In this enlightening episode, Yosi Kossowsky, Co-Owner of K-Tor Consulting Services LTD, shares insights on leading high-performing executive teams. If you struggle with coaching executives or fostering collaboration, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What observations foster growth over critical feedback
– Why your behavior sets the tone for your executive team
– How to communicate clear expectations to drive performance
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder, and today we’re going to talk about your executive team. To reach stage five, to become that Chief Executive, you have to have an executive team, otherwise you’re just kind of Chief Leader, and that’s a whole different episode. As Chief Executive, I would argue your most important job really boils down to your ability to lead, develop, coach and mentor your executives well, but that’s often quite intimidating, and so if you’ve been frustrated by an executive’s performance, or if you’re wondering what you could possibly teach your team, or if you’ve wished that you could clone that one who’s just crushing it, you’re going to really want to hear what our guest has to say today. Today, Yosi Kossowsky is here to share with us. Yosi is a seasoned executive coach with over 17 years of experience and a background as a chief technology officer and Senior Director of Talent Management. Yossi specializes in leadership development, personal growth and effective communication, leveraging neuroscience and organizational development principles, he’s helped global leaders to navigate complex challenges, build high performing teams and develop meaningful change. So get ready to learn actionable insights and strategies to enhance your leadership skills and foster a culture of trust and collaboration. Yosi, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here for your work at ktor Consulting, a lot of what you do is help to empower leaders, particularly executives, to achieve peak performance. Now we’ve got a lot of folks listening to the show who are CEOs, and many of them are working very, very hard to build a strong executive team. Now, one of the things that’s not super clear is what that actually means. So I’m wondering just kind of definitionally to start off, what are the skills that that really distinguish high performing executives, and not only those skills that got them here, but the skills that they’re going to need now that they are an executive?
Yosi Kossowsky
Thanks, Scott. I’m really, really happy to be here. There’s this really interesting challenge, especially if you’re in that startup phase, and you’re the founder as well as the chief executive, about a lot of different movements that are not necessarily self evident or obvious. And ultimately, the idea is that in your mindset, this is your role. You are the top dog. You are the decision maker. You are the setter of the environment and the culture, the way things will happen, so your behavior is going to be their behavior. Your mindset is going to be their mindset. Your language choices is going to be their language choices. And I’m going to be explicit if you you know you feel that you can name, call, go off the handle, yell or scream or anything of that, then your team is going to say, okay, that’s that’s the way it’s going to go. And what starts to instantaneously create fraction a fracture in the system is when you start to hold your team accountable for behaviors, etc, that you don’t yourself exhibit.
Scott Ritzheimer
And one of the things that happens that makes this a little more complicated is I’ve found that to be true, particularly of bad behaviors, but not explicitly true of good behaviors, right? So a lot of folks will struggle, and it can be a huge blind spot for a leader, because the way that their executives relate to them is positive and appropriate, but then they go and talk downstream, or they work with other leaders, and it’s like Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. And so as a leader, especially those who are who love to lead by example, why is it not enough to just lead by example? And what do we need to complement that with?
Yosi Kossowsky
So no one’s a mind reader. And you know, I go through this all the time, no one’s a mind reader. And the idea that just because you think you’re modeling a behavior or something doesn’t mean that it is gonna, by osmosis, seep into anybody else that that is something that’s important to you, that you you you want people to mimic it or follow that protocol. So to me, there’s a two step process. One is we need to be really explicit. We need to set actual expectations. We need to share with people, not. Only what we’re looking for in terms of behavior, speech, cascading, messaging, holding people accountable. We also need to actually talk to people about how would that play out? So saying to you, Scott, you need to be a better listener means nothing. Yeah, right. How would you be a better listener? What do you think you could do? Well, first of all, how do you currently listen today? What are, what are the mindsets, the actions you do? So let’s understand your starting point, and then let’s talk about the the practical nuance of the How to very, very often, what messes people up, and it’s not only in this realm of startups and CEOs, is pretty much across the board, is we say something, but we don’t give a description or understand how it’s interpreted or understood. And so to say, be strategic. Think strategic. You need to be more patient, you need to be more curious, you need to be a better listener. All of these things are very essentially ambiguous, and unless we can demonstrate them, practice them, role, play them together, there’s really zero chance that anybody else will do them in a way that you might have meant or intended.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I want to get back to the second part of the opening question. But actually, before I do, one of the challenges that I’ve seen, and I’m wondering if you’ve bumped into this, and this is particularly for founders, is that many of them have actually never had executive experience, right? They’ve never worked in a company as big as the one that they founded and and so they find themselves in this mode of having to bring executive leaders around them, but they’ve never actually been in that role, especially for somebody else before, and and it can be really confusing, because you just don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. So I’m wondering again, if we could just simply say, for someone who’s never been in that seat before, what does a day a week, a month a year look like in the seat of a high performing executive?
