What is the Real Work of Leading?

I would hope by now you have had a chance to read through Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb. He has compiled 52 practical and wise fundamentals of life well lived and work well done.

For a taste, consider Rule #41: If you want to be a real leader, first get real about leadership. Getting real about leadership involves four things: how leaders are, what leaders do, how leaders act, and what leaders leave behind them.

How Leaders Are. Leaders are both confident and modest, they’re authentic and they are good listeners. He quotes Ron Heifetz, “Too many leaders die with their mouths open.” He adds, “Leaders who need to talk all the time create companies where people simply stop listening.”

What Leaders Do. Leaders are coaches. They attract and grow talent. They lead by example. Maintaining high standards themselves, they challenge people to do their best work. “After a real leader has moved on, the people who worked for him or her always say, ‘I learned more and did more than I ever thought I could.’”

How Leaders Act. Real leaders guide. They don’t dictate. “Real leaders create an agenda, offer criteria, and describe a strategy to take the company ahead.” And they learn from their mistakes.

What Leaders Leave Behind. Leaders leave behind “a passion for the business, a love of the company, and the commitment to leave it healthier and stronger than he or she found it.” They leave a team of great leaders. They articulate sound values and instill them into the culture of the business. And perhaps most importantly, they make more leaders. “The real leader is the one who makes more leaders at all levels of the organization. Leaders practice leadership to cultivate more leaders.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:59 PM
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The Application of Love Leadership

I wanted to share with you an excerpt from John Hope Bryant’s book Love Leadership. The subtitle – The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World – says it all. Bryant is the founder of Operation HOPE, a non-profit provider of economic tools and services that has as its long range objective to literally “drive itself out of business.”

Bryant says we have “lost our story line;” too focused on the me instead of the we, we have become indifferent. He describes the opportunity to lead he found, this way:

In inner cities today, you’ll often find a liquor store right next to a check casher, next to a pawn shop, next to a rent-to-own store, next to a payday lender. If misery loves company, then this is a pile-on. There’s simply a super-abundance of predatory businesses, and many people have lost hope. They are poor in spirit: they’re not skeptical—they’re cynical; they have low self-esteem and negative role models; their get-up-and-go has got up and went. So they go to the check-cashing service to forfeit their today, and go to the payday lender to forfeit their tomorrow. And because they don’t believe they’ll have a tomorrow, they go to the liquor store to forget about their yesterday.

In these communities, poor people spend roughly $10 billion each year on what I call ghettoized financial services—high-interest and high-fee check cashing, payday loans, refund anticipation loans, title lending, rent-to-own, and the like. I know of one individual who got a payday loan for $800; by the time he finished pay it off six years later, after rolling this payday loan over countless times, he had paid $15,000 in interest on that $800 loan. These businesses are in many cases short-term-oriented, purely transactional business models that add little value, and even deteriorate the customer base they purport to serve.

These businesses are ultimately led by one thing: fear. People are afraid to lift themselves up, to lead themselves out of their situation, to think for themselves. Bad capitalism preys mercilessly on these fears.

Throughout my journey from the inner city to my work as a social entrepreneur, I have had a front dash row seat for witnessing how fear destroys a community. But I would learn that there is another way to live and to do business. It would take almost 30 years for me to understand that the antidote to fear is love.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:34 PM
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What Is Your Platform?

Pat Williams is the Senior Vice President of the Orlando Magic, the NBA team he co-founded in 1987. In What Are You Living For? he lists four reasons for living our lives: to build character, for what we believe in, raising another generation, and our influence. He writes, “Through our influence, the very best part of us lives on even after we physically die.”

He lists seven practical ways you can invest your life in the lives of others:

1. Be careful what you say.
2. Be aware that others are watching your example.
3. Use your accomplishments and your influence to inspire the next generation.
4. Take advantage of every “moment of influence.”
5. When you make a mistake admit it.
6. Be generous with your time and resources.
7. Make all of your decisions on the basis of ethics and integrity, not personal advantage.

There are people in your life that need your influence. We all have a platform to “speak-up” from and make a difference in someone’s life.

Dale Murphy (Major League Baseball All-Star and founder of I Won't Cheat Foundation) is a sports celebrity who seeks to leverage his achievements on the playing field into a positive influence on the lives of others, especially young people. People in the sports world who are conscious of their influence often speak of their “platform.” In the literal sense, a platform is an elevated stage from which a person can speak and be heard by the crowd below. A sports celebrity has a platform of fame, which he or she can use to influence fans, young people and society at large.

You may not have the platform of a sports star. But there are people who look up to you, watch your life and listen to your words. Like it or not, my friend, you have a platform and you are responsible for your influence. How are you using your platform?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:50 AM
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IBM's Robert Sampson on Values-Based Leadership

Robert Sampson, general manager of Global Public Sector at IBM, delivered a speech to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, on the power of values to change the world. He says, “Technologies, no matter how game-changing they are, come and go. What really matters in industry and in government is individual character.”

Sampson relates the story of an IBM computer scientist named Arun Hampapur who was driven to enhance the value derived from surveillance systems, to illustrate the value of creating a culture in which people seek to innovate not just for the sake of innovation, but to apply themselves to the kind of innovation that changes society:

Arun Hampapur began studying the video surveillance systems in New York and Chicago. As Arun saw it, these systems had an inherent problem: They could ingest data, but they could not react to real-world incidents in a timely way. You could only respond to a criminal event once it already happened. That wasn’t good enough for Arun.

Arun and his team came up with algorithms that could identify patterns of suspicious behavior and then instigate a real-time alert. In New York City, for example, Arun’s team defined nine patterns of criminal behavior. A guy standing around in the subway on a 90-degree day wearing a trench coat and carrying two duffle bags, for example, constituted one pattern. A white, windowless van circling the block ten times constituted another. And so on.

Who told Arun to develop this digital surveillance system? Nobody. He thought it up on his own.

We haven’t yet calculated the revenue that IBM and its business partners will derive from this solution. But as for the contribution that Arun Hampapur has made to the well-being of millions of people he will never know—here is truly something of value. It’s the value that comes from having values, from believing in the kind of innovation that matters in the lives of individuals and of nations. I’d like to leave you with four leadership principles based on these values:

• Be grounded in a set of values you believe in. If you are committed to every client’s success, you have to communicate that belief in every interaction with your employees and clients. And reward the people who look past organizational silos or who rethink existing technologies to come up with smart solutions.
• Keep your leadership and management roles in balance. You have days where you’ve got to tell people what to do. You might have to kick them in the fanny. But you also have days where you’ve got to lift them up. The hardest days are when you do both.
• Think huge. Wild and crazy ideas matter. What’s holding you back on executing them? Organizational obstacles? You can deal with them. Skills? You can acquire them. Remember that you are in the ICAF because you already have demonstrated your desire to think huge, to act on your need to make the world a better place.
• Determine your legacy. If an organization thrives only when you run it, you have not made any intrinsic change. Leave something of yourself behind. Share what you know. Become a mentor.

The world is ready for a smarter planet. It is begging for strong, smart, value-driven leadership.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:16 AM
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A Leader Builds Community

It’s easy to lead the people who think you can do no wrong. It’s easy too, to get taken in by their flattery. But a leader is responsible for everyone they lead – their core supporters and those at the fringe that may have their doubts. A leader builds community. A leader is inclusive.

In Driving Results Through Social Networks, Cross and Thomas report that “high performers tend to occupy network positions that bridge otherwise disconnected clusters of people.” As a result they can seize the opportunities found in the “white space” between subgroups.

A diversity of voices is essential to a leader. It is not uncommon to find that your most crucial collaborators are not commonly categorized as the high performers and regarded as "in-sync" with you. Instead, we have all seen that these highly valuable people, often found on the fringes, play an important role in making the high performers successful. A leader must be able to motivate these potential partners to join with them as well.

Jagdish Sheth, a chaired professor of marketing at Emory’s Goizueta Business School notes, “One big mistake is when the new leader rewards the people who supported him on the way up, while phasing out the people who did not. Instead, a CEO must realize that he or she is the leader of the company, not a clique, just as the president of the U.S. leads the nation, not just the Democrats or the Republicans.”

Where there is leadership, there is a sense of community.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:00 AM
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The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask

The question of who’s running the organization is a critical one in this economic environment. Many boards are being asked to do what they were never prepared to do. The challenges and pressures are immense. In a critically important book for directors—Owning Up—world-renowned adviser Ram Charan says the economic downturn is a wake-up call to corporate boards. “Boards need to own up to their own accountability for the performance of the corporation.”

Increasingly, "governance now means leadership, not just over-the-shoulder monitoring and passive approvals. Boards must fiercely guard their companies against the threats of rapid decline and sudden demise, while at the same time helping management seize the opportunities that tumultuous change presents but are hard to see in the daily fray of running the business. The board that does both turns governance into a competitive advantage." And all of this without micromanaging. It’s quite a balancing act. [Charan: “Asking questions of an operating nature is not in itself micromanaging, as long as the questions lead to insights about issues like strategy, performance, major investment decisions, key personnel, the choice of goals, or risk assessment.” Why and how is key.]

Charan offers fourteen questions that “get to the heart of the unique issues that boards are facing now.” I think the questions are as insightful and provide as much food for thought as the answers they might evoke:

Question 1: Is the Composition of the Board Right for the Challenge?
Question 2: How Are We Addressing the Risks that Could Put Our Company over the Cliff?
Question 3: Are We Prepared to Do Our Job Well When a Crisis Erupts?
Question 4: Are We Well Enough Prepared to Name Our Next CEO?
Question 5: How Well Does the Board Own the Strategy?
Question 6: How Can We Get the Information We Need to Govern Well?
Question 7: How Can Our Board Get CEO Compensation Right?
Question 8: Why Do We Need a Lead Director Anyway?
Question 9: Is Our governance committee Best of Breed?
Question 10: How Do We Get the Most Value out of Our Limited Time?
Question 11: How Can Executive Sessions Improve the Ownership Function of the Board?
Question 12: How Can Our Board Self-Evaluation Improve Our Functioning and Our Output?
Question 13: How Do We Stop from Micromanaging?
Question 14: How Well Prepared Are We to Work with Activist Shareholders and Their Proxies?

In good times, not enough consideration has been given to question one. Does the board have enough depth of knowledge or experience to ensure the organization stays on track? “Directors as a group must have the specific skills and perspectives needed to carry out their responsibilities.” And these skills must evolve with the times. “If the composition of the board is not appropriate, it is the failure if the [governance] committee. The board must empower the committee to actively shape the board composition.” Bad directors drive out good directors. It’s time for a check-up. Charan’s questions help boards do just that.

Additionally, while squarely aimed at directors, Charan’s questions serve a wider audience of leader’s as well. The questions speak to any leader of the need to “own up” to the responsibilities found in their own context? Are we up to the challenge in the area we have chosen to lead? Are we dealing with the issues? Are we trying to identify the issues early and get ahead of them? Are we learning so that we are better able to perform? Are we aware of our impact? All of these questions speak to the need for personal accountability. Addressing Charan’s questions is the way forward.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:03 AM
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Three Questions Every Leader Should Ask

Robin Ryde explains in Custom-Built Leadership that there are three questions that will bring clarity to your leadership mandate. They will provide “a personal manifesto for how you will lead. They open up and provide entry to a place where your priorities, personal preferences and ambitions can be properly examined.”

How Long Have I Got? This is a question not just about tenure, but the legacy you wish to leave. This will help you to determine your priorities. Your time frame will determine your pace and help you to determine what skills and resources will be of the greatest value to you.

How Grand Is My Plan? This question has to do with your ambition and encompasses three key considerations: your appetite for taking on varying degrees of ambition, your freedom to operate, and your inheritance (it’s rare that we inherit positions of leadership as a clean slate). Timing will certainly affect your level of ambition.

How Broadly Will I Lead? As a leader you will certainly operate within a system. The question is how far will you travel into the domains that affect your issues that stand outside your formal locus of influence.

Ryde pragmatically discusses each of these questions and candidly describes the rewards and pitfalls of the kinds of decisions we make. This book is an important read for anyone taking on a new leadership task or looking to recalibrate the task they are currently in.

Ryde writes, “A long-term leadership strategy requires a very different approach to a short-term campaign. Leadership on a grand scale calls upon a different set of skills to a business-as-usual plan. Leaders who wish to influence a broad range of people and institutions need to develop different qualities to those with a narrower engagement plan.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:56 AM
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Ten Leadership Skills You Need For An Uncertain World

Uncertainty is a part of life. Uncertainty is a call for leadership. Creating clarity from uncertainty is a leader’s stock in trade. Unquestionably some periods of time are more demanding than others. Times like these call on leaders to take a broader view of who and why they are leading and the impact they are having on the world around them. While this is very demanding for any leader, it is also more meaningful.

In Leaders Make the Future, futurist Bob Johansen reports that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity will only get worse in the future. “Solvable problems will still abound, but top leaders will deal mostly with dilemmas which have no solutions, yet leaders will have to make decisions anyway.”

Johansen emphasizes ten leadership skills that will help leaders to cope and thrive in the volatile decade ahead. “We need not passively accept the future. Leaders can and must make a better future.” Although it’s “hard to even think about the future if you are overwhelmed by the present … looking to distant possibilities can provide new insight for the present.” The ten skills he lays out move from the instinctual to the complex and build on each other. Here is a summary of Johansen’s work for you to think on:

1. Maker Instinct: The ability to exploit your inner drive to build and grow things, as well as connect with others in the making. Future leaders will need both a can-do and a can-make spirit. The maker instinct is what separates the leaders from the powerless.

2. Clarity: The ability to see through messes and contradictions to a future that others cannot see. Leaders are very clear about what they are making, but very flexible about how it gets made. How can you as a leader, create and communicate with clarity in confusing times – without being simplistic?

3. Dilemma Flipping: The ability to turn dilemmas – which, unlike problems, cannot be solved – into advantages and opportunities. We must be able to nurture the ability to engage with hopelessness, learn how to wade through it to the other side, and flip it in a more positive direction. Think Roger Martin’s concept of the “opposable mind.” How can you remake a situation with no solution?

4. Immersive Learning Ability: The ability to immerse yourself in unfamiliar environments; to learn from them in a first-person way. Immersive learning requires active attention, the ability to listen and filter, and to see patterns while staying centered – even when overwhelmed with stimuli. Leaders can’t absorb everything, so they must filter out extraneous information and learn how to recognize patterns as they are emerging.

5. Bio-Empathy: The ability to see things from nature’s point of view; to understand, respect, and learn from nature’s patterns. It is big-picture thinking that respects all the multiple interrelated parts and nonlinear relationships, as well as cycles of change.

6. Constructive Depolarizing: The ability to calm tense situations where differences dominate and communication has broken down – and bring people from divergent cultures toward constructive engagement. The next decade will be characterized by diversity and polarization. The temptation is to pick sides, but that is rarely a good strategy.

7. Quiet Transparency: The ability to be open and authentic about what matters to you – without advertising yourself. This begins with humility. Leaders who advertise themselves and take credit for their own performances will become targets. Are you self-promoting?

8. Rapid Prototyping: The ability to create quick early versions of innovations, with the expectation that later success will require early failures. Fail early, fail often, and fail cheaply. Accept failures as important ingredients to success and learn from them.

9. Smart Mob Organizing: The ability to create, engage with, and nurture purposeful business or social change networks through intelligent use of electronic and other media. Leaders are what they can organize. Can you organize smart mobs using a range of media?

10. Commons Creating: The ability to seed, nurture, and grow shared assets that can benefit other players – and sometimes allow competition at a higher level. Can you create commons within which both cooperation and competition may occur?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:30 AM
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How to Hit the Ground Running

Stakes are high. Whether you are just starting out, trying something new or just starting each day with the understanding that you need to be putting your best foot forward, you need to know how to get up to speed, make the right decisions, and produce the right results fast. You need to hit the ground running.

If you could sit and learn from some of America’s best CEOs, you could discover the right steps to take to insure your success while avoiding many of the pitfalls that come from learning from one’s own experience. In Hit the Ground Running, Jason Jennings has made that possible. He has selected ten CEOs that created more economic value for their companies than all of the other CEOs of America’s top one thousand companies during the study period. They made the decisions that allowed them to achieve great results on issues we can all relate to by adhering to, sometimes counter-intuitive principles. From interviews and observation, Jennings has compiled these principles into ten lessons from each of these CEOs that if applied, will help you to hit the ground running.

Rule 1: Don’t Deceive Yourself—You Will Reap What You Sow   Let the Golden Rule guide every decision. Richard Smucker says, “In matters of style, swim with the current but in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

Rule 2: Gain Belief   Leaders gain belief by being authentic and humble, getting rid of regal trappings, proving their worthiness, asking others for belief, and surrounding themselves with others who are also trusted. "I need everyone to respect and support one another and work with each other. Everything else is B.S." says Fred Eppinger of the Hanover Group.

Rule 3: Ask for Help   Howard Lance CEO of Harris Corporation “has a keen sense of humor and doesn’t have a problem generating a laugh even at his own expense.” He says, “Sometimes you have to take the veneer and let people see you for who you really are and share a chuckle or two.” To “hit the ground running" requires that you admit that you don’t have all the answers and engaged the assistance of others when assuming new duties.

Rule 4: Find, Keep, and Grow the Right People   Ronald Sargent’s strategy at Staples is to promote from within, move people around, identify rising stars, make everyone an owner, communicate with your workers and make diversity your priority. Promoting from within “creates a career culture that encourages people to stay longer and stretch their skills.”

Rule 5: See Through the Fog   Pat Hassey, CEO of Allegheny Technologies told Jennings, “It’s the job of the CEO to see through the fog and to be a destination expert. People want to know where the company is headed, what their future holds, the opportunities that exist for them, and what their role is going to be. And they don’t want to wait forever to find those things out.” (See page 97 for Hassey’s well thought out Team Rules that all team members have to agree to part of a Hassey-led team.)

Rule 6: Drive a Stake in the Ground   Jennings writes, "Driving stakes into the ground allows a leader to provide a clear vision about what the company is, where it’s headed, and how it’s going to get there so it can hit the ground running. But it isn’t for the faint of heart. Once you’ve driven a stake in the ground you have to talk about it and promote it relentlessly.” Mike McCallister, CEO of Humana says, “The problem with most businesses is that instead of driving a stake in the ground, they stick a toe in the water and when it gets hard or boring they start thinking about it too much, begin questioning their decision and pull their toe out, changing things, and starting all over again.”

Rule 7: Simplify Everything   "Oversimplify everything! Sit down and ask, `If I could start with a blank sheet of paper today and create the best answer, what would I do?'" says Jeff Lorberbaum, CEO of Mohawk Industries.

Rule 8: Be Accountable   “Setting a personal example of accountability is where many leaders fall short,” writes Jennings. “Instead of starting by being accountable themselves, they use the threat of accountability as a tool to drive others.”

Rule 9: Cultivate a Fierce Sense of Urgency   Keith Rattie, CEO of Questar says, “You must have a sense of urgency—if one doesn’t exist, the CEO’s job is to create one. The mind-set needs to be ‘We’re not as good as we know we have to be.’” Rattie adds that it will be time for him to leave when he loses the “sense of urgency and the belief that we have to be better tomorrow than we are today… it’ll be time to get somebody else in the chair who will bring a new pair of eyes and fresh thinking to the job.”

Rule 10: Be a Fish Out of Water   The CEOs interviewed don’t fit the typical picture of what a CEO should be. They have been described as “humble, authentic, accessible, highly ethical, compassionate listeners and truly, believable committed to doing the right thing for all stakeholders.”

