Who is a Leader?

Are You a LeaderThere is an old saying, “in today’s world, its not what you know but who you know that counts.” Now lets modify it to fit the context of leadership, “in today’s world it’s not what you know that makes you a leader; it’s who you are that counts.”

I am working from the assumption that anyone writing and reading in the leadership development space has long since moved beyond the ‘either you have it or you don’t’ paradigm that sees organisational leadership as a simple ‘talent’ issue.  More than likely also is acknowledgement that having a good tool kit is only one aspect of leadership and that development implies ongoing endeavors.  Possibly even, systems thinking is the lens through which the issue of developing leadership is viewed.

There is currently quite a buzz about leadership and systems thinking.  The language of complexity and chaos theory pervades blogs, academic writing, and discussion about systems thinking and its practical application to the field of leadership development.  There is also a significant buzz to the opposite effect in terms of the lack of practicality despite any attractiveness of the theory.

It seems to me, however, that whilst the pace of change has increased exponentially, the world in which we humans live has always been complex to a greater or lesser degree.  Really, all that has changed is that some of us now see it from a different perspective.

Similarly, viewing the world from a simple ‘either/or’ world view is just that; it is a way of seeing things, a paradigm – which unfortunately for those in the minority – still largely dominates the world of organisations.  It also seems to me, to use a very crude analogy, that to try to persuade doubters of the practical application of a systems thinking approach is a bit like a pacifist trying to prevent war by fighting.

I sometimes wonder whether the benefit of systems thinking is not so much in any practical organisational application, but more in giving us a lens though which we can view who we are, and where we fit in the complex world in which we live and work.  That is, being more conscious about who we are and what we seek to create in the world enables us to create more meaning and satisfaction in our lives.  Being and not doing is to me, the real power of systems thinking and is also the ‘who’ of leadership.

I think the following story gives a flavour of what I am trying to describe.  Or company did some work with a group of leaders not so long ago.  We were looking at the place of personal growth and self-development in the role matrix of being a leader.  About half way through the session a question was posed to the leaders group about what they might change in themselves in order to generate a different outcome with a ‘difficult’ employee.  The response from one leader (let’s call him William) was clear, and somewhat bluntly delivered, “Why should I care?  As far as I am concerned they either like it or lump it!  If they don’t like my leadership they can go and work somewhere else”.  There was a momentary and rather shocked silence in the group before my well practised ‘group leader’ swung into action and we moved forward with the session as adequately as possible.   But, in that moment, what I was really conscious of was that I wanted to say, “Well you SHOULD care about the poor people who work for you!”

This incident led to some soul searching within me in the weeks following, and I wish to share some of my thinking with you.  My first reflections were thus:

  1. Systems thinking tells us that everything we are is learned.  No matter how blessed our genes, early life experiences and later experience in life and work, no leader is capable of optimally managing every situation he or she faces; nor is he or she beyond learning something new.  .
  2. Further to that, Ken Wilber in his Integral Theory describes the development of a new paradigm as both ‘including and transcending’ a previous paradigm.  Systems thinking also tells us that a holistic systems thinking approach is a more sophisticated paradigm than the mechanistic cause and effect, ‘either / or’ view of the world this leader was demonstrating.

But, despite the comfort of knowing this, something didn’t quite sit right in me.  The only way I can articulate what I was also thinking goes something like this…. Who am I to judge? ‘I am right and he is wrong’ is not a systems thinking way of seeing this situation.  So I began to reflect on and examine the situation from the perspective of some of the following understandings about systems thinking that we use in our work:

  • We human beings operate in our work and play in a network of relationship where it is impossible to fully see and understand the extent of the whole picture.
  • Even if we could see it all it is only a snapshot of a moment in time and then the next interaction occurs and the whole picture changes.
  • We cannot anticipate what will happen next.  We can warm up to what is possible but ultimately we have to act in the moment to respond as best we can to the situation or person we encounter.
  • How we respond is dependent on our personal ‘role system’ or the role repertoire we have developed within ourselves over time.

(N.B. a role comprises the values, beliefs, somatic experience and behavioural expression of a whole world view that occurs in response to another person or situation).

  • ‘Who we are’ emerges from our role system.
  • There has to be a sufficient level of perturbation in a system for change to occur.  Challenge is often the first step to change and every challenge is an opportunity to learn something new and add to our role system – or for changes to occur in the wider social system.
  • We can also choose to grow our role system (or wider social system) by being consciousness of what we are seeking to create.
  • Just as ‘we are what we eat’, who we are will largely determine who will follow us.

As I reflected on the situation I came to the following understanding:

  • The leader in question works for a large and successful family-owned business. There is a very low staff turnover and many staff remain in the business over their entire working lives.  They don’t consider themselves poor at all!

We have observed that many people who choose to work in family-owned and operated businesses tend to be comfortable or perhaps more accurately familiar with and accepting of the dynamics of such a family system; and perhaps originate from similar family systems themselves.  In such situations there is little need for change to the leadership practices in the business and the ‘FIFO’ principle works well.

