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Guest: Dr. Mario Simon, a coach at CEO Coaching International. Mario is a transformational leader who has a global track record of building companies and helping CEOs unlock breakthrough growth and cultural impact.
Quick Background: If you want to 10X your company, start by 10Xing the one indispensable resource that drives everything: the CEO.
Your company’s culture, its growth trajectory, its resilience, its ability to pivot, its attractiveness to top talent and potential buyers, and ultimately, its legacy, are all a reflection of you. Learning to lead from “the inside out” can help you make the most of that responsibility and Make BIG Happen.
On today’s show, Dr. Mario Simon explores the three stages of a leader’s evolution and how CEOs can transform their mindset and self-awareness into a competitive advantage.
Dr. Mario Simon’s Three Stages of Leadership Growth
Stage 1: Grasping
Raw ambition. Intense focus. A powerful drive to achieve, build, and break through.
For most entrepreneurs and founders, this initial energy comes from a need to prove something — to themselves, and to the rest of the world.
Sometimes this fuel comes from a negative place. A parent who said you “weren’t good enough.” A business partner who split when the pressure got too high. A former employer who didn’t think you were ready for the BIG job. An entrepreneurial dream that turned into a nightmare.
And sometimes that fuel is a vision that you’re determined to realize.
“Initially, in order to break through, there needs to be a level of focus that can only be gained through real grit,” says Dr. Mario Simon. “And that grit comes from having dealt with adversity, with wanting to prove something to themselves and to others. And it’s rare to find someone who has breakthrough growth that does not go through that.”
As the CEO is Grasping for success, the CEO also might feel an all-consuming connection to their company that subsumes their identity. Again, you might need that extra fuel to push through long nights and to navigate early make-or-break decisions But CEOs also have to understand that this level of immersion in the company can’t last forever if the long-term goal is BIG.
“ Having that sense of ownership, that ‘it’s my baby,’ is super important,” says Dr. Mario Simon, “because you need to be able to put in the energy to grow that baby into an adult. It is like parenting. Attaching your identity to it is necessary. On the other hand, noticing when your identity starts becoming a barrier to continued growth is also important. And noticing if attaching your identity to the business leaves other parts of your life which you deem necessary unattended also eventually can lead to suboptimal energy in your life. I like the expression that CEO is not the Chief Executive Officer, they’re the Chief Energy Officer. That is absolutely true for a company. And so being at optimal levels is super important for the business and super important for the happiness of the executive.”
Stage 2: Giving
To paraphrase Marshall Goldsmith, what got you through the start-up stage isn’t going to get you to BIG.
Once the CEO achieves their initial goals and reaches a point of stability, their leadership mindset has to change.
And so does their source of energy. If you’re constantly leading from a place of “I have something to prove!” you’re going to burn out and drive top talent out of the door.
“As people become very successful, they start seeing they can go beyond success and they can become significant,” says Dr. Mario Simon. “The second stage is much more Giving. That’s where you see a lot of situations where people transcend the ‘I have to have more and more and more’ and start being in this space of giving to others, and actually become more and more significant.”
So if, in the Grasping stage, you were doing everything, at the Giving stage you learn how to delegate and manage.
If you were the superstar, now you begin developing a championship team.
If you were focused on getting things done, as quickly as possible, now you begin ask questions like “How? Why? With whom?” that will evolve your company’s culture.
And if, once you stopped Grasping, you were the primary beneficiary of the company’s success, now that success is shared. Not just financially, but in the opportunities for growth and advancement you give to employees, the value proposition you’re able to offer to your customers, and the positive impact you’re able to make on your community and the world.
The most effective Givers are also able to help their teams give more to the company and each other as well. Dr. Simon recently helped a CEO who was struggling with a talented but disruptive team member channel that energy in a more positive way.
“The way we coach that is to really understand, what are the needs of the other person and why is that person doing that?” he explains. “But more importantly, can we reframe in ourselves that that challenging team member actually is bringing a dynamism? Can we reframe in ourselves that if we take that energy and we ‘tai chi’ it into a different kind of energy, that team member can become very productive? Are they in the wrong role? Are they having ideas that need to be channeled in new projects where that restlessness can be used in a very positive way? And that’s what we did. And the company has actually benefited a lot from the fact that this reframing happened. It’s the job of the CEO to be able to see that and see the opportunity in the challenge and transmute that energy from a disruptive energy to a productive energy.”
Stage 3: Being
”In the life cycle of an executive, there’s different degrees of control,” says Dr. Mario Simon. “In a smaller business or start-up business, the executive typically is the person who thinks, ‘I have to do everything and I have to know everything.’ And while that is absolutely necessary as fuel to get the plane off the ground, once the plane is at cruising altitude there are completely different skills that need to come into play. And some executives find that a great challenge and they want to grow through that and coach themselves through that, into that new level.”
At this final stage of Being, the CEO is in such total control of the business and of themselves that they have the freedom to focus on CEO-level tasks, the clarity to see where the company is heading next, and an ideal integration between work and life.
Being CEOs are the foundation of their company, but they have learned how to lead through empowerment and by example rather than by micromanaging.
The company excels because of the Being CEO, but it is also fully capable of operating without them as well.
Once the CEO reaches Being, the challenge is maintaining this highest stage of leadership while also continuing to grow and evolve along with your company. Not every CEO can achieve these heights. And even fewer can make it here — and Make BIG Happen — without an extra level of counsel and accountability.
“Self-awareness is the capacity to notice oneself and be able to, in the moment, understand what frame of mind or frame of heart they’re operating in,” says Dr. Mario Simon. “Being able to have the flexibility to make choices as to how they orient themselves toward the different issues that come up, whether they’re opportunities, whether there are people issues, whether there’s an execution issue, a strategy issue. What are the triggers that happen internally to make the choices that would be most beneficial to the company? I say that success is not an outside-in job, it’s an inside-out job. That’s fundamentally how I think about self-awareness: understanding the inside in order to manifest the outside. There is a level of self-awareness that each of us has, and what I’m certain about is expanding it really, really helps. One thing that we can never do is see ourselves on the outside in a truly objective way because our self-perceptions gets in the way. A coach can be a mirror that helps the executive see themselves and see how they can evolve and create more options for how they act and how they think and how they feel in the moment.”
Top Takeaways
1. Strive for BIG and find the fuel you need to get there.
2. Embrace awareness to remove the limits on your company and yourself.
3. Be the leader your company needs to excel even when you’re not managing everything.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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