Jennings skillfully weaves the thoughts from these business leaders into coherent and practical lessons. You will find all kinds of great advice in this book, much of it delivered in an almost off-the-cuff manner that belies its value. But it makes this insightful and crisply written book great reading.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:09 PM
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More Useful Quotes from Hit the Ground Running by Jason Jennings

These quotes are from Hit the Ground Running: A Manual for New Leaders by Jason Jennings

Ronald Sargent CEO of Staples warns, “I think a leader has to do something big, new, and different within the first one hundred days and make sure that it’s properly communicated to everyone. If people don’t know what’s going on they’ll assume nothing is going on.”

“The three most important observations I made early on in my career,” says Pat Hassey of ATI, “were that most people are loyal and want to do a good job and be successful, that offering a sincere thank you goes a long way, and that a soft response is always better than a harsh one.” Hassey also remarked, “I promised I’d never let myself get into a position where I’d stop growing. Everybody has a question, an idea, and an opinion, and if you take the time to listen, you’ll end up with a better business. There’s no such thing as a dumb question or idea.”

Mike McCallister, CEO of Humana: "We try to treat all of our people like they are adults, which sounds like straightforward common sense, but it's amazing how many businesses don't."

Goodrich CEO Marshall Larson: “The one thing I did know is that if all leaders in the company thought like me and acted like me, we’d end up with groupthink and make on hell of a big mistake someday and march off the side of the cliff like lemmings.”

Goodrich CEO Marshall Larson: "Any CEO who thinks he can pull all the strings that make things happen is kidding himself.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:08 PM
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Strategic Presence: The Power that Fuels Leadership

Tony Jeary, author of Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life, is a coach to some of the world's top CEOs. In his book he brings together practical ideas to help you get out of your own way. A critical aspect of getting things done through others is presence – your presence. To influence others you need to know how they perceive you and adjust your communication with them accordingly. Here, Tony discusses what he calls strategic presence:

The goal of leadership is to produce superior results on purpose and that makes leadership a results contest. The challenge of leadership is to persuade and motivate those they lead to produce the results they want. When people voluntarily and enthusiastically do what their leaders ask them to do and the desired results are achieved, leaders are considered to be effective and successful! The question is how do leaders really get others to voluntarily and enthusiastically produce the desired results? There are many parts to this puzzle, but there is none greater than a condition I describe as Strategic Presence.

Here is a great story that illustrates Strategic Presence and also illuminates its effect. A student from a foreign country was enrolled in the middle of a school year. During the first day of class, the other kids in the class were doing what kids do. There was a lot of giggling and staring and posturing for the new arrival. The new student was dressed in a way that did not meet the expectations of a few of the other children and eventually one of them (the class clown) began to make jokes about the new student's appearance.

As the scene was progressing toward chaos, the teacher was about to intervene when a girl stood up and told everyone to stop picking on their new classmate. The girl reminded them that it was scary to be new in a school and they needed to be kind to the student and make them feel welcome She reminded them they should treat this new person as they would want to be treated if they were in a new country and a new school. After class, the teacher called the girl aside and said, "That was a very brave thing you did. Why did you do that?" The girl replied, "Because that is what my Mom and Dad would expect me to do!"

This story powerfully illustrates the essence and the effect of what I call Strategic Presence. The girl had merely done what she knew her parents would want her to do. Her parents had succeeded in creating a positive presence in her mind, which gave her the willingness and courage to do what she did. Most importantly, the presence of her parents was so authentic that they did not have to be physically present to inspire their daughter's good behavior.

Leaders create impressions that exist in the mind of every person they lead. It is a presence that defines the perceptions people have of their leaders and what they believe about them. It is this overall persona that I am referring to when I use the term Strategic Presence and there are two types: Positive and Negative. Leaders are constantly creating and presenting images of influence that produce both.

The most important fact about Strategic Presence is that it produces two possible reactions in others. It either produces voluntary cooperation or it produces various forms of resistance. If leaders generate positive Strategic Presence, people will be more likely to support what they want, most of the time. However, if perceptions of leadership are negative people will substitute resistance for cooperation. The possibilities of how people will respond to Strategic Presence are limited to cooperation or resistance. There is not much middle ground between them. As someone once said, "you are either for us against us!" It is easy to see why creating an authentic, positive strategic presence is critical for the execution of a vision.

Creating positive Strategic Presence is not a strategy of manipulation. The positive strategic presence leaders project must be authentic. Failing the test of authenticity means the very image leadership hopes to establish will be perceived as deceptive and disingenuous, or worse. People are very perceptive and they will see through efforts to project a phony persona for the purposes of manipulating their behavior. So, why shouldn't a leader's strategic presence just be allowed to be what it is?" That is a great question and the answer is simple. Many leaders are misunderstood and create perceptions that really don't match their intent. So, understanding how Strategic Presence is created will minimize the possibility of being misunderstood.

So, how is strategic presence is created? What are the things about leadership that speaks the loudest about it? What creates the perceptions that combine to produce Strategic Presence? There are two components that contribute to strategic presence: values and behavior.

Our values are established by what we believe to be right, wrong, true, false, acceptable, unacceptable, appropriate and inappropriate. Let's face it, we have all developed deep, strong opinions about many things as we live our lives. Our opinions spring forth from your values and your values influence what we actually do.

Our values and beliefs impact 5 categories of that drive our behavior, and it is our behavior that creates Strategic Presence. The five categories that drive behavior are:

1. Work ethic
2. Integrity
3. Judgment
4. Courage
5. Willingness to help others

So, if you want to be a great leader, you need to have great values and your values must be demonstrated in the action you take. This is the essence of Strategic Presence and it is truly the power that fuels leadership.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:54 PM
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Attributes of a Boeing Leader

When Ginger Barnes spoke to employees at a leadership development program at the Boeing Leadership Center, she said, “Leadership is all about leaders teaching leaders and about relationships. We can execute the daylights out of anything, so ‘finds a way’ and ‘delivers results’ have always been strong traits. Where we need to improve is in the areas of ‘charts the course,’ ‘sets high expectations’ and ‘inspires others.’” That probably true just about anywhere you go. To strengthen the culture of leadership and accountability within the company, Boeing defined its expectations for leaders as:

A Boeing Leader:

• Charts the course
• Sets high expectations
• Inspires others
• Finds a way
• Lives the Boeing values
• Delivers results

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:30 PM
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Jean-Marie Dru On Leadership

I do not believe much in natural leadership. The majority of chief executives I know were not necessarily destined for that path. They have been molded by the events they have lived through and the people they have met.

The concept of leadership thus evolves into a much narrower question: How can you make sure you will be in the right place at the right time?

To people wishing to enter the advertising business, I always explain that the first quality they will need is tenacity. Mere talent is not much use in the face of the countless obstacles that will get in the way of the best performance. Success is born of determination rather than just ambition. Ambition relates to strategy, whereas determination is linked to execution.

Adapted from How Disruption Brought Order by Jean-Marie Dru

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:08 AM
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The Age of the Empty Suit

In Peggy Noonan’s weekend column in the Wall Street Journal, she delivers another fine essay, Who We (Still) Are: A little perspective for the pessimistic “age of the empty suit.” She writes:

A sober observation came from a Manhattan woman who spoke, on the night Mr. Madoff was arrested, and as word spread through a Christmas party, of the general air of collapse in America right now, of the sense that our institutions are not and no longer can be trusted. She said, softly, ‘It's the age of the empty suit.’ Those who were supposed to be watching things, making the whole edifice run, keeping it up and operating, just somehow weren't there.

That's the big thing at the heart of the great collapse, a strong sense of absence. Who was in charge? Who was in authority? The biggest swindle in all financial history if the figure of $50 billion is to be believed, and nobody knew about it, supposedly, but the swindler himself. The government didn't notice, just as it didn't notice the prevalence of bad debts that would bring down America's great investment banks.

All this has hastened and added to the real decline in faith—the collapse in faith—the past few years in our institutions. Not only in Wall Street but in our entire economy, and in government.

An old friend in a position of some authority in Washington told me the other day, from out of nowhere, that a hard part of his job is that there's no one to talk to. I didn't understand at first. He's surrounded by people, his whole life is one long interaction. He explained that he doesn't have really thoughtful people to talk to in government, wise men, people taking the long view and going forth each day with a sense of deep time, and a sense of responsibility for the future. There's no one to go to for advice.

For several decades we have been systematically dismantling guideposts. This leads us to empty suits. When truth becomes whatever we want it to be, when all truth becomes opinion, when all opinions are equal, then the truth is nothing; it is a empty shell. Living on such a wide avenue is a road going nowhere.

Far too many people and organizations have been accomplices to the crisis we face. In accepting unwarranted short-term gains, we have distorted our role in this world. “Going forth each day with a sense of deep time” requires a truth outside ourselves and building on our inheritance with a mind to those to come after us. We are all soberly reminded of this now. Often it takes a crisis of jaw-dropping proportions for us to face these often inconvenient truths.

While we're at it, perhaps we also need to address the questions we're asking. Questions in search of magic pills will come up empty. It’s time to face up to the hard work of filling the empty suit with substance.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:24 AM
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Weeding Out the Leaders We Need

In Time magazine this week, Michael Kinsley writes that we don’t just need a good man in the White House this time, we need a great man. He thinks both candidates have the seeds of greatness, but “unfortunately”—and this is what caught my eye—“our current political system seems designed to weed out precisely the qualities that are most needed at the moment.”

He suggests that at a time like this we need astringency, not empathy. Feeling our pain won’t get it done. We need leaders willing to tell people what they don’t want to hear. “It's not comforting people about their current situation and reassuring them it will get better. It's telling them that the situation is likely to get worse and that only their efforts can determine how soon it will start getting better. Astringent leadership is Churchill calling on Britons to ‘brace ourselves to our duties.’” But he’s right. Who wants to put that in the White House?

We vote for people that tell us that they will fix everything and not bother us. We vote for people that don’t make us take responsibility—who can place the blame somewhere else—who will level the playing field at someone else’s expense—smooth talk over straight talk. History teaches us that this always comes at a cost. It’s problematic for both leaders and followers. Both get their roles wrong and both pay a price. Kinsley writes:

We have lucked out several times in our history when implausible characters showed unexpected greatness when it was needed: a country lawyer from Illinois, a spoiled patrician in a wheelchair, to name two obvious examples. Even more miraculous (though troublesome for democracy), both Lincoln and F.D.R. were elected by promising more or less the opposite of what they did in office. Lincoln said he'd preserve the institution of slavery. F.D.R. said he'd balance the federal budget.

Can we expect this fortuitous turn of events again?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:56 AM
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Can You Lead With Kindness?

Bill Baker and Michael O’Malley have done a service with their book, Leading With Kindness. As awkward as that title might seem at first blush, the authors aren’t suggesting that kind leaders have a soft personality, or are sissies, or are well liked at all times. (“You can be hard-nosed and kind.”) Leading with kindness is not a hot-tub leadership where the participants pass the torch singing Kumbaya. In fact they write, “They muddle through life much like the rest of us, mostly unnoticed except by those around them who are keenly aware that they are in the presence of someone special.”

(That last sentence reminds me that great leaders are not great because they are super-human. Instead, they are ordinary but growth-oriented people with character that have chosen to make a commitment to a bold course of action that is in the best interest of those they serve despite the odds.)

The authors add:

The fact is, kindness isn’t always nice. It pushes others to do better; it asks them to try out things that they are uncertain they can accomplish; it requires them to engage in activities that they are not sure they will like. Another fact is this: Folks don’t always take kindly to kindness. Leaders, even great ones, cannot save everybody.

Armed with that knowledge, you can safely leave the dust-jacket on when you read the book and confidently move on absorbing the many great insights the book has to offer. The book is research-based, practical and realistic. They suggest that:

• Kind leaders are framers. They reinforce expectations for employees by establishing clear boundaries, standards of conduct, challenging goals, and organizational values.
• Kind leaders are interpreters. They tell the truth about how each worker and the entire company is doing. They help individuals adapt to change and make sense of their efforts.
• Kind leaders are enablers. They stimulate calculated “stretch” and risk-taking, without sheltering people from their own mistakes. They fight cynicism and facilitate growth.

Baker and O’Malley ascribe six attributes and behaviors to leading with kindness:

• Compassion … Staying in touch with workers’ everyday challenges and problems.
• Integrity … Reliably acting on established values and keeping promises and confidences.
• Gratitude … Appreciating others for their essential help in keeping a business going.
• Authenticity … Being honest about being oneself and not playing for the crowd.
• Humility … Tempering optimism with realism and accepting responsibility for failures.
• Humor … Tapping the power of laughter to diminish anxieties and bolster group cohesion.

In the end, it gets down to character, maturity and a genuine respect for other people. Kindness is a way of viewing the world and it can only come from within.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:58 PM
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Change the Way You See Yourself

The authors that brought you Change the Way You See Everything have taken the principles of asset-based thinking and applied them more specifically to you – the individual – in Change the Way You See Yourself. Like its predecessor, this book too is a feast for the eyes. I enjoy the graphics, but the message they convey is vital to your personal development.

Asset-based thinking is a way of looking at yourself that emphasizes what is working in your life and the strengths you possess. It is a way of freeing yourself from negative and unproductive thinking. It allows you to focus on what you can do and not what you can’t do (as often seems to be our default mode of thinking). They write that with asset-based thinking, “you use surprise, serendipity, and even setbacks to make the journey more interesting and more worthwhile. You are more confident in who you are, where you are going, and how to get there.”

In the section on power they invite us to look at it in a new way. Authors Kathryn Cramer and Hank Wasiak write:

When it comes to power, most people think of accumulating material wealth, status, authority, knowledge, and expertise. These are potent external sources of power. AS such, they provide you with control over a vast array of resources – from money, to land, to market share, to intellectual property. While building large reservoirs of external power may be useful, it is not enough for getting results. There is another source of power equally important and often more vital to your leadership and success.

Instead of relying primarily on external power sources to fuel your progress, look deeply inside for what can move you forward. You have a huge reservoir of internally generated power just waiting to be tapped. Internal sources of power derive from who you are – not what you have. Your internal power is defined by your Signature Presence – your unique combination of passions, capabilities, qualities, values, and beliefs. Signature Presence power gives you what it takes to get results when externally derived power is not enough.

Leadership sage Warren Bennis once said, “A point of view is worth 50 IQ points.” He knew That when you live by the power of your convictions you stand taller, sit straighter, and speak more confidently. You raise the level of your game. Others know you as a “force of nature” – someone who will not be deterred and who doesn’t give up.

People crave clarity … your voice rings clear when you stand for something.
People want wisdom … your mind creates meaning when you stand for something.
People gravitate toward hope … your ideas and promises hold sway when you stand for something.

Related Reading:
  Asset-Based Thinking

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:40 AM
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Maxwell’s Lessons Learned From a Lifetime of Leading

In his latest book, Leadership Gold, John Maxwell looks back on 60 years and distills what he has learned about leadership to date. And he stresses that he is still learning. It contains 26 important lessons about leadership and human relationships that are well worth reviewing. It’s a mentoring-style book. He says that leadership can be learned by anyone but it’s not easy. Leadership is demanding and complex. He writes:

Leadership is the willingness to put oneself at risk.
Leadership is the passion to make a difference with others.
Leadership is being dissatisfied with the current reality.
Leadership is taking responsibility while others are making excuses.
Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations.
Leadership is the readiness to stand out in a crowd.
Leadership is an open mind and an open heart.
Leadership is the ability to submerge your ego for the sake of what is best.
Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream.
Leadership is inspiring others with a vision of what they can contribute.
Leadership is the power of one harnessing the power of many.
Leadership is your heart speaking to the hearts of others.
Leadership is the integration of heart, head, and soul.
Leadership is the capacity to care, and in caring, to liberate the ideas, energy, and capacities of others.
Leadership is the dream made reality.
Leadership is above all, courageous.

The list makes a good yardstick.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:35 AM
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Understanding People Must Include Their Identities

Michael Maccoby states in a must read book, The Leaders We Need, that to lead in the global enterprise you'll need to know even more about people. It has always been so, but in past, one was able to get away with not getting to know those you were leading. The place to begin is to find out where they are at. He writes:

By satisfying the demands of identity groups, leaders don’t necessarily gain willing followers. But if these identities are not respected, leaders will be less willingly followed, possibly resisted.

Identities can be powerful motivators because they provide meaning for our lives….When an identity gives us a feeling of security and pride, any attack on identity is a blow to self-esteem, even a threat to survival….Understanding people must include their identities.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:32 AM
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The Great Leadership Lessons Don’t Change

This month’s Harvard Business Review has a great interview with historian David McCullough. He makes the point that the great leadership lessons don’t change. This is easily forgotten because we are bombared with the misconception that leadership is changing while being sold the fads that go along with it. The situations we find ourselves in often change, but the principles of leadership and dealing with people don’t. He makes the following point:

The American historian Samuel Eliot Morison liked to say that history teaches us how to behave—that is, what to do and what not to do in a variety of situations. History is the human story. Jefferson made that point in the very first line of the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events…” The accent should be on “human.”

History also shows how the demands of leadership change from one era to another, from one culture to another. The leaders of the past experienced their present differently from the way we experience ours. And remember, they had no more idea how things were going to turn out than we do in our time. Nothing was ever on a track, nothing preordained. The more you study the year 1776 and the course of the American Revolutionary War, the more you have to conclude that it’s a miracle things turned out as they did. Had the wind in New York City been coming from a different direction on August 29, 1776, Americans would probably be sipping tea and singing “God Save the Queen.”

Leadership, then, partly has to do with luck. And luck, chance, the hand of God—call it what you will—is a real force in human affairs; it’s part of life. Washington might have been killed; he might have gotten sick; he might have been captured; he might have given up. Besides being fortunate, he knew how to take advantage of a lucky moment, because he was blessed with very good judgment. Luck provided the opportunity, but Washington’s night escape across the East River—made possible by the direction of the wind—after an overwhelming defeat in the Battle of Brooklyn would never have succeeded had it not been for his leadership and the abilities of Colonel John Glover. Glover was a Massachusetts merchant and fisherman who, with his Marblehead Mariners, knew how to do the job.

He also says that we need to be developing leaders at all levels:

We need leaders and not just political leaders. We need leaders in every field, in every institution, in all kinds of situations. We need to be educating our young people to be leaders. And unfortunately, that’s fallen out of fashion.

The interview contains a lot of good material and is available for free on the Harvard Business web site.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:51 AM
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Five Tips From Atsutoshi Nishida on Overcoming a Crisis

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Toshiba Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida who recently pulled the plug on the company's HD DVD business. From that interview came the following wisdom regarding crisis leadership in particular but good ideas to keep in mind regarding the daily crises we often face in the minutia of our day.

1. Keep in mind that business without risk is business without growth.
2. Work with the facts. Listen to the market, not your ego.
3. Act quickly and decisively. Delay makes things worse, not better.
4. Be a proactive leader and clearly communicate your decisions.
5. Be resilient and continue to innovate. Success is not forever, nor is failure.

That fifth step is important to keep in mind as it helps you keep things moving forward rather than getting bogged down in your current situation. Things change. Most things are cyclical. He explained the balance between practicality and enthusiasm in decision making.

I don't operate just on logic. I'm practical, but I also have enthusiasm, which is the side of me that's not practical. If you have that in addition to a strong will to achieve your goals, then you can overcome any adversity. For example, I used logic to rationally make the decision to quit HD DVD, but my enthusiasm allows me to move forward.

If you don't take risks, you make no progress. Situations change constantly, so if we can't change with them, then there's no future for us.