  • In our work I have learned, sometimes painfully, that the way we work is not for everyone, not everyone is ready, willing and / or able to work with a systems thinking approach and the situation I have described was one of those occasions.   There simply was no requirement for William to change.

I myself however, found that I was really challenged by how judgmental I felt in the moment of William’s response.  My personal reaction to this situation was incongruent with my view of myself as a leader.  I highly value diversity, and struggled with the idea that I might expect William to see the world from the same lens as I did; or that I would believe his response was less acceptable than mine (even though I did).  This situation provided a platform for my learning and for growing who I am as a leader.

A wise teacher once said to me when I was struggling to deal with a situation where I was not the formally mandated leader, but it seemed that rest of the group I was working with were looking to me for some sort of leadership.  He said, “Leadership is conferred by the people who follow you.  The question here is not, Are you the leader?  The question is, Who is the leader you choose to be?”

Connect with Arohanui-Grace: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn

Really Useful Things Leaders Can Do In A Recession

Leadership - RecessionA Brit, Jenson Button, recently won the first Formula 1 motor race of the 2012 season. You might not know too much about Formula 1, but those of you who follow Nascar will get the picture. These super fast and highly complex cars are designed and tuned to perfection by a dedicated team of experts. The drivers are trained and highly skilled. Any mistake, any imperfection can lead to disaster. Yet despite the complexity and despite the critical importance of getting it right, Button did not drive around the track in Melbourne pulling a team of engineers behind him in a trailer! The hard work had been done in advance, when things were quieter, when the pressure was reduced and when there was time for careful thought and analysis.

As Leaders, whether in business, in not-for-profits, or in public service; we are constantly looking for that key competitive advantage, that unique something that will set us apart from the competition and will result in us making it to the chequered flag before everyone else. We’re also consistently challenged by the tension between investing time and energy for the future whilst still delivering today.

Global recession is pretty challenging for most of us, but as we start to see early signs of recovery we have an opportunity: Race day is coming closer!

Now’s the time to get that engine tuned, to get some re-design so that we can make the best use of our aerodynamics when the race starts. Now’s the time to make sure that every member of the team has the chance to deliver peak performance.

People

No improvement journey can be successful if there’s no focus on people so people have to be the starting point!

When times are hard, our natural human inclination is to revert to survival mode. Creativity can become stifled, and anxiety can lead to team members becoming competitors or even enemies. But no one ever united around a vacuum! What a great time to share a positive vision of the future and to support team members to develop a better understanding of themselves and each other. Leading a vision is crucial, – and thinking around some key team-building, team-working, and team-development tools offers a road-map. In most organizations, it’s not the skill set that causes problems, it’s the attitudes, the commitment and the ability to collaborate with trust and creativity.

Process

Jenson Buttons Formula 1 Pit Team can change a wheel in about five seconds. – Actually, they can change four wheels in about five seconds!  Whether we’re delivering products or services, we can’t disregard key processes. Process review is pretty challenging when we’re at 105% of capacity and if things go well, that’s where we’re going to be in the near future. 65% of capacity doesn’t feel great but it can provide the margin that’s needed.  Those managers and leaders who maintain a focus on their processes will know: if you’ve been running with the same process for 18 months or so, the chances are that there are some valuable gains to be made!

Product

Over the last few months, I’ve worked with a manufacturer of office storage solutions that has realized that their existing machinery is ideally suited to make a whole range of other products for a completely different market; and with a service provider who has recognized that its excellent process for supporting people with learning difficulties, can offer a competitive edge in the care of elders. Now’s the time to talk. Talk with clients and customers, talk with the production guys and the R&D guys, talk with colleagues, neighbors and suppliers. What does the market want from our existing products and services? Where is the brave new world? What are we really great at and how else could we use that expertise? Innovation sometimes comes in a flash of inspiration. But usually it comes from hard work and collaborative exploration.

Leadership - Recession FinalRecession certainly doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do, but it can offer us an opportunity to focus on getting people, products, and processes in great condition – ready to take on the challenge of future opportunities no matter how each of us, defines that particular chequered flag.

 

 

Connect with Richard Andrews: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Be a “Karma Yogi”- The Leadership of Thoughts and Action

Karma Yogi LeadershipLeadership is encompassing, endearing and all pervasive to the man kind. They say, history repeats itself and history is the greatest teacher of all.  Since time immemorial, every century has examples of leaders which have led by the front – by their thoughts and action.

Someone in the prehistoric times would have rallied the infant human society and would have started creating social groups – hence the village would have been formed. Someone would have discovered fire, invented the Wheel and would have shared that with the social society – these advances were innovations which we don’t give a second thought about in our daily lives these days; but they have shaped our lives and altered the course of history. At that period of time, these advances would have been as ground breaking as the invention of the Internet seems to us in the modern times.

So What Really is Leadership?

