Intelligent CXO Issue 66 | Page 35

INDUSTRY INSIGHT

Stop working on your weaknesses, focus on your constraints

Michael Watkins, Professor and Author of The First 90 Days, and Olympic gold medal archer, Juan Carlos Holgado, outline three ways leaders can identify their biggest constraint. By doing this, it will lead to a focused approach to leadership development, meaning less time spent trying to fix every weakness and more time removing the one thing holding your effectiveness back.

When one of us( Juan Carlos) became Executive Director of World Archery, he had spent nearly three decades teaching people how to improve. As an Olympic archer and later an international coach, he had worked with hundreds of athletes and coaches, helping them improve technique, teaching and communication. Later, as Director of the World Archery Excellence Centre and Sports Director of an international federation, he successfully led high-performing teams, managing people, meetings and the transfer of knowledge. By any reasonable measure, he was already an experienced and successful expert in athlete, coaches and teams’ development.

Then Dean Miles, who had coached him for years, watched him run his first meeting in the new role and pulled him aside afterward.“ Did you look at the faces of your people during that meeting?” Yes, Juan Carlos said, of course he had.“ The meeting was recorded,” Dean said.“ Go back and count how many times someone was about www. intelligentcxo. com
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