Leadership is NOT a set of Behaviors

Often in leadership circles, we place those who achieve success on pedestals and we talk about what they did right. We study their actions. We admire the decisions they made and the opportunities they have had. We learn from them and they challenge us.

Do you ever notice that some of these people never fail? They seem to never make a mistake or if they do, we only hear about it because they are telling us about their success overcoming that failure or learning from it.

Are you ever tempted to compare yourself with those people? “I could never do such and such,” or, “I would love to have the chance to do that with his resources and her connections.” Do you find yourself comparing often?

Comparison is a deadly trap. It can keep us from believing we are qualified or capable. It can cause us to flinch, hesitate or stop doing what we know we should.

However, when it comes to leading from who you are — let’s call that character-based leadership — comparison wastes energy. Character-based leaders are imperfect. My character is not perfect. If your character is perfect, you can stop reading here.

So, if you focus on perfection, you will get discouraged, because perfection seldom happens and never happens for long. Or you will choke, trying too hard. Or you might freeze, engulfed by fear. Aim for perfection and bank on discouragement, dissatisfaction, broken relationships, frustration and worse.

Leading from who we are means we must lead with and through imperfection. You can’t be someone else and be a character-based leader at the same time. One way to manipulate is to behave in a way that’s not consistent with who you are to get others to do what you want. Anyone inspired by a wrong image of the real you will disconnect when they discover the real you.

Our imperfections may discourage us but we must refuse to let them take us out of the game. Refuse to listen to that little voice in your head that tells you “Don’t screw up!” or “You always blow it in this area,” or “Remember the last time you tried this.” Genuine leadership is leadership through imperfection.

When we face our imperfection and still do what needs to be done, that’s genuine character-based leadership. We must work on our shortcomings but never let them keep us from taking action. Imperfect, genuine leaders encourage and mobilize others to do the same. They make persistence and success believable, reachable. Let’s stop listening to any voice that tells us we can’t do something. Simply decide to be the change you want to see in the world. Then act. The worst thing that can happen is that you might fail, but you’ll be who you are.

I’ll take an imperfect, transparent, giving, willing leader over a perfect, aloof, self-serving leader any day. Wouldn’t you?

Leadership Behaviors

Get it right on the inside and you will get it right on the outside. That’s good advice that is rarely followed by today’s leaders. Instead there seems to be a focus on just getting it right on the outside. This can work, but it’s probably leaving your followers feeling a little empty at best—or distrusting at worst.

When leaders focus only on their behaviors and outside appearances, they are presenting a thin veneer of leadership that can work for a short while, but which eventually breaks down—especially under pressure.

Wondering how you can get it right on the inside instead of working so hard to act in a prescribed way on the outside? Here are some ways to get started. These are based on answers to such questions as, “Who was your best boss?” and “What made them so special?”

[image courtesy of integralleadershipreview.com]

See people as assets to develop instead of liabilities to manage. Good leadership begins with a fundamental belief in people and the value that they can bring to a company. Where do you stand on this? Do you focus on people’s strengths and how to maximize them, or do you tend to focus on weaknesses and how to correct them? How does that impact your leadership behaviors?

Assume the best. People have good days and bad days. They make mistakes, exhibit poor judgment, and sometimes let you down. How do you react to these situations? What is the story that you are telling yourself about their actions? Are you assuming they had good intentions and just fell short, or does this just go to show that you were right about them all along? Your resulting leadership behavior will be very different depending on your mindset.

See yourself as a leader instead of as an evaluator. Part of leadership is matching skill sets to the overall goals of the organization. The ability to discern talent and apply it effectively is an important quality. But don’t make that the sole focus of your leadership. Instead, go beyond getting the right people in the right positions and actively work to help them succeed in their roles. See their success as a partnership between you and them. When people sense that you are on their side, helping them to succeed, they act and perform very differently than if they feel that you are primarily judging and evaluating them.

Beliefs and attitudes drive your behaviors. In today’s open and connected world, you have to be genuine and authentic. Leaders who get it right on the inside naturally display genuine behaviors on the outside that people respond to. Take a look at your leadership beliefs. Work on the inside first.