Thought leadership or action leadership? Or a combination of both?

What really causes people to follow leaders to the journeys unknown, to pledge lives, to follow without a second thought?

What should a leader have? Assertiveness? Superior intelligence? A position of power? Great aspirations?

Or is it something else which transforms a person into a leader?

These questions have been asked before, and answers are actually there for everyone to understand who looks at human history.  All we have to do is “stand on the shoulders of giants” to understand what really is leadership.

Leadership Starts When People Turn Back to Their Inner Self.

Leadership is about being detached, yet being in control of the inner senses, and thoughts.  Leaders must understand their life’s philosophy and understand what makes them happy and hence involved in what they do.

One of the extremely well known scriptures from the Indian history is Gita – which encompasses a life’s meaning and is a great work on stratagem. It says, “Don’t worry about results – for results are temporary” – focus on your work which might take you a lifetime to achieve the results and leave the results to be savored as an outcome of your work – this is also really known as the “karma”.  This is action leadership.

Think about it, this verse from Gita, gives out what a leader must do to be a great leader.  People tend to forget about what they love to do and just focus on bottom lines, sales targets and the like and in that process they forget about the road they travel to their goals. Savoring the journey is more important than the relishing the time to reach the destination.

Steve Jobs travelled to India when he was 19 and returned back as a Buddhist. In later years of his life, he acknowledged that this trip had a profound impact in his working life and – where he saw the power of intuition and experiential wisdom- that too in his travels from Villages – places where little or no modern learning had reached.  The thought or learning that prevailed was from centuries of collective wisdom from the likes of Gita, which are still understood well. Steve Jobs’ stated goal was not to make money – but to make the world a better place to live in. He made a lot of money – but that was only a bi-product of him trying to do what he loved the most- innovate and hence create products which helped shape the world we live in.

The process of turning back to your inner thoughts and yourself to find your true calling evokes the thought leadership process. In the usual grind of daily lives, contemplation is usually lost, and we are many times left with a singular sense of monotony and the morbid.  Being able to be detached, and achieve the state of Zen is the starting point for becoming a great leader. Many times a person knows and understands the path he/she wishes to take is what  is the right way, yet still gets distracted by what others might see as not right.  The Zen like ability of a leader keeps him/her focused and truly allows them to enjoy the path they seek to take or in more Indian terms- be a ‘Yogi’. A person who practices Zen is a Yogi – to seek internal awakening- essentially this is thought leadership.

Leadership Failure is To Be Afraid of Failing

If a leader is afraid of failing, he/she has already failed.  Failures teach and to be afraid of learning is unacceptable.  Leaders believe and believe strongly in their paths and if they ‘fail’ – the failure is just an outcome.  To be true to themselves and to the people they lead, learning to be not to be afraid of ‘failing’ is a must. Leaders must then be ‘Karma Yogi’. Just focus on work with Zen like ability and forget about results.  Again going back to the example of Steve Jobs- he was fired from Apple – and at that point of time- he would have seemed like a failure for many. He came back to apple, much stronger – after turning Pixar into a success story – and lead by his beliefs to unshackle two more industry verticals to creating a totally new market for tablets. Failures are part of the game, and leaders should be able to enjoy the failures as much as they enjoy success.

Leading is Really About Understanding People.  

Leadership draws on the ability to be compassionate and have a superior sense of empathy.

To quote from two recent tweets from the Dalai Lama

“Compassion is the ultimate source of success in life”

“With inner strength or mental stability, we can endure all kinds of adversity.”

Coming from one of the great leaders in the modern times, this has a special meaning.  He is a person who has rallied his people for a common cause- which necessarily might not have been a personal cause for people who have stood by him and the cause espoused by him.

If the leaders are prepared to take on the work they would want others to do at their behest and lead from the front , the “circle of influence” grows. Getting hands dirty is essential and leading from the front sets the right example. What Dalai Lama believes and preaches – really sums this age old adage. Selflessness, truthfulness and great vision shines though like a beacon and hits the heart of people around you. Loyalty and motivation are not rationally defined, but emotionally governed and people can sense selflessness, truthfulness and a great vision which rallies them to follow their leaders to the ends of the earth and beyond.

Summing up, leaders should work to be a Karma Yogi. Action leadership combined with thought leadership is karma yogi.   Great results are adored and praised. The work path is usually forgotten and relegated to secondary spot- but this is what gets leaders great results hence it is more important to focus back being a Yogi and rely on karma to achieve the great results!

Connect With Rahul Mehta: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Leaders: Know Thy Self

Self LeadershipLeading Yourself: Most of us reading the posts in the Leadership Blogathon will be very familiar with the idea of leading others, and perhaps even with the growing, somewhat counter-intuitive idea of followership (following others), but there seems to be less written directly addressing the issue that sits at the core of all issues around your ability to lead and that is the key tenet of leading yourself.

