As CEO, Sean had no work-life balance, and he was struggling with the overwhelming responsibilities of being a CEO. One of the biggest challenges of any CEO is to get everything done. The list of critical items seems to grow every day.
As his CEO coach (and as a former CEO), I recognized the stress he was under. That level of stress is no fun. To help Sean become a better CEO, I focused him on delegation, talent development, and balance.
First, we focused on developing Sean’s delegation skills. Delegation is the “8th wonder of the world.” When you make it work, your workload diminishes, and the company performs at a higher level. As Sean became better at delegating, he also began to see strengths and weaknesses in his leadership team from a different perspective.
The next step was to refresh his leadership team. We created a plan to either develop the ones that could step it up and perform better or find new leadership team members for those that couldn’t help the company grow.
Finally, we worked on creating a way of living for Sean that provided him some balance. I tell my CEOs to “put their oxygen mask on first.” If a CEO wants to perform at the highest level, they need to take care of themselves first.
Now that Sean has a much better leadership team, he has become a master delegator. By delegating many of the activities he had taken on before, he now has much more time to take care of himself.
Sean’s company has now entered a new growth phase. More importantly, he is enjoying his work a lot more and his life a lot more.
