Building Better Leaders-One At A Time
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders
I had an interesting kitchen table discussion recently with a friend who questioned my belief in the ability to change the world by helping support the development of effective leaders.
Note to everyone: while disconcerting, it’s healthy to have people question your view of your ability to change the world every once in awhile. Sobering, but healthy. If nothing else, it helps you re-examine the strength of your convictions.
His point: for every one person that actually “gets it” and develops into an effective, values-driven and people-focused leader, dozens of “incompetent idiots” will end up in positions of responsibility and the cycle of horrible leadership and lousy leaders will continue.
There’s some truth in my friend’s cynical view of the world. In fact, the weight of evidence is much more on his side than on the side of those of us that believe that our efforts will actually make a difference.
However, regardless of the overwhelming evidence against us, I remain steadfast in my (Quixotic?) belief that the size and complexity of the challenges that we face on this third rock from the sun will require the best leaders and the best of our leaders. I also believe to my core that the only way to develop the next generation of effective leaders is one at a time, step-by-step and person-by- person.
I make no secret that I focus my development energies on two groups of individuals: early career professionals and a group that I describe as emerging senior contributors. The early career professionals are typically first-time leaders and my emerging senior contributors are those moderately experienced professionals that are ready to step up and make a difference on a larger scale.
These are the groups where good coaching, strong mentoring and plenty of tough assignments will have the greatest impact. Help one first time leader “get it” from the start, and she will spend a career paying it forward. Help one emerging senior leader or senior contributor learn how to make a difference the right way, and watch as organizations and individuals are transformed on a large scale.
So, while my cynical but honest friend might have the numbers on his side for now, it’s not clear to me that he will win in the long-term.
My question for you: what are you doing to support the development of great and future leaders on your team? You too can help rebalance the equation.
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Note from Art: A busy few days on the road will find it challenging for me to post anything but some short snippets. However, I am excited to have a Fresh Ideas guest post on tap on “Developing Executive Presence” from Jeff Hornstein, proprietor of The Speaker’s Choice and a professional speaking coach and an all-around great person.
One thing that never goes out of style is our need to improve our confidence and competence as a speaker. Like it or not, we are judged in part by how confident and capable we are in presenting our ideas and ourselves, and for many, this is a vexing career issue. In his guest post, Jeff will share his thoughts and even offer a helpful free booklet for download, filled with ideas on how we can all improve our confidence and executive presence.
The Struggles and Mental Toughness of a Leader
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Values
Imagine Lincoln’s thoughts as he watched the smoke from Confederate campfires rise into the sky just a few miles from the White House, well aware that there were insufficient troops to defend the city should they choose to attack. As a backdrop to this disturbing situation, all evidence suggests that Lincoln understood that HE was perhaps all that stood between a nation united and one perhaps forever divided.
How lonely must Washington have been as he struggled for most of the revolution without resources and without anything that would have passed for a trained army to even the most near-sighted observers? No money, no food, no guns, no army, no shoes, no uniforms and little reason to hope. Yet, here we are.
Churchill lifted and carried a nation’s hopes on his back for much of a war where the nation’s survival was in question.
Recently, Chesley Sullenberger in all of his humbleness reminded us of the toughness and determination of a leader and master technician that used all of his skills to land a jet in the Hudson and then help get everyone off safely.
Patton willed his army to march what must have seemed like halfway to hell to ensure the outcome of the war and Pershing built an army in record time for a nation that had none and in the process helped save a continent from collapse.
So, how important does that budget meeting sound now?
I suppose it’s not a fair fight to grab the headlines and headliners of history and then compare them to our daily existence as leaders and managers of institutions and organizations, even if our organizations are struggling. Nonetheless, the lessons of these leaders ring true long after their days have passed.
I’m particularly drawn to the quality of “mental toughness” in great leaders. Where most would have cut and run, the best stare at adversity and seem to draw strength from the enormity of the challenges in front of them. Failures are but mere setbacks and when conventional wisdom and all of the advisors preach capitulation, these leaders see and seize opportunity.
I look for this quality in leaders in the business environment, but often our hiring and screening processes get in the way. We tend to focus on hiring those that package themselves as flawless. Their victories sound grand and their defeats and flaws are hidden behind a veil of carefully wrapped histories.