You may be technically excellent. You may be a great presenter. You may have incredibly high standards, but if you are unable to lead and develop yourself, it is unlikely that these important but somewhat peripheral strengths will be enough to become a sustainably great leader. Yourself, probably not even fully known to you, is what connects you to other people; what directs your actions and thus leads you to having great integrity or little, being trusted or not. Without these things established at such a “close to home” level,  it is difficult to lead others effectively.

I’m no expert in Zen Buddhism, although I am interested in it, so if we can at this point agree to put aside the interesting idea of ‘emptiness’ and the advantages of not possessing a goal, it may be helpful for you to work alone or with someone else to really understand what sort of person you are now and want to become. Being honest about where you are now, and clear about the human being you wish to evolve to become, is time incredibly well invested. I would suggest taking a formal or informal 360 feedback report. Work with the evidence it provides to think about how others perceive you. You shouldn’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” but work on areas you acknowledge as important and that may currently be holding you back. Further develop those strengths that remain important to your newly defined self.

You see the closer that your current self-image is to your ideal self, the higher your self-esteem will be. High self-esteem is based from this position of integration between what you are, as a self, and what you want your self to be. The confidence and calmness that emanates from high self-esteem will have great impacts on your own day-to-day effectiveness (Bachkirova, 2009).

Once you have decided what sort of person you want to be and you have committed to working towards that, you can begin to craft what sort of leader you want to become. The order is important here. You can’t achieve this effectively, the other way around. You can’t, for example, decide you are going to be a collaborative leader and start along that path, if you are unaware that others see you as self-centered or not a team player.

Knowing your personal development goals will allow you to align this to a leadership style or approach that is fully integrated. No more acting and being a different person at home to the person people see Monday to Friday.

Connect with Glenn Wallis: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn

Leadership Productivity Through Improved Energy

Leadership ProductivityLeaders, no matter their geographic location, are expected to perform and achieve a lot. Their time is consistently taxed as they try to achieve more in less time. Many leaders fail to do one of the most important things that could help their productivity, and that is to make their health and specifically, exercise, a priority. It is important to exercise several times a week, even when you’re on the road. Exercise gives you the opportunity to relax, clear your mind, and it improves your energy levels so you can get more done.

After a busy day, even when I am tired, I go to the gym and exercise. After my workout, my energy level soars. I a filled with positive energy and my head is clear! With this energy I can spend quality time with my family, rather than going directly home and giving the negative energy of a busy day to my wife.

Exercise is a win-win situation for your business and personal life; that every leader should take seriously.

Studies show that people are more productive when they take part in a regular exercise routine. For most of us, it is difficult to make this happen on a regular basis. But as leaders, it is important to lead by example and to encourage your staff as well. Don’t let the fast and busy life of a leader, manager etc… influence you the wrong way.  By exercising and eating healthy you will feel energetic; and this energy will transfer to your staff, employees, friends, and family.

In my spare time I’m a Personal Trainer, Wellness Coach, and a Martial Arts Teacher. I teach everyone that it is critical to get a balance in their nutrition intake and their physical activity in order to ensure a healthy, productive life – now and in the future. Below I have listed a few easy exercises that a busy leader can do every day Even as little as 15 minutes a day can be hugely beneficial to your health. Something is better than nothing.

  1. One of my favorite and intensive full body exercises is called a burpee.
    1. Begin in a standing position.
    2. Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground. (count 1)
    3. Extend your feet back in one quick motion to assume the front plank position. (count 2)
    4. Return to the squat position in one quick motion. (count 3)
    5. Return to an upright standing position. (count 4)
  2. Push-ups you can do in several ways, for example: Push-ups with your elbows inside (triceps) and elbows outside (chest). Push-ups use a lot of muscle groups. If you cannot do too many that is OK, start low and keep doing them every day and slowly increasing your count.
  3. Sit-ups you can also do in several ways, for example, knees bent in 90 degrees, 180 degrees and touch your toes. A good one for your core is planking on your lower arms, about 10 cm above the ground. You can also do crunches and leg raises.
  4. Additionally you can do squats, jumping squats, and lunges.

Try to be consistent and spend a little time every day, even if it is only 5 minutes.

One last tip, look for small ways to exercise: Take the stairs instead of the elevator, when you’re walking the dog, take a bigger route. Park farther away from a store entrance, do leg raises under the seat in front of you when on long plan ride.

Just as with any leadership initiative, do it one step at a time.

No more excuses, start today!

Connect with Ronny Snel: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Followership: the Corollary to Leadership

Leadership & FollowershipIn a team environment high performing followers are every bit as important as good leadership, yet we pay the most attention to leadership. Recently I did an Amazon search for ‘leadership’ and got 73,828 hits, yet a search for ‘followership’ received only 187 hits, most of which were not relevant to the subject.  Conclusion: leadership is the hot topic; followership …not so much.

There is a built in assumption in our society that everybody should strive to be a leader.  That’s where the fame and fortune are—with the leaders.  You can get a PhD in organizational leadership, but you can’t even get a bachelor’s in followership.

