How to Handle a Honey Badger

In the mid­dle of one of my CEO coach­ing calls about what it takes to win in busi­ness, I burst into laugh­ter when he shared a sto­ry about how, ear­ly in his career, he was referred to as a ​‘hon­ey bad­ger’ because of his intense dri­ve to suc­ceed and do great work.

I laughed because one of the key lead­ers in anoth­er com­pa­ny I work with also has the inter­nal nick­name of hon­ey bad­ger. These peo­ple, in two dif­fer­ent parts of the world, are both very suc­cess­ful, high-per­form­ing exec­u­tives who run thriv­ing companies.

Hon­ey bad­gers, in the wild, are intel­li­gent and strong, thick skinned and resource­ful, dar­ing and fero­cious. Accord­ing to the Guin­ness Book of World Records, they are the world’s most fear­less creatures.

Now, I’ve been called a lot of things to my face — almost every name in the book, I’m sure! — but hon­ey bad­ger, isn’t one of them (that I know of!)

But I do res­onate with their traits and have done a lot of work to tame and pol­ish them. So, while my dri­ve for great results and accom­plish­ment is still there, I’ve found a bet­ter approach, and now leave few­er bite marks.

The Key to Success

Some of the most impact­ful CEOs and exec­u­tives I’ve worked with have some hon­ey bad­ger ten­den­cies. But their fear­less dri­ve to get great results and to build some­thing great, can get them into trouble.

Unless they have oppor­tu­ni­ties to har­ness and chan­nel their nat­ur­al skills, abil­i­ties and dri­ves, and be con­nect­ed to some­thing mean­ing­ful, they will strug­gle to effec­tive­ly col­lab­o­rate with, and lead, others.

The most suc­cess­ful hon­ey bad­gers learn to chan­nel their aggres­sive dri­ve for great­ness, to devel­op and hone their lead­er­ship skills and to grow their EQ (emo­tion­al intelligence).

If you notice up-and-com­ing hon­ey bad­gers, keep your eye on them. Make sure they get the coach­ing and men­tor­ing and devel­op­ment they need to be successful.

While most peo­ple want to run from them, I’ll take a hand­ful of hon­ey bad­gers any day — as long as they are will­ing to learn and grow.

The Chal­lenge

• Who are the hon­ey bad­gers, in your orga­ni­za­tion, who may need some addi­tion­al men­tor­ship, guid­ance or coach­ing to be effective?

Old­er Blogs

• Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment: Inte­gra­tion vs Intervention?
• Can you Read the Room?
• Find­ing a Great Exec­u­tive Coach

Old­er Podcasts

• Liz Wiseman’s Mul­ti­pli­ers – How the Best Lead­ers Make Every­one Smarter
• I Have a Key Exec­u­tive That I Think is Inef­fec­tive. What Do I Do?