2011/Notes/Influencing CEOs Becoming CEOs

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Participants provided inputs based on the following questions:

What is a leader?

A leader is able to make people feel like they belong to a group and motivate the group members to act together.
Someone that others respect and look to for guidance. Someone who is trusted.
A person who is capable of having and communicating a vision, and attracting others to help create the vision
A visionary tasked with making directional changes and who ideally takes responsibility for those choices
One who is able to motivate others to make progress against a shared vision or mission
One who polarizes people to certain action
One who provides a guiding ideology
A leader defines culture and helps to motivate others to build in accordance with that culture
Strategic
Long and short-term vision / plans
Ability to make tough decisions & sacrifices for best of whole
Ability to get people pulling in the same direction
Leaders inspire and motivate action
Someone who inspires others to follow them

What is an executive?

Someone who enacts / executes on decisions
Executives have omain-specific power and responsibility
Command & control (even if illusory)
$$
Upper level management
Works on bigger scale projects
A leader charged with executing to achieve the company's mission
One who is intimately involved in the guidance, oversight, and direction of business activities
One who provides leadership to the company
One who listens to stakeholders
An executive is someone with operational decision-making capability / empowerment
An implementer of those decisions both with and without responsibility for them
A leader that has been recognized by the organization as being of high value / impact
No idea. Someone in a suit and a corporate car. I tend to think of them as out of touch.
I don't have a good answer for this one.

What is blocking me in my journey of growth as a leader?

Past: Personal disagreement with select superiors
Present: Time and financial resources when deparing said superiors
The number of hours in a day
Limited resources (budget, human, etc.)
Understanding how to define and build the appropriate culture
Building rapport and goodwill
No openings
No process for training and development
Company not as focused on training staff to move -- but bring in more outside talent
Still working on my own self-development
Persuasion skills
Lack of experience and knowledge
Communication skills
Getting across my vision
Changing roles and copanies to grow, but not being able to get hired into the next highest rung. At my firm, the jump to "Director" and higher is significant
Self-effacement? What makes me qualified? I feel like a fraud. The closest I get to feeling like an effective leader is that I sometimes have insights about direction that others don't seem to have.
I want to lead an organization I didn't create