“It is so easy to get caught in the savior mentality. I needed to find out which stakeholders could be my partners. I needed create a coalition. And I also needed to accept that I am only human.”
In our inaugural round table for executives leading non-profit organizations with national or global impact, our long-term friend and client Dario Soto Abril kicked of the conversation with this vulnerable reflection about being caught up in savior mode. It was part of a larger conversation where he described his own learning journey as first time CEO of a globally operating federated non-profit organization.
Together with a group of fourteen executives, my colleagues Elisabeth, Andy, and I explored the typical challenges executive of complex systems face:
- Everyone expects you to solve their problems
- You are constantly balancing the (sometimes conflicting) expectations of multiple stakeholders
- You work long hours and often feel overwhelmed and/or underappreciated
Everyone in the room was equipped with a large strategic toolkit and several leadership frameworks to do the outer work of leadership. Despite that, what emerged in our conversation was the clear realization that the most difficult part of being a CEO is often the personal inner work; honoring our humanity and our desire to belong and be loved while letting go of mindsets and assumptions that may have served us well in the past, but no longer serve the work now
We are successful because we have a history of solving problems and taking them off of people's shoulders – but now that might get in the way of way distributing the work where it belongs.
We often are good at relating and serving others, but now we might need to disappoint people, say no, set healthy boundaries.
And finally, we have been very committed, and successful – and actually not very comfortable with failure or “good enough,” which leads us to long work hours, over-drive and sometimes even burn out.
Being a CEO is like being a top athlete: you need a team. And that is not necessarily only your colleagues. You need peers who help you normalize the new experience. You need coaches and confidants who help you take care of yourself and distinguish between the difficult role you have, and the beautiful self you are. And you need partners who give you permission to not do it all at once.
As one participant of our executive group put it so beautifully: “I sometimes think my organization has a garden full of problems. And it is only I who sees the most of the picture. But I realized I don’t need to attend to all of them at once. Some little plants can grow a little larger until others see them too.”