Manage 2 Win Podcast – After 28 years at HP, Tom Hardison hit a wall. This is how He recovered.

I had a powerful conversation with David Russell about how overusing my strengths was holding me back. I was stuck and needed to discover new ways to generate leadership for myself and with my work and family.

Here’s a summary from David:

To break through his challenges required a new set of leadership skills that would allow him to resolve new, or previously overlooked, complexities in his life.  This was true even though as an engineer, he had very strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

But how to change?

Tom was caught in a system of processing information and making decisions that blocked him from receiving and evaluating critical data, and fully engaging with people whom he cared most about –  personally and professionally.  This significantly limited his ability to resolve problems. 

One symptom he identified was that when he was stuck, he made his strengths into “giants” that got in the way of everything he tried to do.  For instance, he was driver, but under this intense pressure, he drove his people too hard.  This hurt his relationships with others and the stress he caused limited their ability to resolve issues.

To get unstuck, he decided to try watching and listening more, and asking more questions. 

This led Tom to develop a new system of leadership to overcome the stressful challenges facing him.  He calls this approach generative leadership. 

Are you stuck?  Could you be less stressed?  Do any members of your leadership team struggle in these areas?  If so, join us to hear Tom’s story and solution. 

Tom Hardison helps leaders build great teams and organizations with a culture of generative
leadership so they can scale from 200-1000+ employees. He led change and business growth initiatives at Hewlett-Packard for 28 years, a period when revenue grew from 5 billion to 127 billion. He now uses this extensive experience to guide leaders and their teams to leverage the generative power of people working together to achieve sustainable growth.