Leadership: What About These Factors?

This is the fourth in a series in conjunction with John W. McKenna's leadership challenge.

So far, we've looked at influence, a real-life leader story, and the idea of viewing leaders as people, not roles.

What about the multiple factors that are impacting leadership and leaders today?

Here are some that may not be so apparent.The list is incomplete and I hope you'll add to it. I've seen or experienced each one as a manager as well as in my consulting practice. Some are disguised as good things and conventional wisdom. Others you may not have thought about.

Leadership and the Not-So-Obvious

The Leadership Movement

I believe that the leadership movement, replete with books, tapes, and clever sayings has (with good intentions) created as many problems for leaders as it has solutions. Here's why:

1. It has elevated leadership to a god-like practice with god-like qualities. Yet it is practiced by ordinary men and women.

2. The manager/leader dichotomy is intellectually understandable and helpful in delineating the skill one has to exercise in a given situation at a given time. Otherwise it is bogus and, from observation and experience, actually gets in the way of organizations accurately viewing the development of their people. I've never seen a manager who didn't have to lead. Nor have I ever seen a "leader" who didn't have to manage.

3. The range of attributes used to describe effective leaders are relatively standard. You won't find substantive differences among respected writers, researchers, and practitioners.

• No one can be a "10" on all of the stated attributes. No one. Do everyone a favor and don't expect it.
  

• Organizations need to spend some time pinpointing the handful of qualities that are most important in executing the strategy. Focus on hiring and building leaders with those qualities and inclinations, and help them become adequate in the others. But do make them become adequate. If they say it's too much of a struggle, then let them know that that's how you learn.

• Take a page from physicians: You can't cure every illness. Do no harm.
  
  Sometimes the best thing a leader can do is no harm. Make sure that yours have the discernment to know when to make that call.

4. Leadership development is still, for the most part, classroom-based. People are reading books or hearing lectures about leadership. Uh, that's called "increasing one's awareness." There are good programs to learn about leadership. The most useful classroom programs that I've run involve computer-based simulations that require decisions that impact financial, customer, and employee outcomes.

If you're going to actually develop leaders, then let people start leading from the get-go. You can't tell if someone has long-term leadership potential unless you--and the individual--check to see if anyone will follow them.

I can't tell you the number of times that some client has said, "What we do is important! We can't afford to have young/new people managing a project or running a big-time meeting. It's too risky."

OK, fine. When it's time to activate your succession plan, do so with the knowledge that people with absolutely no experience in managing/leading will now have the capability to make mistakes costing  hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of a few thousand.

4. Start doing "What About Bob?" development. Baby steps. (This is related to #3).

Before every leadership  program in which I am involved (sure, I do those, too), I ask participants to rank the value of their development activities to-date. Every one--I said every one--is emphatic about job assignment and small project leadership being the major influence on their development.

What about classroom learning? They said that it gave them a good conceptual model to fully understand what they were experiencing and to develop mental models for their own variations-on-a-theme.

What and How: Potential Conflict

When we sign on with a company, we are saying that we agree with what it wants to do and that we're willing to receive compensation in order to help achieve it. But the sticking points start to emerge when the "how" begins: how we'll do it, how you do it, how come we're working harder than they are, and how can we do it better?

The "how" issue is important because the how helps define our uniqueness and our unique contributions. How we do something is the expression of our expertise. In fact, starting at certain levels in an organization, it's why we were hired.

If leaders get in the way of the how without good reason they'll see a decline in initiative and commitment.

Leaders, Followers, and the Relationship

As strange as it may sound, some people don't like it when the word "follower" is used. In an age when cashiers are "associates" and trash collectors are "sanitary engineers," it's not surprising that egalitarianism would make it's way into the workplace.

Yet if we demand that the heads of our organizations be effective leaders, then we better understand that they can't live up to that expectation without followers.

My online friend and EQ expert Galba Bright describes the productive adult leader/follower relationship in this way:

The most effective leaders I've observed often lead...however, they often follow ..in the sense of eliciting the views of their team and enabling them to shape the direction of the organisation...part of it involves enabling people to lead themselves..it is a messy, frustrating and often very rewarding process.

What works for me is the idea of influence, because it encompasses a range of nuances and behaviours that go far beyond issuing orders for followers to carry out. Sometimes one influences by direct orders, another time, by showing a very deep understanding of the person that you're seeking to influence.

Galba's right, of course. People who are effective in all areas of life know when a situation requires strong, even non-negotiable direction and when a goal is best served through the right degree of participation with the right people.

