Elephants are big. You'd think they'd be easy to spot.
But in a leadership team they're surprisingly hard to see. Everyone walks around them. Everyone knows which topics make the room go quiet. After a while nobody even notices the grey thing in the corner, until the plan stops landing.
I should say up front that I'm not writing this from the high ground. Like most of what I write about, this one started as an observation about myself. I've walked around a few elephants of my own. I'm the imperfect coach. (It's a lot easier to spot someone else's.)
Six months of tiptoeing
A while back I was asked into a business that, on paper, had done everything right. Clear strategy, strong growth, a leadership team that looked like it was pulling in the same direction. But the plan wasn't happening, and it hadn't been for about six months. That was one of the reasons they asked me in.
It didn't take long to see the strategy wasn't the problem. The business had grown, and its strategy had grown with it, faster than some of its people. Roles that made sense a few years earlier now needed something different. A few people were struggling, and some of them had started to self-sabotage without really meaning to: missing things, pushing back on decisions, digging in.
Everyone around the table could see it. Nobody wanted to deal with it.
Of course they didn't. These were people they liked, people who'd been there through the hard years and helped build the place. Raising it felt disloyal, brutal even. So for six months everyone tiptoed round it, and the elephant got bigger.
A plan is only worth something if people are actually implementing it. The best strategy in the country is just a document if the people meant to deliver it can't, or won't. And the cost spreads. The leaders carrying the extra load get worn down. Good people further down watch the same issues go unaddressed and start to wonder who's actually in charge. The people who are struggling are usually miserable too. Six months of that is a long time.
Getting it on the table
I talk to people one on one first. That's where you hear what's really going on, and by the time the team gets together you usually know where the elephants are, even if nobody's said it out loud.
In the room, the job is to make it safe to name the thing. No blame. Just say what everyone already knows.
The idea that helped most here was a simple one. Sometimes an organisation leaves some of its people. Nobody did anything wrong. The business moved, and some roles moved beyond the people in them.
When that happens, the leadership team has an obligation to be honest about it, and to help those people through the transition, whatever that ends up looking like. Keeping someone stuck in a role where they're struggling isn't doing them any favours. Avoiding the conversation might feel kind. It isn't.
Once it was out in the open, the shift was obvious. The leaders felt empowered and energised. They'd been carrying it for half a year, and now they could actually lead. Some of the people who'd been struggling saw where they were at and chose to move on. Others looked at the change and committed to it, properly this time. Either way, people knew where they stood, and the plan started moving again.
That's the thing about elephants. They're big, but sometimes they're hard to see. And once you see them, the fun starts. A team that will put the real issues on the table, in the room, not in the car park afterwards, is a very different team to lead.
So here's the question I keep asking myself, and now you: what's the topic that makes your room go quiet? (If nothing comes to mind, ask someone else on the team. Elephants are easier to see from another chair.)
Good luck out there. And don't forget to have fun!