Leadership Trust Gap – Part 3 of 3

Prof Barbara Kellerman asks those in charge of leadership-development programs to question the assumptions the industry promotes:

·         Leadership can be learned by most—quickly and easily; over months, weeks or weekends.

·         Leaders matter more than anyone else.

·         Followers are secondary.

·         Context is tertiary.

She also suggests several important mindset shifts based on these assumptions:

We cannot stop or slow bad leadership by changing human nature. No amount of preaching or sermonizing—no exhortations to virtuous conduct, uplifting thoughts or wholesome habits—will obviate the fact that our nature is constant (even when our behaviors change).

We cannot stop or slow bad leadership without stopping and slowing bad followership. Leaders and followers are always interdependent.

We cannot stop or slow bad leadership by sticking our heads in the sand. Amnesia, wishful thinking, the lies we tell as individuals and organizations, and all of the other mind games we play to deny or distort reality get us nowhere. Avoidance insures us to the costs and casualties of bad leadership, allowing them to fester.

What Leaders Can Do

Leaders can become more effective and ethical by following these steps:

Remember the mission.

Limit tenure in positions of power; share power.

Establish checks and balances.

Avoid groupthink; ask the right kinds of questions.

Establish a culture of openness in which diversity and dissent are encouraged.

Don’t believe your own hype; get and stay real.

Compensate for your weaknesses by hiring and delegating well.

Develop a personal support system (mentor, advisor, coach, best friend).

Stay balanced and healthy.

Be creative, reflective and flexible.

Question assumptions; get reliable and complete information.

What Followers Can Do

If bad leaders are to be stopped or slowed, followers must play a bigger part.

But many followers consider the price of intervention to be too high. There are real benefits for going along, along with real costs and risks for not going along. We often choose to mind our own business. Nevertheless, incompetent and unethical leaders cannot function without followers.

Followers can strengthen their ability to resist bad leaders by observing these guidelines:

Empower yourself.

Hold leaders accountable; use checks and balances already in place.

Find allies; develop your own sources of information.

Be loyal to the whole, not to any one person.

Be a watchdog (especially if the board seems too compliant).

Be skeptical; leaders are not gods.

Take collective action (even on a modest scale, such as assembling a small group to talk to the boss).

Luckily, more followers are stepping up to the plate, demonstrating a willingness to share responsibilities, power, authority and influence. They know that once bad leaders are entrenched, they seldom change or quit of their own volition. It’s up to us to insist on change—or an early exit.

Leadership Trust Gap – Part 2 of 3

In a perfect organizational world, we would be blessed with transformational servant leaders who are intrinsically motivated to provide benefits to their followers. But, in the real world, corporate executives are rarely that accommodating. We nevertheless expect our leaders to make things better for both the business and our careers.

Corporate leadership is simultaneously envied and disdained. We are in awe of strong personalities who take charge and earn big compensation packages, bonuses and perks. At the same time, we cannot deny that the gap between the rich and poor has been steadily increasing for decades, and the middle class has declined.

Furthermore, the financial crisis—the worst since the Great Depression—has been slow to recover. Many blame executives at our top financial institutions for eroding trust in leadership. We are left with an impression of widespread corporate corruption that continues to be amply rewarded, even when CEOs are dismissed for poor performance.

A 2011 Gallup poll confirmed that corporate America’s reputation is in tatters, with 62% affirming they want major corporations to have less influence in the future—a figure that increased 10% in a decade. A whopping 67% of those polled said they resent big business’ influence.

A survey of Fox News’ right-of-center viewers found that most overwhelmingly believe (a 6:1 margin) that corporate leaders have done more to hurt than help the economy.

Income Disparities

Most of us expect our leaders to be paid more than we receive. We recognize that they work long and hard, are intelligent and experienced, and shoulder responsibilities and risks most of us wouldn’t want.

But, has the economic and lifestyle gap grown absurdly large?

Between 2002 and 2007, the bottom 99% of American incomes grew only 1.3% a year, compared to a 10% bump in compensation for the top 1%.

