Executive coach Randall Stutman shares his insights on admired leadership and coaching top executives. He discusses common behaviors among hedge fund managers, the launch of the admired leadership online course, and examples of inspiring others and decision-making. The podcast covers topics like time management, elevating performance, and the significance of creating a culture of innovation and constructive feedback in leadership.
Great decision-makers focus on consensus-oriented approaches for effective execution.
Admired Leadership Institute emphasizes behavioral development for exceptional leadership across roles.
Success lies in referral-based business models prioritizing excellence and client relationships.
Deep dives
Creating Consensus in Decision Making for Better Execution
Decision-making, a complex process, benefits from diverse input to improve execution. Great decision-makers focus on consensus-oriented approaches, engaging everyone in the process rather than unilateral decision-making. The behavior of weigh-in consensus making involves setting a target proposal decision and having individuals weigh in against it. Active leadership plays a key role in addressing dissenting views, reshaping decisions, and convincing individuals towards consensus. By validating decisions away from the table and reaching near-consensus before formal meetings, time is saved for efficient execution.
Unearthing Powerful Behaviors of Admired Leaders
Admired Leadership Institute explores behaviors and routines of exceptional leaders, guiding individuals on becoming better parents, teachers, coaches, and spouses. It emphasizes behaviors over techniques, providing a deep reservoir of leadership wisdom. The online course offers transformative insights that empower individuals to enhance their leadership abilities across various roles and relationships.
Referral-Based Business Strategy for Building Long-Term Client Relationships
The success of the firm lies in being referral-based, avoiding external promotion or vanity metrics, and focusing on delivering deep relationships and value to clients. By prioritizing excellence, responsiveness, innovation, honesty, and strong colleague relationships, the firm has fostered an environment that values quality work over self-promotion. The internal credit from satisfied clients and long-term partnerships outweighs external recognition, aligning with the ethos of humble and impactful leadership.
Consensus Making and Decision Ownership
Wayne consensus making emphasizes the importance of having a decision maker owner for major decisions. CEOs who try to make all decisions in group meetings often struggle to reach consensus and end up making unilateral decisions. Consensus making allows leaders to avoid being perceived as autocrats and streamlines the execution process. By assigning decision owners, leaders can foster better decision-making and execution within their organizations.
Managing Technology and Productivity
Technology, when left unregulated, can negatively impact productivity by controlling individuals rather than being a tool for them. Creating personal rules around technology usage, such as setting time limits for email processing or prioritizing voice-to-voice communication during conflicts, can help in maintaining productivity. These rules act as constraints on technology usage, ensuring that individuals remain in control of their time and interactions, ultimately enhancing productivity and work-life balance.
Randall Stutman is founder and co-head of the Leadership Practice at CRA. and the Admired Leadership Institute. Randall is probably the top executive coach that you’ve never heard of before. He’s spent 30 years coaching and learning about the behaviors and routines of extraordinary leaders. To give you a sense, he was worked in the White House and the Olympics, with something like 2,000 senior executives and 400 CEOs, and in our world, the most senior executives at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Blackstone. Randall is also well known among the titans in the hedge fund community, where he’s worked with many of the industry’s leading funds. And he’s done all of this entirely by word of mouth referral. Randall was one of the first people I asked to come on the show three years ago, and he respectfully declined – at that point in time not wanting share the uncovered behaviors that drive his work. A few months ago, he and his partners launched Admired Leadership, an online course with short videos of 100 behaviors repeated by the most talented CEOs. The course is extraordinary. It’s so ridiculously good that I started sharing a link to it in my email signature as a gift to those who don’t know about it. Our conversation covers Randall’s path to coaching and the coaching process. We cover behaviors common among hedge fund managers, the admired leadership course, and examples across inspiring others, decision making, time management, and elevating performance. We close with Randall’s thoughts on behaviors that allocators can identify in their manager research.