Category Archives: Leadership Development

The Self-Deluded Leadership Trap

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Leadership TrapI have been observing people in power for quite a while, long before the latest public official made, shall we say, an error in judgment and came clean with the obligatory chest thumping and mea culpas.

It doesn’t matter whether you look at elected officials like Sanford, Blagojevich, Clinton, or Nixon or famous individuals such as Falwell, King, Jackson, Skilling, or Madoff, the underlying behavior is identical. What led to their public dressing down was their apparent belief that the rules of conduct that apply to other people somehow don’t apply to them.

Prior to their meltdown, we were under the impression that these individuals were intellectually bright. Imagine how disappointed we would be, and how foolish they would look, if we discovered they believed that Newton’s Law of Gravity simply didn’t apply to them—that it was only for “mere mortals.”

Case Study

I have been watching a leader within an organization I know well who is in the process of being removed because of his ineffectiveness. The main cause of the coup is fairly straightforward. This leader no longer
views his behavior and communication style in the same manner as those on the receiving end of his mannerisms and diatribes. As one person put it, “he has lost the locker room.”

This leader is not normally mean-spirited or angry, but he doesn’t seem to understand that there is a price to be paid every time he spins out of control. He is consistently operating by only viewing his positive contributions as the scorecard on which he should be judged. He attempts to discount or dismiss away any indications that he doesn’t walk on water without the benefit of rocks underneath.

Whenever someone attempts to give him feedback on the perception of others as to the impractical nature of his ideas, he dismisses it with a simple twist and attempts to put the messenger on the defensive by asking why s/he is being so negative.

He obviously believes that a good defense is to play offense. The tactic hasn’t been appreciated by others, and they have stopped trying to talk with him entirely. It’s not worth the ensuing battle.

To many of those he is supposed to be leading, he is viewed as suffering from delusions.  In his world, everything is always going to work out smoothly because the initial idea was his. In the organization’s world, it doesn’t work out that way, and others must scurry around to try to avoid a disaster.

Often, as people rise to positions of power, the people who report to them stop telling them the truth. Sometimes it’s because those at the top don’t react well to bad news, so the messengers learn to act in their own best interest. Sometimes the person in power starts to believe that they are so wise and talented that there couldn’t possibly be anything that could go wrong and therefore indicate a flaw in their plan.

A Leader’s Pursuit of Truth

Keep in mind the dangers of having reports sanitized for your protection (as in the O-ring and NASA’s Challenger disaster). As a true leader, you must be strong enough to push the people on whom you depend to tell you the real truth, in its entirety. In your personal and professional lives, there is no substitute for being grounded in reality when you are making decisions and taking action. True leaders willingly read more than their own press releases, so to speak.

Be True to Yourself

My advice is this: to thine own self and other people be true. Not “kinda sorta” true. True. Self-deception and self-delusion are not hallmarks of great leadership. Indeed, we have seen these qualities take down entire organizations, regardless of size and history.  Are you willing to give up subterfuge for truth even when it isn’t pleasant to live through? I hope so. People in your life are counting on it.

Managing Passion

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I was thinking about the methods that are currently in vogue as organizations attempt to execute the business of  the day.

Specifically, I was thinking about the role of passion as a management tool. When missing, the environment feels flat to those working in it—the corporate version of Austin Powers’

“Have you lost your mojo, baby?”

I am hesitant to refer to passion as a management tool because I don’t want to advocate manipulation in its most negative form. Instead, I want you to approach this as a form of booster rocket that you can adapt and use to get to where you want to go faster.

Almost every exec will admit that the more people in the organization who understand the strategic plan and the objectives, goals, and tactics that support it, the easier it is to execute.

Almost every exec will admit that when people in the organization are really engaged (because they understand their role and willingly accept their responsibilities), it’s infinitely easier to lead them and successfully execute annual business plans.

If that is the case, why do so many leaders shy away from proactively tapping into the endless stream of human potential that is unleashed when fervor exists and is cultivated?

