Moving to Thriving beyond Surviving

Feeling like you’re just “surviving” in your role as a CEO? Discover how to break free from the constant pressure of “spinning plates” and transition into thriving leadership. This video breaks down four critical mindsets—Reactive, Proactive, Strategic, and Opportunistic—that can transform how you approach challenges. If you’re ready to move from managing daily fires to seizing bigger opportunities, this thought-provoking shift may be the key to unlocking a more empowered leadership style.

Listen to this episode to explore:

• The shift from a survival mindset to thriving as a leader
• Practical analogies (air traffic controller, city planner) to reframe your role
• Four leadership mindsets that elevate CEOs from Reactive to Opportunistic
• Why a thriving mindset uncovers opportunities even in challenging markets

___
Videos for all these episodes are on my YouTube channel.

If you enjoy my content and you want to get in touch to find out how I could work with you, or someone you know, you can reach me at:

My LinkedIn Page

Or you can drop me an email.

Transcript

0:02

I'm spinning too many plates. I've got too many balls in the air. Two common things that I hear from some of the first time CEOs that I work with who are maybe few months into their job. And they are feeling, already tired, exhausted and approach to burn out. I have a whole series about being busy and why that's a bad thing. But today, I want to talk about something a bit different. Moving from the survival mode of being somebody like that. Who's spinning plates, who's juggling balls. Who's got a lot of things going on to thriving in a role that you're in, especially as a leader and especially as a CEO. So, how do you make that move? Right? Well, the first thing you do is you use a different analogy, a different way of thinking about the situation that you're in. So to the CEOs I worked with have made this leap. One of them, they see themselves as an air traffic controller. They are controlling aircraft taking off and landing planes are in flight. They are gently nudging the pilots to make them make better choices, but they're not controlling and flying the planes. I have another CEO who uses the analogy of a city planner. Well, they are sat at the top of their a hundred story skyscraper, looking out over the city. That's been built something with a coffee, again, seeing what projects are happening, calling in and challenges when they need to. But they're ultimately not responsible for anything that's happening now. Okay. And what the difference is between these two ways of looking at things is if you are plate spinning, if you've got too many balls in the air, you're being reactive. If you need a traffic controller, you're a city planner, you are being reactive, right? It's a simple shift in the way that you see your world. Shifts the way that you work. So, how do you look at this? How can you make that shift from one to another? Well, the first part there is obviously making that choice of how you see it, but the other way is looking at well, what's the possibilities of being in a different place like that, right? Is it possible to be a leader who isn't all over, everything who isn't at the Beck and call of that leadership team? What of course it is, right. That's the leadership that all of us want to have. Now beyond being proactive, there are actually two more states that you can be in. So beyond that proactive state, you've got the opportunity to be much more strategic. Okay. You can start to think about what you're building next, where you're at now, where your airport's going to be, where your planes are going to go next. You're looking at the wider picture, right? So you're moving from being reactive to proactive, Trish to strategic. From reactive to proactive, to strategic. But what's interesting is there's one more step beyond that and that's opportunistic. And that's looking at the market that you're in. And the situation around you and seeing what opportunities there. And that really is what thriving for leadership and for a business is, is looking at the world and going, well, what opportunities are there here? Okay. There are challenges in this sector. I'm working with a CEO right now. Who's in a. Challenging. Well where his sector as a whole is on the decline. Right. Everything is changing businesses, not once what it was. He meets that with other CEOs in his sector and they will say the same thing, right. Businesses, not what it is. The world we're moving into is what? Well, what's the opportunity there, right? So if everybody's feeling this pain, if the market isn't as strong as it once was. If the techniques and tactics that we were once using. Isn't working across the whole industry. What opportunity is there for us? And we're looking at things like acquisitions. Mergers. Shifting. The whole. Focus of the sales operation into something new. There's always opportunity there. So ultimately as a leader, you can move from that. Reactive to proactive, to strategic, to opportunistic mindset. Over the course of a couple of years, but it takes a shift in how you see the world for you to be able to get there. That is literally how you move from survival. Moved from surviving to thriving. Let me know your thoughts on that. Big concepts here, and I've really not dug too much into the detail of how you do that. Other than making a mindset shift to know that that's possible. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and get in touch. If you want to learn more about your journey from survival to thriving.