Yosi Kossowsky
So this is, you know, Scott, you you bring up like, I guess, like, right to the hot point of the challenge, which is we don’t know what we don’t know. And if I’ve never been in that role before, sometimes I’ve worked with founders that this is their only job. They came out of university and they did their startup, and they were thankfully successful, and they’ve actually never even had a role model to see what that would look like. And that is, I would say there’s not one answer from for me, it’s been either start to talk to the executives that you’ve hired and ask them for how have they seen it done before? Give the you know, let them give you examples of their mentors or their role models in the executive space, have this discussion about, what was that behavior? How did that play out? How was how did you see that you know happen in practice? Because again, how do you know what you don’t know? The second is, honestly get a coach, because that is why we’re here. We’re here to share that experience, bring what we have learned from other leaders, from ourselves as leaders and that. And then, of course, there’s workshops and books, though, honestly, I find those are harder to take from what to do into how to do so that would be the way I would think about it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So when it comes to, when it comes to tying a couple of these ideas together, when it comes to coaching these executives on our team, again, if we’ve never been in that role, or for whatever reason, it can be intimidating, right, especially for our founder, maybe they’ve brought in, they’ve kind of got the bringing great people and then stay out of their way, kind of approach. And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it can lead us to kind of being like, I don’t know what to do with my hands, like they’re here, like, hopefully it works. I don’t know if it will work, and that’s just not a great place for most founders to be. So what does an active role in leading and developing an executive team look like?
Yosi Kossowsky
I’m going to say something, and I think that it’s kind of self evident. It’s communication. And what I mean, though, by communication is put out questions be really, really curious. And one of our challenges with curiosity is that we all at some level, face perception biases, confirmation biases, meaning that we. Are really good about hearing what we want to hear or what we expect to hear. We’re not really good about hearing what we don’t want to hear or not expect to hear. And you know when you’ve not done this before, when you’ve not led ultimately, our humanity is fantastic if we really tap into it, if we are sitting there and willing to have a conversation, an open conversation to let’s change the idea of feedback to observations. So the idea of observation is, Hey, Scott, when you were in that meeting today, I observed you doing this, and this is how I experienced it, rather than Scott, what you did was not good. That’s not helpful. It triggers us. If we can move to a space of as a team, sharing observations with each other, helping us understand how we were experienced, then that is, I have really found that to be a really strong, powerful way to grow as a team, regardless of the title that we’re playing with.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Now, for executives in particular, there’s a lot riding on their ability to have success through others, but one of the things that can happen is we can rise to that level of authority or that position inside of an organization, very much on the merit of what we knew and accomplished. You know, either directly or as part of a team. How do you help executives? Maybe any executives listening to kind of shift that mindset from maybe an I first mindset to a we first mindset.
Yosi Kossowsky
So the first thing I try to instill in the people that I work with is a mantra. And I don’t know if my language is going to be okay, but the mantra is, what if I don’t know shit? And when we go in to any situation thinking we know the answer, we’ve got this, you know what? As you say, what got me here is going to get me there? And there? It limits our ability to think outside of that. It we’re, you know, the whole brain is going to be cycled or focused on confirmation. So the first is, what if I don’t know shit? And that mantra then hopefully leads us to being more open to hearing and seeing and again. Ultimately, I don’t think there is the way to be successful. There’s not the way to scale from startup one to two to three, right? There’s you finding your way. Your team’s finding their way. And the danger is when we stop listening when we stop being curious. And these are words that are ambiguous. So it’s really about, how do I listen? How do I watch out for that ambiguity? How do I watch out when I’m being stubborn? And so, you know, there’s, there’s cute games where we set up like a financial payment system. So we, there’s, you know, anytime that any of the group says something that we say that’s not going to be helpful, then you put $1 out into the bin, into the Community Chest, type of thing, and you work with each other on that we all have the right to support each other, to share our observations, to raise a flag. And that doesn’t mean we’re not going to lose it, we’re not going to have short patience. It means that this is our agreement and and we need to remind ourselves of it constantly and be able to hold each other accountable to it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s it’s a lot more fun, it’s a lot more challenging, but it’s a lot more fun to do that in a team environment. So I love that there’s a subtle undertone to that response that I think is really powerful. Now, when we’re thinking about an executive and helping them develop, sometimes it makes sense to go to the outside and ask for help from outside the organization. When’s the right time to do that? Do you wait until somebody’s in trouble? Are there things that you can do in advance, as someone who does this for a living, helping in many ways from the outside? When’s the opportune time to bring in coaching for your executives.
