How one CEO moved out of organized chaos to empower his startup’s high performance team
A data analytics company helping to service and empower more sustainable and profitable operators in the aquaculture industry has clients scattered across the world, and a high concentration are based in Southeast Asia. They operate at the intersection of innovation and environmentalism. One of their founders literally wrote the book on fish nutrition and aquaculture. Like most startups, their 12-person team is more an assemblage of hyper-specialized experts, thriving in a bit of organized chaos - delivering year over year growth in spite of themselves. Lacking a method to the madness was all well and good in the early days when they were hustling to win clients, and ensuring that those clients were winning with their product. But is organized chaos sustainable? Process was not their friend. A lack of it was getting in the way of their productivity. They stopped having meaningful conversations about what they were trying to achieve together. They weren’t learning from their mistakes.
To get unstuck, the CEO turned to professional coaching. As a high level, multi-sport collegiate athlete, the CEO was always results oriented, but through coaching, he learned to appreciate the process as well. Executive coaching was offered as part of his Executive MBA program, but he didn't work with a coach at that time. It was after two and a half years of building his business and feeling stuck that, on the advice of a mentor, he discovered first-hand how coaching could help transform his team and his results.
Coaching for clarity helped him to offload responsibility to his team, empowering them to deliver meaningful results for their growing startup. With attention paid to how he shows up, offering greater clarity to his team around his expectations, and to the destination they're trying to reach, he's discovered that as a team, they are increasingly rowing in the right direction. Through his own mindfulness, the team has become attuned to the culture and values of the organization too. Everyone on the team is better able to offer productive feedback so that there is learning from mistakes, as opposed to unresolved anger or frustration.
Being the chief executive is often described as lonely, being the one required to offer the initial vision, the consistent voice or the final vote. Collaborating with a coach gives perspective to the role, enabling leaders to better see the raw materials that they have available, and then shining a light on how to use those raw materials to the benefit of the team and organization.
Whether you’re the CEO of a growing startup or leader of a project team, professional coaching can help you cultivate an environment that empowers your team and transforms them from a working group to a high-performance team. Tapping into your own mindfulness as a leader, in alignment with your team’s values, can get you and your team unstuck and moving in a more productive direction.