High Growth Personas: The Corporate Executive

Have you ever been a human being, just trying to get through the work day and not hate what you’re doing?

Have you ever been a human being, wondering if your leaders have any insight into the actual day to day experience of employees?

Have you ever been a human being who is also a corporate leader, wanting what is best for your team, but having no idea how to get there?

Hi, humans!

I’m here to go a little bit deeper into High Growth Personas, a series geared towards helping corporate executives, mid-career leaders, and company Founders align their human systems to their business so they can thrive because of – not in spite of – their humanism.

And since The Sound of Music once told me to start at the very beginning since it’s the very best place to start, we are going in hard today around… The Corporate Executive.

Some of us are one. Most of us have been impacted by one. Some of it good, some of it bad, but all of it, at the end of the day, human.

And humans need help. We are collaborative creatures. We thrive together.

So, the beginning, the very best place to start, is with those who are leading us. After all, whether we like it or not – whether we like them or not – we are often led by corporate executives.

Corporate executives have the biggest opportunity to improve humanism – and, as a result, business outcomes.

To uncover how to make human systems successful.

And what, exactly, are human systems?

Human systems represent the invisible architecture of how people think, relate, and act together. Human systems ultimately drive culture, performance, and outcomes whether or not they are intentionally designed.

And who typically designs the human systems (or lack thereof)?

Corporate executives.

The issue? It is often done unintentionally.

And, when left to chance, unintentional human systems tend to erode trust, create conflicting priorities, and negatively impact an organization’s ability to meet their goals.

However, when developed and executed thoughtfully and strategically, human systems have the ability to create exponential growth, possibility, and long-term career development options for high performers within an organization.

And ultimately, what any organization needs to be successful at scale and long-term, is talent density. Meaning, if you want your company to do well, you need a team of people who are good at what they do.

Bonus points if you can avoid not only idiots but also assholes.

The Idiot or Asshole Conundrum

Whether we like it or not, corporate executives have influence on entire organizations, they carry weight. So what do they need not only to be successful, but also to scale their success to the teams of people (and robots, potentially) who are actually doing the work?

Most corporate executives don’t struggle because they lack intelligence, experience, or strategic capability. They struggle because the ways that they operate haven’t evolved at the same pace as the business they lead.

How does this show up?

They try to change culture using the same behaviors that created the current one.

What worked in a previous phase of business development is reinforced, even when the organization now requires something different. For example, where speed, control, and decisiveness helped an organization get to Point A, alignment, clarity, and trust might be what they need to get to Point B.

They are navigating complexity without a system for decision making.

Every decision begins to feel high stakes. Every stakeholder has a different priority. Without a clear way to frame decisions and build alignment, leaders end up either defaulting to instinct (or what worked previously), or just avoiding the decision altogether.

They are expected to create clarity in environments where none exists.

At the executive level, ambiguity isn’t something you navigate – it’s something you are responsible for resolving. But most leaders were never taught how to create clarity for an entire organization – only how to find it for themselves.

They rely on influence, but don’t always understand how it scales.

At this level, influence is not necessarily direct. Culture is shaped through decisions, signals, and what gets reinforced across layers of leadership. Every action (or lack thereof) cascades.

They are accountable for systems they didn’t design.

The infrastructure often exists, but the human systems underneath it haven’t caught up to the current stage of the business. Executives inherit these systems and are often expected to fix them while still delivering results.

At the executive level, the challenge isn’t just how you operate – it’s how your way of operating scales across an entire system.

This has always been challenging. But in the world of AI – much of which is replacing “human resources” – this is incredibly nuanced and specific.

We can’t avoid the fact that AI is here, and it’s currently the belle of the corporate ball.

And AI is a powerful thought partner. It can support many of the capabilities executives need to lead effectively at scale.

But executives are still human, and they still need other humans to do the things that only humans can.

To ensure human systems don’t hold their organizations back from what they can achieve.

To design work so that teams can get through the day and not hate what they are doing.

To communicate so that employees don’t question how out of touch their leaders are with reality.

To make decisions so corporate executives who want what’s best for their teams aren’t guessing their way to success.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) will only take you so far. AI (Authentic Integrity) helps you close the gaps for a culture, team, and business that thrive long-term.

AI (Assholes and / or Idiots) will be dealt with.

Corporate executives are humans like the rest of us. But at this level, it doesn’t just affect them. It shapes entire systems. And if that system isn’t intentional, it will still take form – just not in a way that serves the people or the business.

There’s a lot of room to get this right.