Yosi Kossowsky
So I the way I think about it is when you start to notice certain road signs or flags. So for example, if if the same behaviors or leadership challenges keep on resurfacing over and over again. You said you’ve cut you’ve had conversations, maybe you even sent some people to training. And yet you’re finding that things aren’t shifting. That’s a great time to bring somebody in who can have a one on one or a team conversation. If you start to notice that there. As decision bottlenecks or emotional playouts that now are becoming systemic, then again, to bring somebody in who can be an observer role, who can who can help everybody see things from another point of view, see our blind spots, or when you’re finding that either the that it’s very, very hard for a leader to play leader and facilitator, and so when you’re finding that you’re trying to play both roles to get you and your team going together, because if you are going to play the role of facilitator, you are essentially putting yourself outside the team. And so often these founders think, oh, I can do both. And I would say, in my experience, and I’d love to hear your Scott that you really can’t do both, yeah. And so again, when you’re trying to facilitate and lead, just take the leadership role so you’re part of the team and let someone else come in and help facilitate.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that, even just as a mental model, that, yes, being a facilitator, I would say the advantage that I have is that I am outside the team and and like coming from a background of being in the meetings and being with teams, it’s a constant battle for me to not cross that line and get into the team, right? Which actually removes the benefit. And I love that idea that if you are facilitating, you have placed yourself outside the team. I’ve never heard it explain that clearly, because it’s so true, right? It’s like it’s almost schizophrenic. Throughout the day, you’re trying to move the conversation along, you’re trying to contribute, you’re trying to make space for others. And what I think a lot of folks don’t recognize is your body language as CEO, right, as the one in charge, is such a big part of that process. And so when you’re facilitating, and even if you’re just thinking, right, I play music at our church, and I can’t call myself a musician. That would be unfair to musicians, but you get this like, stank face when you’re like, you get the right sound. And leaders do that as well. Like they might be coming up with a great idea, they might be really frustrated by an idea, and it looks exactly the same, but if you’re also the facilitator, how’s the room supposed to read that? So I love that, that you’re putting yourself outside of the room. I think that’s such an important and helpful point. I got that wrong for a long time, a really long time it wasn’t and for most folks, I say, just try it right. If you’ve never done it, you have no idea what it feels like. So brilliant, simple way of thinking about that. So, Yossi, I’ve got this question that I ask all my guests. I’m very interested to see what you have to say. So the question is this, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Yosi Kossowsky
So I don’t actually think it’s a secret, but I think that people don’t realize the impact, and that is that we all have subjective perception, and subjective perception means that I have been talking, or, Scott, you’ve been talking, but you know, know how I am hearing and interpreting and understanding anything that you’re saying, and vice versa. And our biggest failure, I find, is the fact that we will say things. We will say, hey, any questions, do you understand? You got it? And that is not checking for understanding. That is just wanting to hear the answer yes or no. If we truly could take into our system that every time I am speaking, it does not mean anybody understands me. What would I have to do differently to make sure I am understood in the way I want it to be, and vice versa, when I am listening and I know that I’m not hearing it the way that the other person or the other people are saying, What do I need to do to make sure I understand them? To me that if we could do that, I think it would shift so much misunderstanding, so much conflict and frustration.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good, so good. Yosi, there’s some folks listening to this, and you know, they want help with their team. They want someone to help facilitate any number of different ways that they could get some outside support to really take their executives to the next level. They want to learn more about you and your firm. Tell us where they can find out more.
Yosi Kossowsky
So right now, it’s LinkedIn. Honestly, I’ve got a web page, but it’s it’s in it’s in motion. The best way is LinkedIn, and it’s gone. I’m sure you put my LinkedIn into the show notes. That’s the best way. There is even a button there to schedule time with me so we can have, you know, a non obligatory conversation, just to hear each other out. But that’s the best way.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Yosi. Thanks for being on the show. It’s just a privilege and honor having you here today. Loved this conversation, super, super helpful, and for those of you watching and listening, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Yosi Kossowsky
Yosi Kossowsky is a seasoned executive coach with over 17 years of experience and a background as a Chief Technology Officer and Senior Director of Talent Management. Yosi specializes in leadership development, personal growth, and effective communication, leveraging neuroscience and organizational development principles. He’s helped global leaders navigate complex challenges, build high-performing teams, and drive meaningful change. Get ready to learn actionable strategies to enhance your leadership skills and foster a culture of trust and collaboration.
Want to learn more about Yosi Kossowsky’s work? Connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ykossowsky/