Leaders, Are You Creating Gangs in Your Org?

May 20, 2014 by

Leadership-Gangs-GraffitiIt was just after eight in the morning. I had been on an overnight flight across three time zones. My mind was fuzzy with fatigue and eyes drowsily droopy. But shut they would not.

I grabbed my bags and headed for the train station. A few minutes after rolling out of the station, my sight was assaulted by vivid color. For the next mile, the earth-retaining walls and the back walls of buildings next to the railway tracks were covered with graffiti. And I wondered, if graffiti was this elaborate here, why was there none in the airport arrival lounge?

At every train stop, the same scenario repeated itself about a mile into the station and another out of it. An hour later, we rolled into my destined station. It was the same as all the others. As soon as I stepped out onto the street, I quickly surveyed all the surrounding building for any signs of graffiti. None, zilch, nada… I wondered, “Why?”

There was clearly a lot of artistic acumen in the canvas of graffiti that was laid out on those walls. I could see the intricate thought. However, I also had a deep sense of the violent despair in the soul of the graffitist, emptiness.

The words and images were a depiction of a lost hope. It was like those behind the graffiti had ganged up to send a silent challenge and a plea to be pointed in the right direction. What if their talent was harnessed to improve the aesthetics of public places?

Back home, two separate incidents helped me understand why ganging up emerges when true leadership fails. When a leadership vacuum occurs, gangs slowly start to form and thrive.

Stop, Police!

I had a conversation with a senior police officer as he sat in the passenger seat of my car. Where I come from, it isn’t uncommon for a police officer to flag you down for a lift. They sometimes don’t have sufficient resources at their disposal. It was then that I spotted the driver of a commuter bus commit a traffic offence.

When I asked the police officer why this was so rampant, his response left me gutted. “You see,” he sighed in resignation, “If I arrest this guy, I’ll waste a good part of my day. The paperwork is time-consuming. When he goes to court, he’ll only have to pay a small fine and is back on the road a few hours later. So why bother? No one has been injured anyway.”

This special breed of gangs have emerged because of a lack of leadership in the judicial system and weak enforcement of laws. The traffic-law-breaking gangs have grown to endemic levels; just because a leader abdicated their role to put in place the right policies and protocols.

Checked Out

The second was a series of events at one of my former workplaces. Discord was evident everywhere. The quality of work had deteriorated. By the time I left, about half the work force was coming to the office an average of thirty minutes past the official reporting time. Some would saunter in as much as an hour late and act like nothing unusual had occurred.

About half the workforce was showing up but was checked out. They had formed an alliance; a gang of employees who did the bare minimum work that reflected the quality of the leadership.

Something unfortunate began to happen. A few hard-working valuable employees were unsettled by this mediocre gangs that had formed. They were frustrated as delivery of their results depended in part to their colleagues who had already “checked out.”

Finally, some of these valuable people started to check out too. They did not join the gangs of mediocrity; they left the organization for good!

Three ‘must-dos’ for Leaders

First, people have a deep desire to be led in an authentic way. You can’t expect goodness from people if you don’t extend it to them first. “If we have a good heart and concern for others, our actions will be positive.” ~Dalai Lama

Secondly, start small before things snowball on you. Assess your habits as a leader. If you show up late for work late, your followers will follow suit. It doesn’t matter whether you are a morning person or not. “Leadership is an action, not a position.” ~Donald McGannon

Third, listen to the pulse of workers who churn out quality work effortlessly. Protect and influence them to create gangs of excellence that grow the organization’s vision. “Leading an organization is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.” ~from the Tao the Ching

Which gangs would you rather lead? I’d love to read your comments!

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Leadership Around the World Using Positive Power and Influence

March 16, 2012 by

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.

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