Ask Christa! What Do Executives Do? (S3E34)

Introduction and Listener Question

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and when I first reviewed today’s listener question, I thought, “Hm, here’s a great example of how the basics have been lost against the backdrop of so many business myths over the years, which has got me thinking that I should have a “Shattering Old Business Myths." Stay tune for that… and here’s the listener question:

“I work in a very large global organization. I started here two years out of undergrad, and I’ve been here almost 15 years. I listened to your Ask Christa! episode about organizational structure, and I realized for the first time in my adult life that I have never thought about how organizational structure  can impact a company. I was surprised that I had never learned anything about that part of business, and my undergrad was in business. I’m now in operations. After that episode, I started to think about other business areas I feel I should know more about—really basic things, like, what do executives do? I don’t mean that sarcastically, either. I know those are big jobs with a lot of responsibility, but I have no idea what the day to day might look like. I suppose it likely changes based on role and style, and I’m sure it’s a bit different for different organizations, but if you could review what an executive does, it will help me fill in some gaps I didn’t realize I had.”

And that’s why I appreciate this listener question so much. My guess is, there are a lot of others who have the same question, and while this seems like a “Business Basics” question, I didn’t include it in that series because I’m not sure I’d consider it part of the basics of business.

Here’s what I mean.

The Concept of an Executive

The listener is right in that the role of an executive will change based on the objectives of the business, which, if you’ve listened to other Ask Christa! episodes, you know is a BIG theme in my world. Everything hinges on your objectives, and at least one objective must be about performance and another objectives must be about efficiency. And NOT the kind of efficiency you hear about in the news or from hobbyists who have never studied or implemented actual efficiency measures. Anyone can hack away at costs, but that’s not what efficiency is about. True efficiency is about making space to do more with what you already have because you’re better utilizing resources or eliminating work that doesn’t add value to your customer—which these days sounds like a radical idea. But efficiency is like a never-ending Tetris game, and performance means you win the game—predictably and consistently. And THAT creates value for your business.

And it’s also where the executive’s mindset should be at all times, recognizing you create value for your business through people: current and prospective customers, suppliers, other vendors, partners, and of course, employees.

Aside from that, the RESPONSIBILITY of an executive starts with the depth and ownership of responsibility—a top-level accountability to his or her department AND the organization: making decisions and owning them, even if they prove to be sub-optimal or just BAD decisions. Behaving with dignity and grace for mistakes while standing firm about expectations. Earning the trust and respect from your employees. Taking responsibility for what goes wrong, and giving praise and recognition to those with a direct hand in what goes right. Being the person where the angst goes to so that those doing the work can focus on the work (and performance and efficiency), and someone ELSE manages the angst, politics, and challenges. In other words, a big part of an executive’s role is to remove the obstacles.

Executive Impact on People: Leadership Style Matters

Then there’s the block and tackle of an organization. Along with the top-line accountability comes ownership of the big-ticket items: departmental budgets, or sometimes multiple budgets if multiple departments report to you, large-scale hiring and expansion plans, escalation points for customers and vendors, compliance points for laws, large-scale sign offs on decisions that could have a material effect on a company—and by “material” I mean an effect that could introduce a big risk. Executives are critical communicators about the state of the business AND the ability to convey answers so as to keep the angst down to a minimum while offering the most accurate and forthcoming, honest answer for any question. They are also the ones who often need to deliver bad news about a failure and then openly, honestly, and in a trustworthy manner, enable the employees to process the news, take some time to work through it, and within a reasonable amount of time, get back to work WITH any additional resources necessary to support.

And of course, executives should demonstrate key traits within a professional setting so as to get the BEST out of employees; the top two behavioral traits being impulse control and emotional regulation. I’ve seen a lot of executives, today they are peers but early in my career they were a few levels up from me, who had a hard time keeping their emotions in check—they would over-react, become defensive, conveying partial information because they didn’t know how much they could say, and they had a hard time keeping a handle on their stress and their tempers. It’s actually one of the biggest reasons why I switched over to patching up problems and cleaning up issues. Early in my career I did a lot of transformation work, and soon I realized there’s no success with transformation if the sponsoring executives couldn’t control their impulses—they would frequently interrupt others and jump to conclusions half way through listening—or regulate their emotions, where they would work themselves up to a point where they showed contempt for peers or even those in their departments. 

But I saw a lot of great ones in action, too—the kind of executives who are fully engaged and in touch, where you can go to them no matter what level you’re at and they’re going to listen and make changes to the extent they can make them—the kind who hustle to open a path for their employees to see, feel, and achieve success at the individual, team, and organizational level.

There was an excellent TED segment a year ago that talked about how we don’t hear about the best leaders because they’re quieter—how we celebrate incompetent leaders. The competent ones aren’t always in the news. They have a lower profile. Very little, if any, controversy. They lead a healthy, respectful culture with a holistic view, including the need to enable employee success—which means a culture of accountability all the way up the chain of command. 

Fact: when an organization places emphasis on executive selection and ongoing development, the company runs smoother. Employees, for the most part, also enjoy working there. They feel engaged, committed to success, understand how the work they’re doing matters. They also feel cared about, listened to, like their good work matters.

Sound like a dream come true? That might be about your manager or someone managing work closer to you OR, it could be because of the executives.

I mean, we can usually get past or manage a bad boss—we know our time with that boss is probably limited, either because we can find a way to move on or we know they will. 

