Leading Effectively Series
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We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
Doug
It's an old question; how much of "you" can you reveal at work? I don't mean dress code, but acting and saying things the way you would outside of work. Where's the line between inappropriate and inauthentic?
With social networking, flexible schedules, and hip-mounted technologies that keep us connected to people and places all over the world – separation between work and non-work is no longer the default way of doing things. Most workers have to figure out and manage their boundaries – by reinforcing them, blurring them, or whatever makes sense in the moment. Switching from one’s “work-self” to one’s “non-work self” is something we have to do more frequently. Many folks blend work and non-work “friends” on social networking sites. That could be a good thing, but is it? The idea of an integrated self is appealing - it'd make life easier, but is it a equal option for everyone?
Being authentic is bound to be easier for folks who are part of the leadership “in” crowd (aka folks who fit the leadership mold – who look, walk, or talk in a manner consistent with dominant images of leadership). As we collectively embrace more inclusive images of leadership, I imagine the option for everyone to bring their full self to work will increase.
In the meantime, we may have to ask ourselves is this inappropriate or is it something that challenges our image of leadership - and thereby places an expectation that someone else has to be inauthentic in order to fit our leadership mold?
My recent post about the legacy of Ted Kennedy stirred up an interesting discussion in CCL's LinkedIn Group. Our blog posts are fed in as News items for the group to read and discuss. If you haven't joined us there yet, we'd love to have you in the group.
Two of the main ideas in the discussion are 1) can someone reinvent themselves? and 2) how “perfect” do role models need to be?
Here's what I have been thinking.
I have witnessed high-impact experiences prompt significant changes in people's lives; personal transformations. People can and do make big changes in themselves. Not everyone experiences it, but some people do have a moment (or a time) when they decide – I’m not the person I want to be or that I could be.
What's really interesting to me is how complex personal transformation is and how difficult it can be to foster. I usually think of things like a serious illness, the death of a loved one, or some other major event as a potential prompt. One discussant recommended the book The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back by Waldroop and Butler as a place to read more about personal transformations; I haven't read it but it looks fairly well rated by other readers. Another goes so far as to say “A leader who has been through this comes out a better person and a better leader.” While facing significant challenge is not my idea of a good time, it can be one of the best teachers we have.
Regarding the second idea, all leaders have flaws and experience failure. Having children and entering public office are two surefire ways to find out about your flaws and taking risks is bound to lead to failure at least some of the time. But without a little risk nothing changes - which means nothing gets better.
On a side note, if someone learns from a risk gone wrong, I'm not sure we should refer to it as failure, maybe a mistake.
Anyway, it's difficult to know where to draw the line in terms of when flaws are to great or mistakes too frequent or severe for someone to be an effective leader - and we all have different ideas about how and what we value as the "good" and how we weigh that against the "bad." I guess that's part of what makes leadership so interesting. In one context a leader who is a philanderer is no big deal, in another, it is the leader’s undoing.
I’d be interested to hear what people think are the flaws or mistakes that can revoke a leader’s “role model” status. What do you think?
Tom Glavine was recently released by baseball's Atlanta Braves. A little background on Tom Glavine - He has won over 300 games as a pitcher (a watershed statistic for pitching greatness), two Cy Young awards (an award handed out to the best pitcher in the league), 10 times an all-star, and 1995 World Series MVP of Atlanta’s only world series in win in the 1990s. More than likely, he’s headed to the Hall of Fame.
 Glavine had been with the Braves since being drafted in 1987. He left the Braves to sign a more lucrative contract with the rival New York Mets club in 2003. He re-signed with the Braves in 2008, pitched a few games, but hurt his throwing arm that year. He had surgery, and had been rehabbing since, hoping to return to the Braves in 2009. I read last week that his rehab start with the Braves minor league Single-A team in Rome Georgia went well. That same day when I went home, I was watching the MLB network and saw that the Braves released Tom Glavine. I was shocked.
Many have speculated why the Braves released Glavine, a veteran pitcher with a proven track record and lots of nostalgia attached to him of glory days of the past. Some have thought that the Braves wanted to get out of paying a $1 million bonus if Glavine pitched in the major leagues. Others thought that Glavine’s pitches were just not acceptable for major league pitching and that he just didn’t have what it took to pitch in the majors anymore. Some (and I put myself in this group) see that the Braves are just trying to move on, and use their high potential, youthful (and much cheaper) pitchers and start with them. They need “on-the-job experience” and no more training in the minors. It is probably no coincidence that if Glavine came to pitch in the major leagues, there would be no spot available for star phenom Tommy Hanson to move up from the minor leagues to the major leagues. It would cost more money to put Glavine in the majors and keep Hanson in the minors, and would somewhat slow down Hanson’s development into the star pitcher the Braves (and everyone else in major league baseball circles) thinks he will become.
My friends asked me how I felt about this, as they know I am a Braves apologist and an Atlanta Braves homer. What I told them: Loyalty always takes a back seat to youth and/or money. Back in 2003, Glavine left his loyalties behind and signed with the arch-rival New York Mets for more money. This year, the Braves left their loyalties behind to try and save up some money, and help the progress of their future by cutting ties with a player synonymous with the success of a decade ago, and promoting someone younger for success in the future.
Leaders sometimes have to face this same decision. They have to choose between loyalty of their people and cutting costs in dealing with the problems in their own organization. On a more personal level, sometimes they have to choose between staying loyal to their present company and the opportunity to make more money at another company. Glavine was an integral part of both scenarios during his career. The final outcomes of both have not been pretty for either side. Personal feelings aside, one can see that it boils down to “it’s just business.” Sad, but true commentary.
 On Friday I did something that used to strike fear in my heart. I took my two young boys to the video store to select a movie for the weekend. The kids walked into the store, agreed on a movie, and we walked out the door in less than 10 minutes. Easy. But it used to be a nightmare. They would bicker on and on about which movie to get. I would mediate and ultimately figure out which movie would satisfy them both.
Until one day when we’d been in the store for 20 agonizing minutes with no end in sight and I’d reached my limit. I said, “It’s your job to pick out a movie together. If you can’t agree, we will not get a movie.” As the squabbling continued, I refused to get in the middle and just repeated, “Talk to your brother and figure it out.” Eventually it sunk in and, miraculously, we walked out with a movie in hand.
Now it’s habit for them. Whether it’s deciding which snack to buy at the grocery store or which video game to play first, I don’t do the heavy lifting for them. And they’re getting good at it. They approach problems differently than I would. Their reasoning is different. And their solutions are creative.
As leaders, this can be an easy trap to fall into. We don’t give employees a chance to do the heavy lifting of figuring out their own solutions. We want to hang on to what’s made us successful: namely, being great solution generators. We shy away from delegating because it’s easier and faster just to do it ourselves. If we really want to be successful, we need to conquer our fear of delegation and get our minds around what it means to contribute in a different way.
My boys weren’t learning anything from watching me pick out a movie or make the peace between them. But when I gave them the power to make a decision I normally make, that’s when the learning kicked in. About how it feels to be empowered, to have the authority to make decisions, to develop a new-found confidence in their capabilities.
That’s what good leaders should do – let their people learn not just by observing leaders but by doing the work of leaders. I like this quote from Rudolf Frieling, SFMOMA curator of media arts:
“(T)hese objects, once they are assembled, will lend themselves to certain functions, but they might also be reconfigured and used in ways that we can not foresee. Precisely because we might embrace the idea of dysfunctionality-the fact that it becomes more difficult to do something maybe is what makes it more interesting — and provide an open situation.”
Dear Mr. President (Elect),
Congratulations on your election into office! I'll bet the thrill of victory seems like a distant memory already.You’ll be coming into power under difficult circumstances: For the first time in 40 years the country is at war during a presidential transition, retail sales in October slumped 2.8% (the largest decline since 1992), the Senate is considering extending $25 billion in loans to the auto industry (not to mention the billions designated for the financial sector bailout), OPEC slashed production quotas by 1.5 million barrels a day at the end of October – an action that had minimal effect on falling oil prices.The list of crises and resultant emergency measures goes on and on.
Given the calamities occurring on almost every front, I think it my duty as a citizen to help provide you with a realistic job preview. In a leadership role like yours, you can expect to be deluged with data, figures, trends, information, theories, and opinions from a wide variety of experts. You probably already have been. Know, however, that you’re not alone. Leaders from all walks of life experience this barrage. Because they can’t possibly be everywhere at every moment, they have no choice but to rely on information from others. At first, this dependence can be unnerving. After all, you (like other senior leaders) have ascended to your position based on your individual skills . . . your ability to locate and process information, your communicative aplomb, your intellectual horsepower.
When leaders get to the point that they can no longer survey the informational landscape alone, they must develop one of the most under-acknowledged but critical leadership competencies: the ability to discern. Discern what? Good information from bad, reliable sources from unreliable ones, priorities from nuisances, competence from incompetence, realism from hype, and so forth. When leaders are good at discerning, we take the results for granted. Organizations (or nations) work smoothly because sound decisions are made at all levels. When they’re bad at it, the results are the stuff of despair. Mediocrity becomes the pathetic stunt double for excellence, crises overshadow priorities, and people shake their heads in disbelief at the quality of decisions.
Here’s the irony. Discernment belongs to the social sphere. Each of the standards above (i.e., what is good, reliable, or a priority) is determined in and through communication with others. That’s why you’ll need to surround yourself with others who will tune in, tell the truth, and argue. These actions will shape the standards of your presidency.
So, Mr. President, I hope you’re able to find some time to tune up your BS detector (and those of your Cabinet members) prior to your arrival in the White House. You’re going to have a lot of people coming at you with a lot of information. You’ll need those radars in top shape to make the best decisions. Let me know how I can help.