Who is voted the MVP football player?  99% of the time it is the quarterback—the titled leader of the team.  Has a center ever been the MVP?  They are always there, even when the QB is injured.  They mix it up on every play.  If he doesn’t get it right the play fails and the game can be lost.  The center’s job is to make sure it is his quarterback that is presented the Lombardi trophy and say he is going to Disneyland.

There is one major exception to the lack of followership training: the military. The military is the best at training and educating followers.  Why?  Lives depend on the quick thinking and reaction of followers.  The best followers get to be leaders.  Their success as leaders is based on their followership.

My point is that we tend to emphasize leadership training in our organizations to the point where we have lost sight of how to get even better leaders and get a higher return on the investment in organizational training and education.  Simply stated, we need a focus on followership education.

Why should an organization focus on followership as least as much as leadership?

For starters, there are more followers than leaders and they are the ones that are doing the real work.  Logic tells us that we want the best followers possible and training and education are the means to develop them.

Great leaders will not guarantee an optimal organization, but great followers will come close.  The best organizational leaders will come from the ranks of the followers.  Therefore, focus on creating great followers and great leaders will emerge.

How do you nurture great followers?  We need to go beyond the standard answer of training in the actual job and move to a view of followership education just as we have done in leadership education.  Can we identify the traits of great followers?  Can they be learned and taught?  Yes to both, but first we need to look at organizational culture.

Followership is all about the culture

Every organization has a culture–a personality–and multiple sub-cultures which can promote or hinder the organization’s mission.  Leaders and followers want their organization’s culture to be positive and productive.  The formal culture can be designed and integrated in a way that the informal sub-cultures are also affected.

All organizations have lots of words on the wall: mission, vision, values, etc. statements that are impacted by the culture.  The culture gives life to the words in the best case and can kill their attainment in the worst case.

The best leaders craft the details of the organization’s culture in a variety of ways from funny to quirky to serious.  Some of those details can change over time, so the wise leader should put a rock-solid cultural foundation under the details.

The foundational, life-giving element is the “Followership Culture.”  Seven simple principles constitute the Followership Culture that guides everyday activities by everyone in the organization. They are easily taught, learned and integrated into any organization.

The followership principles

The 7 principles that make up the Followership Culture are:

Instant Response: Begin action immediately when assigned a task; complete it as fast as possible with quality; ask the leader to adjust priorities if necessary.

Initiative: Be a self-starter, just do it; look for problems to solve; look for new ways to accomplish the mission.

Imagination: An innate capability in all humans, share ideas daily to multiply their potential power; focus on the small stuff first as it leads to larger possibilities.

Integrity: Honesty; declare mistakes immediately; tell the truth without compromise, leaders cannot lead without it; prove to be trustworthy and you will be entrusted with more.

Inquire: Ask the “who, what, why, where, when and how” questions about everything to learn; leaders look for learners; teach others.

Inform: Keep the leader updated; no secrets allowed; share your tasks and ask for input.

Involve: Life and work is a team effort, join; participate in the whole organization; act beyond the job description.

More words on the wall?

Uh, oh!  Did we just add more words on the wall?  Unapologetically, yes!  On the wall, in the employee manual, anywhere it makes sense to put them.

But they have to be more than another set of words, they must result in action.  People are accountable for their actions, so they are recorded and graded in personnel evaluation reports.  The Followership Culture is also about accountability and the accountability tool is to put them in a section of the evaluation report.  This way the rock-solid foundation is reinforced with re-bar (steel rods).  It’s all about the culture, but it is a culture for which everyone is accountable.

Do leaders lead differently in a Followership Culture?

No.  Excellent leadership is still required just like it is in any successful organization.

Yes.  Their senses must be more attuned to certain leadership skills and traits in order to reinforce the Followership Culture.  For example, great leaders know that they must go to the locations where the followers are doing their work.  Whether it is a visit, a walk through, a lunch or just chatting on the floor, leaders know that direct contact with the followers is essential.

However, great leaders in the Followership Culture take a turn at doing the dirty work.  They start with what organizational people would say is the toughest, dirtiest job and they do it for a day.  Then they move on to other jobs and do them for a lengthy period.  They go beyond intellectually understanding what their followers do to feeling what they do.  It’s like a combination of the TV programs Undercover Boss (only this is overt) and Dirty Jobs.  The leaders are the follower for that period, not the boss paying a visit over coffee.

Followership leaders educate their followers in a mindset that permeates the entire organization from top to bottom so that everyone knows what is expected when they go to work every day.  If you educate followers to be great followers, your organization will perform at a higher level and great leaders will emerge.

Implementing the Followership Culture

Leaders need to gain control of the culture to propel the organization forward.  If not, culture will happen on its own and it won’t be all positive. These principles are described more in depth in “Follow to Lead, the 7 Principles to Being a Great Follower.”  The book contains a humorous, unforgettable fable to be used in a followership education experience for everyone in an organization. It also includes nine additional lessons for leaders so that they will be better leaders in the Followership Culture. You can see more about it at www.follow-to-lead.com.