Tell me about your adverse circumstances and where you stared down capitulation and the mistakes that you learned from and my eyes will light up and my mind begins to wonder whether I’m dealing with someone that has the extraordinary mental toughness that I need and we need to win the war.
Show me honesty by highlighting that you were uncertain in approach but unwavering in direction and I’ll know that I’m dealing with an honest leader.
And most of all, share with me the reality that many others did the work and that the victory was not yours, but rather theirs and I’ll hire you three times over in spite of the best advice of those that favor the well-polished and eminently that recruiters and other pros are so comfortable presenting.
Mental toughness wins everyday in my world.
Executive Behaviors, Your Boss Has No Clothes and Revolution from the Bottom
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Management Innovation, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Values
Gary Hamel offers a post well worth reading on “Why Success Often Sows the Seeds of Failure,” in his Management 2.0 blog at the Wall Street Journal. He takes some tough and well-earned shots at the narrow-minded thinking of executives that foments the eventual demise of formerly good organizations.
In my opinion, the habits and traps that bedevil formerly successful companies also exist in those less-than successful organizations. Regardless of starting point, the tendencies and habits of ineffective executive leadership are not hard to see. In theory, they shouldn’t be hard to call out and change. However, we don’t. Why not?
A few of Hamel’s observations:
Hamel: “Years of continuous improvement produce an ultra-efficient business system—one that’s highly optimized, and also highly inflexible. Successful businesses are usually good at doing one thing, and one thing only. Over-specialization kills adaptability.”
Art’s Comment: Motorola (Cellular) is my poster child for this one. This early adopter and advocate of Six Sigma become great at providing playgrounds for legions of engineers to create a smorgasbord of products that no one wanted or wants. Processes were golden, but no one had a clue about the customer or what competitors were doing.
They hit a low when the new CEO brought in to turn-around the Cell division (success doubtful) gave a phone to his wife and after trying to use it she gave it back, indicating (paraphrase) “If I have to use a manual to figure out how to use the phone it is too complicated.”
Hamel: “Long-tenured executives develop a deep base of industry experience and find it hard to question cherished beliefs. In successful companies, managers usually have a fine-grained view of “how the industry works,” and tend to discount data that would challenge their assumptions. Over time, mental models become hard-wired.”
Art’s Comment: I’ll pick on the hiring authorities for this one. Many boards and management teams demand that hires walk in the door with such precise level of industry and sometimes technology knowledge, that they guarantee Hamel’s hard wiring. Entire industry trade talent over time and ensure that the same bad-old ideas and ingrained biases of the industry remain in place, stifling creativity.
Hamel: “Caretaker executives who’ve never been entrepreneurs and have never built something out of nothing are prone to view success as an entitlement, rather than the result of innovation, gut-wrenching decisions and perseverance. Isolated from the bleeding edge of change by subservient minions, they start believing their own speeches.”
Art’s Comment: Wow! That’s a lot to take in in one sentence. Amen to the need for executives to be faced with the challenges to build and innovate and to feel the pressure of Hamel’s self-described gut-wrenching decisions. Nothing like a good dose of real-world accountability to knock some hubris out of the leader.
It seems like the auto companies, especially GM, missed this memo.
Why Can’t We Tell the Emperor About the Lack of Clothes?
It’s easy and fun to pick on the people in charge. They are big, easy targets with plenty of faults to single out. The bad habits, poor attitudes and ego issues that Hamel points out are painfully easy for all of us to see. Yet time and again we allow ourselves to be blinded and made deaf and mute by the light and actions coming out of the executive suite.
Perhaps part of the cure for what ails us is for people to screw up the courage to talk about problems and pursue actions to fix them. Maybe the revolution doesn’t start in the executive suite
My friend and a sage leadership advisor, Wally Bock, writes frequently at his Three Star Leadership blog about the power and importance of the Supervisory-class of leaders—those front-line leaders and the import that they play to a firm’s success. Maybe we need to retool top leadership by modeling the right behaviors from the bottom of the pyramid.
