Leadership Caffeine™—Rethinking Leadership Execution

The words around leadership are well covered. The definitions are complete and the behaviors have been described over and over again by countless authors. There’s very little new to be said about what leadership IS. There is however a great deal to be said about how leadership takes place—particularly in an era characterized by what the academics call VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, conflict and ambiguity.

The how…the execution component of leadership is where value is created or destroyed, and it’s where the easy words of leadership books and posts undergo a conversion from raw material to diamonds or coal dust. The “how” is messy; it never takes place in a straight line, and in contrast to the words in the books, those charged with this role almost never know the answers when staring down the critical questions.

Much of my work is now focused on helping the youngest of our workforce move into positions of increasing responsibility, and yes, into leadership roles. My challenge is to help them move beyond the textbook definitions and into action. Fortunately, they are remarkable students—hungry for ideas and anxious to apply and learn. (Sidebar: The laments of the older generations about millennials are empty, narrow-minded perspectives. They reflect a failure to understand and adapt. The millennials don’t have to change, you do, but this is another post for another day.)

The leadership execution topics that occupy our discussions and experiments are identified below. We are all well served to embrace these lessons and rethink our own approaches to executing on our role as leaders.

4 Areas Where You Must Rethink Leadership Execution:

1. Motivation is about creating a series of adventures—quests in the video game vernacular of our younger generations—and providing opportunities for instantaneous feedback to support learning and achievement. The cause is the issue. Inspire others with a meaningful cause and they will move mountains.

Our greatest generation had a galvanizing, encompassing cause. In our world of endless problems, the leader has to give shape and texture to a specific cause and capture the hearts and minds of the right contributors. Corporate profits or some large, far-reaching strategy are not causes that motivate. Issuing directives or expecting others to pay-their-dues while waiting for the bigger and better cause to emerge is guaranteed to fail, particularly with the younger generation. Define the cause, and the grinding is no problem.

2. More on causes. One of the attributes of our younger generations in the workforce is their genuine desire to change the world in some way. They have watched nothing but disruption in the lives and careers of their parents for the past two decades, and they have a fierce drive to select different paths and drive different outcomes. Anyone in a leadership role today must harness this passion and drive to change the world—it is rocket fuel for execution.

3. Teach, don’t tell. I am convinced that in our era, one of the essential activities of anyone in a leadership role is to teach—a distinct contrast to the command and control models of the past. As a leader today, you can only promote progress, execution and success by teaching the following:

How to think critically and creatively.
How to talk—how to drive discussions that move forward on gray matter, not fisticuffs.
How to negotiate.
How to experiment and keep learning and improving.
How to make decisions and how to make increasingly better decisions.
How to galvanize support by leveraging and cultivating power and navigating the politics of the organization.

At no point in my career with some great large and small firms, did a manager or person in leadership help with any of the above. Today, these activities are the currency of the realm. Leaders teach.

4. Constantly Challenging Individuals and Groups to Refine their Field-of-View. There’s too much happening to remain isolated on the same picture. Every business, every industry and every career is in the process of being disrupted by something happening somewhere. The challenge is to learn to constantly challenge assumptions by shifting your or the collective field-of-view to take into account these external triggers and forces. In contrast to prior eras where the leader pointed and said, “We’re going this way,” today’s leader challenges her team to identify the destinations. He or she might need to tune or parameterize the initiatives, but the setting of direction is now a community activity. This is profoundly different than our prior world of strategy and goal setting.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There’s little doubt in my mind that we must foment a revolution in how we lead, or, we will fail at the big tasks in front of us. We need accountability and decency from our leaders in all areas of our firms and our lives, and we need leaders that recognize that the “How” of getting things done has changed.

For those new entrants to the world of leading others, you can succeed, just don’t emulate the bad habits of those who came before you. For those who have been around the sun more than a few times, it is time for you to rethink everything about how you execute on your role as a leader.

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Get the latest e-book (free) from Art: “A Bold Cup of Leadership Caffeine: Ideas to Stimulate High Performance.”

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See posts in the Leadership Caffeine™ series.

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Read More of Art’s Motivational Writing on Leadership and Management at About.com!

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Art Petty serves senior executives and management teams as a performance coach and strategy facilitator. Art is a popular keynote speaker focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.