Let’s look at a few examples of CEOs’ annual compensation:

·         In 2008, Oracle’s Larry Ellison received nearly $193 million

·         Countrywide Financial’s Anthony Mozilo: $102.84 million

·         Aflac’s Daniel Amos: $75 million

·         Safeway’s Steven Burd: $67 million

The median pay for top executives at 200 big companies in 2010 was $10.8 million, a 23% jump from 2009.

These examples contribute to our dislike and distrust of those at the helm. These leaders seem to grow excessively rich as the average American struggles to make ends meet.

Flawed Followers

Perhaps today’s leaders can get away with various and sundry peccadilloes because their followers fail to demand accountability.

“Leading in America has never been easy,” writes Barbara Kellerman in The End of Leadership. “But now it is more difficult than ever—not only because we have too many bad leaders, but because we have too many bad followers.”

Many of us are too timid, disengaged or alienated to speak up, making it easy for corporate leaders to do what they want—and what’s best for their bank accounts.

The leadership-development industry has become huge, with $50 billion a year spent on corporate training. Shouldn’t the curriculum include elements of followership? Everyone, including the CEO, has to answer to someone, be it a board, stockholders or a senior team.

Tomorrow, in the concluding Part 3; I'll examine some of the assumptions with the leadership development in the business world.

Leadership Trust Gap – Part 1 of 3

  

Leaders everywhere are taking a bad rap these days. Hardly a day goes by without news of corporate ethical violations, financial fudging and CEO failures. Yet, compensation packages and bonuses continue unabated, even when disgraced leaders are sent packing.

Corporate leaders are being pushed out in record numbers. In 2002, over a hundred CEOs from the world’s 2,500 largest companies were replaced—almost four times the number in 1995.

What is happening to our efforts to develop good leaders? In spite of the billions spent annually to train high-potential candidates, why do those promoted to positions of power, with critical responsibilities, continue to fail?

“Being a leader has become a mantra. It is a presumed path to money and power; a medium for achievement, both individual and institutional; and a mechanism for creating change sometimes—although hardly always—for the common good.”  ~ Barbara Kellerman, in her book - The End of Leadership

Harvard Business School Professor Barbara Kellerman criticizes the leadership-development industry in her book, The End of Leadership. She asserts:

·         Leaders at every level, across all industries, are failing the people who depend on them.

·         Leadership programs have done an inadequate job of producing effective and ethical leaders.

·         We don’t really know how to grow good leaders, and we know even less about how to stop or slow the bad ones.

·         Today’s business environment is rapidly changing in ways leaders are unable or unwilling to grasp.

·         Followers are disappointed and disillusioned, even though they are more empowered, emboldened and entitled than ever before.

Leadership’s Devolution

Until only recently, we presumed that leaders should dominate and followers must do as they are told. But after several revolutions, labor movements, human-rights legislation and the spread of democracy, the world has radically changed.

Power, authority and influence are in scarce supply for even the most charismatic CEOs, and continuing to devolve. Workers in the middle and at the bottom of the hierarchy have an expanded sense of entitlement, but they are demanding more and giving less. Technology has helped level the playing field.

Workers are often indifferent, disengaged or outright resistant. There are only two reasons they’ll follow a leader:

1.    They have to.

2.    They want to.

The end of the 20th century marked the demise of command-and-control leadership, although some bosses stubbornly insist on trying to make it work. In its place, leaders are advised to become more participatory—to lead by cooperation and collaboration.

Leadership success is judged on three criteria:

1.    Is the leader ethical?

2.    Is he/she effective?

3.    Does the business make money and provide jobs?

In the workplace, however, followers judge their leaders and ask:

·         Does my boss have my best interests in mind (and does he/she even know what they are)?

·         Is my boss looking out for the company’s best interests?

·         Why should I believe, follow and trust this person?

·         Like most other animals, humans tend to look to strong males to provide what’s most important: safety and security. We are just like baboons, deferring to males whose strength and capacity to lead have been tested.

There is no leadership without followership. Good leadership requires good followers, who may be passive or active (depending on context). But followers have generally been slow to embrace empowerment and participate in the leader/follower tango.

Tomorrow, in Part 2; I'll examine the leadership reputation in corporate America and public perceptions.

Decisions and Motivations

Everyone makes decisions differently and is motivated or driven by different things. Being aware of and understanding these differences are really important when managing employees or creating relationships.

