiation Skills: Are your managers and leaders good at finding solutions that meet all parties needs?  How much do you tend to leave on the table?
  • Emotional Intelligence:  Were you aware that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is proven to be more important for leaders than IQ?  It is also trainable.  How many of your leadership team could do with a top up?
  • Influence & Impact:  If your managers and leaders became more aware of their personal impact and worked to improve it, how would this change business outcomes?
  • Resilience & Wellbeing: Have you acknowledged that ‘resilience and wellbeing’ is fast becoming a strategic priority for all organisations?  How is this acknowledgment impacting the daily working lives of your staff?
  • Presentation Skills:  If your change agents, managers, senior leaders and / or executives were more interesting to watch and listen to, how would this improve the landing of the messages and impact on your business?
  • Creating Transformative Spaces Online: Are your staff confident and skilled in designing and facilitating meetings / workshops and events on line?  
  • High Performing Sales:  Is ’selling’ critical to your organisations success?  In what ways have you experimented with enhancing the sales capabilities in your business?  How important is it you address this now?