If fervor speeds up execution, why leave it to random? Why not manage it?

Passionate Managers

Managerial Talent

The term managerial talent has been defined as “the behavior exhibited by a manager that increases the amount of productive, constructive, and profitable behavior on the part of others in the organization on a daily basis.” In all my years of consulting, no one has ever had a problem with this definition. But that doesn’t make it any easier to live that standard, does it?

Changing behaviors and improving results on a daily basis is tough to do even when we have no choice. In fact, one could argue that if the people being led don’t subscribe to this philosophy, there will be a great deal of pent up frustration about why the goal-posts seem to be moving every day.

Step Function vs. Rising Curve

As an executive, part of your role is to ensure that your managers know that they must operate so their teams make a gain and then hold the gain. It may help to envision a step function versus a continually rising curve.

Rising Curve

The hold part is more critical than most realize. It is more than simply not backsliding— that’s only part of the equation. Without the hold part, people won’t ever get to enjoy a feeling of victory because whatever they just accomplished a moment ago isn’t good enough now. Not a very motivating environment.

Before the age of the knowledge worker, people were usually treated as extensions of a piece of machinery. As long as they were fulfilling their functional responsibility, they could check their brains at the door. Many times during my career, I have heard one person say to another, “I need three bodies to work in this area.” Not a very enlightened view of people is it? What is the likelihood that high levels of managerial talent are running rampant in an environment like that?

Pursuing Organizational Success

How many people in your firm are going about accomplishing their tasks but not really helping you achieve organizational success as much as they could be?

  • Is it because they aren’t passionate about their role?
  • Is it the way they are being led?
  • Is it because they don’t know the end game?
  • All of the above?

 

Upon his retirement from HP, David Packard said to his employees,

“You shouldn’t gloat about anything you’ve done; you ought to keep going and try to find something better to do.” (Emphasis added.)

In addition to the obvious message from David recommending that HP people not rest on their laurels, it seems there is a more important takeaway. You can help ensure that there is greatness to be had in the future of your organizations by encouraging people to tap into their passions and following them through.

Help your people align their passions and interests with what is needed by the business— the “better,” if you will—and then enjoy the ride together.

This article is republished from American Executive Magazine

Seeing Your Blind Spots

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Blind Spot

I Noticed a Pattern

Despite how intellectually bright executives are at the top of the house, they seem to be suffering from one or more blind spots that color their view and inhibit their judgment.

This seems to be playing out in their inability to see what the actual obstacles are, so they remain hidden. As a whole, the organization struggles or never develops the ability to work around these impediments. To frame this discussion, I have chosen a graphic originally created by the Total Quality Institute.

Customer Loyalty Star Model

It may appear obvious that every for-profit organization should be interested in developing loyal customers and great business results, but I challenge you to examine your effectiveness in all the areas that should naturally feed those desired outcomes.

On the graphic, we see strategy at the top. As I consult with organizations that range in size from multi-millions to multi-billions, it seems that many organizations are lacking a disciplined approach to revisiting their strategy and building true business plans.

Too often, it is either relegated to an exercise in pure imagineering or becomes a mundane computation arrived at using last year’s results. “Take last year’s results and multiply them by 1.05. There. Good. We’ve set this year’s goals.” Sound familiar?

With the speed of available information estimated to be doubling every nine minutes and the number of hungry competitors growing around the world, can we afford to be complacent about the marketplace even for a short time anymore? I don’t think so.

A flawed plan makes it harder on everyone in your company to compete, even if is only with the business across the street. Peter Drucker said,

“The job of an executive is to think, change, and operate.”

How much time does your executive team spend thinking versus changing and operating?

Once the strategy has been truly vetted, it’s time to take a hard look the next point on the star: your organizational structure: is it geared up to execute the strategy? One question I routinely ask is, “If you were starting your business today and could fully use what you know of your strategy, is this the way you would structure it?” Usually, the answer is no. The executive admits that legacy issues have crept in over time and that he or she has been putting off having a difficult, but much needed, conversation with key managers.