But an executive—it’s hard to get past an executive who displays bad behavior or makes bad decisions or seems incompetent.

And here’s the interesting part: it’s even harder to only do the bare minimum or even LEAVE an organization when an executive consistently behaves well, makes and owns good decisions, addresses it head on if they make a bad decision, and provides the level of support everyone needs to get the best work done each day.

Leadership style matters all the time, but especially with those at an executive level.

Larger companies will often identify high-potential employees early on, or make note of those interested in leadership roles, and offer management training and an optional tracks to an eventual executive role. But small and mid-sized companies, as I’ve discussed in other episodes, often neglect to train their managers right from the start, and neglecting any training for your managers often means neglecting any training for the whole chain of managers, all the way up to executives. Maybe you’ll be able to hire executives in from other companies that TRAINED their managers, but if they’re the minority AND they do not receive ongoing checks and skill updates, their management AND leadership skills will erode.

But effective leadership is a competitive value for an organization, especially the smaller and mid-sized ones that may not have the resources to fill in talent gaps the way larger organizations do. So when someone becomes a manager and has NO training or INSUFFICIENT training from the start, that’s typically the beginning of the end for performance. 

Yick. No thank you. 

The Day to Day

So… the day to day… executives support and enable execution of the strategy, which they have or should have weighed in on and contributed to on behalf of their departments. Yes, I know, this doesn’t always happen. I’ve facilitated enough strategic planning discussions to know there might be a few people in the room who aren’t prepared, but—I’m letting you know how high performing companies operate, and there ARE companies that do it the right way. 

The day to day will change based on the size of the organization and the function the executive is leading, but enabling the execution of strategy most times means making sure your people have the tools and resources available, and continue to learn and develop appropriately, to do their best and meet or exceed their goals and the company’s objectives.

I review a few examples in the video version of this episode—that level of depth doesn’t always translate well over audio, but I’ll put additional information in the show notes to learn about various roles and responsibilities.

Have Expectations of your Executives

Now that you have a bit of insight, I want to ask you to drop any preconceived notion you have about how BAD executives are and reframe who YOU are as an employee. We all know there are bad apples everywhere, but executives are out in the open for everyone to see—that’s actually part of their role as top leaders. And I get how hard it can be to feel like things aren’t happening TO you—how bad decisions are made at the top and by the time it gets to you, you say, “we can’t do any of this, we aren’t structured this way or we aren’t funded to do all that work,” 

So, I get it, and I’ll say it: in a general sense, executives have earned the reputation as people who are out of touch and make bad decisions. BUT!  That’s not always true. 

Now, if it’s TRUE for YOU, one of the ways to counter that is to determine YOUR expectations of an executive. Take notes about who they are, how they behave, what they do, and whether you feel motivated to give your best for that day. Then YOU make some decisions:

1)     What will you insist on—what is it you HAVE to see and know in order to feel respect for your executive?

2)     What behaviors do you want to see versus what you actually see?

3)     What would make things better for you?

4)     Is this someone you can trust?

The point of asking these questions isn’t to convince yourself to like or dislike your executive. The point is to create a STANDARD you expect from your executive, followed by expectations you have. Because you SHOULD have them. 

“But Christa, no one cares—what do I do with those standards?”

Well, craft good feedback and then offer it to them—OK, I know-- most people can’t do that, but do you have suggestion boxes at work? Do you have a mechanism to provide ideas for improvement? Do you have a forum where you can offer behaviorally based inputs, describe the impact of that behavior, then ask for something to change? 

AND, suggest skip-level meetings where you and your team can have a monthly meeting with your top-line executive so you can meet him or her, learn about them, see them as a person, ask questions, and feel more connected. Your top-line executive will gain the same benefit. Most executives WANT to connect with the employees within their department or function. If they’re really good executives, which means they’re effective leaders, their day to day is mostly made up of what they need to do to enable their organization’s success AND department’s success, removing obstacles and clearing the way so that you get purchase what is needed, get the time from others that you need, hold fellow employees accountable without issues, and work in a culture and environment where you feel you can do. Your. BEST.

Additional Resources

For your resources, I’ve included an article that describe what executives do from Indeed UK. I’ve also included an article that is similar, but also reviews some of the titles from Indeed USA. I wanted to offer resources that might provide career advice and insight rather than the usual type of resource I provide.

And look up executive roles on job boards—it’s one of the best ways to get a sense of executive-level expectations.

I’ve also included an article from Ziprecruiter about How to Become an Executive. As someone who worked at an executive level for years, and now advises them in a variety of ways, I appreciated the article very much. 

AND—you’ll find the TEDx Berlin talk from Martin Gutmann titled “Why do we celebrate incompetent leaders?” It’s from May 2024, and has over a million views.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And that’s a WRAP Episode 34… we have just two more episodes to this season, and both are still related to working in a business, but more about the “how to’s.” One is about having better meetings and the other is about better presentations skills—and remember, I’m not giving you answers that you can easily find with a google search or on YouTube. I’m giving answers aimed to make an impact, sharing information and a perspective that you can not only use in a variety of ways, but also where you can’t get anywhere else, so keep the questions coming! 

Go to my show’s website, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, and submit YOUR question, or review past articles of the More Answers newsletter OR if you prefer—sign up to receive it every Sunday night to give you a boost for your workweek. 

Thank you, as always, for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!