Leadership is about learning, a relentless drive to improve and a sense of purpose, according to Murray Fulton, who adds that backing yourself is not ego, it is awareness and maturity. “If every fibre of your being is telling you to take an opportunity, go for it.”
Murray Fulton is a seasoned director and partner at Advantage Business, making an impact in the business advisory sector since 2005. He specialises in guiding businesses with annual revenues between $5 million and $100 million in both New Zealand and internationally. Here he discusses the lessons he has learned over the years and his advice to young, and not so young, leaders who want to step up.
You have been a CEO of six organisations and the CFO of several over the course of your career, what do you believe were the skills/traits that made you stand out for those roles?
- An ability to lead, manage and achieve, with and sometimes through teams. Many times, this involved inspiring colleagues and team members.
- The ability to overcome self-doubt, and the resilience and willpower to withstand and operate at a consistently high level while under sustained adverse market pressures, and internal stakeholders who were at times difficult and working to their own agenda. Politics fades as commercial truth emerges.
- An ability to stand up and be counted and win over opposition from senior stakeholders such as shareholders and directors.
- An ability to create strategy, decide tactics, and meticulously execute operational details.
- Showing vulnerability, but only after alignment of values and business culture.
What do you believe were the best leadership decisions you made in those roles?
- Allowing team members to achieve, make mistakes and learn from them, and develop their skills and characters.
- Stating team directions, marshalling support and energy, ensuring availability of sufficient quality resources, and achieving stretch goals.
- Finding a top-quality mentor. My first mentor took 10 years to find. I had three mentors over my time in CEO and leadership roles; it would have been two, but one tragically died.
And the worst decisions (if you don’t mind)?
Bad decisions are just an opportunity to learn. Without this vital experience I would not have the confidence I have in my decision-making today.
- Trusting the wrong people.
- Not trusting my gut instinct a couple of times.
- Not empowering a couple of star performers to achieve all they were capable of.
As a leadership coach and a thought leader now, what are the most common mistakes you see CEOs making?
- Trying to do too much themselves
- Not allowing their teams to make mistakes, but only on the condition that they make up for them…fast.
- Not always communicating vision, strategy, tactics, and linking them to shorter term goals, objectives and tactics.
Why do you believe they are making these types of slip-ups and how common are they?
- SME business CEOs are under great pressure – they have resource shortages; too little time, people resource, and funding to name three pervasive factors.
- There is a constant (24/7) battle to acquire sufficient resources, which leads to the three common mistakes I see CEOs making, as detailed above.
- At the same time, these mistakes are often at least partially compensated for by technical knowledge, business acumen and charisma – i.e. these mistakes hold back the pace of progress, but are often gradually overcome as resource shortages ease over time within a business.
In your experience how open are senior leaders to changing their approach to leadership or the style in which they lead?
- There is a direct correlation between leadership agility, and commercial success.
- The most successful leaders both have this agility, and also work on nurturing it in the same way that a top athlete works on performance improvement.
If you had to give just one or two pieces of advice to aspiring CEOs to help them move up to a bigger role, what would that be?
- Backing yourself is not ego, it is awareness and maturity. If every fibre of your being is telling you to take an opportunity, go for it.
- Your own criteria for success are surprisingly fluid. Work on your ability to feel comfortable with a lack of comfort. Leadership is always a work in progress, and achievement perspective is difficult to analyse internally.
“Be very well informed. Read 30 minutes early each morning. Listen to trusted parties…”
For a CEO to succeed in today’s volatile and uncertain economic (and global) environment, what do you believe are the most common traits they should possess?
- Be very well informed. Read 30 minutes early each morning. Listen to trusted parties. Work on your personal filters – trivia shouts, wisdom whispers. Refine your active listening and hearing skills.
- Agility does not mean inconsistency. Be like a helicopter but allow your team to fly the machine at times.
- Cultivate a realistic and pragmatic outlook. Performance is tangible, but quality analytics highlight critical but subtle commercial shifts. A CEO must recognise and act with data-driven decision making.
Are they things that can be learned or are some people just wired to lead?
- We are all born with a temperament, which we cannot change. Certain temperaments are conducive to leadership.
- We can however develop our character, knowledge, values, purpose, abilities and charisma.
- Leadership is more to do with learning, a relentless drive to improve, and sense of purpose. Nurture plays a greater role than nature. Everyone has the capability to improve, but leaders both want to, and have to improve because it is who they are.
Murray Fulton.
Murray Fulton is a director and partner at Advantage Business. A cornerstone of his advisory work is his one-on-one leadership coaching for CEOs and leadership team members, where he imparts his experience and insights to aspiring and recently appointed leaders.