Please share your perspective of Followership below.

Connect to Don Mercer: Website | LinkedIn | Facebook

Leadership by Example: How to Ignite this Quality in Your Life and Work

SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE... What bit of wisdom has MOST influenced your leadership?   What other thoughts and advice do you have to share with others? Throughout the world, it is clear that our notions about LEADERSHIP are being turned upside down, questioned, revitalized and changed before our eyes. Like all renewal, the process may seem chaotic for some – but what is emerging has fresh fingerprints on it. As I’ve watched and participated in my own ways, I’ve often thought of the opening line in a treasured old, tattered book, written over fifty years ago. I found it by-chance in a hidden corner of a used bookstore. I’ve wondered if its message carries a modern day truth for all of us. It reads…

 [William Makepeace] Thackeray once said that the world is a looking
glass 
and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
Take a Look at Yourself by John Homer Miller

What is this reflection asking of you and me?  Something significant! The reflection of our faces in the mirror of the world is a reminder that the future, collectively, rests in our hands. We are here at this time for a purpose – and it is hard to deny that we are the ones who will create the next chapter in history. A daunting, yet exciting reality and opportunity, yes?

 There are some compelling reasons for us to be responding to our reflection in the mirror by re-evaluating our notions of LEADERSHIP as we have known it: Times have changed. Things are different. Our “systems” are broken. The stakes are very HIGH – and our global and domestic families are looking to us for a renewed kind of leadership, worthy of solving our most pressing problems for the good of all.

The stereotype of the traditional “leader” we have known has been a person seen with authority and privilege – even if in reality, we discover that leadership may be just a little bigger cubicle and a lot of hard and rewarding work. However, today the landscape of leadership touches each of us, at all levels of society. Leadership is as local as any of us sitting at our desks or collaborating in an online meeting or via social media or working in our communities – and as global, connected, and far-reaching as time, distance, and technology can take us. In an instant, it stretches across cultures and many dimensions of difference. We all are part of an emerging diverse, global leadership corps with opportunities every day to influence something or someone. Because of this reality, there isn’t the option we once had to just “opt-out” and leave it to others. As an example, I’ve heard many groups that say they don’t want to rely on a single leader’s authority. Yet, collectively, they are leading one another – and like other bold pioneers across the world, they are influencing change on many fronts far beyond what anyone could imagine. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela described the next steps for us as we continue to open the way:

 “…For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a
way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
The true test of our devotion to freedom is just
beginning …With freedom come responsibilities.” by Nelson Mandela

What does it take to LEAD by Example?

There has been a looming set of questions being asked by many groups, “What’s your message?” What do you want?” I believe strongly that the fastest way to calm these questions will come from leadership by example. Two world renowned leaders, present and past,  serve as sources of timeless wisdom to prove this belief: Frances Hesselbein and Gandhi. Together, they make a compelling case that “leadership by example” is the answer. Each leader’s story below demonstrates the power of this quality as a tool of influence, while teaching us how we can apply it to our lives and work.

Frances Hesselbein is founding president and CEO of The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation). He is an exemplary “leader by example.” Among Frances’ long and remarkable list of leadership contributions and achievements, she is a Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient, the highest civilian honor in the United States of America for her pioneering work on behalf of the Girls Scouts, women, diversity, and volunteerism. Frances has been my mentor, teacher, and friend for many years. She taught me many valuable lessons. Two stand out related to our discussion on leadership by example:

  • Frances never deviates from her core values.
    I was asked to describe her one time: Frances is a beacon of leadership excellence. Watching her is a lesson in how to BE a leader. Meeting her is an experience you never forget. Futurist, Joel Barker, my long-time colleague, illuminated her qualities when he said, “Frances taught me how important influence – not power – is in changing the world for the better.”
  • Frances defines the leader’s role and lives it.
    She writes:The leader of the future will not be the leader who has learned lessons of how to do it The leader for today and the future will be focused on how to be – how to develop quality, character, mind-set, values, principles, and courage.”

Mohandas Gandhi forever whispers to us across decades, by his example, providing the ultimate self-assessment and call-to-action for our time. For me, it started many years ago when I read a story about Gandhi. He had a practice of not speaking one day a week. On one of these days, he was traveling by train. When the train stopped at a midway station, a journalist came up to the window yelling, what message do you have for me to take back to my people? Gandhi, staying true to his practice, wrote five words on a slip of paper and put it up in the window for the journalist to see. It read, “My life is my message.”  In the years since, it has become a kind of silent, perpetual mantra for me inside – I have multiple places in my office and home where I’ve placed his message in different forms. It is always asking how my behavior and actions serve as an example for others.