Enthusiasm too, helps us to reframe our problems in a way that is constructive. This is not a naive optimism, but an informed optimism that reflects the reality of the situation.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:10 PM
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Aristotle on Virtuous Leadership

James O’Toole surveys the works of Aristotle in Creating the Good Life, and creates a practical framework that can be used to evaluate leadership in our own time. This excerpt is from a section regarding community leadership:

Aristotle says a leader also needs practical wisdom. Practical wisdom has “nothing to do with calculating magnitudes,” nothing to do with science, theory, disciplinary knowledge, or knowledge of facts in any way. It is concerned “neither with eternal and unchangeable truth nor with anything and everything that comes into being (and passes away again). Instead, it deals with matters where doubt and deliberation are possible.” In particular, practical wisdom is not concerned with the way things are but with “how things can be other than they are.” In other words, it is about how conditions in society and organizations could be made better. And “it implies the use of one’s faculty of opinion in judging matters” relating to what is right and wrong for a group, or society as a whole.

In Aristotle’s eyes, such practical wisdom is the prerequisite of “moral excellence,” the sine qua non of leadership: “That is why we say Pericles and men like him have practical wisdom. They have the capacity to see what is good for themselves and for humankind.”

Aristotle concludes that virtuous leaders in the Periclean mold are rare, but their scarcity is not due to a shortage of leadership capacity in the human race. Instead, he believes the virtue manifested by those rare leaders is an acquired trait; he believes leaders are made, not born. Indeed they are self-made.

At all times, the conscious goal of a just leader is to help followers achieve what is good for them, which, on occasion, may be something different from what they think they want. Hence, in addition to effectiveness, leadership has a moral dimension: the capacity to discern and provide justice.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:52 AM
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Do You Want to Change the World?

James Kouzes and Barry Posner are the authors of the classic The Leadership Challenge. In A Leader’s Legacy, they make an important point about leadership and passion:

"When people talk about leadership, they often use the word passion. And when we think about passion we tend to think of emotions like enthusiasm, zeal, energy, exuberance, and intensity. Well, all those attributions might be true, but when you look up the word passion in any dictionary that includes origins you’ll see that it comes from the Latin word for suffering. Passion is suffering! A passionate person is someone who suffers and a compassionate person is someone who suffers with, and shares the suffering of, others—and wants to take action to alleviate this condition. Nearly every act of leadership requires suffering—and often for the leader a choice between one’s personal success and safety and the greater welfare of others. We’re asking you to understand that nothing great comes without costs.

"If you want to be a leader, you must be willing to pay a price. By sacrificing, you demonstrate that you’re not in it for yourself. This sends the message, loud and clear, that you have the best interests of others at heart.

"The most significant contributions leaders make not to today’s bottom line but to the long-term development of individuals and institutions that adapt, prosper, and grow. People should never take the job of leadership if they’re unwilling to see beyond their own needs. If they do, they will ultimately fail."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:27 PM
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Charles Handy: Are Leaders Born or Made?

Charles Handy, in another thought-provoking distillation of his thoughts, Myself and Other More Important Matters, ponders the idea of getting to the bottom of who we really are and the difficulty of seeing ourselves as others see us. Throughout our lives we all play many parts and in a sense, become different people. Can we become something different from what we see ourselves as being to this point? Can we become a leader? Handy weighs in on this:

One of the debates in psychology is whether we have a core identity that is sitting there in our inner self, waiting to be revealed, or whether our identity only evolves over time. One of the perennial questions that bug organizations is a derivation of that debate – are leaders born or made? The truth, as in most things, is probably a bit of both. The battery of personality tests that purport to show whether we are introvert or extravert, whether we like structured situations or a bit of chaos, are based on the idea that our real identities are formed by early adulthood and that a good life is about finding situations that fir our characteristics. There is some intuitive truth on this….We can’t escape our genes.

On the other hand, we do develop as we learn from experience and it does feel as though we are doing more than revealing our inherited selves. We are perpetually filling out our identities which get firmer and more consistent as we age and begin to discover the spheres of life that fit us best.

Herminia Ibarra of INSEAD … argues that a successful life does not mean knowing what you want to do before you act, but the other way around. Only by acting, experimenting, questioning and acting again do you find out who and what you are. That is certainly my experience. Our identity is party inherited, partly shaped by early experiences, but it is not fully formed until we have explored more of the possibilities.

Leadership is a possibility we can all explore. It is something we can develop if we choose to. What combination of strengths and weaknesses we have to manage will of course vary from person to person, as we are all different; we are born with different genes. And this is as it should be. Leadership development is a highly personal experience that requires self-knowledge and a willingness to confront those areas where need to improve that will make us effective with people. The traits that will make you a better leader are the same traits that will give you the capacity for success in all areas of your life. Above all, our leadership is reflected in our character.

At the same time, leadership training offers the opportunity to examine our thinking in an environment where mentors are available to help us to interpret what we find and guide us to the appropriate changes we need to make in our lives. But no training will, of and by itself, make one a leader. That’s an inside job.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:22 AM
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Looking for Tomorrow’s Leaders

Harvard Business Review published an great interview this month by Paul Hemp, with Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill. As has been stated before, we need to be looking for leadership from people that don’t traditionally fit the stereotypes we generally apply to leaders. Rightly so, she acknowledges that leadership is not always about commanding but enabling others to do what they are good at. Here are some of the key ideas from that interview:

Are we looking for leaders in all the wrong places? No, but we definitely need to broaden our search. Most companies understand that in a global economy much of their future growth will be in emerging markets. As we look at leadership potential in emerging economies, we risk assuming that leadership models developed in the United States or Western Europe will work elsewhere. Leadership is about making emotional connections to motivate and inspire people, and our effectiveness at doing this has strong cultural overtones. We know from research that people’s expectations of how leaders should behave vary across countries. But we need more research on what is universal about leadership and what is culturally specific.

Stylistic invisibles: These are people who just don’t fit our conventional image of a leader. Because they don’t exhibit the take-charge, direction-setting behavior we often think of as inherent in leadership, they are overlooked when an organization selects the people it believes have leadership potential.

Leading from Behind: It’s also becoming clear that today’s complex environment often demands a team approach to problem solving. This requires a leader who, among other things, is comfortable sharing power and generous in doing so, is able to see extraordinary potential in ordinary people, and can make decisions with a balance of idealism and pragmatism.

This image of the shepherd behind his flock is an acknowledgment that leadership is a collective activity in which different people at different times—depending on their strengths, or “nimbleness”—come forward to move the group in the direction it needs to go. The metaphor also hints at the agility of a group that doesn’t have to wait for and then respond to a command from the front. That kind of agility is more likely to be developed by a group when a leader conceives of her role as creating the opportunity for collective leadership, as opposed to merely setting direction.

But keep in mind that leading from behind doesn’t imply that everyone in the organization has equal talent or the right to lead at a given time. Talent—or nimbleness, if you will—is actually a function of context, which means that different individuals will come to the fore in different situations.

The more you want to get the best out of a group by letting people use their own judgment and take risks, the more you want to lead from behind.

There’s one area in particular that calls for leading from behind, and that’s innovation. By definition, you don’t know exactly where you want to go. And innovation is almost always a collective process, the harnessing of the creative talents of a diverse group.

Developing Leaders: Let me emphasize something here: I’m not saying that if you simply go out and find the right people, your leadership problems will be solved. It’s not just about selection; it’s about development. Leaders of the future must be nurtured by their leaders, who need to make space and provide opportunities for their team members to grow and lead.

The complete interview is available on the HBR web site and is worth the visit.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:04 AM
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The Other Side of Leadership

It may seem counter intuitive, but great followers make great leaders.

In Reinventing Leadership, Warren Bennis wrote, "Good leaders should also be good followers. If you're coming up within an organization, you must be a good follower or you're not going to get very far. Leaders and followers share certain characteristics such as listening, collaborating, and working out competitive issues with peers."

Echoing this thought, authors Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward, stress the importance of becoming a Performer in leadership development—the need to create a record of performance. That is to say, you need to become a great follower, a great contributor. In their excellent book, Launching a Leadership Revolution, they wrote:

The quickest, most assured way of gaining that track record of performance is to absolutely master the patterns of success already established in an organization. It should be the goal of every leader striving to become a Performer that the entire organization notices his abilities with the proven patterns. This will give him a platform and the experience to help others accomplish similar results. That is the route to influence. As the Marquis of Halifax wrote in 1693, “When a Gentleman hath learnt how to obey, he will grow very much fitter to command.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:44 AM
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Keys to Spotting a Flawed CEO

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on the keys to spotting a flawed CEO. Of the twelve warning signs given by Clemson University professor of management Terry Leap, all boil down to problems of the self – ego. Leaders that disqualify themselves for leadership are those who try to make leadership about them. They lead for the self. In attitude and spirit, the act of leadership is about outgoing concern for others.

These warning signs reflect a lack of humility. Unfortunately, humility is a characteristic that is widely misunderstood. Consider the comment from Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines, quoted on the PINK magazine website. She said, "Humility and modesty are valuable personal qualities, but they won't do much to advance your position in the workplace." If you think humility is synonymous with timidity, weakness, or reticence, then perhaps her comment holds some merit. But that is not humility. Humility is about a proper self respect—neither thinking too highly or too little of ourselves—it is about a healthy respect of other people and teachability; all of which will help you advance in any situation.

Michael Watkins wrote in his excellent "guide for new leaders," The First 90 Days, "When a new leader derails, failure to learn is almost always a factor." Other than just not having the know-how to systematically diagnose an organization, he says some leaders have “learning disabilities.” Failure to make an attempt to understand the organization, a compulsive need to take action and preconceived ideas of what is “right,” all stem from a mismanaged ego.

Here are the warning signs presented by Dr. Leap:

• An overt zeal for prestige, power and wealth. A manager's tendency to put his or her own success ahead of the company's.
• A reputation for shameless self-promotion. Trumpeting their successes while quickly distancing themselves from setback.
• A proclivity for developing grandiose strategies with little thought toward their implementation.
• A fondness for rules and numbers that overshadows or ignores a broader vision.
• A reputation for implementing major strategic changes unilaterally or for forcing programs down the throats of reluctant managers.
• An impulsive, flippant decision-making style.
• A penchant for inconsiderate acts.
• A love of monologues coupled with poor listening skills.
• A tendency to display contempt for the ideas of others.
• A history of emphasizing activity, like hours worked or meetings attended, over accomplishment.
• A career marked by numerous misunderstandings. There are two sides to every story, but frequent interpersonal problems shouldn't be overlooked.
• A superb ability to compartmentalize and/or rationalize. Some executives have learned to separate, in their own minds, their bad behavior from their better qualities, so that their misdeeds don't diminish their opinions of themselves.

See also on this blog:
Taking it Personally
Four Warning Signs That Our Ego is Getting the Best of Us

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:01 AM
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Is CEO the Job Right For You? Look Before You Leap

With CEO’s falling sooner and harder than ever before, the CEO job is not for the faint of heart.

The leap to CEO from any other position is a big one. Ram Charan writes, “The job of a CEO is more intellectually, socially, politically, and psychologically demanding than ever. And it is much more challenging than other jobs leading up to it.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this week in A Different Animal Seeks the No. 1 Post; Often, It’s Not No. 2, that “the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 in a company is often bigger than many realize. CEOs not only perform different tasks from their second-in-commands—who typically focus on running operations—but they have to act differently too. That means the two roles often demand very different personality traits, say people who have been there.”

WSJ author, Phred Dvorak, continues, “The very talents that make a great chief operating officer—like finicky attention to detail—can get in the way when you are in the top seat. CEOs are supposed to strategize, not micromanage.”

Murray Martin, Pitney Bowes CEO, told Dvorak, “He can understand how executives with more retiring personalities wouldn’t like the transition. One of the biggest differences between the two jobs [COO/CEO] is how much time is spent on external affairs.”

We have seen people taking positions in organizations across the board—business, politics, religion—who like the idea—the trappings—but can't handle the pressure and responsibility. They complain, “Why don't they just leave me alone?” But that’s part of the job. Perks only come with responsibility. The CEO job is certainly one where you need to count the cost as there is a dramatic shift in expectations, but any leadership position should be weighed before you accept it.

Is CEO the job right for you?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:07 AM
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Leading When Things Aren’t Going Your Way

In Bo’s Lasting Lessons, authors Bo Schembechler and John Bacon relate a story from Bo’s early days coaching. He learned a lesson about leading when the heat is on from his boss from his boss and mentor Ara Paraseghian that he carried with him the rest of his life. Here's that excerpt:

The following season, 1956, I left Doyt [Perry] and Bowling Green—with his blessings—to become an assistant for Ara Parseghian at Northwestern University.

Ara was not a big ego guy, he was great with players, he was a wonderful motivator, and he understood the game so well he could come up with things no one else had thought of. He was probably the most imaginative coach I’d ever seen, always adapting his plays to his players instead of the other way around like most coaches do. Heck, we used to call his practice field “The Laboratory,” because that’s where he’d try every trick in the book on Mondays, testing this and experimenting with that, just to see what might work that Saturday.

Before Ara arrived, Northwestern hadn’t had a winning season in five years, but in his first year Northwestern went 4-4-1, and everyone was encouraged. But in Ara’s second season, 1957, everything went to hell. We lost nine games—every single game we played! For a coach, that’s just about the most difficult situation you have to face.

We could keep our opponents down to one or two touchdowns, but we couldn’t score for our lives. And I was working with the offense!

Losing creates all kinds of other problems too—poor morale, nagging injuries, lackluster effort. The players were spending more time in the PR office than in the weight room. It was just a mess. I never experienced anything like that in all my years of coaching—and thank God for that.

I learned an awful lot from Ara in my first year at Northwestern, but I learned a heckuva lot more from him that second season, when he lost ‘em all. And what I learned was how a real leader leads when things aren’t going his way.

Ara treated the staff as though we were winning every game. He never gave the slightest inclination that we were the problem. He not once blamed any assistant or any player fro any loss we suffered that year. NOT ONCE.

“Stick with it, guys, and we’ll get through this,” he’d tell us. “We’re going to be okay.” We all kept busting our butts for Ara, working past midnight, doing everything we could to get that guy a victory.

I’m not saying there wasn’t some bitching among the players. When you’re losing every game, every player thinks he deserves more playing time. But I promise you this: There was a whole lot less bitching on that team than I’ve heard on teams that won half their games—and there was absolutely no, but no, bickering among the coaches.

And that wasn’t even the most impressive thing Ara did that year.

Stu Holcomb was Northwestern’s athletic director, and his son Chip was a backup quarterback on the varsity. In the middle of this losing streak, Stu kept cranking up the pressure for Ara to start his son. At one of our staff meetings, Ara laid the situation on the table. Then he asked us point-blank: “What do you think?” The thing is, there wasn’t anybody on the staff pounding on the table to make a quarterback change just because we were losing. We knew there had to be a ton of pressure on Ara to put Stu’s son in, but our quarterback wasn’t the problem. And that’s exactly what we told him when he asked us. He just nodded.

Another coach—maybe most coaches—would have caved in to their boss just to save their hides. But Ara held firm. He didn’t change quarterbacks, or even consider doing it. And every one of us who walked out of the coaches room that day felt the same way I did: Ara Parseghian is a stand-up guy. He’s a leader. I want to work for this guy!

And that’s why that losing season didn’t break Ara’s back: Because he’s a confident guy, and he knew he could coach. His staff remained dedicated to him and his program the entire season.

You’d think my two years at Northwestern would have been a horrible experience, but it wasn’t. It was a great experience, because Ara had put together a stellar staff—they’re all still good friends of mine, especially Alex Agase—but mostly, it was because Ara was there.

The result? Put this down: Ara Parseghian lost every game that year, but the next year his team went 5-4—Northwestern’s first winning season in eight years.

When Ara took the Notre Dame job five years later, in 1963, he left Evanston as one of only three coaches in the last century of Northwestern football to post a winning record. And of course, from there he won two national titles and Coach of the Year at Notre Dame. Don’t tell me he didn’t deserve it.

But that 0-9 year? He didn’t get any rewards for that, but let me tell you: THAT was the most impressive year of his coaching career.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:02 AM
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Shogun Yoritomo-Tashi on Leading by Example

Ancient Shogun Yoritomo-Tashi believed that the art of influencing others was the key to success. The Japanese statesman and philosopher believed that the spirit of the individual continuously exerts influence, even as the flower also exerts influence by spreading its fragrances in the air. But just as the blossom can not tell whither its fragrance spreads, so none of us can say how far our influence may reach. From his writings we have his take on the dynamics of influence by example:

The reciprocal influence which individuals exercise on one another is the cause of many evils difficult to conjure.… The influence of example is considerable. One of the greatest obstacles to the doing of good actions is the timidity based on the fear of responsibility, which haunts mediocre minds.

It is toward these that he who would wield the power of domination should turn his attention. It is sufficient to impose on these timorous souls the resolution to perform the task that they themselves desire to see accomplished, and to set for them, the example of his achievement. In this way, their vacillating will strengthen itself by the moral support which they will be certain to feel, and their anxiety about the opinion of others will be soothed by the example of those whom they recognize as their superiors, and whose superiority they are glad to acknowledge.

It is these, then, whose minds are strengthened by renewed practices of wise reflection, who should watch carefully over their own acts, so that their example may be, for the persons over whom they have an influence, a source of improvement and constant elevation.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:51 AM
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5 Leadership Lessons: Bo's Lasting Lessons

Bo Schembechler's book, Bo’s Lasting Lessons, written with John Bacon is an engaging, hands-on, first-person account of the winningest head coach in Michigan football history and fifth on the all-time list, only behind coaching legends Paul 'Bear' Bryant, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Glen 'Pop' Warner, and Woody Hayes. The lessons found here are easily applied anywhere.

  If you have to make a decision they’re not going to like, it’s better to tell them why you’re doing what you’re doing. They still won’t like it but they’ll always appreciate being told instead of being left in the dark. And if you don’t tell them why, they’ll feel abandoned, and start coming up with all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories.

  You start cutting corners for this guy or that situation, and before you know it, you’re spending all your time playing judge and jury, deliberating over every little incident, when you should be leading your team. It’s painful sometimes, but you create a lot fewer headaches for everyone, including the players, when you simply stick to your guns.

  If you don’t have leadership inside the ranks, you’re not going to be successful, because you will spend too much time policing that small things yourself, and create an “us against them” environment.

  If you’re a leader, your ultimate responsibility is the training of your people, because every job requires training. If it’s a job worth paying someone, it’s a job worth training. And it’s your job to make sure they’re trained well. Make your training as close to the real thing as possible. Sounds easy, but from what I’ve seen, not many companies do. You get what you emphasize. Plain and simple.

  If you do not like people, you will not take the time to get to know them, and if you don’t get to know them, you will have no idea what scares them, what inspires them, what motivates them. If you don’t listen to what your people have to say, you will not know when they have a problem with you—and you will not know when you have a problem with them, either. You cannot lead if you cannot listen. Even if you’re doing everything else right, if one of your people comes to you with a good idea—or a personal problem—and it just goes in one ear and out the other, YOU WILL FAIL. You can have a tremendous impact as a leader just by taking a little time. Your people have to know that their value to you and your organization is not determined just by what they do, but by who they are. I can’t make it any clearer than that.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:01 PM
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Being a Role Model: Who's Watching You?

Former Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York on July 29, 2007. Before about 75,000 people, he delivered a good speech in which he emphasized the importance of living a good example. Here is the text of part of that speech:

We all hear about how baseball imitates life, which held especially true for my dad. He used to say that everything that happens in baseball happens in life and everything that happens in life happens in baseball. He certainly taught us about life through baseball. But I also have to admit that as a young man with a limited view of the world, baseball and life became one for me and it was difficult to see beyond playing the game.

Did you ever stop to think about how your life would unfold or imagine how you would like your life to turn out? One of those reflective pauses happened in my life when I was around 18 years old. I thought I had it all figured out, I would play big league baseball until about 45 and then worry about the rest of my life after that. It took me a little while, but I did come to realize that baseball was just one part of my life with the possible exception of this weekend, of course. This was never more clear to me than when we had children. I realized that the secret of life is life, and a bigger picture came into focus. Games were and are important, but people and how you impact on them are most important. While we all work to develop into productive people for our own happiness, it is also vital that we do so for the good of society as a whole.

