Not a gap, a partition

I’ve become convinced there are very few real skills gaps at the C-suite level. What looks like one often turns out to be a partition — a capability the person already has in another area of life.

A commercial head told me privately during a C-suite retreat that she was frustrated with the head of risk. Her team had to fight for internal approvals while a competitor won deals. "Maybe I should take another stakeholder management course," she said, with a sarcastic smile.

She was certain something was missing. I’ve seen enough executives shift instantly out of this kind of situation that I’ve become convinced nothing is actually missing.

So we explored a different question, how she treats her best clients. The answers came quickly. Within minutes she'd come up with several ways to do the same with her colleagues. She already knew how. She'd just never brought it over.

Later, in one of the breakout sessions, she teamed up with her risk and compliance peers. The three stayed together even as the day ended, deep in conversation. What had started out tense turned to personal lives and sharing pictures on their phones.

A gap asks: what does this person still need to learn?

A partition asks: what do I suspect they do brilliantly somewhere else?

By the time people reach the C-suite, they carry many of these partitions. They appear as ways of being, forged in one part of life, and so native to it they don't register as having a place in another part.

Look at what decades build in your people, out of your sight:

Negotiating with a teenager who's already decided no.

Staying steady when a parent's diagnosis changes everything.

Repairing a friendship after they were the one in the wrong.

Sitting with grief that takes as long as it takes.

None of it was built in a training room. All of it is leadership.

Before you send a senior leader off for more development, find where that capability already lives in their life, and ask what might bring it into the room here.

Sometimes they simply hadn’t seen that as an option. Sometimes it's the incentive, the history, the unspoken rule about what is allowed. Sometimes it might really be a gap. Telling those apart is the work.

At the end of one retreat, someone said something I haven't forgotten: “I love who I am when I'm part of this team.”

That’s what it feels like when partitions come down.