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There's never been more pressure on executive leaders to perform at a higher level in a wider range of areas. While leadership today is more complex at all levels, the role of enterprise leadership presents unique challenges. It can be daunting to keep up, given the complexity and the rate of change in so many different parts of the business.  

Transformational – Empowering – Collaborative – Thought-Provoking – Practical – Enlightening

This list represents six of the words that individual participants shared when I asked each of them to use one word to describe the leadership development experience so far. We were three months into a six-month development process and I wanted to see where their heads and hearts were.

An IT leader (new to his team) was recently grumbling about his team members not wanting to participate in a team outing after work. He made an assumptive leap that their lack of interest in getting together as a team meant they did not want to get to know him. In probing further, I asked him to tell me about his team members and he told me about the work they do. I interrupted and asked about them personally—what are their interests and do they have families? He paused and said “I think a couple of them do.” This opened the door for a conversation about how to truly get to know team members.