As I came to know the importance of my role in the development of my children, I began to sense the impact I could have on other kids. It is all about coming to the realization that we all have within us the power to develop and pursue almost anything we set our mind to, and that is the message and opportunity we want to pass to all children.

We are the ambassadors for the future, just as a baseball player wants to leave his mark on the game and leave it a little better than he found it, we should all try to make this world a better place for the next generation.

When I realized that I could use baseball to help make life better especially for the kids, baseball became a platform. By trying to set a good example, I could help influence young people in positive and productive ways. And some of this became apparent to me in my earliest playing days. So as my major league career unfolded, I started playing a little more attention to my actions. I remember when Kenny Singleton showed me a tape of me throwing my helmet down after a strikeout and all he said was, "How does that look?" I remember learning about a family who saved their money to come to Baltimore to see me play. I got thrown out in the first inning and their little boy cried the whole game. I remember how I reacted with anger when dad was fired after an O-and-six start, and after each of those events and others, I vowed to act better the next time.

Yes, these were only little things, but as dad used to say, if you take care of all the little things, you'll never have a big thing to worry about.

As the years passed, it became clear to me that kids see it all, and it's not just some of your actions that influence, it's all of them. Whether we like it or not as big leaguers, we are role models. The only question is will we be positive or will it be negative. Should we put players up on a pedestal and require them to take responsibility? No. But we should encourage them to use their influence positively, to help build up and develop the young people who follow the game.

Sport can play a big role in teaching values and principles. It can be a huge developmental tool for life. Just think—teamwork, leadership, work ethic and trust are all part of the game and are also all factors in how we make the most of our lives. So an essential part of the job of every player and of all people for that matter is to help the young people of today learn these lessons so they can live better lives tomorrow.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:30 PM
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Lord Sharman on Helping People Grow

Leading By Example is a concise little book of interviews with top leaders from various fields. Each interview in this new Harvard Business School series is followed by a list of takeaways. Here is an excerpt by Lord Sharman, chairman of the Aegis Group, on investing in people by understanding their strengths and nurturing them like a gardener with prized plants.

I’m very fond of gardening myself, and I’m fond of gardening examples. To some degree, developing people in an organization is impossible. You can’t develop them; they develop themselves, and so your job is like that of a head gardener. You figure out what the various microclimates are around the place, and then you figure out the qualities of the plants that you need to go into those microclimates. Similarly, you select the people based on their strengths and place them in those jobs. I’ve seen notes of appraisal interviews, which say that two-thirds of the interview is spent talking about what the guy’s not good at. Now, that’s great—I can’t imagine anybody coming out of an interview like that feeling anything other than very depressed.

What you want to do is spend time talking about what the person is good at and how he’s going to develop that. Sure, see whether you can do something about the weaknesses, but to my way of thinking, appraisal interviews should be two-thirds about what the person is good at and how those great assets can be used within the organization. If you look at good coaches in the sports field—and I’ve always been fascinated about how good coaches work—they don’t actually coach technique very often. The really good coaches are the ones that coach the mind and the attitude.

You’ll always have people that find it much easier to be critical than to be encouraging. The tome at the top has to be right. If you start criticizing your colleagues about what they’re bad at all the time rather than encouraging them, that’s sure as hell going to get down through the organization very quickly.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:15 PM
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Lessons from the Prophet Jonah

Two days ago, on Yom Kippur — a day about braking wickedness — at synagouges around the world, a book about breaking wickedness — the book of Jonah — is read. In the Jerusalem Post, the dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, Einat Ramon draws a perspective on leadership and responsibility from the book of Jonah that I had not read before. He writes:

We are currently in a crisis of leadership, having lost faith in our leaders. In the Minha service on Yom Kippur, we read the Book of Jonah. Jewish tradition seeks to conclude Yom Kippur with the universal story of the prophet whose response to the call to prophecy, to leadership, is: "And Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from before God" (1:3). Why did Jonah flee? And from what?

The midrash in Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer (ninth century) stresses that Jonah was an extraordinarily successful prophet (10). Every time he brought the word of God to his audience - Jews and non-Jews alike - they were persuaded by his words of reproof and repented. Why then did he seek to hide? Did he, as is commonly interpreted, truly desire that the people of Nineveh be punished rather than repent?

According to the midrash, Jonah's flight derived from his sensitivity to public opinion. Jonah understood that which modern statistics have shown us, that the chances of a leader being popular once he acts like a leader are about 8 percent. In other words, leadership almost always is met by disdain and ingratitude, and alienation from the people.

The Book of Jonah, like the Book of Deuteronomy, which deals with the leadership struggles of Moses, reflects the leader's pain. In general, the Jewish sources set a high threshold for responsible leadership for the nation of Israel and for humanity to encourage us to assume positions of leadership despite the inevitable price exacted by these jobs.

Many people desire leaders who will stir their souls and flatter them and enwrap them within their inflated egos. They transform the popular leader into a divine shadow that is plainly or mysteriously distant. Though pleasurable for the leaders, this is false prophecy. It does not lead society anywhere safe, good, useful or moral.

Trivia: Jonah was told to go to Nineveh. Nineveh today lies across the Tigris River from the modern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:42 AM
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Louis Nizer: A Leader Wears Many Hats

One autobiography I never tire of is Louis Nizer’s Reflections Without Mirrors. I keep coming back to it. Originally published in 1978, it is timeless. I’ve always appreciated his wit and style of writing. The British born American attorney died at age 92 in November 1994. His observations about life, the legal profession and his part in it ring true in many other walks of life as well. Here are a few comments from this legendary attorney:

It took as much energy to unify our comrades as to prepare our own brief. A lawyer, particularly when he deals with eminent co-counsel, whose talents and achievements warrant strong egos, must be a consummate diplomat.

What else must he be? He must be an archeologist who exhumes evidence; a psychologist who strengthens his client and weakens his enemy; a paragon of patience to withstand the unreasonableness of troubled clients; a man of endurance to withstand the strain of the most arduous profession; an optimist in the darkest hours and a pessimist in the brightest, so that momentum doesn’t slacken; a historian of the law so that he can better predict its future; an idealist in the service of justice and a practical man who may forgo litigation in his client’s interest; a precisionist who must draft documents which defy ambiguity; a negotiator who makes deals not breaks them; an administrator who can recommend corporate efficiency and achieve it in his own office; a pleader whose eloquence is harnesses by sincerity; a scholar who is not confused by his own learning; a lover of the law so that sacrifice for it becomes a selfish act; a visionary who uses legal tools to sculpt a better society; and a realist who knows that it is impossible to attain any of these except to a small degree but who never stops trying.

Those words cause me to take a step back. Any leader would be strengthened by applying these concepts in their own arena.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:18 AM
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Quiet Sacrifice

Tami Longaberger, chair and CEO of The Longaberger Companies and was appointed the Chair of the National Women’s Business Council in 2005. She spoke to the attendees at the 2007 Global Summit of Women in Berlin about leading. She made the following comment about a word directly related to leadership that doesn't come up much when people are asked, "Why do you want to lead?"

Leaders also understand the meaning of quiet sacrifice. This is something I have had to do several times in my career and will, I am sure, have to do again.

What do I mean by “quiet” sacrifice? I mean a leader puts her employees and customers, as well as the community, ahead of her own private interests and takes the hard step of giving up something dear so others can benefit and prosper.

Kay Graham surely did this at The Washington Post when she sold her company to Newsweek magazine. She did so in order for her people to have a better opportunity to do what they did so well. She did not personally benefit at all. In fact, she suffered greatly, giving up an institution to which she was so dedicated for so many years. But The Washington Post, and the people who worked there, after they overcame the initial shock, did very well.

Time and again, Margaret Thatcher put her countrymen and women ahead of her own interests and withstood vicious personal criticism to ensure that the British people might live a better life. Her difficult battle with the coal miners union is one example all of us may recall.

Quiet sacrifice is not easy. You have to look into the mirror and ask yourself what is best for my people, my organization, and my community. Am I prepared to act and suffer any personal consequences? And then you need to step into the deep end of the pool without a lifesaver in sight. In my own case, this has never been easy. And it is not going to get any easier as I do so in the future. But it is necessary.

Well put. Nothing great comes without costs.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:51 AM
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In A World Of Accelerating Change, It Takes Bold Leadership

Speaking July 18th, at the annual Scotiabank Lecture Series in Jamaica, former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, said that in a world of accelerating changes, a combination of bold public leadership, a commitment to entrepreneurial capitalism and a focus on education is the key to avoid the risk of severe economic stagnation.

What does he mean by bold leadership? In terms of a government's leadership style, Bush noted that it is critical for an administration to rethink what they are doing.

“A lot of times, the way we do things is because we have been doing it that way before, not because it is rational, not because it improves the human condition or creates the chance for people to pursue their dreams, but because we have been doing it that way. So in a world where change is happening a lot, whether the government is changing or not, it is important for leadership to have a healthy disrespect for the status quo. You won't change everything but the things that don't work need to be changed and without leadership, this won't happen."

This thought is echoed in Jim Tompkins’ new book, Bold Leadership for Organizational Acceleration. In it he addresses three important aspects of bold leadership—the inspirational leadership that drives an organization, outsourcing those areas outside your core competencies, and the importance of a Plan B. Tompkins states. "Leaders must not only be bold if they want to thrive today, but they must also develop bold companies—encouraging boldness in all aspects of the organization."

To do this, “Leaders must therefore teach others how to be leaders. Their strategies must be flexible and innovative. They must challenge the established view of a leader as someone who leads and demonstrate that leadership means inspiring others to lead. They must have the courage and spirit to move from wherever they are to further their abilities to lead others into getting extraordinary things done. In other words, these leaders must practice Inspirational Leadership."

To make this happen Tompkins suggests that leaders look at the big picture to locate and deal with those “parts of the picture that are just filling up canvas and not adding value to the subject.” Tompkins adds something that I think underscores the importance of this point. “Actually, it is not enough just to look at the big picture. If your picture is in a frame, you need to look at the frame too. Is it possible that the frame is the important part and the picture inside it needs to be changed or removed? ... Or is the frame that holds the picture rotting or overpowering the picture so that it is totally lost?”

Perhaps it’s time to look at what we are doing and ask if we need to be doing it differently or if we need to be dong it at all.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:00 AM
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The Importance of Competence

Competence alone can’t make a leader, but it can undo one. While inaction is a prime problem facing many organizations (and individuals for that matter), there’s the very real possibility that one is doing the wrong thing. An incompetent leader has almost unlimited opportunities to be ineffective. Knowing what to do—professional competence—is vital.

Being competent doesn’t mean that a leader knows how to do everything, but rather that they know what to do and how to get it done. Even the most brilliant leader who tries to go it on their own is setting themselves up for failure. A good leader will know where their strengths and weaknesses lie and thus know what kind of expertise they will need to surround themselves with.

While many “leaders” are often selected for their competence alone, competence is something different from character or leadership competence, and should not be confused. We have placed too much emphasis on professional competence and not enough on character. And it has gotten us into trouble. Traditional business schools have excelled at teaching professional competence, but have mostly failed to impress on individuals the need to develop a moral compass to use those skills appropriately.

Yet, competence is a critical part of the whole leadership picture. Socrates believed that the “one who clearly knows best what ought to be done will most easily gain the obedience of the others.” Competence engenders confidence in a leader. Competence, trust and loyalty are “inextricably intertwined” says In Extremis Leadership author Thomas Kolditz. “Leader competence is usually at the root of loyalty and trust problems.” He writes:

Most leaders have gotten to their station in life through their own competence, but that becomes lost on followers unless the leader’s competence is occasionally revealed by action.

Some leaders try to build trust and loyalty through social events such as golf or team-building activities, but loyalty and trust problems can’t be fixed with a trip to a rock-climbing school.

Leaders need to take the time and effort to show followers what they’re good at and why followers should be confident in the leader’s ability. Use care, however, never to upstage or embarrass someone else as you demonstrate competence. In the end, leadership is about the success of your people, not about you.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:52 AM
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Corrupt Leadership: Tyranny of the Self

Power corrupts. Well . . . it can and too often does. The exercise of power — causing some to submit to the will of others — is necessary in any functioning state, organization or relationship. This power may shift, but it always exists. Power is not evil, but one should be cautious about the form it takes. Power controlled by the ego is something to be fearful of. Power tempered by humility and character is a gift.

Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote colorfully about power in his 1949 book, On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth, “The leader of any group of men . . . feels thereby an almost physical enlargement of himself . . . Command is a mountain top. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience.” With this kind of power should come understanding, without it, it is a slippery slope to self-delusion and tyranny.

Power with out humility and compassion is ignoble

In your opinion, which of these is the most critical cause of state failure?
Corruption:	43%
Lack of Basic Education:	15.3%
Group Hatred:	13.2%
Poverty:	9.1%
Lack of Social Equality:	7.2%
External Actors:	5.5%
Natural Disasters:	3.8%
Environmental Damage:	1.5%
Malnutrition and Disease:	1.5%
Source: FundForPeace.org Results as of June 22, 2007

at best, but more often than not, it quickly degrades to tyranny, exploitation and destruction.

As part of their Fail States Index project, FundForPeace.org has been running a poll asking readers what they feel is the most critical cause of state failure. It’s not always easy to determine the source of failure. There is a tendency to allow oneself to fall into the abyss of dense complexity and deep subjectivity. Fortunately, there is no space for that here.

The current results of the poll show corruption to be the overwhelming reason for failure. I would agree. Lack of education too, certainly limits one’s thinking and responses to life’s issues including corruption in government. LaBrent Chrite, professor at the University of Michigan Business School wrote, “Leadership and governance provide the predominant factor behind the dissonance or variance in progress seen across developing countries.”

Corruption is ultimately the result of a total breakdown in leadership. It's wrong thinking and a wrong perspective on the part of the leader. In a corrupt culture, leaders have set the pace by looking after themselves instead of looking after their responsibilities. They have fallen to the tyranny of their own mind — belief in only one’s self.

James Hillman wrote in Kinds of Power, “This kind of power, which makes us both effective and blind, goes deeper than merely being set on our ways. It is the tyrannical rule of style, the style of our thinking and working and connecting, the style of our words and gestures, and as it all fits together into the integrated personality, consciousness becomes tyrannical. We drink to escape from this tyrant; divorce, fall in love, quit jobs, move residences, go bankrupt, shoot rapids, hang-glide, fight our children—anything to escape the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted by the absolutism of successful rule. Everything has been subordinated to the one tyrannical pattern. All otherness is gone. One has become totally oneself and now suffers from totalitarian rule.”

Are we tyrannized by our own mind?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:33 AM
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Calls for Leadership: The Failed States Index 2007

The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine has just released the Failed States Index. It is a sobering survey of 177 countries ranked in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration. It is based on 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators. (You can click on the map above to view a larger image detailing the status of various nations of the world, including your own.)

The third annual Index found the greatest improvements over the last year in Liberia, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bosnia. Unfortunately, the risk of failure is running higher than last year in Lebanon, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, and Niger. Although these countries may seem world's away, their problems have consequences for all of us.

Failing States have one thing in common—bad leadership. Foreign Policy concludes, “Many states must endure poverty, corruption, and natural disasters. But, for the weak, there is nothing more costly than a strongman calling the shots.” Billions in foreign aid and security are no match for bad leadership. Effective leadership can reverse a states slide to failure.

Three editorials from the last two days, speak to the leadership issue behind these problems. First, here are some comments from The Daily Star in Lebanon titled, “If Lebanon becomes a failed state again, failed leadership will be to blame:”

Lebanon's slide downward on the scale toward failure was more pronounced than that of any other country in the world. Who or what is to blame for the fact that Lebanon is once again rapidly on its way to becoming a basket case? Yes, the war with Israel created problems, but the leaders of Lebanon have compounded those "difficulties" and transformed them into an utter disaster. Leaders on both sides of the political divide are guilty of playing solely to their respective supporting audiences and ignoring everyone else. Not one has risen to the challenge of being a leader for all the Lebanese. [There exists a] paralyzing impasse that has been brought on by their political leaders' shared predilections for hubris and maximalism.

From AllAfrica Global Media, we have this opinion from Nurudeen Jattau in Nigeria:

It is needless to say that the tragedy of the contemporary nation-state of Nigeria is the seeming absence or the lack of visionary leadership in all spheres of governance. This precisely, is the singular reason why analysts are agreed that Nigeria may never reach anything close to its full potential as a nation. All things considered, and whichever way the pendulum swings, we must understand and appreciate the fact that leadership is invariably a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

Consider finally, an editorial by Fouad Al-Obaid in the Kuwait Times:

If one studies history and the civilizations that preceded us, one will most certainly not come across common names. However leaders on the other hand, do end up in the pages of history for several reasons. They do so when their failure is total and their incompetence is obvious to all. Just as much as they do so when their bravery, their tactics, their leadership capability along with their capacity to move minds and hearts in the most turbulent times is put to test and they succeed.

In the Arab World we seem to be lacking true leadership capabilities at least in modern times. Today, we need to find a source of inspiration in leaders that will set the path for a renewed socio-economic development scheme. We need people that have visions, leaders that are willing to fight in order to craft reality out of a vision. If one looks at the development of Qatar and Dubai, one can credit their leadership with bold vision which has projected their otherwise semi-arid desert lands into global hubs where transport, trans-shipment, and multinational corporations have established their home base in.

[T]he lessons that need to be extracted from such success stories is that visions can become reality and in that field we are either lacking vision or having a hard time executing it properly. In either case, we clearly are doing something wrong. We today need leaders that are willing to perhaps sacrifice themselves for the better good of society. Reforms are never easy and it takes a strong leader to execute them.

Foreign Policy would agree with Mr. Al-Obaid. They write that effective leadership doesn’t necessarily make a leader popular. “But then, such leadership is exactly what more failing states need: a head of state who chooses continued reforms over his own power and recognition.”

I am reminded of something John Lukacs wrote in 1993, “The great and enduring problems are political, not economic. They involve the lust for power, not for money. (But then, this has been true of mankind ever since Adam and Eve, misunderstood by Adam Smith as well as by Karl Marx.)” You don't have to look too hard to find applicable lessons here for any leadership role we find ourselves in.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:47 AM
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Andy Stanley on Communication and Leadership

Andy Stanley is always interesting. He told Christianity Today the following in a discussion about church leadership:

"Here's an incredibly important principle. You cannot communicate complicated information to large groups of people. As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information. Congregational rule, when you're trying to make a complicated decision, works against the principle. So consequently, the guy with the microphone and the clearest message always wins. The most persuasive person in the room is going to win. Whether right or wrong."

He was asked about criticisms that some churches seem so corporate in their leadership structure with the pastor as CEO. He says there is a sound principle behind the structure: “‘Follow me.’ Follow we never works. Ever. It's ‘follow me.’ God gives a man or a woman the gift of leadership. And any organization that has a point leader with accountability and freedom to use their gift will do well. Unfortunately in the church world, we're afraid of that. Has it been abused? Of course. But to abandon the model is silly.” I would add that we can find many that are afraid of that concept outside the church as well. It's often why we see leadership theory taking strange twists and turns in the literature today. Learning to operate without abusing the influence or power that goes with leadership at any level, requires a proper perspective as to why you are leading in the first place.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:10 AM
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Key to Presidential Courage

Historian Michael Beschloss, gave an engaging and entertaining talk to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council a couple of nights ago about his book, Presidential Courage.

We expect our Presidents to be willing to make a sacrifice if necessary; to place the interests of the country ahead of their own interests. George Washington set the bar for other Presidents to follow. John Adams, our second President was faced with an issue—potential war with France— that required the courage to place his own aspirations second to what was right for the country. He had to go against his party by rejecting the idea of a war with France. It cost him a great deal of personal anguish and loss of the Presidency to Thomas Jefferson. Beschloss wrote of Adams, “He had long argued that a leader ‘must run the risk’ of incurring ‘people’s displeasure sometimes, or he will never do them any good in the long run.’”