A Send-Off Message for You:

This seems most important at this International Leadership Blogathon, yes? This seems especially true when the send-off is defined as a celebratory demonstration of good will and enthusiasm for the beginning of a new venture. Leadership by example is perhaps our most powerful tool in putting what we are learning here from one another into action. Imagine how different the world would be if one-by-one, we would each reflect all that we wish for in how we think, behave, interact, and operate in our lives and work. At the end of my book, Putting Our Differences to Work, I quote another passage from John Homer Miller that sums it up:

 “You want [a better organization,] a better world? What you need to help [make your organization better] or to make the world better is not more education of your intellect. What you need is something spiritual and ethical added to your knowledge. You need educated emotions and a dedicated heart.”

May your life be the reflection of your leadership message.

SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE BELOW…
What bit of wisdom has MOST influenced your leadership?
What other thoughts and advice do you have to share with others?

Connect to Debbe Kennedy: Website | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

Leadership is About Achieving Results (Which are Beyond the Ordinary!)

Leadership ResultsA few years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to a ‘dialogic’ conference held at a small conference venue in a Château in the south of France, near the beautiful St. Paul de Vence.  This was a select gathering of leaders drawn from business, the arts, religion and academia; fourteen diverse minds drawn from across the world.  Who could possibly turn down such an opportunity, even if it were just for the wine, fabulous surroundings and ‘bonhomie’?

A dialogic conference is, as the name suggests, where people talk, present, ask questions and discuss.  The topic for the conference was the mere small and insignificant question ‘What is Leadership’?  After three days of intense discussion and fascinating rumination the group came to the interesting conclusion that it was impossible to define leadership because the concept meant different things to each individual.

To say the least, this was a little disconcerting, since I had promised to return to my organisation with an inspirational insight into leadership and here was I about to proclaim that some of the finest minds in the field had declared that it was an undefinable concept!  Moreover, the discussions had been brilliant; inspirational, thoughtful and intellectually challenging, so the lack of an outcome seemed wasteful in the extreme.  On the return flight I decided there must be some learning to be taken from the event.  From my folder of extensive notes taken from days in cloistered reflection came the following conclusions:

  1. Leadership is about outcomes not behaviours.  Training leaders cannot be achieved by training behaviours or developing qualities; this has been tried and discredited.
  2. Developing leaders, I believe, is about helping them develop a set of skills (intra-personal skills and inter-personal skills), which:
    – Encourage collaboration
    – Encourage the generation and execution of ideas
    – Maximize the potential of people
    – Maximize their own potential (including an understanding of their own limiting beliefs)
  3.  Leadership is a system that enables an organisation to achieve results beyond the ordinary. The leaders are the catalysts that make this happen.
  4. Good managers are not necessarily going to be leaders. Leadership should not be confused with Headship.
  5. Leaders will have an unequivocal source of inspiration that underpins their actions and can be drawn upon by their people.
  6. Most importantly, Leaders have clarity of purpose that drives them to find ways of achieving results that are out of the ordinary.

Of course, that’s not the end of it; there are always new ideas, concepts and approaches which are added ‘into the pot’. I’m tempted to suggest these points are the basis for a much broader discussion.  Anybody fancy three days in the South of France?

Connect with Dave Bradley: Website | BlogTwitter | LinkedIn

Reflection as a Leaders Tool

Leadership ReflectionWhen I started writing The Leaders Workbook back in 2009, I had discussed leadership and leaders with thousands of people around the world. I came to realize that we often ended up talking about the same topic – how can we become better at what we do? What are the key success factors to grow and develop as leaders? What can we – each one of us – do to develop ourselves?

We often agree that if we only could spend more time thinking about our actions, our plans, the results we create, how we ended up where we happened to be, why we made such and such mistake, how to avoid it in the future…the topic list goes on, while the challenge remains. I found that leaders on all continents, in all sectors, in all industries and on all levels, struggle with the same issue. The challenge of reflecting.

We all accept that we need to stop and rewind from time to time. There are not many I have met that call themselves a leader, who do not agree that we need to focus more on retrospection and reflection. Yet, very few seem to have found the key to reflection in todays busy schedule.

Time

As soon as you agree that reflection is important for you to grow as a leader, to develop yourself and your team, your first quest becomes to find the time for reflection. There are written books on time management, from Steven Covey’s Big Rocks to Getting things Done, from Personal Efficiency Plan (PEP) to Do it Now. There are trainings, theories, and competing theories of course,  and wars fought between some of these groups. None of these tools give you more time – they can only help you structure your time better.

No matter how you use your time, I believe that you are able to find the required time to reflect in your busy schedule. Most leaders I know, travel. Some only between their home and their office, others seems to always be stuck at some airport. And travel time is easy to convert to reflection time. When you sit there, stuck in traffic, you can spend quality time with yourself. And if you, like me, spend much time on airports and planes, you have plenty of time to bring out that notepad and jot down your doodles while thinking about how you are doing.

Even if you are not traveling, there are plenty of other opportunities for reflection – if you are working out, spend that time thinking, reflecting on your goals, and your results. You can make it a routine to take five minutes in the morning (or before going to bed at night) to reflect on a topic. Or you could schedule a meeting with yourself every week – 30 mins a week will take you a long way!

