ITC – Advancing Leadership Skills for High-Level CEOs

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ITC – Advancing Leadership Skills for High-Level CEOs

Susan Blais, leadership coach and achievement strategist, joins Justin Recla to discuss advancing leadership skills for high level CEOs. Susan started in business as a receptionist and worked her way to become the CEO of a billion-dollar division of a Fortune 100 company. Today she  helps CEOs implement and understand the critical balance between relationships and results. Listen in as she discusses the skills high-level CEOs utilize to advance their leadership skills.

Welcome to the In the Clear Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Recla, and today we are talking with Susan Blais about advancing leadership skills for high-level CEOs.

Susan and I met at an event out in San Diego and we’ve connected a couple of times now, and she’s onto some exciting stuff. Susan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Justin.

Awesome. Right before the show, we were talking about even people like Bezos and what not, that are constantly wanting to up-level and learn and find new ways to succeed. What are some of the things that you’re seeing within the executive level and leadership level of folks in business that are really continuing to up-level. What are some of the patterns that you’re recognizing?

Well, what I’m seeing in my leadership coaching is that once I start working with an executive who’s already at a very high level, they might be a CEO, a president of a company, or a CFO, and as they start to really understand their strengths and as they start to unleash even more of their potential through the coaching process, it seems almost inevitable now that eventually they get to a place where they realize, “Oh, I want to do more.”

Everybody who is a high achiever, it seems there’s never really a top for them.

Just like Jeff Bezos, like you mentioned, who is the richest man in the world and has 140,000 employees at Amazon. You couldn’t really get your career too much bigger on Earth, so he wants to go to the moon. Everybody who is a high achiever, it seems there’s never really a top for them. They always want to reach for something bigger.

Yeah, that’s so true. The next thing is that it’s just kind of the aspect of personal development. You’re either growing or you’re dying, and I think the people that continue to succeed, it’s just a continuous up-leveling of what you do. And by all means, there’s some people that get to a certain point, they get off that elevator and they build from there. But those that are really wanting success really understand that the only way to continue to move forward is to continue to learn and develop new skills.

Absolutely, and sometimes that might be … You know, there’s only, you’re right, so much vertical to go. I mean, a CEO might decide they want to run an even bigger company or they might want to kind of take a sidestep into a different industry to keep their own interests high and keep growing into a new area. But it seems that the intent to grow and just that growth factor in people that are really high achievers just does not stop and is always seeking a greater pasture.

Yeah, it’s one of those things that you could do multiple things once when you have the right keynote points. But as an individual looking to continue to evolve, we’ve got to continue to stretch ourselves. We’ve got to continue to learn and develop new skills.

That’s right, and what I find is a real key to it is the evolving self-awareness. If someone … Someone did ask me, in fact, at the event where I met you what do you think is the one critical skill for a leader? I thought about it for a moment and I s