A few of these “Right Behaviors” include:
- Frank discussions about what’s working and what’s not
- Environments where challenging the status quo is appreciated and encouraged
- Hiring practices that don’t involve cloning and that do allow for creativity in bringing on-board unique skill sets and talents.
- Development practices that include “Charan’s” apprentice model so that upcoming leaders can face the gut wrenching decisions and grow in the process.
Last and not least: making it a core value and behavior inside a firm to cry “Foul” when the leaders up above pontificate while walking sans clothing through the business day.
What’s to stop us from starting to get this right?
Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?
It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.
You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.
Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles:
- The dictator
- The assassin
- The two-faced politician (is that redundant?)
- The warlord
- The megalomaniac
- The evil genius
- The double agent
While this might sound like the cast of a great new movie, I know a few people that would agree that it looks a lot like a quorum at their senior management meeting.
Is it our nature to gravitate towards evil leadership in our pursuit of power and wealth?
I sure hope not, because I’m missing that gene.
I’ve worked in and with organizations that seem to cultivate and reward more than their fair share of villains, thugs and hoodlums masquerading as leaders. My observations as to why some environments seem to produce a bumper crop of these dysfunctional characters include:
- No visible sign of values in action—the sign might be on the wall outlining the values, but other than that, nothing. No teeth and no meaning behind those words.
- Some leaders just like to be surrounded by enforcers. One leader I encountered as a consulted tolerated a truly heinous individual because in his words, “I like to have a pitbull in the office looking out for my interests.”
- Some senior leaders enjoy the conflict. It is entertaining and it fits their Darwinian view of the world.
- Some leaders are sensory deprived—they are so preoccupied with their own issues they are truly blind to the carnage going on around them. While they hear isolated reports, they are not perceptive enough to see the patterns.
The Cures:
- If you have the chance, fire an evil leader or even a future evil leader. I actually enjoy this. Ooops, is that a sign that I might be moving to the dark side?
- Regardless of where you fit in the food chain, establish, promote and reward those that show character and reinforce proper values. Fire the others. Yep, still enjoyable.
- If you are in charge or starting up, establish clear, meaningful values from day one and build your culture and team around those values. Abstinence from evil leaders is still the best bet.
- Help the evil leader unmask himself or herself. This is not for the faint of heart or light of bank account, since you are in essence playing their game but often without the power.
- Find a new job and company, but remember to do a great job culture sensing before you sign up. You would hate to move from one evil den to another.
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If you have a good evil leader story, the readers would love to hear it. Unlike most stories, we like these to end poorly for these people. It just makes us feel like the good people have a chance.
The Words of Leaders
Believe it or not, this post was prompted by a conversation that I had with one of my MBA students the other evening. The fact that it coincides with the inauguration of our new President is coincidental.
We were discussing the failure of many organizations to stop old ways of doing things, even in the face of overwhelming proof that the old ways don’t work. My student mentioned that the appointment of a new CEO last year had at first been encouraging until it was clear that nothing would truly change.
The essence of his comment to me was that the initial words from the new CEO were just what the employees needed to hear. They energized, they motivated and most of all, they provided hope. However, after a few months when none of the lofty words turned into tangible actions, people lost interest and returned to their former, cynical state of existence.
Hope is a terrible thing to raise and then crush with our words.
This unfortunate event is all too common. The “All Talk-No Action” leader is gifted with a silver tongue and charisma to match, but cares less for tangible outcomes than he/she does for the momentary wooing of the audience. I’ve been around long enough to watch a few of these characters stay one jump ahead of the widespread recognition that they are incompetent as they parlay one failed leadership position into the next.
When Rich Petro and I were doing the legwork for our 2007 book, Practical Lessons in Leadership, we asked people what they admired most about leaders that they viewed as effective and successful. The words were sometimes different, but the meaning was always the same. One person said it best: “The do matches the tell.”
If you’ll pardon the grammar, does your do match your tell?
It better or you’re attempting to lead without credibility. You might as well hope to sprout wings and fly. You will never create sustained success and significant value for your firm or your team members.
If it does, protect it like it is as important to you as breathing.
Remember, everyone is watching, waiting and hoping. Don’t let them and yourself down.
The do must match the tell.
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