Beschloss said that in effect, Adams said, “I wanted more than anything to get a second term so that I had a chance in history to be the equal of General Washington. Now that’s gone. But, I can go back to Massachusetts and I can feel that my sacrifice was for something important. And I still have my wife Abigail (to whom he was so close) and my children and my farm and my books and my old veteran friends from the revolution.” Adams lived on for 26 more years; long enough to see his son John Quincy elected to be the sixth President. Bescholoss found his attitude a significant key to courage. Adams had a life beyond the Presidency.

“We’ve got to look at candidates for President this year and next, and if you want someone who is capable of presidential courage, I would say one thing to look for is: Is this someone who is desperate to be President and hang-on almost at all costs or is this someone who if there is a moment requiring presidential courage—where they have to give it all up—has something else in his or her life—a family or other interests or even better yet, convictions (they can feel that they gave it up for doing the right thing)?

As we choose candidates these days, in a system that I find completely atrocious, it forces all of us to evaluate these people’s character. And one thing I would really ask is that we would look at them in terms of the stories in this book and say “Is this someone who is like these courageous Presidents?” Because, in the next five years we may very well need that.

The question was raised concerning the difference between courage and betrayal. We speak of courage on the one hand, but what is going on when a President betrays people by doing something that people do not like or different from what they said they would do. Beschloss responded, “In these stories you will see where Presidents do tell American’s that it’s a good thing to do things that they may not first approve of, but it is not something that is wildly different from something they said in the campaign. They’re moving public opinion just somewhat beyond where it’s willing to go at the moment.” For example:

Of the nine presidents I write about, only one had to pay the price of losing reelection and that was John Adams. Everyone else was a good enough politician or a good enough educator that they were able to continue. For instance, FDR, in trying to get a third term could say to Americans, “Well, you may be disturbed by my building up our defense, but think of it this way. Maybe it’s the best way to scare off Hitler if we’re really strong with 50,000 airplanes and so on.” Or in Abraham Lincoln’s case, he stuck to the Emancipation [Proclamation]. But rather than just say, “Well, I’m going to be a courageous guy, and I’ll just go down in flames,” he was such a good educator that he said to Americans, “You may not like the idea of fighting the Civil War also to free the slaves, but since I’ve declared the Emancipation, 200,000 African-Americans have come across enemy lines from the South and they’re all working hard in our Union War effort. If I now dispense with the Emancipation, they’d sit on their hands and we’d lose the war.”

That’s what a great President does.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:34 AM
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Up the Organization

Jossey-Bass has released a commemorative edition of Robert Townsend’s (1920-1998) leadership classic, Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits. Originally published in 1970, this candid and provocative book deserves to be re-read every year. Here's a sample of Townsend's straightforward and practical advice:

On People: Why spend all that money and time on the selection of people when the people you’ve got are breaking down from under-use. Get to know your people. What they do well, what they enjoy doing, what their weaknesses and strengths are, and what they want and need to get from their job. And then try to create an organization around your people, not jam your people into those organization-chart rectangles.

On Delegation: Many people give lip service, but few delegate authority in important matters. And that means all they delegate is dog-work. A real leader does as much dog-work for his people as he can: he can do it, or see a way to do without it, ten times as fast. And he delegates as many important matters as he can because that creates a climate in which people grow.

On Leadership: True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders. In combat, officers eat last. Most people in big companies today are administered, not led. They are treated as personnel, not people.

On Rewards: Rewarding outstanding performance is important. Much more neglected is the equally important need to make sure that the underachievers don’t get rewarded. This is more painful, so it doesn’t get done very often.

On Compromise:Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can’t solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then, unlike Solomon, pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work.

Robert Townsend served as the president and chairman of Avis Rent-a-Car from 1962 to 1965 during its celebrated turnaround. You may remember the infamous the "We Try Harder" advertisign campaign that helped to tranform it into a world-class organization.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:33 AM
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The Leader as Coach

Consultant David Noer makes an insightful comment in Learning Journeys about coaching others:

The great teachers of my life gave me a precious gift. It was not a tool, process, or technology; it was something deeper and more profound. They helped me understand that what really matters when helping people or organizations through change and transition is not technique but authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy. They taught me that connecting with others at the warm, messy, and unscientific level of the human spirit is a prerequisite for any methodology or process. I learned that technique without a grounding in empathy and vulnerability is sterile and artificial. I learned, as Larry Porter, one of my many great teachers, once said, “In the final analysis, the only tool worth a damn is our own warm body.”

Heart is a distinction of great leaders. We need to have deep convictions about helping others to succeed. The connecting with others grounded in empathy and vulnerability that Noer writes about is not something we can work up. It comes as the result of our own struggles and growth. It is through our own struggles that we come better prepared to help others. Sometimes we look down on people who are struggling. That’s not only ignorant, it’s arrogant. Remember they’re growing. It’s an amazing process. (If we knew better, we might even be struggling with the same thing they are.)

We can’t see ourselves as the great teacher imbued with special knowledge and wisdom. We can’t make it about our need to be helpful as often happens. We are a facilitator of their growth. If we’ve been growing, we can often help them to see their situation differently. A well place comment or thought can help them to make new connections in their worldview. I think being there is half the battle. It’s difficult at times to truly focus on another person’s aspirations and needs, but you can’t lead without it.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:31 AM
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The New Golden Rule

Do we need a new Golden Rule? It’s not uncommon to find in modern literature, the call for a new golden rule. Is the Golden Rule adequate in today’s world?

The Golden Rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Some would say that this just isn’t enough: in our global village, we need to consider cultural differences and the desires of others. This thinking suggests that we humans have never found ourselves in a multicultural setting before now.

The new Golden Rule goes something like this: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them. The need for a change really reflects a narrow view or understanding of the original intent of the Golden Rule. In fairness, calls for a new rule points to the very real need to explain the intent of the original. That it should and would need to be explained properly to each succeeding generation is a fact of life.

It should be noted that the term “Golden Rule” does not come from the Bible. However, the Bible does say that whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. The rule has been stated in many ways for millennia. Almost 4000 years ago, written on papyrus, we have from the Egyptian story, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, "Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." Similarly, the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca instructed leaders to "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors." (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 47:11) Clearly, human nature hasn’t changed much.

Rules are tools designed to get our thinking and behavior to a place that we might not naturally go to on our own. As a rule, the Golden Rule is no different. It is an attempt to guide us to the thinking behind the rule so that it is manifested in our behavior.

The Golden Rule is an introduction to a lesson on responsibility, awareness, ethics and outgoing concern for others. The principle the rule is trying to get at is one of selfless service to others. We naturally look at things from our own vantage point. So it’s not surprising that we look at the rule selfishly as well—from our own viewpoint.

The rule has within it the implicit instruction to treat others thoughtfully—in the same manner of outgoing concern—as you would like them to treat you. Certainly none of us would want others to treat us in a way that shows disregard for our personal needs and feelings. The principle of the Golden Rule is selflessness. It is not meant to imply that you should do for others exactly what you want them to do for you. It’s not about you.

This rule is about how to treat others. It’s not a manipulative behavior to get others to do something for you. It’s an approach to how you should be treating others regardless of how they treat you. It’s not a training behavior to get others to do a specific act for you. “I did this for you, so now you should do this for me.” We are to treat others—in the same manner—as we would like to be treated by anyone we come into contact with.

The Golden Rule is a lesson that can hardly be introduced to children soon enough. It’s a prescript that should be followed throughout life. This is a tall order, but something every leader should strive to develop. It is the essence of service and servant leadership. Properly understood, the Golden Rule encompasses cultural and personal differences.

Certainly, the intent of modern literature on this issue is to jog our thinking from a self orientation to an other orientation in our dealings with others. As is, the Golden Rule, if practiced, would go a long way to improving our relationships.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:05 AM
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Artists as Leaders of Society

USC Thornton School of Music dean, Dr. Robert Cutietta, gave an entertaining and interesting commencement speech to The Colburn Conservatory of Music—the premier west coast performing arts school—that focused on artists as leaders of society.

Cutietta began by asking the graduates how they would have an impact on today’s world with degree in music performance. He stated, “Whether people know it or not, our society looks to its artists for a type of leadership that is not found elsewhere. When artists speak people listen. I think subconsciously, society believes that artists possess a certain type of wisdom, a certain outlook on the world, a certain trustworthiness that is seldom found elsewhere."

By way of example, he mentioned the world-class cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who died last month. Rostropovich was a defender of human rights in the former Soviet Union. Cutietta noted, “He used his music and his fame to be an inspiration to many artists and writers to think and act independently. His call was heard and respected by artists and non-artists alike because people inherently feel that artists, by their very nature, have something important to say.

“When the Berlin Wall fell (November 1989) Rostropovich used his music to highlight the importance of this event. He held an impromptu solo concert at the base of the wall. But he didn’t play flamboyant, celebratory fanfares, he performed Bach. What a great choice. What other music could capture the depth of emotions, the implications and complexities that the collapse of the wall really meant? No words could have captured that moment in time with the expressive subtleties as that solo performance.

“Likewise, could we even imagine the civil rights movement without the songs that moved us to tears and action, the Viet Nam war without many of the protest songs, or Bernstein’s Mass, or Yo-Yo Ma using his influence to highlight the impact Asia has had on Western art music.

“For some reason too many musicians are silent. I fear that something has changed and artists don’t see themselves as leaders of society.

“If artists abandon this role, the leadership paradigm loses its balance of power. For our future to remain bright, we need artists to be leaders to help envision the positive future that can be, by helping point out the present that shouldn’t be.”

Has this degree prepared you for the real world? Cutietta asked. “I hope not. If that is all it has done, then you and your teachers have wasted your time. The more important question is whether your degree prepares you to change the real world; to make it a better place for all of us to live in.”

Cutietta believes that their degree has prepared them to make an impact on the world because he told them, "you understand perfection. You understand hard work. You understand self-discipline. You understand working intimately with others towards a goal. And without a doubt, the most important thing you understand is the importance, the power, and meaningfulness of pure beauty.

“All of you share a very real and a very unique responsibility to lead, to be a leader and to make a difference; To use your phenomenal talent and training not just for self-serving gains, not just to become famous, but to truly make a difference.”



NOTE: The Colburn School has a great concert hall – Zipper Hall – but it also works as a good meeting venue for less than 400 people at a reasonable price. So, if you’re in downtown Los Angeles and need a place to meet you might check it out. It’s situated across from Disney Concert Hall and the LA Music Center.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:54 AM
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Solid Connections in a Liquid World

Dr. Ralph Shrader, Chairman and CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton, recently stated that “we have to get beyond our human tendency to want a fixed certain state. It simply doesn’t exist.” To be effective in this kind of environment we need solid leadership and solid linkages with other people. While the typical response would be to demand more, he contends that less is more. “Less is more solid.”

“When it comes to leadership, I believe less instant is more thoughtful.” Leaders need to communicate a clear vision and clear set of priorities. This mean that everyone needs to not only understand where we are going and why we are going there, but what trade–offs should be made to achieve the most important priorities. When push comes to shove our followers “need to know what comes first—whether it is expediency, economy, or an overarching principle.”

Solid leadership in a liquid world also requires a common understanding and consistent measures of success. You can choose metrics that can position you in the best light, “but in reality, it only hurts [your] ability to build the institution because it can mask true performance.”

Additionally, solid leadership in a liquid world requires “informed—but timely and unambiguous—decision making.…Leadership attention is perhaps the scarcest resource in today’s highly networked world….Therefore we as leaders need to focus our attention on the most important matters. My strategy on focusing attention is to be minds on, but hands off. By minds on, hands off, I mean that leaders are responsible for everything important—but we don’t have to actually do everything important.”

This requires that we slow down to think. “Thoughtfulness and clarity cannot be compromised.”

Finally, Shrader brought out another important element in his speech for making solid connections in a liquid world—personal linkages. “Less virtual is always more personal and more powerful.”

We need to use technology for what it does best—store, retrieve, compute, and mine data—and use people for what we do best—imaging, design, dream, and relate. At the end of the day, one of us, not an information system must make all the big decision. We’re the ones who need to be minds on.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:59 AM
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Alias Smith and Jones on Leadership

Hannibal Heyes to Kid Curry: “Listen , when the leader of the gang tells him to do something , don’t he have to do it?”

Curry: “Yeah, that’s my understandin’.”

Kyle (gang member): “But, what makes you such a great leader Hayes is that you never tell no man to do no thing you wouldn’t do yourself.”

Heyes to Curry: “You wanna be leader?”

Curry: “After you!”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:19 AM
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Lucky in Leadership

Just when you thought you walked on water, Steven Bornstein, CEO of NFL Media, writes in the foreword of The Taboos of Leadership:

"Aside from effective management of politics, there’s a certain amount of luck involved in being a successful leader. I don’t think anybody talks about that, but the truth is, any leader could be pumping gas instead of running a company. Sometimes your best plans go to hell, and you still manage to be the last one standing. We can call that skill or street smarts or panache, but to me we should cut to the chase and acknowledge that it’s pure luck."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:59 AM
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What It Takes to Lead

Tony Smith believes that much of the leadership literature today dances around what it really takes to lead because there are some areas that are politically incorrect or just too difficult to talk about. As a result we have created a “sanitized, air-brushed, or glorified picture of leadership that masks or disguises reality” and we never really get at what leaders do and why they do it.

Through his frame of reference, that of executive coach and advocate, he adds great value to our understanding of the realities of leadership even if at times, his conclusions derail when trying to understand leadership at any other level that that of the CEO. In his new book, The Taboos of Leadership his observation that “leaders who are successful never quite fit the theories we apply to them and are always messier and more complex than we would predict” is quite true. It is an aspect that is missing from or far too understated in most leadership literature. Perhaps that explains why international leadership expert Manfred Kets De Vries, wants to put the leader on the couch.

Smith writes:

There is nothing tidy or clean about leadership. It’s messy, but so is the rest of life.

What makes an effective leader is a contradictory collage of motivations and drivers, rewards and costs. We can’t teach leadership, not in the sense that we’ve been trying thus far. We can’t look at all the theories of leadership and say: Do this, this, and this, and you will become or create a good leader. But we can understand leadership much better than we do now. If we take a look below the surface, into the blood, guts, and pulsing arteries of leadership, we are bound to understand leadership as a process much, much better.

He asks ten taboo-braking questions: What does it take to lead? Does charisma matter? Is being political a bad thing? Do women make better leaders? What about the trappings of power? Should the leader play favorites? Do leader’s really want to groom a successor? Should a leader’s work be their life? Should leaders put aside their own motivations and interests and serve only the motivations and interests of their people? Do leaders cultivate loneliness deliberately?

He left out a direct discussion of followers and authority. These are two areas that are misunderstood as often as they are poorly executed. The proliferation of “leaderless organization” literature will attest to that fact. Instead of sugar-coating or dismissing these topics, we should seek a better understanding of these vital and necessary issues.

Smith suggests: “Perhaps we should know, or at least recognize, the risk-reward ratio of leadership a little better before we judge our leaders, or decide to become one ourselves.” That point can’t be emphasized enough.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:28 AM
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A Pyrrhic Victory

In 279 BC, 40,000 Romans battled for two days against 40,000 Greeks and their 20 war elephants in the hills of southeastern Italy near Asculum. The Greeks were under the command of King Pyrrhus. According to the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, he was the greatest general the world had seen since Alexander the Great.

The first day of battle accomplished little. The two sides fought an indecisive battle. Over the next day, the Romans were forced back, but Pyrrhus was unable to capture their camp. Finally, at the end of the day, seeing the futility of continuing, the armies separated. The Romans had lost 6,000 men and the Greeks 3,500 including many officers. It was a costly victory for Pyrrhus. At dawn the next morning, in response to congratulations for his victory over the Romans, the historian Plutarch relates that Pyrrhus confessed “one more such victory would utterly undo him.” The battle had been won at too high a cost. Although they never defeated Pyrrhus on the field, the Romans were able to win a war of attrition. Henceforth, no soldier would cheer a Pyrrhic victory.

We, too, have battles to fight from time to time. Some battles though, can be won at too high a cost. As Pyrrhus admitted, some battles can literally undo us. If we are not careful we can let situations and our ego get the best of us. We can undermine our purpose of serving and lifting up those we lead. Winning an argument can destroy our influence and cost us a relationship.

In Pearls of Wisdom, Joyce Brothers wrote, “There is a rule in sailing where the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft. I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well.” Relationships are what leadership is all about. As the leader we are the more maneuverable ship. Being immovable or stubborn, just because we are right, doesn’t move us closer to our goal. It is up to us to step back, bend, or give way and let the other person pass. Later we might try a different tack if it is really that important to make the point. Hitting a difficult person head on is rarely the appropriate action.

When we come up against conflict, we must ask ourselves if winning this one is really that important. How will winning affect my ability to work with this person? What is motivating me to win? We don’t need to fight every battle. We should choose battles that in the final analysis will strengthen our relationships and improve our effectiveness.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:53 AM
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Lee Iacocca’s 9 C's of Leadership

Lee Iacocca’s polemic, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, will be released on April 17th. In the meantime you can read chapter one Had Enough? in our Reading Room. Included in chapter one he presents his 9 C's of Leadership you will find briefly illuminated below:

1. A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care.

2. A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. Leadership is all about managing change -- whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt.

3. A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth.

4. A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power."

5. A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

6. To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION -- a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done.

7. A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma.

8. A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing.

9. You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE.

THE BIGGEST C IS CRISIS. Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:46 PM
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Tyranny of the Urgent

It is easy to succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. There is always something competing for our attention. Worse still we might find we have to deal with what Michael Watkins calls pyromaniacs—those people like to create fires for you to put out. The only way out is to get some perspective. In White Hat Leadership, author Ty Warren writes about the importance of making time to disengage:

Part of preparing to lead is recognizing when to step away to recharge. Most of us have experienced the benefits of taking time away from the office (or family) for a few days, then returning with new energy and a better perspective.

Stepping away allows us to work through issues and problems without the stress induced by a sense of urgency. It is usually in these moments of relaxation that we generate objective solutions. We must go away to return with clarity.

Those who feel task saturated are the very people who need to step away most.

Leaders must have time to think or they will likely forfeit their ability to lead. Task saturation causes us to react rather than respond. Reaction is a mechanical, almost involuntary reflex to events. It comes from the primal areas of the brain and does not involve real thought. Response is initiated from the cognitive regions of the brain. Reaction is normal for the task-saturated person; response comes from the leader who makes certain to allocate time for cognitive consideration.

The urgent will always be with us. How we handle it will determine how effective we are. Michael Watkins offers five strategies to help you deal with the urgent on his blog.

Once we begin to let the urgent take over the important we loose perspective and get sucked into a cycle that perpetuates the problem and drains us. Without direction, we mistakenly find ourselves trying to compensate by going twice as fast. We must take time out to think. The perspective you gain will help you to handle everything you do better.

Are you part of the problem? Do you create fires for others to put out? Take the “Are you a pyromaniac?” quiz.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:51 PM
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President and CEO = Head of Support

I appreciated Umpqua president and CEO Ray Davis' comment in his book, Leading for Growth concerning the true function of a leader:

If you’re a president or CEO or senior vice president, no doubt you worked hard to earn that position. And yes, your title gives you a certain amount of authority. But it doesn’t tell you what is really important—it doesn’t tell you what your job really is.

My title is president and CEO, and that’s the title I use when I’m out in public representing the company or when I’m on the phone talking about our quarterly results with Wall Street analysts. But when I’m talking to our people, I tell them to scratch out “President and CEO” on my business card and write in “Head of Support,” which is my real title in their eyes.

