The Effective Executive’s Traits

Yesterday, I wrote about a really good student leader I’ve come to collaborate with in my improv group.

I specifically highlighted his use of language.

Today, I’ll break that post down with Peter Drucker’s framework of the commonalities of Effective Executives.

“What I need from person X is ___”

• The first practice is asking: “what needs to be done?” and he identified the need. Not what he wanted, what he needed.

“Moving forward, we’ll ___”

• He took responsibility for that decision, moving forward in a specific direction, and he said it with certainty.

“Our priority for those next two weeks”

• he developed an action plan, with a program with what we as a group will be working on in the next weeks.

“Okay, copy, we’ll prioritize”

• Not part of the 8 traits, but one of the chapters, which is put First Things First.

Finally I would say that he ran a productive meeting, in that actions were taken by stakeholders after the meeting.