CEO Leadership: Why What Got You Here Won't Get You to the Next Level with Gene Hammett, CEO Coach

In this episode, I discuss the evolution of CEO leadership, emphasizing that "What got you here won't get you there," as introduced by Marshall Goldsmith. I share insights from over 800 interviews, focusing on the need for leaders to adapt their mindsets and strategies as their businesses scale. Through a client's growth story, I highlight the importance of strategic shifts and personnel changes to meet new challenges. I encourage leaders to continuously reassess their approaches and balance operational tasks with empowering their teams, reinforcing that effective leadership is a dynamic and evolving journey. Episode Highlights & Time Stamps 3:28 The Challenge of Growth 5:52 Evolving as a Leader 7:14 The Importance of Transformation 8:38 Conclusion and Next Steps Key Takeaways • What helps you start a business can eventually slow its growth • Scaling requires upgrading your team, strategy, and leadership mindset • Complexity grows faster than most CEOs expect • The best leaders evolve early — not when things break • A CEO's real job is building leaders, not doing everything themselves Resources & Next Steps Ready to take your leadership energy to the next level? Explore free training and resources at training.coreelevation.com to help you identify energy leaks, strengthen your leadership presence, and elevate your team's performance.

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  You first began your business, you were able to work hard because you were driven, you were passionate. And we all have that drive in the early stages of business because it's so exciting. But then the reality sinks in that it is hard, that it is a marathon, not a sprint. And you've got to add people to the team, you've got to build systems. And as you do that, you begin to manage the doing and the managing of work. You begin to do the best you can to show up. You get up earlier and earlier, or stay up later and later, or both. And you figure out how to get your work done, as well as all the

• 0:43Speaker 00

  other stuff that you need to do as you drive this company forward. Welcome to Grow Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hemmick. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about CEO leadership and one big concept. Maybe you've heard this before, maybe you haven't. But what got you here won't get you there. Marshall Goldsmith wrote an incredible book. That title has been quoted so many times by myself, by my peers, and you've probably even said it yourself. What got you here won't get

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  you there. If you're in CEO leadership and you want to be someone who drives more growth, want someone who drives the kind of business that evolves from where it is today to that next level, then you've got to be willing to look at things differently. Because what got you to where you are, the hustle, the hard work, the drive, the commitment to solving the problem yourself, are all good things. But eventually, that leads to a breakdown. It leads to a bottleneck. It leads to where you feel like it's heavy and stressful because you've added more people, there's some complexity. And what got you here may not get you to that next level.

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  Now, what I want to do for you is unpack this in a way that can be helpful for you, help you understand that and give you a couple of stories along the journey. My name is Gene Hammett. I'm a CEO coach. We work primarily with companies in growth mode to help them understand how leadership evolves as the company grows and how you must upgrade your skills, upgrade your mindset even around leadership in order to keep ahead of that growth. Otherwise, you will feel like it's harder than it should be. You will feel like it's heavy and stressful. All that being said, I focus on helping CEOs step out of being the operator to being a multiplier CEO, which I've done some content around this, but today

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  we want to look at this. What got you here won't get you there. So let's go back in time a little bit. When you first began your business, you were able to work hard because you were driven, you were passionate. And we all have that drive in the early stages of business because it's so exciting. But then the reality sinks in that it is hard, that it is a marathon, not a sprint. And you've got to add people to the team, you've got to build systems. And as you do that, you begin to manage the doing and the managing of work. You begin to do the best you can to show up. You get up earlier and earlier,

• 3:36Speaker 00

  or stay up later and later, or both. And you figure out how to get your work done as well as all the other stuff that you need to do as you drive this company forward. But what I've noticed with companies, because I do the podcast episode, we've done over 800 founders and CEOs through this podcast over the last 10 plus years. We also work with clients individually and work with their teams to help them grow and help them install the leadership operating systems they need. And we see this at scale. One of my clients went through this, and it was particularly hard for them. I won't tell you the name of the company because it's confidentiality and all, but they had grown from about 40 employees to 180 employees. Now, that's a pretty big growth. I know you would you

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  would respect that. They went from about 8 million to about 30 million. All that being said, The skills of the CEO, the founder, had to evolve because otherwise he would feel like he couldn't get it all done because he would be stuck doing and not leading. And that's where you want to make sure that you understand what got you here won't get you there. You have to evolve at a personal level. Now, what ended up happening with this client over the past couple of years, they had to replace nearly every person on their executive leadership team and even the level below that, the directors and the senior managers of their company. It was about 16 out of

• 5:02Speaker 00

  18 people that were replaced in two years. I will tell you that every time we had the discussion, that it was difficult because he cared about his employees, he had a sense of loyalty for them, but they weren't evolving at the pace they needed them to. They weren't thinking strategically enough. They weren't proactive enough in their roles. And, and sometimes it was just the complexity of those roles, take something like HR or operations, they just change over time. And so the people that you begin with, aren't the people that you end up with as the company scales. Now, you may also think about this again, in his journey from 30 million to, let's

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  say 100 million, there will be more evolution, more changes, and he will have to continue to stay in pace with that as a leader. Hopefully you get this. CEO leadership is never an ending to the game. It is just refining how you do it. And as you add more people, you add the systems and you add the leadership that is necessary for you to scale because you can't do it alone. So what got you here won't get you there. Let's take a look at it from a strategy perspective. If your strategy got you to a certain point, and then it might start breaking down. What worked in marketing may work, have

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  worked six months ago, but doesn't work now. And so you have to continuously refresh that strategy. What got you here won't get you there. So we've looked at it from your people standpoint. We looked at it from a strategy standpoint. But let's take it even deeper. What about you as a leader? Have you really stepped back and think about how you use your time as a CEO? I have a lot of clients that come to me that one of the very first things is you work with a lot of CEOs. I don't know if I'm doing the right things. I'm not sure if I know how to CEO. And CEO leadership does evolve. And so that's what I'm saying for you. I'm planting that seed. I'm not here to share with you how to do that. But I'm just letting you know that it's coming and it gets heavy.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  It gets hard before it gets there. And then sometimes it's even too late. And so I will remind you that you're either going to be too early or too late in your own transformation. I think you want to be too early. I think if you err on the process of always evolving your skills as a leader, always evolving the tools that you use, how you see things, being able to look at it. And once you get things optimized, they don't stay the same. You have to continue to evolve over time. And you have to continue to push that down throughout the organizations.

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  If you want all of this to work as a team, work as a group of people moving in the same direction, you've got to work on your communication. You've got to work on your ability to have the tough conversations, your ability to empower, the ability to install confidence in people, to overcome fears and to make decisions. All of that is your job. Now, if it's not your job, excuse me. Maybe you've got someone else in your team that is responsible for the leadership and development of others. Maybe you have that special situation where you have a team member who isn't you, and they can do those things, but that's rare.

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  Most of the time, the CEO has to step back from the doing and developing and driving the strategy to being a people leader. I've got many tools and many things that help my clients understand this. But at this level, through this podcast, I just wanted to share with you. CEO leadership is realizing that what got you here won't get you that next level.

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  If you want to go a little bit deeper with any of the work that we do to help you become a better leader and drive your business forward, the next training we have will really help you. It's absolutely free. Just go to training.coreelevation.com. You can sign up. You will learn the mistakes to avoid. You also learn the five steps that we take you through, all of our clients, and you can learn from that, and we will give that to you absolutely for free. Just go sign up at training.coreelevation.com. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth thinking. As always, leave a courage. We'll see you next time.