In practical terms:

Because things are moving so quickly, I can’t assume that the tools and support that worked yesterday will be sufficient today. I’m out there all the time, asking, “What is it you need?” It’s a constant. It’s the only way we can keep up with our own growth.

Davis says that support goes beyond just training and tools. The standard fare usually doesn’t get at what people need in a specific way in order to meet your goals. So you always need to be asking people directly what they need. This may mean you need to give different things to different people. The idea that you shouldn’t make individual exceptions “I think is dead wrong…. When people are exceptional, you must make exceptions for them.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:31 AM
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The Well-Differentiated Leader

Recently U.S. Navy Cdr. Kirk S. Lippold spoke about leadership at Highland School in Virginia. You may remember that he was the commander of the USS Cole when it was attacked in Yemen in October of 2000. Lippold said, "When you talk about leadership, for a lot of people, it boils down to one word, and that is integrity. If you have the integrity to do what's right regardless of the circumstances and the situation, you are a leader in your own right, because so many people today fail or waiver on that one key trait.

"As commander, you provide the crew with the command philosophy, then you give them goals and guidelines to get there. By that philosophy, you start with the foundation of integrity, but it is also good work ethic, taking care of your fellow sailors, making sure that you look out for each other, not just for the time you are there on the ship, but when you are on liberty.”

What he is referring to is similar to an idea Edwin Friedman presents in A Failure of Nerve. It’s what Friedman has termed the well-differentiated leader. It is similar to what is most commonly termed authentic leadership, but I like the way it is articulated here. The well-differentiated leader is not “an autocrat who tells others what to do or orders them around, although any leader who defines himself or herself clearly may be perceived that way by those who are not taking responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny.” By the well-differentiated leader “I mean someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others, and therefore be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing. It is not as though some leaders can do this and some cannot. No one does this easily, and most leaders, I have learned, can improve their capacity.”

Two key concepts here are self-knowledge and self-control. What Friedman spurns is a highly anxious risk-avoided, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus. He calls this a failure of nerve. Friedman writes, “It is the integrity of the leader that promotes the integrity or prevents the dis-integr-ation of the system he or she is leading.” It was Lippold’s understanding that “you have the integrity to do what's right regardless of the circumstances and the situation” that enabled he and his men to get through the attack. It points again to the fact that leadership is really a character process and not an intellectual one.

Previously: Friedman - If You Are a Leader, Expect Sabotage

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:02 AM
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Employees Who Quit, But Stay On

Are disengaged employees eroding your customer satisfaction, employee retention, productivity and profitability? Research has shown that the average employee engagement figures for the United States are: 30% Engaged, 54% NOT Engaged and 16% Actively Disengaged. Keith Ayers in his book, Engagement Is Not Enough, says that it is a leadership issue and the problem is critical. “Like a cancer, they spread their discontent and do their best to turn the engaged employees against you as well. Even if they don’t succeed, they will undermine the good work your engaged employees are doing by failing to complete their part of projects on time or lowering the overall quality of the job.”

According to the Gallup Organization, the problem usually begins in the first six months when an average of over 60% of employees switch off. This is basically due to the perceived realization that their expectations are not going to be met. They feel powerless to fix the situation and give up, but stick around at your expense. Ayers, warns us to avoid four primary obsessions that often result in managers unintentionally increasing the spread of the cancer of disengagement:

An obsession with financial results. “To drive myopically toward profit or achieving budget alone, ignoring the needs of employees, customers, and the culture and the values of the organization, is very costly to results.” How much more could you “achieve with passionate employees who go to extreme lengths every day to give their best performance?”

An obsession with control. “Control-based leaders assume that people cannot be trusted and send that message to their team. These autocrats are a liability to the organization, squashing natural enthusiasm, creativity, and ambition and driving away the most talented employees.”

An obsession with avoiding responsibility. “The number one cause of lack of engagement, poor employee performance, and staff turnover is the relationship the employee has with his or her immediate supervisor. If your team is not performing the way you want them to, first look at whether the leadership they are getting from you is what they need to be able to perform at their best.”

An obsession with logic. “Managers obsessed with logic and left-brained thinking are dismissive of feelings—they say that emotions don’t belong in the workplace. They do not believe engagement has anything to do with organizational performance or that people can be passionate about their work. Managers need to understand that emotional intelligence and right-brain thinking are critical skills to become successful leaders in the new global economy.”

Ayers offers a discussion of the leadership skills you will need to develop to create passionate employees. He correctly notes, “By now you may be thinking, ‘Don’t the employees have a responsibility to be engaged and perform at their best?’ And you’re right, they do. They should be engaged. But the reality is, in an average organization, 70 percent of them are not! Being right about what they should do won’t make them more engaged. Being effective as a leader will.”

According to The Conference Board, they reported that in looking at a cross section of studies, that all studies, all locations and all ages agreed that the direct relationship with one's manager is the strongest of all drivers. Not surprisingly then, they also reported that larger companies are more challenged to engage employees than are smaller companies.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:24 AM
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If You Are a Leader, Expect Sabotage

Sabotage “is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership” writes Edwin Friedman in A Failure of Nerve. “Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the territory is a family or an organization. And a leader’s capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution’s specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom.”

The “shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system” just referred to, have a lot to do with people’s insecurities, people trying to measure up and just trying to merely hold on to what they have or where they are. It is a reaction that some people get to strong and clearly defined leadership. Knowing that this is part of the leadership process and not an unexpected turn of events is helpful in maintaining a leader’s authenticity.

An effective leader should expect to be attacked as a result of their leadership. Some people will react negatively to what a leader stands for and then begin a campaign of sabotage in order to draw attention away from themselves or the mission. Friedman says “this is the moment when a leader is most likely to have a failure of nerve and experience a strong temptation to seek a quick fix.” This is the moment of truth. “A leader can never assume success because he or she has brought about a change. It is only after having first brought about a change and then subsequently endured the subsequent sabotage that the leader can feel truly successful.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:42 AM
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The Study of Leadership

In a 1969 keynote address in Tokyo, Peter Drucker made the following observation about an aspect of leadership—management:

There are management tools and techniques. There are management concepts and principles. There is a common language of management. And there may be even a universal "discipline" of management. Certainly there is a worldwide generic function which we call management and which serves the same purpose in any and all developed societies. But management is also a culture and a system of values and beliefs. It is also the means through which a given society makes productive its own values and beliefs. Indeed, management may well be considered the bridge between a “civilization” that is rapidly becoming worldwide, and a “culture” which express divergent traditions, values, beliefs, and heritages.

Management must, indeed, become the instrument through which cultural diversity can be made to serve the common purposes of mankind. At the same time, management increasingly is not being practiced within the confines of one national culture, law, or sovereignty but "multinationally." Indeed, management increasingly is becoming an institution—so far, the only one—of a genuine world economy.

Of course, along the same lines, leadership encompasses far more than the business or political environment we typically confine it to. From being the act of a few, it has become a personal responsibility. The issues we face today require a multidimensional understanding of leadership that is broader than most academic studies would give it. In fact the study of leadership is not the study of leadership at all, for leadership is the development of an individual’s whole being which is dynamic and ongoing.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:41 AM
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Not All Leaders Are the Same

In The Greatness Guide, Robin Sharma clarifies the mantra that leadership is everybody’s business. While everyone is a leader, not everyone does the same thing. Obviously not everyone should be running the company. He explains:

Know your role. Everyone needs to behave like a leader—no matter what they do. Everyone needs to demonstrate leadership traits—regardless of their position. That means everyone needs to take responsibility for getting results that they generate. Everyone needs to do their part to shape culture. Everyone needs to be positive and inspirational. Everyone needs to keep customers happy and protect the brand. Everyone is a leader. But not everyone is the same.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:10 AM
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Goldsmith's Gold: Stop Trying to Help People Who Don’t Want to Change

You can help some of the people some of the time, but you can’t help all the people all the time. Not everyone wants help. Not everyone wants to change. Some people can’t or won’t be lead. It’s a fact of life. Marshall explains, “This may sound harsh, but some people are unsalvageable. You’re only banging your head against a wall if you think you can fix them.” Some flaws can’t be coached away by any boss, especially if the following conditions exist:

Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem.

Stop trying to change people who are pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization. If they’re going the wrong direction, all you do is help them get there faster.

Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job. Move them on.

Stop trying to help people who think everyone else is the problem. People like this will never give up on their near-religious belief that any failure is someone else’s fault.

More importantly, we need to be sure we are not deluding ourselves into being one of these people. Always be looking to change, grow and improve. Ask. Others are sure to point the way.

This is from What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:59 AM
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Why Are Leaders in Such Short Supply?

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, authors of Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? wrote: Given the hunger for leadership, why are leaders in such short supply? We think there are two fundamental reasons.

First, organizations desire leaders but structure themselves in ways that kill leadership. Too many organizations—in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors—are machines that destroy leadership. They encourage either conformists or role players with an impoverished sense of who they are and what they stand for. Neither makes for effective leaders.

Second, our understanding of leadership is blinkered. The main body of leadership literature focuses on the characteristics of leaders. The underlying assumption is that leadership is something we do to other people. But we believe leadership should be seen as something we do with other people. Leadership should always be viewed as a relationship between the leader and the led.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:43 AM
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5 Things Leadership is Not

Greg Morris, asks us in his book, In Pursuit of Leadership, to consider five things leadership is not:

1. Leadership is not a position. Leadership comes from personal influence, not a job title.
2. Leadership is not building a personality cult. Leadership is not surrounding yourself with “yes men.”
3. Leadership is not being indispensable. While it may give you strokes to feel needed, it is not leadership. Some leaders build followers, while true leaders build other leaders.
4. Leadership is not about blaming others. Leadership is first and foremost about being honest and responsible for the decisions you make or fail to make.
5. Leadership is not privilege. Authentic leaders will not use their position for their own advantage or comfort and should not ask others to do what they are unwilling to do themselves.

He adds, “The reality of true leadership is that your rights actually DECREASE as you rise in the organization, while your responsibilities INCREASE. This suggests that leadership involves not power or prestige but servanthood.”

In Pursuit of Leadership is an interesting analysis of the life of Moses—a man nearly all of us are familiar with—in terms of his leadership and the path he took to get there. He points out that the accomplishments that Moses is known for “materialized in the final third of his life…. The first eighty years of Moses’ life molded him into a man that God could trust and use. There is no shortcut to spiritual preparation and leadership training. Only through the crucible of life can patience, discipline, character and maturity be developed.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:21 AM
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Who Will Succeed or Fail in the Corner Office?

Carol Hymowitz asked in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “which CEOs have the skills to survive the New Year’s challenges?” In her article she writes:

The true test of enduring leadership success is how well business leaders handle setbacks and failures. They can advance by outperforming others, but they can't always be in control.

"Given the collision of pressures and challenges in business today, you'll never be on top all the time," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management. The real test, he adds, is who survives a challenge to a chief's business model or reputation.

Executives have a better chance of survival if they address problems directly, admit their mistakes and build alliances to make changes. They must seek advice from others but also feel secure enough to make decisive plans.

A leader’s communication flexibility and consistency is important in this regard. Leaders are not only expected to influence their direct reports, Gene Klan writes in his new book, Building Character, but “are also expected to influence their superiors, board members, peer, customers, clients, suppliers, the news media, community officials, political leaders, government regulators, negotiators, environmental authorities, special interest groups, Wall Street Analysts, and any number of other stakeholders…. [E]ach group requires different tactics to be influenced and led both effectively and positively. Leaders need flexibility and many different skills to communicate credibly and interact with all these parties for maximum results.”

Consistency is a matter of character. “For leaders,” Klan continues, “consistency means always reflecting the same basic principles in practice. It means that one’s behaviors conform and agree with one’s past words and actions regardless of pressure, criticism, and advice to do otherwise. It means maintaining the habitual positive behaviors that are key to winning trust and respect and achieving effectiveness overall. It means being seen and known as a pillar of dependability and reliability, not changing or wavering based on opinion polls, internal disapprovals, or external condemnations."

"Consistency also implies that a leader’s behaviors and character are not compartmentalized between work and personal life. You are who you are, and that doesn’t change when you arrive at the office or at your own front door. Your character is such that you find consistent standards for behavior in any context. Responsibilities, stresses, and personalities may vary, but your character does not. All the politically correct arguments to the contrary do not change that reality. Behaviors reflect a leader’s character regardless of the context. In every context, your character will be noticed and judged.” It is these leaders that have to best chance of surviving the challenges that lie ahead in the coming year.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:52 AM
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Leadership Challenges

The Dubai based ITP Business Magazine published an article this last weekend by Alex Andarakis, CEO of Middle East drinks giant Aujan, relating some of the challenges of leadership we face today. Returning from a recent forum at the London Business School, he came away with the following lessons and issues:

  Strong and successful companies understand that leadership is not the exclusive domain of the chief executive or board of directors. Rather, leadership is a key requirement across all levels within an organisation.

  The role of leaders is to constantly, and with large amounts of passion, communicate and raise the profile of ‘meaning', articulating it in a manner that is easily understood and wholly relevant.

  Leaders inspire the imagination of a community of followers and believers. Leaders provide their teams and the individuals within them with the strength and motivation to create and maintain momentum throughout the journey of achieving the company’s vision, strategy and targets.

  We are increasingly impatient to achieve success: See how the traditional career of 47 hours a week, 47 weeks a year, for 47 years has been replaced by young professionals who put in 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 17 years.

  We are increasingly disconnected from any sense of community: Look at the breakdown of families and the disappearance of social clubs and associations.

  We are increasingly distrustful of authority: From Enron to WorldCom to Parmalat to Tyco, corporate scandal has slowly eroded trust.

  Leaders must drive significance, community, authenticity and trust. They must capture the hearts and minds of their staff – who invest a significant amount of their life in an organization, often at a great cost to their personal and family ties.

  Take this challenge: The next time you're sitting in a business class lounge, study the faces of the many gifted individuals around you, wearied from an endless tour of duty for their employers. They are more than just people being paid to do a job; they are individuals with families, friends, hopes and fears; all trying to understand how and what they do will make a difference to others in their community.

  Valuing the emotional dimension – and forging an emotional connection – is the key difference between good leaders and great leaders.

  Understanding oneself is of paramount importance. If self-knowledge is absent, how can you imagine that you will ever understand your organisation, community or even customers?

Issues such as the authority deficit and the decay of meaningful community will become even more obvious in the coming years as we struggle to deal with them. As we begin to discover the emerging problems related to these issues, we might find that we to reexamine our own attitudes concerning them before anything meaningful can be done to correct the situation.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:29 AM
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The Era of Professional Management is Dead

About a month ago Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric Company, visited the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Speaking to the students, he stated, "The era of professional management is dead. The future is growth leadership."

The Darden School news release states:

To prepare, he advised Darden students to gain expertise in six key areas:

• Be a fearless globalist and explore new opportunities wherever they exist.
• View leadership from the perspective of innovation and product management
• Simplify. "Doing things simply is a lot harder than doing them in a complicated way," he said. But simplification saves time and increases efficiency, while allowing for the free flow of ideas.
• Be a salesman. In the digital age companies will sell fewer things to more people, Immelt said. Guessing correctly what those things will be and determining how to sell them will be a hallmark of the successful executive.
• Like people (be a good student of organizational behavior). This helps maintain loyalty, while giving talented individuals a reason to stay at the company. "Convince them your vision is their vision," Immelt said.
• Build trust. "Take care of your workforce," the executive said.

The Darden School Dean, Robert F. Bruner added some comments of Immelt’s talk on his blog:

To be a growth leader is to stimulate organic growth of a firm through close acquaintance with the needs of the customer. Thus, “domain knowledge” is important—the knowledge that can help you decide what to sell, to whom, and where to make it. Jack Welch believed in the theory of the “best available athlete,” the generalist who could be transferred successfully from turbines, to medical devices, and to TV production. Immelt believes that higher competition requires a closer knowledge of the customer than the best athlete model allows.

On the same post Bruner is also left some impressions of Immelt that are worth reading.

Robert Bruner himself is an interesting and articulate man. I especially appreciated his comments on “Getting a Life.” He writes, “High performance professionals must have a renewing life outside of the workspace. You can’t sustain a high rate of intensity without a break. This varies for everyone, of course. But the formula should include some kind of exercise, family or community-oriented engagement, and some strictly personal break time.” He shares what works for him in his own personal renewal program. Reading, cycling, food and wine, and foreign travel resonated with me.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:55 AM
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Humility Is a Core Quality Found In Great Leaders

We, of course, keep coming back to humility. It is, as Anthony Bell writes in Great Leadership, a core quality of a great leader.

Humility is often misunderstood. As Bell writes: It’s not about self-deprecating insecurity; it’s much more about honest recognition of both strengths and weaknesses, reinforced by an attractive lack of preoccupation with either one. It’s the antithesis of self-absorption—the recognition that ‘it’s not about me.’ It’s not as someone put it, thinking less of yourself; rather, it’s thinking less about yourself.

A selflessness is inherent in this kind of humility. It reflects a willingness to put the interests of the organization and of its people ahead of the leader’s own interests.

Humility is rare in leaders, but when it’s there, it’s powerful. It’s powerful because it’s disarming.

Humility rests firmly on the foundation of self-awareness. Humility generates two qualities: a thirst for personal growth and a healthy dose of self-discipline. [A thirst for personal growth because] it requires a certain measure of humility to recognize what you don’t know and an equal measure to want to keep on learning. [It also breeds a healthy dose of self-discipline because] humility recognizes that greatness requires work, and work requires self-discipline.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:02 AM
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Charismatic Leadership and Social Change

In Pakistan’s The News – International, former principal of Gordon College of Rawalpindi, Prof Khwaja Masud wrote a piece on charismatic leadership and social change. Here are some of his observations:

The problem of leadership appears most urgently at defining moments of history. A sharp crisis in social, economic and political affairs, when something must be done and done quickly, naturally intensifies interest in the role of a leader in history making.

The society-shattering deed is possible only when the society is ripe for it. In the biblical phrase, things happen in the fullness of time. Delivery may be forced, but the child must be ready to enter the world. The leader acts only as a midwife who brings forth what is already mothered by the spirit of the age, or as the Germans say ‘zeitgeist’. We cannot sit back and wait for the event to happen. This is where commitment comes in. These who stand and wait are either cowards or traitors to the cause.

Apart from the qualities enumerated by Iqbal— lofty vision, mellifluous discourse and a passionate heart—the leader must possess charisma. [W]hen a social order nears bankruptcy, there is actually felt a desire among the people for a charismatic leader who may symbolize their deeply felt needs and aspirations. The charismatic leader is born in a climate of uncertainty and unpredictability. He moves in to bridge the gap between the discredited past and uncertain future. When the two ages overlap, one dying and the other refusing to be born, the historic need for charismatic leader arises, who has his hand on the pulse of time, and, who, above all, is closely attached to the common people. He is fired by the passion, inspired by the vision and totally committed to extricate the distraught people from the agony of uncertainty so as to lead them to safe haven.

Tolstoy has correctly pinpointed the source of power of a charismatic leader. He says: “The power of a great leader lies neither in the physical nor moral qualities of him who possesses it. Power is the collective will of the people transferred by expressed or tacit consent to their chosen leader.”

The objective conditions may be ripe for the radical transformation of a society, but without a leader who can command the respect and love of the masses, the historic opportunity may be lost.

As former US president Woodrow Wilson once said: “When I look back on the process of history, I see this writing over every page that the nations are renewed from the bottom, not from the top, that the genius who springs from the ranks of the unknown men is the genius who renews the youth and energy of the people. The utility, the vitality and the fruitage of life does not come from the top to the bottom, it comes like the natural growth of a great tree from the soil, up through the trunk into the branches to the foliage and the fruit. The great struggling unknown masses that are the base of everything are the dynamic force that is lifting the levels of history. A nation is as great and only as great as her rank and file.”