Next, ask yourself about the last time both production processes and business processes were closely examined and assumptions tested. Smart operators do this regularly to ensure speed, reduce unnecessary internal costs, and help maintain a competitive advantage.  They want to ensure they don’t burn out their best and brightest people. Your best people are not motivated to come to work so they can struggle mightily against all odds just to get a fair day’s work out the door.

Keep the following adage in mind:

“When good people are in a bad process, the bad process usually wins.”

Bad process sets people up to fail in their quest to provide great customer service, whether internal or external.  Frustration drives them to their breaking point, and they leave your organization. Nice of you to provide this well-trained and -developed human capital to your competition.

Satisfied, loyal customers are cultivated by caring, competent people that feel they are well lead and managed. Is your reward and recognition system rewarding and recognizing the attitudes, skills, and behaviors necessary to achieve your current strategic direction, or is it mired in a bygone era? For example, you might need a collaborative, team environment but only be rewarding a small number of individual performers.

Companies only thrive when each of the organization’s leaders are truly committed to excellence in all of these areas. In addition to better business results, employee engagement is an outcome that money can’t buy. It is the culmination of the right things being done in the right way by the right people at the right time for the right reasons.

Acknowledgements

Star Model Graphic reprinted with permission of the Total Quality Institute

American Executive Cover

 

This article is republished from American Executive Magazine

Have You Wondered Today?

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Wondering LeaderDo you and your teams wonder enough? The question I’m asking is deeper than it appears. I was listening to a group of seasoned business owners talking about the challenges they are facing as they build their companies. More than one indicated that individual and organizational complacency were the biggest issues.

Up until that moment, I had always viewed complacency as a cause of other problems and circumstances. For whatever reason, right then, I looked at it as a symptom.

That allowed me to get around to the other side of the problem. After some back and forth discussion, I concluded that they were suffering from a lack of thought-pattern disruption.

I shared that a friend of mine had once told me, “In five years, you’ll be exactly where you are today, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Obviously, what he meant is that unless we consciously do something to change our thinking, we will be stuck where we are.

Let’s face it. We all know people who graduated from school and proceeded to live in a time-warp where nothing appears to ever change. Like a version of “Groundhog Day,” they see the same friends in the same places and have the same conversations about the good old times. They appear to be allergic to maturing and growing up.

When I went deeper into these business owners’ issues, I discovered that their feelings of complacency came mainly from operating in set habits.

That lead to a breakthrough. To have regular thought-pattern disruption, they had to examine their mental models. We had to find a way to help them view their world differently. We had to get behind the obvious to get to the core thought process.

One way of doing that is to ask yourself a simple question that starts “I wonder…” We all know that many positive discoveries have come from a simple zero-based inquiry. Can you and your team develop the habit of asking more questions and questioning more assumptions?

One way is to develop the mantra “Discover every day.” This is a powerful way to remind yourself and your staff that learning and growing is a choice. It is a scenario that you can move toward or run away from.

The SCAMPER Technique

Another technique that can be used to start this creative-thinking process involves the acronym SCAMPER, developed by Bob Eberle. Here are some examples.

S stands for substitute.

How can you substitute one thing for another or develop alternative uses?

C stands for combine.

What pieces, parts, or issues can be combined differently? A stands for adapt. How can we change the nature of the challenged item/issue?

M stands for modify/distort.

What, if modified, would allow us to better meet more of the needs?

P stands for putting to other purposes.

What other uses/issues could benefit from this being added or made available?

E stands for Eliminate.

What, if  eliminated, would allow us to better meet the needs? What, if not eliminated, would cause us to lose our competitive positioning?

R stands for Rearrange or Reverse.

How would doing something in the reverse order pan out?

There are many other examples of innovative idea-generating approaches. The real question is: can you easily adopt an approach that allows you to apply them to your real world? I hope so. Now go do something differently today.

This article is republished from American Executive Magazine