Take a couple of minutes right now, and review your weekly activities. Where can you add reflection to an activity? As soon as you figure out that it is quite easy to re-design your time to accommodate for reflection, the next challenge turns up.

 Topic

After time, figuring out what to reflect about seems to be the biggest hurdle for leaders I speak with. My answer was: Any reflection is good for you., it does not really matter what you reflect upon, as long as you reflect. In my own reflection, in retrospect obviously, I found that my answer wasn’t very helpful. It was too broad, to open to actually provide a solution.

I realized that most of us had unlearned reflection and reflective behavior, even if reflection is one of two key elements in experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). We need to relearn reflection. As leaders, there are some topics that tend to be more important than others, and the challenge for many leaders is to discover these topics, and to use those as a training ground for relearning reflection. As soon as you start searching for these topics, you realize that those tend to evolve around one main area – leadership.

Questions like «How valid is our goal?», «What is different now, compared to when we started? How does this impact our journey towards the goal?», «Where are we going if we continue down this path?», «What alternative paths are there?», «How can I change my behavior (so I am better suitable to reach our goal)?». The questions themselves may be different, and the answers you seek may not always be what you like to find. That is part of the purpose of reflection – you are to look deeply within to see if you are doing the right thing. For you, for your team, and for the organization.

Impact

I took it upon me to relearn reflection, as well as learning leaders how to reflect. All of the trainings I design are designed with reflection in focus. We use reflection actively to both teach the topic of the training itself, and as a way to exemplify how important reflection is in our learning and development. Often in our trainings, you will go through exercises designed for individual reflection, group reflections and plenum reflections, each iteration adding to your learning. And often without you realizing that what you are doing, is in fact, reflection.

The same is true when you start looking into reflection as a leadership tool. The more you reflect, the more you realize that it comes naturally, and that without it, you are not able to do your job. You will discover that we all reflect, most of the time. By relearning how to use your reflecting skills as a tool in your leaders toolbox, you can increase your ability to see possible challenges early, and seek alternative solutions before you are forced into a corner. You become pro-active.

To create that impact, I invite you to take a couple of minutes to identify three possible topics where you would benefit from reflecting more. If you like, you can share those topics below in the comments.

Connect with Kai Roer: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Leadership Around the World Using Positive Power and Influence

Leadership InfluenceMany definitions of leadership involve the word INFLUENCE. “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” (John Maxwell) What does influence have to do with leadership, though?  A leader needs to do two things: build or maintain relationships, and get things done.

What is common to all cultures is the need for a leader whom people trust and admire. But in the global organizations that exist today, what makes someone trustworthy and admirable when you have five different cultures in the room as those attributes are viewed differently across cultures? Also, there are various personality types in addition to cultural differences. Lastly, don’t forget the various levels of dysfunction that exist in most corporate cultures! Therefore building or maintaining relationships can get complicated.

So how do you build relationships and get things done in this kind of environment? INFLUENCE.  There are many different ways to positively influence people. For example, you can use logic, you can be clear about what you need, you can draw out the other person using disclosure to make them comfortable, and you can speak to what you both have in common and paint a picture of where you are headed.  Positive influence is about being genuine and authentic which builds trust, hence relationships. That trust is built when the leader is consistent and therefore reliable.  These attributes come naturally when a leader uses positive influence.

Many top leaders want everything delivered in sound bites of data. The direct reports are instructed to have the problem defined and fixed, with the data to support the solution. If you can’t present it in ten minutes, then don’t bother. What many corporate structures do is isolate people as they get promoted so internal relationships become less and less important. Getting things done becomes critical, as the top layers are beholden, i.e. in a publicly traded company, to the Board and, in the US, to investors and Wall Street.

However, there is a period of time with each ascending role where internal relationships are critical in order to get things done. Understanding that each person is a unique personality requires you to be flexible in your use of appropriate influence styles, which is critical to your success in building solid relationships.

In order to get things done globally generally translates to a lot of conference calls with people that have never been in the same place physically and have cultural differences. There is, however, a similarity between unique personalities and cultural differences.  Leaders have to stop focusing entirely on their own agenda and understand what matters to their direct reports regardless of culture. Knowing about the culture you are interacting with obviously is a great first step. The next step is to create the time to connect. Listen to what the issues are that create barriers to progress. Make it safe for people to give you bad news. Back up your people when things go wrong. Be present.

Whenever I talk to groups about being present, the room becomes very still.  When I am present with another person from any culture, the gift of my attention in this age of a million distractions creates an immediate bond. When I am willing, as a leader, to be present with someone, I am authentic and become more trustworthy. I am then a leader whom people trust, admire, and want to follow. Isn’t that the definition of impactful leadership?  Building my constituency one relationship at a time and exceeding expected results.

Connect with Sherri Malouf: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn