Are Leadership Expectations Too High and Self Trust Too Low?

Does the attention given to "leadership crisis"  ever make you pause and wonder: "Why do we wring our hands about this day after day?"

Note: I believe good leadership is important and necessary. But if business people are problem-solvers and we're still proclaiming leadership a big problem, then what's up?

Here are some thoughts:

Skewed Expectations?

1. The issue isn't always whether someone is actually exercising leadership. The issue is often "this is what I think a leader ought to be and (s)he isn't that way." (I don't feel warm and fuzzy all the time and I'm supposed to feel warm and fuzzy all the time. It's the leader's job to determine that I feel good).

2. Sound-bite/Star Search leadership. The Leader-as-Celebrity syndrome takes a pop-culture approach to who is good and who isn't. "Our CEO doesn't have the stage presence and media following that ____ _____has." No. Your CEO quietly and without fanfare helps create profits and jobs and then goes home and spends time with the family.

3. The Business Book leader. We want our leaders to be the kind that best-selling authors say they should be. OK, let's see where this leads us:

Let's say that you aren't feeling like a natural leader. No problem. Unnatural Leadership: Going
Against Intuition and Experience to Develop Ten New Leadership Instincts will help you grow unnaturally. Solves  the problem.

Leadership Secrets of Jesus might surprise some, not the least of which would be Jesus. He would no doubt be ticked off at Paul and those prolific disciples who already published his secrets under the mundane marketing moniker, "New Testament."

OK, so you aren't especially filled with grace today. No problem, you can still be a leader. Everyone loves Abe, so how about Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times. This will be especially helpful if you happen to be president during a civil war and the best general already signed up for the other side.

Engineers, Scientists, Researchers, and IT folks: Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World.

Oops. Soft-skilled leaders take heart: Leadership Is An Art.

And if you're pressed for time in your quest for how to lead, you can skip The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader and just do Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager.

What's Going On With So Many Leadership Sources?

I honestly believe that leaders are second-guessed so often that they're second-guessing themselves. Instead of trusting the fundamentals and principles they've used along the way, many are turning to multiple sources of advice. Each contains some truth. But ultimately, we all have to exercise self-leadership and determine how we're going to "lead" our lives.

So it is with organizational leadership. Read, study, try out new things, and grow. But determine how you will lead and why...and trust that you've made a thoughtful and wise decision.

Then take the first step with confidence.

Weigh in on this one. What do you think is legitimately getting in the way of leadership?

Comments

[peter vajda]

Hi Steve,

You ask,, "What do you think is legitimately getting in the way of leadership?" True, real, authentic, transparent, human(e) leadership? For me, in a word, fear.

(I might begin with the book, "Leadership and Self-Deception." Looking inside, first. Many can't or won't. Why? Too scary.)

Marshall Goldsmith (a premiere executive coach as noted by Forbes Magazine) says, in referring to his process when coaching leaders, "The person who is receiving the coaching has to get confidential feedback on how everyone sees him. He is going to find out what he's doing well, what he needs to improve, to venture suggestions. Then we sit down, with his boss, possibly, and talk. We have to reach an agreement. He's going to have to get the feedback, talk to people, follow up on a regular, disciplined basis, apologize for previous sins."

Apologize?!!!! Me?!! Hmmm

Goldsmith goes on, the process is called "...feedforward, not feedback. You have a conversation with your co-workers. Whatever they say, you sit there, shut up, listen, take notes and say thank you."

Shut up, take notes and say thank you!!!! Me?!! Hmmm

Not too many leaders who are wrapped in bravado, hubris, and obsessed with their self-image would be able or willing to do this. Why? Fear (anger,resentment,denial, resistance, perhaps, first, but beneath that is fear).

So, we have/read another new book, a new technology of leadership, lots of information, facts, knowledge....much old wine in new wine skins...but has much changed?

In my work and experience, those who have done the "inner work" allow and admit of their fear (as it's not a "weakness") while, at the same time, are also able to access their inner sources of strength and courage to move through it.

Those who resist, deny and move around their fears respond, for example, with, "Sure, I'm willing to do what it takes to change. But, do I have to be different?" Ah, for these many, the conundrum that inhibits change. The devil I know vs. the devil I don't. Leaving one's familiar, safe (unconscious) emotional and psychological comfort zone can be very, very threatening. So, for them, it's "let's change 'it, you, him, her, or them'." "Change" is safer that way. Safer for whom? and, Why? Hmmm.

[Jim Stroup]

Steve,

The thrust of this post has been a major theme for me for many years. A direct or indirect current in your recent posts has been stress, and the damage and disarray it can cause. Well, just mention leadership to an executive and watch the bloodpressure go up and the theatrical atmospherics begin.

There are few subjects that have attracted so much attention and generated so little insight as this one since the rise of professional management in the past century or so. Nevertheless, almost any discussion of it will attract desperate attention, leading to faddish approaches and market-oriented prescriptions that come and go - and come back again - like the tide - relentlessly changing without changing.

I prefer to take the view that leadership in an organization is not properly - or at least not best - understood as an individual characteristic at all, but as a characteristic of the group dynamics that take shape with the creation of the organization. I think the notion of celebrating leaders as a calling separate and superior to management is not helpful; rather, managers lead, and, more importantly, they manage the leadership that is intherent in their organizations.

Granted, much of this gets lost in the semantics, but there are distinctions here that make a real difference - I've seen it in the Marines, I can assure you, and I've seen it in my work since.

Thanks for a strong, challenging post!

[Steve Roesler]

Peter and Jim,

I confess that my frustration with the current focus on individual super-leadership as the answer to organization effectiveness led me to go down a somewhat tongue-in-cheek path.

Between the topics of authenticity and the leader/manager faux dichotomy, we probably have enough material for another year of conversation!