It is the dialectical relation between the charismatic leader and the struggling masses that makes history.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:01 AM
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Management & Leadership

Kenneth D. Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Bank of America made this distinction between management and leadership to the graduates at Chapel Hill, North Carolina earlier this year:

The distinction between management and leadership is, in my view, crucial. Leadership is about how you use the influence and trust that people grant you to define necessary change and chart the future direction of the organization. Management is about how you earn that influence and trust in the first place.

Management is how we demonstrate our competence, business acumen and organizational ability. Management is how we show that we will be fair, inclusive and trustworthy in the way we use power. Most important, the way we manage establishes the standards of ethical conduct to which we hold ourselves and our teammates.

In day-to-day operations, people will do what a manager tells them to do because he controls their paycheck. But that doesn’t mean they’ll go above and beyond to accomplish a shared goal. Without trust and loyalty, they won’t put in the long hours. They won’t take career risk. They won’t follow where the manager wants to lead.

Ultimately, people grant a manager the opportunity to lead because they have found that person to be effective and trustworthy. Over time, by managing effectively, the manager begins to earn what we sometimes call “followership.” And that’s when you begin to have the opportunity to lead. Leadership is not granted by virtue of a title. It’s granted by the people who have agreed to follow you. And it can be taken away by those same people very quickly if their trust is violated.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:41 AM
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Peter Drucker on What a President Needs to be Effective

In the August 1960 Harper’s Magazine, Peter Drucker wrote, “What a President needs is an active mind—a mind interested in other people and their ideas; able to find the kernel of sense in a farrago of abstract theorizing; quick to see where imagination turns into riot, but also where logic turns into absurdity. Such a mind needs constant nourishment and stimulation through the ideas of others.” He is suggesting that a president needs people with ideas; people that can fire the imagination with hope that new things can be done.

Drucker felt that the contemporary leader that made the most use of such people was General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander in occupied Japan. MacArthur wrote in his 1964 book Reminiscences, "I carefully abstained from any interferences by edict with the cultural traditions or the personal Japanese way of life. In frequent public statements I advised the Japanese people to seek a healthy blend between the best of theirs and the best of ours, and I was careful to tell them that no people or country was sufficient unto itself in these matters. I encouraged delegations of Japanese from every walk of life to travel in the West, and where it was possible, I paved the way for such visits. I have always felt that one of the things that made the occupation a success was my insistence that we wanted to learn from the Japanese as well as teach them. It had a great deal to do with restoring a sense of dignity and purpose in their people, and as they regained self-respect and pride, they approached an exchange of ideas with avidity and goodwill. This mutual respect became the foundation of the basic esteem our two peoples came to have for one another—and enabled the occupation to write a unique and warmly human chapter of world history.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:21 AM
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Being Relevant

Determining what matters is the one of the first tasks of a leader. Peter Drucker wrote, “The right answer to the irrelevant question misdirects. But the wrong answer to a relevant issue still puts the spotlight where it belongs.” One can be right but irrelevant. What matters, what is relevant is dictated objectively by the situation one find themselves in. Determining what is right on complex issues can be daunting and take time, but it is vital that the issue we are working on is relevant. A leader’s job is not necessarily to solve the problems at hand, but to get us thinking about the right problems at the right time. This means creating understanding from the analysis of both sides—or more often, all sides—of an issue. Without the relevant issue we are just spinning our wheels.

A leader might also make use of what Andy Grove calls helpful Cassandras. You may remember from Greek Mythology, Cassandra's great beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. Helpful Cassandras are those people that can help a leader see other points of view, people that are willing to be blunt, so that a leader doesn’t win an argument they ought to lose.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:20 AM
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Five Qualities of Great Leaders

In The Nature of Leadership, Joseph White writes,"To be a great leader, you have to be successful at achieving change—important, consequential change in the results for which you are responsible. Making change successfully is a leader's greatest challenge." To this end a great leader utilizes the following qualities to produce results and make change.

• INNOVATION: Great leaders are original thinkers, and often contrarians. They are usually guided by a few big, revolutionary ideas. For Abraham Lincoln, it was eliminating slavery. For Ronald Reagan, it was crushing Communism. For Warren Buffett, it was finding a way to make the frowned-upon practice of putting all your nest eggs into a single basket pay off for investors.


• RISK TAKING: Great leaders are informed risk takers with a track record (but never a perfect record) of success. They act decisively, not recklessly, to maximize lucky breaks. Herb Kelleher took full advantage of the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978 by launching Southwest Airlines.


• SPOTTING TALENT: Great leaders have an insatiable appetite for outstanding talent. They know they need people different from themselves, and stronger and smarter, to achieve their aspirations. Steve Jobs, a very smart entrepreneur, recognized that he needed strong, professional leadership for his promising start-up. He set his sights on John Sculley, an outstanding executive slated to become CEO of PepsiCo, as the ideal CEO for Apple Computers. Then, he worked to sell Sculley on joining him in running Apple.


• HELICOPTER VIEW: Great leaders have an extraordinary sense of perspective. They routinely put an immediate challenge into a larger context of the past, the future, and current events, while keeping the organization’s mission and practical consequences firmly in mind. With the creation of GE Healthcare and his “eco-imagination” strategy, Jeff Immelt, General Electric’s new CEO, has reflected Jack Welch’s quality-improvement philosophy while encouraging innovation, anticipating future trends, and responding to environmental realities.


• THE SPARKLE FACTOR: Great leaders have presence. Every great leader, regardless of his or her personality, has a special, compelling something. There’s no formula for “sparkle.” But you know it when you see it. Barak Obama, the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, is intelligent, well spoken, warm, energetic, and thoughtful. He has the sparkle factor in abundance, which will give him an edge if he tries to become America’s first African-American president.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:30 AM
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Assertiveness: The Meekest and Mightiest Make the Worst Leaders

Balance. Easy to understand, tough to practice.

The overuse of strength creates a weakness. Every strength has a point where it becomes a liability. Maturity and self-control help to rein in the excesses of our personality.

Not surprisingly, recent research by Stanford professor Frank Flynn has found that the greatest identifiable trait that can hold someone back from becoming a great leader is being too assertive—or not assertive enough. In other words, assertiveness that is out of balance.

In the Stanford Graduate School of Business News, Marguerite Rigoglioso reports:

Analyzing three years’ worth of written and survey data on students, as well as students’ assessments of their own former bosses, Flynn and Ames found that excessive or inadequate assertiveness was the No. 1 issue listed in the weakness column when it came to evaluating individuals’ leadership potential. “It was mentioned twice as frequently as any other issue. It appeared as a clear factor in weakness comments more than lack of intelligence, conscientiousness, and charisma combined,” Flynn says. Specifically, what the researchers found was essentially an “inverted U” between the ratings of a person’s assertiveness and his or her leadership ability: Up to a certain point it was positively associated, but then it went back down.


“The analogy we use is that assertiveness is like salt in a sauce: Too much spoils the dish, but too little is equally distracting,” Flynn says. Interestingly, at the “just right” point, assertiveness disappears as a leadership quality, either positive or negative. “While getting assertiveness wrong in one direction or the other dominates perceptions of weakness, getting it right is not a major theme in perceptions of strengths,” Flynn says. “In other words, nobody ever compliments the chef on a perfectly salted dish.”

What Flynn and Ames discovered was that when people were determined to be extremely assertive, the social costs of their behavior—others’ hurt feelings and damaged relationships—were seen to override the positive aspects of their ability to get the job done. Conversely, when they were deemed too passive, their inability to move projects along and achieve goals was what stuck in people’s minds, not their ability to preserve social harmony. “People pay more attention to what’s bad about assertive or non-assertive behavior than what’s good about it,” Flynn explains.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:32 AM
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Exemplary Leadership

Michael Dingake wrote this piece on leading by example in Mmegi, Botswana's daily independent newspaper. Here is an excerpt:

Any leader who like my clownish primary school teacher who used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do," cannot be a true leader. Leaders must be role models. Any leader who speaks like my teacher forfeits the role model status and is disqualified for leadership ambitions. Leaders who do not inspire emulation can at best be regarded as incompetents, perhaps clowns on the political stage. Exemplariness is a non-negotiable leadership quality.

[C]an we assume that all leaders at whatever hierarchical rung of leadership, share equal responsibility and are ipso facto expected to display equal exemplary behaviour? The American President, Truman said the buck stops at his door! He meant that the higher the responsibility of office, the higher the level of commitment to other exemplary leadership qualities like independent-mindedness, integrity, courage, impartiality and so forth.

Exemplariness is one of the most important leadership qualities one can think of. In the political arena, the governing party is not on the same social status rung as the parties in opposition for numerous reasons. The governing party is endowed with power, authority influence and resources. Public expectation, trust, hope and demand, is that the party entrusted with such responsibility has to demonstrate exemplary trustworthiness and not abuse the powers, authority and the resources under its control.

Exemplary leadership or leadership deserving of imitation is what Aristotle would call virtue in action. It's authentic. Not just talking the talk, but putting it into action. Our lives must correspond to the truth which we proclaim. Often times this means transcending our own egos. Leadership isn't something you turn off and on. It's a reality you express.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:33 AM
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You Don't Need A Title to Be A Leader

Recently I was talking to a Postal employee about her job. She said that she really saw herself as only a follower. She couldn’t be a leader.
She just did her job. After we talked a bit she began to see that by the “little” things she did everyday, she made profound contributions not only to the Post Office but to the people she worked with. I gave her a copy of this book. It will help her to see even more clearly, the important contributions she makes—her leadership role.

The fact is, no matter whether we have a title or not, we are at one time or another both leaders and followers. This gem of a book will help you and those you come into contact with, not only understand how they lead in various ways, but how they can step up and make more of a contribution—expand their influence.

Mark Sanborn, author of the Fred Factor, has assembled a collection of excellent examples pulled from everyday life to illustrate the important impact we can and do make on those around us.

Here is a short excerpt:

[A] title is not a job description. There are some things that a title can suggest, like having responsibility for others and getting results. It can’t, however, specifically define what a person does.

Titles are broad brushstrokes.

It’s impossible for a title or an organizational chart to reflect all the many people who act as leaders or exert leadership throughout the organization. That’s why I call such people “nontitled leaders.” They may or may not have direct responsibility to lead others, yet every day they influence and lead those around them.

Get this book into the hands of those in your organization. Seeing their role in the greater context will give them meaning and quicken their step.

You can read an excerpt from the introduction here.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:07 AM
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September 11, 2006

September 11th is a tragedy that struck all of us. It caused us to look deeper inside ourselves to see what we had and what we lacked. As any crisis reveals, leadership is something that is built over time and not something you dream up on a moments notice. A lot of character was revealed and developed that day. Five Years Later, Memories and Lessons of Sept. 11 Remain Strong by Stephen Barr, Washington Post Steven M. Carter Sr. and William Stout showed that day the importance of leadership, experience and training. * * *

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:35 AM
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Great Expectations

Samuel Johnson lamented that, “Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration.”

Michael Curtin, Vice Chairman, COO and Associate Publisher of The Columbus Dispatch, spoke recently on the degradation of language:

Of course, we know that all living languages change. They must to survive. Language never is what it was in the good old days. The real question is what constitutes change and what is decay.

There is abundant evidence that the American people are growing more worried about language decay—an increase in casual profanity, rudeness and incivility in our expression.

The Associated Press reported recently that three-fourths of Americans say they encounter profanity in public either occasionally or frequently, and a majority agreed they encounter it noticeably more often than 20 years ago.

Words that once were shocking to hear in public now are heard commonly on television and radio, in music and movies, at work and on the street.

Are we on an irreversible downward slope?

Interestingly enough over on the Christianity Today Blog they have been debating for months as to whether a young poet should have been allowed to use the F-word throughout the public recitation of her poem at church. Oddly, the debate is all over the place. I know the poet’s pastor thought that he was being caring, loving and accepting, but in the end he failed her. He was disrespectful to the young girl by allowing her to recite the poem with all of its profanity intact.

To be sure, a leader needs to be accepting of those they lead. They need to try to relate to and understand those they lead. But more importantly, they need to be respectful and they need to expect the best of their people—or they will seldom get it.

If in trying to be accepting, we lower the bar and drop the standards, we all lose. Perhaps in the short-term this seems to work but in the end it backfires—we lose ground and respect. Unfortunately, we see this kind of misguided thinking happening in homes, schools, companies and yes, even churches.

In short, the pastor sent the message that she was not capable of coming up to a standard that is acceptable to society at large. Apparently her pastor didn’t feel she was talented enough to express herself in a proper manner. It is insulting.

If a leader is to make a difference they must act courageously. Upholding standards is not always easy but it is necessary. Emerson wrote, “Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” We need to have enough respect for the people we lead to expect the best from them. What we expect is all too often, exactly what we get.

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Desmond Tutu on Real Leadership

Desmond Tutu, South African cleric and recipient of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, gave a speech recently at the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture in Cape Town. Here are some of his edited comments from that speech on Real Leadership:

I thought it might not be entirely inappropriate to talk about leadership—true, real leadership.

There is an episode in the Christian Gospels when the disciples of Jesus were bickering about leadership positions. So Jesus called them together to give them a profound lesson on true greatness real leadership and it turned out to be one of the most paradoxical statements ever. Just listen:

"And when the other ten apostles heard it, they began to be indignant with James and John. But Jesus called them to Him and said to them. You know that those who are recognized as governing and are supposed to rule the gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority and dominion over them. But this is not to be so among you; instead, whoever desires to be great among you must be your servant. And whoever wishes to be most important and first in rank among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to have service rendered to Him , but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10: 41-50)

Now what kind of advice is that? Totally unrealistic, sentimental and utopian. They would make mincemeat of you in a hard nosed cynical world where it is dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, and devil take the hindmost, and everyone for himself in a setting of cut throat competition. But is that kind of success really what people in fact admire, indeed revere?

The leader is there for the sake of the led. The formula Jesus propounded clearly was not so utopian and unrealistic. Almost all who have become outstanding leaders have demonstrated this remarkable attribute of selfless altruism. The leader is there not for what he/she can get out of this exalted position. No, the real, the true leader knows the position is to enable the leader to serve those she leads. It is not an opportunity for self aggrandizement, but for service of the led.

Integrity: People look up to their leaders for inspiration; they somehow believe they embody their best ideals, attributes and characteristics. This is how they want to believe they would be at their best.

They want their leaders in a way to be a Colossus without blemish, a paragon of virtue, of impeccable moral standards, not an idol with feet of clay.

There surely is conduct which might be tolerated in a lesser mortal but that would be anathema in the Head of State. We speak of gravitas, of in our language shadow, isthunzi, a presence. We want to experience our head of state as being presidential. He/she is not an ordinary person.

Humility: Almost paradoxically we also are attracted to a head of state who is humble and approachable not arrogant and aloof.

People want their leader as it were to have charisma, to be regal and exalted, dignified, almost godlike as expressing the best about their idealized corporate consciousness and identity. But they also want them to be people of flesh and blood, not remote, but down to earth in touch with them, aware of their aspirations, anguish, needs and know where the shoe pinches.

No human being is infallible: Most politicians seem to have a massive allergy to admitting they might have been wrong. I suspect most of us find humble pie unappetizing. We do not like to admit that we made a mistake. It is our peculiar hubris.

A leader leads by leading: A true leader whilst eager to carry his constituency with him whenever possible, sometimes has to take a stand that is not too popular with his followers. But the real leader then demonstrates his mettle by leading through leading. It requires courage to do this, but the leader recalls that the tortoise makes progress only when it sticks its neck out. Leadership can be a lonely vocation.

Bishop Charles Albertyn used to tell us this story, In this establishment, there are only two rules. Rule No. 1 - The boss is always right. Rule no. 2, in case the boss is wrong refer to rule No. 1. It may seem as if the kind of leader who uses this style is always in charge, things happen, everybody dances attention. But in fact it is self defeating. It allows resentment and anger to build up in those who have been humiliated by the apparently decisive boss and then one day even the worm will turn.

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The Recognition Deficit

George Washington Carver wrote, "How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."

Understanding and encouragement will take people further than almost anything else you can do for them. Followers want recognition for their contribution. It is one of those things that have incredible leverage. The small investment on your part is greatly exceeded by the impact it has on someone’s life. Not only in that person’s life but the lives of those they come into contact with. It has a rippling effect.

Considering its value, it’s amazing how little it is done. Frankly, if it were considered more of a priority in the leader’s agenda it would happen more. Yet without it, any leader’s effectiveness is diminished. It has to become an integral part of what we do. In Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? the authors comment:

There are some particularly aggressive corporate cultures where the imperative is to “just do it.” Recognition is for wimps. All our experience is that effective leaders find ways to break through those barriers.

During his long tenure as CEO and chairman of GE, Jack Welch was well known for his handwritten notes. [D]espite his colossal workload, Welch made the time to jot down a few well-chosen words of recognition. He knew how important it was. The great thing about a handwritten note, of course, is that it is both highly personalized and lasting.

Do you make people feel that their contribution is important? That they personally matter to the goals of the organization? It is what will make your efforts more effective.

Everyone is in need of encouragement. Actress Celeste Holm summed up the issue well, “We live by encouragement and we die without it; slowly, sadly, angrily.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:26 AM
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Extreme Leadership

In his must-read book Real Leadership, Harvard professor Dean Williams remarks, “The exercise of leadership is not a trivial matter…. Passion is an important element in the realm of real leadership. If you are not passionate about making things better in your local school, enterprise, or community, then you should probably not seek to be the primary actor in the process of leadership and consider moving to the side.”

Leadership is a big and challenging responsibility. It is a commitment to be responsible for the well-being of those you are leading. Much of what passes to day as leadership is role playing. Too often this is because those who get the titles are good at playing the role. But they're not leading.

Steve Farber speaks to this well on his web site:

Here's the problem: many people who call themselves leaders are only posing. They're wearing the label or accepting the title without putting their skin in the game. So I'm asking you—assuming that you really do aspire to lead—to approach the act of leadership as you'd approach an extreme sport: learn to love the fear and exhilaration that naturally comes with the territory. And that takes a personal commitment and a significant, personal choice. As my friend and colleague, Terry Pearce, said in an article in the San Francisco Examiner:

"There are many people who think they want to be matadors, only to find themselves in the ring with two thousand pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar."

If, however, you do make the choice to leap into the ring, it's because of your love of the challenge, the adventure, and that love is what makes the fear of the "sport" worthwhile. Not only do you accept the fear as part of the experience, the fear—in large part—creates and defines the experience. Extreme would not be extreme without fear. And fear would not be worth it without the love of the game.

The same is true of Extreme Leadership: it is the dynamic interplay of fear and love-two of the most powerful forces in the human experience. And in my estimation, those who actively and intentionally use the experience of fear and love everyday in their attempts to change things for the better—in whatever arena—are Extreme Leaders.

Farber is the author of The Radical Leap and more recently The Radical Edge. His web site has a wealth of information on leadership that’s worth taking a look at.

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Stepping Up to the Plate

Cleveland Indians manager Eric Wedge, gave a nod to the importance of chemistry and leadership in the making of a great ball club. The teams disappointing first half he attributes in part to a lack of leadership in the clubhouse.

Anthony Castrovince at MLB.com reports: "What's happened is we've gotten to the point [as an organization] where the younger players are the ones who have to step up [and assume leadership responsibilities]," Wedge said. "I don't think anybody's really taken hold of that. Last year we had guys like [Kevin] Millwood and [Scott] Elarton, veteran guys who were more vocal."

