Many senior leaders have spent years pushing themselves up from middle management to gain recognition and promotion at senior leadership ranks. It’s a tough ride and requires intense focus on the end goal, persistence and tons of resilience. There is a lot of mileage and sacrifice beneath that C-suite title. However, what gets you there won’t keep you there. Walking through those C-suite doors requires a change in leadership focus and a change in behaviour.

On the climb, you are the centre of your world, your needs and goals come first. You need IQ smarts to navigate the pathways of executive skill building. In the C-suite, others must become the centre of your world, their needs and the organisational goals come first. You need EQ smarts to navigate the networks relationship building.

You want the proof?

A study published in the Harvard Business Review* found that 40% of CEOs fail within their first 18 months of leading an organisation, and 33% from Fortune 500 companies don’t make it past three years.

Ninety percent of senior executives who fail to survive the early years do so, not through the lack of technical leadership skills, but through their lack of EQ skills.

Two in five CEOs fail within their first 18 months of leading an organisation, according to a study published in the Harvard Business Review. One-third of chief executives from Fortune 500 companies don’t make it past three years.

Research shows that CEO’s have the lowest EQ of anyone in the company. They have leant too far into their strengths and lost the awareness of reality and flexibility to change. They don’t get the feedback needed to self-adjust – no one wants to upset the CEO right! Very career limiting! When you lose your feedback loop, you lose valuable insight, and it starts showing up in typical behaviours of:

• Overly self-importance – an arrogance that shows in a smug demeanour, a lack of interest in anyone else’s opinion, and a belief that title confers God-like rights.
• Self-involvement – they fail to make the transition between a focus on oneself, to a focus on others
• Narcissism – climbing up the backs of those they want to impress, and sticking knives in the backs of those they see as competition
• Narrow focus of attention – on local events, sports and entertainment, instead of on global trends, national economies and continued personal growth

The strengths-based approach to climbing the corporate ladder gets ingrained in the psyche, making it a difficult transition towards the humility and connectedness needed to stay at the top. The winds of ill-contentment blow very strong on the mountain-top so be aware of the following ego traps in each area of EQ mastery.

Author author Jen Shirkani refers to many executive failings as ‘ego traps’; which align to the same principles and challenges in Insight Mastery’s EQ Leadership Program.

Self Awareness Traps

Believing you are better than you actually are – because you no longer get much negative feedback and you no longer ask for it. When you do get it, you either ignore it, get defensive or hit back at the messenger in some way.

Believing you right or know best, all of the time – you are no longer that interested in what others have to say, and only give a passing interest in allowing others to contribute to solutions

Self Mastery Traps

Believing technical leadership skills trump EQ skills – a belief that you no longer need to worry about people, that you are a ‘leader’ now, and no longer have to worry about ‘management’.

Surrounding yourself with people just like you – people you believe won’t disagree with you, will acquiesce to your every demand ,and will like you as you are.

This leads to relapsing into bad habits; you lose mindfulness about your own world, and your performance within it

Social Awareness Traps

Blindness to, or underestimating the impact of your behaviour on others – inconsistency, on the fly demands without guidance on reprioritisation, stress related behaviour such as sarcastic quips, lack of positive feedback to team members, inappropriate allocation of blame, and not supporting a team effort by keeping in touch with what is going on.

Ignoring feedback you don’t like – when others do step up and attempt to help you overcome your lack of social awareness, you tend to dismiss their feedback as unfair, lacking truth, and self-motivated.

Social Mastery Traps

Not letting go of control – you want to keep control of every operational element you have managed before; instead of focusing on global issues, strategy, industry and major client relationships, strategic alliances etc

Losing touch with the real world – you develop one set of rules for yourself, and another for everyone else. You believe that now you have arrived, you just need to focus on keeping all the balls in the air, instead of looking beyond the periphery to see what winds are coming towards you that just might blow all those balls out the window.

* hbr.org. Ending the ceo succession crisis

Author: Gail La Grouw. Insight Mastery Program Director, and Strategic Performance Consultant for Coded Vision Ltd.