Are there any other factors that are not-so-obvious but really important to effective leading?

I'm going to add a couple tomorrow in the wrap-up post.

But I know you probably have a shopping list from your own personal experience, so take a moment and let the world know (all enlightening comments cheerfully accepted!).

photo attribution:  www.sphoto.com

Comments

[Dean Fuhrman]

Steve -

Here is my list of what I want in a leader -

- Treat me like an adult ... in return I will do the same for you
- Tell me the truth ... even if there are various shades and even if it is bad
- Talk to me ... let me have some time to develop my own insights into the situations at hand, and then let me participate
- Admit your own mistakes
- Lean on your strengths and recognize your limitations (even publicly) and then fill them in, even if it takes letting someone else take over in that area
- Be collaborative
- Don't be a jerk
- Help me be my best ... help me liberate my strengths/minimize my weaknesses
- Work "with" me ... we're all in it together anyway so be with me

Interesting, I think any follower should follow the same model for any leader they are following.

[Wally Bock]

There's a lot that I like in this post.

I'll start with the leader/manager dichotomy. I love most of Warren Bennis' work, but I think he should be flayed alive on pay-per-view for that nonsense he started about how we need less manages and more leaders.

Note to theorists. If you've got a job where you're responsible for the performance of a group you will have to do leadership work and supervision work. You will not "be" a leader, manager, or supervisor or your will be all of them. Take your pick.

Most leadership "development" is indeed classroom based. Alas, you don't develop in a classroom.

Leadership is an apprentice trade. You get some ideas about what to do and how to do it from classes and reading and such. But you learn about 80 percent of it on the job.

There are three powerful tools to help this happen. One is developmental assignments, as stated in the post. Two others are feedback (from your peers, you subordinates, and yourself), a combination of role models, mentors and peers you can look to for advice.

You learn to be a boss over a lifetime of development. There's no program and if there was it wouldn't work for everyone.

[Steve Roesler]

Dean,

Your straight-talk list conveys the synthesis of real-life experience and sums up the heart of just about every theoretical model out there.

I'm going to weave into into the last post in the series.

[Steve Roesler]

Wally,

Thanks for tossing in the other developmental tools. Don't know why I overlooked them.

Thanks for weighing in on the manager/leader dichotomy. If you can produced the PPV special, I'll be the first to sign up.

That dichotomy has, to me, proven to produce the results of a house divided.

[Wally Bock]

My biggest problem with the "manager or leader" thing is that people take up time with the debate without having much effect on behavior and results. I'm going to do a program next month at a client for their first line supervisors. When I sent them the time plan for the day, the meeting planner wanted to know why we weren't discussing the manager/leader dichotomy because the CEO says he "wants more leaders." I've sent off my response which is that we can do that but we won't be able to teach cover something else like analyzing performance issues, helping subordinates develop, giving and receiving feedback, etc. I asked them to tell me which one they thought we should eliminate. No response yet. I tremble to think they may suggest that we'll be just fine if I lecture more and cut the exercises.

[Steve Roesler]

Wally,

Your response is really a helpful and responsible one. Your client should be pleased to get that kind of thoughtful experience.

I guess the final answer to your question will tell you something--not sure exactly what--about the CEO's knowledge of development. After reading the comment a few times, I guess you could start with whatever the CEO wants and then legitimately follow through with, "Now we need to do this to (either build skill or add leader context).

Please be sure to weigh in with the response. It will make a useful conversation for people faced with the same choices in development.

[Jim Stroup]

Best line of a piece chock full of them: "The range of attributes used to describe effective leaders are relatively standard. You won't find substantive differences among respected writers, researchers, and practitioners." This is precisely why the leadership movement is a terrible distraction and waste of intellectual energy and organizational resources - to some degree it is actually dangerous.

Best line from the comment thread: ". . . he should be flayed alive on pay-per-view for that nonsense he started about how we need less manages and more leaders." This bit from one of Wally's comments only hints at the damage done by the arrogantly insular pontifications of the self-styled prophets of the modern leadership movement.

Your focus on practical experience - particularly as a deliberate part of a management development program - is an important antidote to this.

Thanks so much for this excellent piece.

[Steve Roesler]

Jim,

Glad you like the focus of the article.

I know that you are also committed to the practical application of principles that work because they are based in both truth and reality. I keep thinking that the proliferation of "here's how you should be as a leader" books and workshops are simply one more example of Utopian social engineering, but in a business context.