My son went to Atlanta to visit his sister, and when he returned he brought a pitifully skinny street kitten home with him. The cat, now named Jasper (Holstein, I added, since he's black and white), is underwriting the vet's next vacation at my expense, but has managed to gain 2 pounds in a month, which is 50% more than his original 4 pounds!
 Jasper Holstein bonded with my son Isaac immediately. I've heard that cats always do that with the people who rescue them. I don't know. Trust was instant, and certain. Slower with the rest of us. I've watched Jasper developing trust with my other two cats.
Pumpkin Jack, an orange tabby who was a local street kitten until my female cat brought him to us last Hallowe'en, is still young enough to play with him, at Jasper's unrelenting insistence. Jack still doesn't completely trust Jasper, but Jasper flings himself at Jack with complete abandon, legs and arms splayed, vital organs completely exposed. Total trust. Jack is more cautious. Jasper is still young, but he's big enough to hurt. All his little sharpies are in good working order. Jack chases and allows chasing, but when Jasper pounces, Jack growls and spits and hisses. Jasper then jumps a couple of feet straight in the air, and walks away. "No problem. I'll be back."
The other kitty, Yoda, a Siamese who also came to us as a pitiful lost kitten a few years ago, covered with kerosene, his ears full of mites and held painfully at half mast, still suffers from some of the ill effects of his weeks on the street. One is blindness. At first Jasper jumped on Yoda the same way he did on Jack. He learned quickly that that wouldn't work with Yoda. Yoda would just sit down, close his eyes, move his ears to half mast and wait for Jasper to give up. If Jasper jumped on Yoda while Yoda was walking across the floor, Yoda would just wear him like a fur stole, and keep on going.
So since playing didn't work, Jasper grooms Yoda. Jumps on him and licks him all over. Like he's Yoda's tiny mother. He interacts with the two big cats in completely different ways, but he appears to trust them both completely. And he seems to have made them trust him. He started curling up to sit and sleep with them after just a day or two.
And then there's me. One of the things that most irritates me about a cat is if it runs and hides from me. I'm not as fast as I used to be. It's hard for me to get a cat that runs from me. And Jasper is quick. He can dart out a door in a heartbeat! But the endearing quality of this little kitty is that he doesn't run away. He darts out, but he allows himself to be retrieved.
We talk about how to develop trust a lot in our leadership programs. Especially the question comes up of how to re-establish it after it has been broken. I know humans are not completely like animals. (This is a hypothesis, of course. The evidence is still out.) But there are some lessons here from Jasper.
Jasper certainly had plenty of reasons not to trust. He had had a rough time of it until Isaac rescued him. He could have fallen back on any of these reasons as an excuse not to trust, but he didn't. He gave everyone, including even the veterinarian, a fresh chance. There was no cynicism in this small cat. Even starving, he never growled at the other cats or fussed. He was glad to get whatever he could from anyone, and he strategically figured out what the best way was to fit in. He made no unreasonable demands on anyone. He figured out how to serve each one. He runs from Jack, but he doesn't run from me. He holds Yoda down to groom him, but he doesn't try to hold Jack down. He chases Jack but he doesn't chase Yoda.
So we need to give one another fresh chances too. We need to let go of cynicism and find ways to serve one another. We need to make an effort to understand one another as individuals. We need to figure out ways to fit in and be useful instead of throwing our weight around and making unreasonable demands. Trust is a bit elusive, but I think if we are trustworthy ourselves, that is the first step.
 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a book I used to read over again as a child. As I recollect fondly about my three imaginary companions - Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodman and Scarecrow, it dawned on me that their adventures along the yellow brick road contains some endearing lessons on relationships and a leader's journey.
Cowardly Lion was on a journey in search of courage. While, he finds himself intimidated by the fierce beasts of the forest, it was through moments when his companion's lives were endangered that he found courage to risk his own and and take a stand. Tin Woodman was in search of a heart and it was through the supportive relationships around him that brought out compassion, conviction, and a concern for others. As in the words of a song "Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have." The adorable scarecrow was in doubt of his own intellect and it was through tribulations, not of his own, that he demonstrated remarkable insight and wisdom together with his friends.
Like Cowardly Lion, one may feel intimidated by stronger forces or negativity at the workplace. Yet courage is found in standing up for one's companions and acting on behalf of those who may not be able to defend themselves. Like Tin Woodman, leaders may feel that the demands of work have turned them into hard taskmasters. Yet compassion can be found in relationships that draw out the positive rather than the negative. Like the Scarecrow, we may feel that we're never smart enough for the task. Yet wisdom is found when tested in challenging circumstances and developed in solving challenges together with others.
The journey of the yellow brick road may resonate with our own dilemmas and struggle as leaders. The endearing lesson is how the journey is enriched with diverse travel companions. Our ongoing research at CCL on how leaders in different parts of the world develop, reveals a salient truth to leader development - relationships play a critical role in supporting, provoking, and drawing out development. It is through such relationships that one develops courage, compassion, and wisdom, even when the ideal seems to be far from reality.
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