Keynotes and high-potential
leadership programs
Charles is available for keynotes and high-potential leadership programs.
From aerospace to finance, retail to tech, construction to pharmaceuticals, chances are that Charles has had experience with your sector.
Topics
Living with Yourself: Integrating the Multiple Roles of the CEO
CEOs are human beings. They occupy multiple roles in life including spouse, parent, caregiver, citizen, leader of an enterprise. These roles put values in tension with each other in ways that can be difficult to reconcile – making it hard to live with oneself if you are a healthy human.
Authentic leadership requires an honest and open reckoning with the interior conflicts and the exterior choices the CEO role demands – the brutal truths of a business facing competition, dealing with the risks emerging in the macro-environment, generational changes in the employment contract, and disruption across business and society as a consequence of emerging technologies.
No one understands the full complexity of these times. Some of the threats are or at least can feel existential. How you deal with them reflects your character and tells your stakeholders who you are.
The Power of Relationships
Being human is being in a network of relationships – these relationships shape us and we shape them in turn through our actions and our communications. This holds for CEOs as well as for any human. If we treat our relationships as transactional, they will be limited to transactions. If we treat them as something more, something co-generative, then our network of relationships may become a powerful force for change.
Who we are and who we become may be shaped by our intentions and our actions through the network of relationships we cultivate over a career and a lifetime.
Becoming a CEO who is a match for the challenges of these particular times calls for a shift in perspective from individual to team, from having answers to generating questions, from knowing to learning, from some of us to all of us, from transactional to transformational.
Leading with Gratitude and Extending your Impact to Society
To get to where you are required sacrifice, talent, hard work and persistence. It also required luck and near countless acts of support from people you know and remember as well as uncountable others you don’t.
To know this and to hold it as a core principle is not to dishonor what it took from you personally to achieve your success, but rather to honor the many contributions of the community that surrounds you.
Being a leader, being a CEO is a great responsibility and a great privilege. Extending the privilege in ways that benefit your company, your stakeholders and the greater human community may not be easy – it is worthy.
Effective Team Alignment
One of the most common concerns for every leader is how to create alignment amongst their team members, up the chain and across the organization.
How to process frustration and bridge the gap between intention and reality.
Purpose, clarity of vision, fostering psychological safety, communication and building a relationship based approach are some of the elements that form the foundation in aligning teams within an organization, but without the intent and ownership to create positive change the foundation will not last for long.
Testimonials
“Charles has a set of techniques that helped me learn things about myself that I know I never would have discovered on my own.”
“The toolbox Charles has given me is invaluable; I find myself tapping into it day in and day out.”
“It is always fun and interesting to work with Charles. You can feel how much he cares about his clients and our success.”
“I’ve worked with Charles in many different capacities for over 10 years, and he has been one of the most influential characters in my life and my career. He has an uncanny capability to quickly understand complex environments and provide deep insight into how one can better function in those environments.”
“In my work I value the insights and advice of only a few outside advisors. I look for the rare combination of a strong conceptual grounding and mastery of relevant frameworks for understanding and intervening in whole systems, coupled with a practical grounding in the reality of doing business in the corporate environment. Charles possesses each of these in great measure, and brings a third set of gifts, namely a strong personal presence, an ability to create rapport with leaders in the organization, and the ability to coach others in order to bring out their highest aspiration and potential. This combination of these three dimensions is what sets Charles apart.”
“Charles is a mind-blowingly great coach who works from deep empathy and his commitment to a healthy and equitable society. I’ve worked with probably 6 good to great coaches over time and Charles is in a whole other league.”
“After each conversation with Charles, I feel lighter and clearer about the path forward. An amazing listener, Charles has a knack for asking questions that enable me to get to the root cause of a challenge. In addition, he creates a space of psychological safety. I am able to be vulnerable with Charles. With him, I know there will be no judgment. Instead, he offers a tremendous amount of care and empathy, deep knowledge and understanding of human behaviors, and meaningful insights. Charles is simply a wonderful human. I am genuinely grateful to know and have the privilege to work with him.”
“Charles has played an integral role in my leadership journey from a Global Finance Integration Lead to Senior Vice President and CFO at Del Monte to Executive Vice President and CFO at Perrigo. Throughout this journey, Charles has challenged me to think more strategically, to broaden my perspective to consider multiple stakeholders’ views, to invest my time wisely (balancing work and personal life), and to be clear about my intentions and purpose. It is a pleasure to work with Charles.”
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