I am now motivated to write this article, following the successful Round Table discussion that I hosted on VoARadio Network  on last Saturday.  Over fifty years of scientific research has revealed that there are three distinct styles of decision-making. Each of us can make decisions in all three ways, but we tend to develop a preference for one more than the other two. This preference becomes a subconscious force, affecting the decisions we make on a daily basis and shaping how we perceive the world around us and ourselves. The three decisional styles are personal, practical, and analytical.

To some extent everyone is capable of making all three kinds of decisions, but we ultimately have a preference. Here is a simple example of the three in contrast with each other. A person with each style is sitting around a table working on a project together. While the Personal style is focused on the needs of the team members involved and how to best use their talents, the Practical style does not really care as much about the team or if it is done right, he just wants to get it done. Finally the Analytical sees no reason to worry about the people involved or even getting it done if it is not going to be done correctly.

We all have different balances of these three styles. That is what makes our decisions and actions different from others. These ways of making decisions and how we use them are at the core of who we are.

In addition to there being three distinct styles of decision making, people are also motivated to make decisions based on different drivers. Based on the research of Dr. Eduard Spranger and later by Dr. Gordon Allport, there are seven key motivational drivers and they include the following:

§ The motivation to achieve balance, harmony, and find form or beauty

§ The motivation for security from economic gain and to achieve practical returns

§ The motivation to be seen as unique, independent, and stand apart from the crowd

§ The motivation to have influence and control over one’s environment or success

§ The motivation to benefit others in a humanitarian sense

§ The motivation to establish order, routine, and structure

§ The motivation to gain knowledge or discover truth

Imagine how beneficial it would be to know how your team members make decisions and why they are motivated to do what they do. Imagine being able to share that knowledge with the actual team members. Communication, teamwork, and your ability to manage would instantly improve. Results and outcomes would measurably improve. Uncovering how people make decisions and what drives them to do what they do can be uncovered through a simple assessment process. [Please contact me if you are interested in the assessment process.] However, the assessment process is only the beginning. A commitment by management to create an action plan on how to effectively use the knowledge to improve team building is a critical second step. Information for information’s sake is—you got it—just information. An action plan to manage with the new information will provide long-term and sustainable results for your team.

Leaders Who Inspire Start with “Why”

How does a leader become truly inspirational?

If the leader cannot clearly articulate WHY they exist in terms beyond its products or services, then how does (s)he expect the team members to know WHY to come to work?

Certainly we are all motivated to come to work to get paid and other incentives. But pay doesn’t motivate us to give our all, to become better than we were last month, to commit to goals or to engage our hearts and minds to our full potential.

Pay doesn’t buy enthusiasm. And that’s what is needed if you want people to act for the good of the business, for the good of all who work there, for the benefit to customers.

Leaders who clearly communicate a higher purpose inspire others work with engagement and commitment. It unleashes people’s potential for doing good work.

The trouble is many leaders do not communicating clearly about why they come to work every day. I am talking about a higher “why” than the obvious ones. I am talking about expressing your true purpose, your passion, your real reasons for getting out of bed in the morning.

Often it’s a cause or purpose greater than oneself. What is that for you? What is that for your company? Not only are some leaders not clear about what that why is, they often put it into the background, where it gets fuzzy and loses energy.

Maybe it’s because values and purpose get expressed as nouns… as in:

·                     Integrity

·                     Innovative

·                     Creative

·                     Thought leadership

But nouns don’t inspire action. You are not communicating clearly when you ask your people to be more innovative or to be creative, or to have integrity. These words may have lost their meaning and become fuzzy from overuse.

However, when a leader asks people to always do the right thing, or to look at problems from other angles, or to question their assumptions… now leadership communications become actionable. It takes transforming nouns into verbs, and connecting with why your work is important.

Some of the work I do with my clients involves clarifying the why of their careers and their organizations. The second part of that is in finding a way executives can express their why in a way that makes sense to others. Those who improve their communications by starting with why find greater results in terms of influencing others.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

What do you think about this? Are you communicating to your people, using actionable verbs, what you truly believe in, why your company exists? What is your higher purpose for your business? Leave me a comment, I am curious.