Article by Bud Roth

CEO’s Out of Round
By Bud Roth, Roth Consulting Group, LLC
July 31, 2003

I am a consultant who develops leaders and leadership teams. I share my experiences with corporate leaders who often need to regain control of their companies and their own lives. The leader whose life is out of balance, or out of round, can hurt the business he loves, as well as hundreds of families whose lives become intertwined with the company for whom they work.

Listen to one CEO’s story of failure and redemption.

I’m Hugh. I’m still the CEO of the company I tried to ruin. Five years ago we were on a high growth curve. Hard work, a good economy and competitive products brought us into the top five companies in the world in our industry. We (I) wanted more, and dreamed of the possibilities. A string of acquisitions was our quest. This risky strategy took a great deal of sweat, time and disruption of what we do best. Ultimately, it didn’t work.

The personal sacrifices took their toll on many people in the company, including me. I failed to see at the time how our plans were falling short, turnover was rising, leaders were bailing out, and customers were upset and going to our competitors. The financials and stock price suffered terribly. Nobody but me was doing what was necessary to execute the strategy. It was the fault of other conditions, financial institutions and people, certainly not my judgment, direction or leadership.

As it turned out the biggest problem WAS me.

I was complaining about the mess we were in to an old boss, mentor and friend one evening over dinner. He started asking me some pointed questions. “Whose strategy was this? Was the company ready to handle this fast expansion? Was everyone on board with the plan? Was the leadership team performing? What has this growth initiative done to you, your family and other families?” As his questions continued, and as my answers continued to sound hollow, I started feeling kind of shaky. I found myself, for the first time, willing to consider that I was at least part of the problem.

The one question my friend asked me that really stopped me was the one about me, my family and other families. After a silence, I realized how many relationships I was slowly destroying or perhaps had already destroyed. My personal life was falling apart long before I started my personal ambitious quest to be number one in our industry. I think I was trying to prove something by being a high achiever in my business because I didn’t know how to be successful as a human being, husband, father, or friend. Maybe my career focus was the reason I didn’t take the time to enrich my family life. I thought providing money for my family would take care of everything else.

As I look back, I can see that my personal life had a fundamentally toxic effect on my desire to succeed in business. My ego got so big that I wasn’t listening to trusted colleagues and leaders. I figured I knew how to get us where we needed to go. I thought that driving the strategy from the top would push the organization to the goals that I wanted to reach. My personal life became more stressful as I tried to convince myself that I was doing the right things. I simply lost touch with reality. I went out of round.

My friend helped me see where I had gone off track. At his suggestion, I sought some help from an executive coach. I was already seeing a marriage counselor with my wife. With the help of my friend, my coach, the counselor and my wife and family, I started the first steps toward recovery. I won’t go into the details of my transformation, but I will say that I learned the importance of re-connecting with my personal values and starting to live them again. My values define me, and what I stand for.

Seems simple, doesn’t it?

While I was getting myself straightened out, I was putting the company back on the road to recovery. I started with apologies, and just kept working on rebuilding my relationships. I even got some of my former leadership team to rejoin the company. We (notice I said ‘we’) changed our vision and strategy as we re-thought what our real mission should be. As we initiated from the top, we collaborated throughout the organization to gather input from as many associates as possible. We made it clear we were going to shape our strategy from the ground up; we were going to recover and begin to grow again.

This process was value-based as well as collaborative. As the leader of this company I now know that I must be the same person on the job as I am at home. This helps create personal success as well as business success. I care about the personal lives of the people I work with, and I care about my friends. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

We haven’t fully recovered yet, but we’re confident we will be there and beyond very soon. I couldn’t have made my transformation without the help of my coach. He really made me confront myself, and helped me identify the priorities in my life and career. He also helped me through the critical steps of getting the business back on track as well as rebuilding relationships. His in-depth business experience proved invaluable.

Thanks for listening...
Hugh

We can get a lot from Hugh’s story. The key learning points I’d like you to take away is this: Make sure your personal life is in balance. Slow down. Take a look at yourself before you blame others, and get some objective help when your life is out of round, and you feel stuck.

Leadership coaching is valuable in many ways, not just in helping the “Hughs” of the world. Coaching is also for teaching teams how to become high performance teams. Coaching helps newly hired or promoted executives to lead at a higher level. Coaching can transform good performance into great performance. In fact, research shows that coaching generates a 529% return on investment, versus a training course that may only produce 20% ROI.*

*”Executive Briefing: Case Study on the Return on Investment of Executive Coaching”, Merrill Anderson, Ph.D., November 2, 2001.

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Bud Roth, President, Roth Consulting Group, LLC consults with companies of all sizes: renewing their organization, developing leaders and teams, coaching teams and executive leadership and directing global companies to successfully manage their expatriates. He can be reached at 317-843-9521 or email budroth@rothcg.com

Roth Counsulting Group, LLC
5914 Silas Moffitt Way, Suite A, Carmel IN 46033
ph: 317-843-9521 webmaster@rothcg.com

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