What is senior executive performance?

By Dr Ann Hutchison

As a senior executive, if you were asked by someone what good performance looks like in your role, what would you say?

How is your performance measured at the moment?

It’s a tricky one.

The reason it’s tricky is that senior executive performance is synonymous with organisational performance, and yet … it’s complicated.

If you are on the top team, your job is to push the organisation into achieving its objectives. The problem with that is that the organisation’s objectives are sometimes paradoxical¹. There are tensions between the goals. For example, corporate social responsibility doesn’t always mean better productivity. Growth doesn’t always mean profitability.

Long-term goals have to be weighed up against short-term goals, fiscal goals against non-fiscal goals. It is a melting pot of difficult decisions.

There is another complicating factor: Your behaviour as an executive contributes to the organisation’s success, but so do the behaviours of the other executives on your top team. It is entirely a top-team effort to make this organisation a success. So, your part in it is critical, yet your performance cannot be easily judged by looking at organisational outcomes alone. This means that your navigation of the top team is very important. But we will come back to that.

If we set the organisational goals aside for a minute, perhaps your performance can be judged in terms of how well you achieve your own targets - short-term, long-term, fiscal and non-fiscal — as agreed with your CEO. Yes, that is one good way of looking at your performance, but what about the behaviours you display on the way to achieving your objectives?

An executive can be bombastically destructive in the way they treat people, yet highly productive and strategic. Or, they can be extremely good at fostering a safe and warm climate, including positive relationships with the rest of the top team, yet not be as results-focused.

So, behaviours are important, and a perfect blend of behaviours needs to be present.

This leads to the question of what are the critical behaviours at the top level? The answer to that is nuanced, but broadly the research suggests that the following three categories of behaviour need to be present in order for an executive to excel in their role:

Task behaviours: How well they contribute to the substance of the business. That is, the bottom line, the achievement of goals, and good business decisions.

Here, behaviours might include pace-setting, displaying a drive for results, building good structures, setting the right goals, and prudent financial decision-making.

Climate behaviours: How well the executive contributes to the social environment of the organisation, the relationships, and the people within it.

This includes relationship-building, collaboration, role-modeling, leadership, good listening, respect towards others, and mentoring others.

Agility and innovation behaviours: How well the executive fosters new thinking, flexibility and agility. This includes things like receptiveness to new things, idea generation, and tolerance of ambiguity.

These three important areas of behaviour each have an array of desirable actions that an executive does. The behaviours that are most necessary will depend on the organisation itself, but there are some core ‘golden behaviours’ that are desired at this level.

Within all this there is the context of the top management team, where the executive sits, and from where they go forth and interact with the rest of the organisation and, in some cases, the board. It is a fascinating area of work, and one that requires a real sharpness of thought.

The contribution of the senior executive to that top team, the way they interact with their peers on that team, the alliances they build, the debate they foster … All of that is, arguably, critical.

The point from all this is that when an executive sits back and reflects on their role, there are several ‘performances’ to consider, and none of those should be dropped — They are all important.

1

Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2011). Strategy and Human Resource Management. Palgrave Macmillan.