Wedge reflects, "It's tough for young people to get in front of their peers and put themselves out there like that.” Disturbingly he adds, “In the game in general, there's not too many leadership personalities out there. That's the generation we're in." His observations are a reflection of a more general concern we find in society at large. Why don’t more people feel the need to step up to the plate?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:48 AM
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Jack Welch On Leadership

Jack Welch revealed some lessons on leadership in a keynote address to the executives at the FranklinCovey Symposium in Dallas. Here is a recap as presented by Training Magazine:

"Great leadership development is the heart and soul of every company. Now more than ever, companies shouldn’t be afraid to take risks by promoting tomorrow’s leaders into these roles today. It’s wonderful to have an organization that is dynamic and changing and getting fresh blood into management positions. Fresh eyes sometimes see fresh opportunities. Will they be ready? Maybe they won’t all be trained perfectly, but they will be able to grow into their job if you give them the right support systems. When I left GE, my successor was 46 years old, and his direct reports averaged 38 years old. That’s great stuff.

One thing that is key to remember is that leadership is inclusive, not exclusive. When you have a problem, I think you need engage as many people as you possibly can into solving the problem.

The idea that there’s just one right view is absolutely crazy. When you’ve got a crisis, you’ve got to reach to every level of your organization and find every place where knowledge may live. It’s part of what I called a “role-model atmosphere” at GE.

Leadership is not about dictating, it’s about empowering employees so that they recognize their ability to take action. And highlight it when they do. When somebody had a great idea at GE, we’d fly that person in to showcase the idea. You should always be showcasing your people’s great ideas. That’s part of a role model atmosphere and it works. People need to feel that their contributions are important. Always give them voice and dignity. That’s what leaders do. And that’s how leaders build leaders. But implementing that and making that real is a lot harder that just saying it."

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Jack Welch: "What Worked for Me"

The cover story of the July 24, 2006 issue of Fortune takes issue with Jack Welch’s “rules” for winning. There is nothing really significant here. Obviously, it is designed to sell magazines but it is worth taking note of. Neither column below represents “rules.” They are more properly approaches or applications of rules. The listing is contrived to make the “rules” look mutually exclusive. Although for the most part, in practice, they are not. Yet, in the wrong hands they can be administered that way. It would be more appropriate for Jack Welch and others to make a listing of “What Worked for Me” or “How I Applied the Basic Principles of Business in My Situation” or even, “What Didn’t Work for Me.” It might not garner as much readership—no easy 1-2-3 answers here—but the approach might prove to be more useful and the ideas more easily applied in the appropriate situation.

	New Rules	vs.	Old Rules
1	Agile is best; being big can bite you.		Big dogs own the street.
2	Find a niche, create something new.		Be No. 1 or No. 2 in your market.
3	The customer is king.		Shareholders rule.
4	Look out, not in.		Be lean and mean.
5	Hire passionate people.		Rank your players; go with the A's.
6	Hire a courageous CEO.		Hire a charismatic CEO.
7	Admire my soul.		Admire my might.

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George Custer and the Importance of Information

One-hundred Thirty years ago on June 25, 1876 on the banks of the Little Big Horn River, the Battle of the Little Big Horn also known as Custer's Last Stand took place. It was reported that on the banks of the Little Big Horn River was the largest concentration of Indians from six tribes that history has ever recorded. It has been estimated that there were anywhere between ten to fifteen thousand Indians with over 2,500 warriors. Custer was in no position to pick a fight. Sadly, he decided to ignore that information.

Leaders live and die on good information. Getting it is only half the battle. The other half is listening to it. Far too many leaders find themselves talking when they should be listening. Paying attention to information is especially important when it suggest that things are not what they seem to be. Custer's pride unfortunately cost him and those around him their lives.

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Are You an Extreme Leader?

The adventure race Primal Quest has attracted the attention of Daniel Wilson, a researcher with Project Zero, a program in Harvard's education school that studies how people learn, think and create. “Since 2002, Primal Quest has sent videographers along with the racers at various points on the trail. Wilson has watched hundreds of hours of footage, analyzing how teams behave in high-stress situations,” reports Hannah Clark in Forbes.

It's clear from the footage why some teams succeed and others struggle. Wilson only studied teams that completed the race, but even among finishers the differences are stark. On the top squads, every team member participates in decision-making, and everyone takes a leadership role at some point in the race. On the lower-performing teams, by contrast, one person often dominates discussions. "It's very, very clear in the interaction patterns how these top teams are so successful," Wilson says.

Many adventure racers assume that Adamson's charismatic leadership is the key to Nike's success. In fact, when Wilson shows his students a video clip of Nike, they struggle to identify the team's leader. Teammates Danielle Ballengee, Mike Kloser and Tobin all share the role. A charismatic leader can actually hurt an adventure racing team, Adamson says, by convincing his teammates to do something they don't want to do.

In high-pressure situations, however, multiple people often need to assume leadership roles. If there's only one leader, he or she is bound to get tired, says [Rich] Brazeau, Primal Quest's CEO, who also participates in adventure races.

Below are several of the 10 leadership skills of an endurance racer that Ms. Clark lists in her article:

Sharing Leadership: One person can't bear the entire burden of leading a team. That person is bound to get tired, or stressed, and other team members need to pick up the slack. On the best endurance racing teams, everyone leads at some point during the race.

Shifting Roles: During endurance races, it's important multiple team members have navigation skills. On one poor-performing team, the captain never let go of the map. On the best teams, however, multiple members had strong navigation skills, and they all consulted about the best routes to take. "If the group only has one role as a navigator, that team is going to struggle," says Harvard researcher Daniel Wilson.

Seeking Information: Ask questions. The top teams are aware of what they know and equally cognizant of what they don't. Asking questions doesn't expose a weakness; it helps your team gather as much information as possible and explore different ideas and proposals.

Closing The Loop: Every time someone says something, someone else should respond. This is called "closing the loop," and while it's ubiquitous on top teams, it's rare on the poor performers. It keeps the discussion on one track, avoiding the confusion that plagued Team Kool n' Fit. It also reduces stress. "They're facing so many factors like fatigue," Wilson says. "The cognitive load is very high. If you acknowledge someone's message is received, it's one less thing they have to worry about."

Setting Goals: In high-stress situations, team members should discuss their goals and the plan for achieving them. "As a team, if you don't have the same goals, you're just headed for disaster," says Brazeau. While teams must make some plans ahead of time, they must be able to evaluate and adjust as circumstances change.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:40 AM
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Leadership and Intelligence

Traditional measures of intelligence don’t always predict leadership success. Elizabeth Station recently highlighted in Notre Dame Business recent research by Amy E. Colbert, Timothy Judge, and Remus Ilies, published in the June 2004 Journal of Applied Psychology. The findings were based on 151 independent studies that probed the intelligence-leadership connection and showed that “the relationship between intelligence and leadership is considerably lower than previously thought.” They found only a moderate link between the two.

Perceptual measures of intelligence showed stronger correlations with leadership than did traditional paper-and-pencil measures of intelligence. In other words, appearing smart may have a greater impact on perceptions of leadership ability than being smart. Not really surprising. They also reported that "the leader's stress level and the leader's directiveness moderated the intelligence-leadership relationship."

Station asks: "So if brains aren’t paramount, what qualities do matter most? Leaders are usually extroverted, conscientious, open and emotionally stable, according to previous research. Intelligence is important when combined with attributes like motivation, persistence and dominance."

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The Skilling Trap

Mark Gimein wrote a great analysis of the Enron scandal in Business Week. In The Skilling Trap, he hits the nail on the head. He responds to Jeffrey Skilling’s comments to reporters on the steps of the courthouse after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy: "Obviously I'm disappointed. But that's the way the system works." Gimein comments:

But there's more to it. "That's the way the system works." It's a strange thing for a man to say who has been convicted of 19 separate criminal charges. Reduced to words on a page, you can imagine the tone to be bitter or accusing. But it's not. Nor is it gallows humor, a tip of the hat to the prosecutors who won their case, but something more poignant.

It is a supremely characteristic statement, and it evokes the essence of what went wrong at Enron. Skilling had a startling confidence in what he thought of as "the system," a strange and even endearing belief in the mechanisms -- the letter and only the letter -- of the law.

It’s easy to blame the system, but the system isn’t something outside ourselves, some vast unseen force putting pressure on us to do things we don’t want to do. We are the system. It works that way because we work that way. It won’t change until we do. Adding more laws can’t protect us from ourselves. What is lacking here is character and the integrity to maintain right principles even at a personal loss. Gimein continues and address the spirit of the law:

But what made Enron possible was not a lack of rules. It was an unwillingness to think about regulation and responsibility in any but the most legalistic terms.

[T]here's little question that the source of all the crimes of which he was convicted was the basic dishonesty of trying to keep the company's stock afloat so he could make more money.

No question, the parade of executives in handcuffs will have some deterrent effect. But the evidence that any of this will make executives more accountable and more honest rather than just more careful is thin. Contemporary business culture accepts outsized compensation as a given and takes for granted the notion that chief executives have no special responsibilities more pressing than ensuring a fabulously wealthy retirement. In such a culture it's certain that when the market next crests and crashes, hundreds of corporate executives will at least toy with ways to make the numbers look good until they can get their own money out. After Enron, those who go that route will be more cautious in interpreting the law. Can that prevent the next wave of scandals? No, because no reading of securities law is so careful that it avoids the Skilling trap: When you try to keep to the letter of the law while undermining the spirit, you are likely to violate the letter in the end.

The Skilling Trap is that trap you fall into when you don’t see beyond the letter of the law. Sadly most laws are in place because we substitute what’s legal for what’s ethical. They are not the same. It’s a tug of war we have all experienced. Ethical addresses what should I do. Legal is about what do I have to do. If legal is the only consideration then caution is the watchword. Ethics is about principles and responsibilities.

As Mark Gimein observes, the issue is failure to deal with the spirit of the law. If your actions are right but your attitude is wrong, it will eventually catch up with you. When leaders are looking out for themselves—when leaders are in it for what they can get not for what they can give—we have Enrons. Leadership is about service and looking out for those you are responsible for. Some readers will yawn at this, but character is a real issue with real consequences.

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General Douglas MacArthur:
The Soldier, The Gentleman

General Douglas MacArthur is regarded are one of the most effective generals in history. General George Marshall regarded him as our most brilliant. He accomplished this in large part because of his code of self-discipline. He believed self-discipline to be the key in enabling the leader to think clearly and act responsibly. Mastering your impulses and controlling your emotions allows one to bring balance and perspective to any situation. This ability to display the right amount of emotion was especially critical and valuable to him in his most trying circumstances.

Major William A. Ganoe recalled this aspect of MacArthur’s character in his book MacArthur Close-Up: Much Then and Some Now (1962) in the following excerpt as cited by William Manchester:

Of all his traits, Ganoe believes “the one that made the greatest impact was his unwavering aplomb, his astonishing self-mastery. I had seen men who were so placid or stolid they were emotionless. But MacArthur was anything but that. His every tone, look or movement was the extreme of intense vivacity. . . . As he talked, so he walked jauntily, without swagger. His gait and expression were carefree without being careless.” He possessed “a gifted leadership, a leadership that kept you at a respectful distance, yet at the same time took you in as an esteemed member of his team, and very quickly had you working harder than you had ever worked before in your life, just because of the loyalty, admiration and respect in which you held him. Obedience is something a leader can command, but loyalty is something, an indefinable something, that he is obliged to win. MacArthur knew instinctively how to win it.” He was, the adjutant concludes, “all contradiction. He commanded without commanding. He was both a patrician and plebeian. I could close my eyes and see him in his toga, imperiously mounting his chariot, and the next minute clad in homespun, sitting on the narrow sidewalk of Pompeii and chatting informally with a slave.”

But the toga fitted him best. “To him the word gentleman held a religious meaning. It was sacredly higher than any title, station, or act of Congress. It was an attitude of life to be cherished in every gesture and spoken word. It comprehended and excused no letdown in its execution. . . . Flying off the handle, berating or bawling out were cardinal sins, which I not once saw him give way to. In times of stress or stinging irritation, his voice grew low, falling to a deep bass and intoning, with a control so strong, it held motionless everyone within its sound.”

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Leadership is Philosophy

In a lighthearted and engaging way, Matthew Stewart makes a case for the need to make management education a function of the philosophy department. In The Atlantic article, The Management Myth, he begins by generally dividing all management theory into two camps—Frederick Taylor’s rationalists and Elton Mayo’s humanists. “The Taylorite rationalist says: Be Efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about. And the debate goes on. Ultimately, it’s just another installment in the ongoing saga of reason and passion, of the individual and the group.”

The tragedy for those who value their reading time, is that Rousseau and Shakespeare said it all much, much better. In the 5,200 years since the Sumerians first etched their pictograms on clay tablets, come to think of it, human beings have produced an astonishing wealth of creative expression on the topics of reason, passion, and living with other people. In books, poems, plays, music, works of art, and plain old graffiti, they have explored what it means to struggle against adversity, to apply their extraordinary faculty of reason to the world, and to confront the naked truth about what motivates their fellow human animals. These works are every bit as relevant to the dilemmas faced by managers in their quest to make the world a more productive place as any of the management literature.

All leadership issues are human. Leadership is not a science. It is an art. This idea of the NEW leadership is nonsense. Contexts change and will continue to change but leadership principles are constant. Leadership is about people and relationships. People have had to deal with the same issues since time began. Leadership deals with philosophical issues in ever changing contexts. While certain generalities can be made (reduced to percentages if you must) most leadership issues must be viewed more individually than generally, more philosophically than scientifically. Having laws that govern something doesn't make it a science.

Beyond building skills, business training must be about values . . . But, as anyone who has studied Aristotle will know, “values” aren’t something you bump into from time to time during the course of a business career. All of business is about values, all of the time. Notwithstanding the ostentatious use of stopwatches, Taylor’s pig iron case was not a description of some aspect of physical reality—how many tons can a worker lift? It was a prescription—how many tons should a worker lift? The real issue at stake in Mayo’s telephone factory was not factual—how can we best establish a sense of teamwork? It was moral—how much of a worker’s sense of identity and well-being does a business have a right to harness for its purposes?

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:52 AM
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Looking for Leaders

Where to find good leaders has always been an issue. In our search we unfortunately find it easiest to gravitate to the role players — those people who appear to have the qualities we are looking for but really just are good at playing the “game.” They have been around long enough and possess enough ambition to get themselves noticed. These people help to produce the cynicism found in many organizations because they are not effective leaders but effective self-promoters. Once given a title they struggle to keep up because they just don’t have the substance required for the job. General Dwight Eisenhower writes about these people with fake reputations, as he calls them, to his friend General Prichard. This is excerpted from Alan Axelrod’s new book, Eisenhower on Leadership:

This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning.

—Letter to Vernon E. Prichard
August 27, 1942

In a letter to friend and fellow commander Vernon E. Prichard, Ike took up the theme of leadership he had discussed in his letter to Scrappy Hartle just two days earlier. “Fake reputations,” he wrote, “habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered and kicked overboard.” Those who remain are people capable of “solid, sound leadership,” possessed of “inexhaustible nervous energy to spur on the efforts of lesser men, and iron-clad determination to face discouragement, risk and increasing work without flinching.” Those who remain are the people who also possess “ a darned strong tinge of imagination—I am continuously astounded by the utter lack of imaginative thinking among so many of our people that have reputations for being really good officers.” Finally those who escape being kicked overboard are those who are most dedicated and “able to forget . . . personal fortunes. I’ve relived two seniors here because they got to worrying about ‘injustice, ‘ ‘unfairness,’ prestige.’”

Need will find leaders, but Ike counseled his friend Prichard to get a jump on need by starting to look right now. “While you are doing your stuff from day to day, constantly look and search among your subordinates for the ones that have those priceless qualities in greater or lesser degree. . . . [Y]ou will find greater and greater need for people upon whom you can depend to take the load off your shoulders.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:51 AM
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Leadership Begins at Home

The Nanaimo News Bulletin reports that Leonard Krog—member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly—in a speech to the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce stated, “Community leadership starts at home. The best leadership examples are found in the home by parents who are involved in their communities. People can do small things, like build a community park in their neighborhood, or big things like run for public office or join community groups. Be a leader in your family. That’s how you build a strong and healthy community.”

Parents are the earliest and most influential influences on a child. Their examples profoundly affect the kind of leaders they become. Leadership training takes time (think quantity not just "quality") and guidance in every facet of a child’s life from early on. Additionally, leadership needs to be modeled by the parents. It helps if you view all of this in the long-term. The big picture view assists in smoothing out the immature peaks and valleys and helps keep your goals on track. Here are some (not comprehensive) ideas to think on:

Take time to know your child. Working with a child’s personality, a parent needs to learn to develop that child’s individual traits and abilities and sometimes temper strengths that left unchecked would become a liability. For example, an assertive, outgoing personality is a great trait in a leader, but without self-control it can be seen as overly aggressive and controlling.

Take the time to point out where they can learn from the example of others. Use examples and outcomes of decisions of both right and wrong approaches to situations. Teach them cause and effect. Choices have consequences.

Take the time to understand what problems and issues your child is dealing with and then guide them to the right decisions by applying the right principles. By instilling principles rather than pat answers to problems, you will give them tools to work with that they can apply over and over again in their life.

Take the time to praise them when they make the right choices and gently show them the choice they missed when they go astray. Give them age appropriate responsibilities and let them stand or fall on their choices. (Note: Self-esteem comes from knowing you did do or are doing the right thing and should be praised. It’s not generated from unsupported, manipulative comments designed to make kids—or anyone else for that matter—feel good.)

Take the time to involve them in family activities and work. This will help them learn teamwork (sharing and considering others) and a good work ethic.

Why do all this? Pat Williams (senior vice president of the Orlando Magic) in his book, Coaching Your Kids to be Leaders, quotes Jackson University football coach Steve Gilbert,

I tell young people, "It feels good to be a leader!" Success and failure are part of the adventure of life. Young people need to see that good leaders are important in their community—and there are great rewards for being a good leader. Those rewards include a sense of satisfaction and a feeling that what you are doing is meaningful and significant. You don’t always win when you lead, but that’s okay. Young people should be rewarded and encouraged for stepping up and leading, no matter whether they succeed or fail.

Krog added some additional thoughts that apply in any leadership training. “What is negatively affecting leadership across the country is the use of polls to gauge public opinion. Good leadership takes a longer term view of issues that may or may not be popular. Polls force governments to make popular, short-term decisions to stay in power. And sometimes leadership involves championing ideas that are not so popular.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:08 AM
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Attitude of Wisdom

American essayist Norman Cousins wrote, “Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.” Wisdom is about the thinking through of thoughts, behaviors and actions and seeing their relationships. It is seeing how things are connected. It is easy to get so caught up in what we are doing that we operate as though we are in a vacuum. Yale University professor Robert Sternberg explained that one reason smart people are sometimes inexplicably stupid is that they think they have overcome the problem of consequences.

Understanding how everything is connected is a daunting task, but it shouldn’t cause us to stop dead in our tracks full of indecision. We still have to function. Professors Pfeffer and Sutton suggest in their book Hard Facts, that we must travel through life with an attitude of wisdom. That attitude is described as the ability to act with knowledge while doubting what you know. They point out that this attitude or approach is the single most important quality that a leader, advisor, or team can have for practicing evidence-based management.

This attitude enables people to act on what they already know while at the same time doubting what they know. It means they can do things now, as well as keep learning along the way. It implies a certain degree of humility to make it work. You really have to be able to get out of your own way. Professor Karl Weick said, “Argue like you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong.” From Hard Facts:

Practicing evidence-based management means adopting beliefs and designing settings that enable people to keep acting with knowledge while doubting what they know, and to openly acknowledge the imperfections in even their best ideas along the way.

A lot of experience often holds people back from adapting this attitude. An old example holds true here: A person may say, “I have 20 years of experience.” But it’s not 20 years of experience. It’s 1 year repeated 20 times. That is to say, we live our lives in such a way that we aren’t really learning. We’re repeating. While wisdom requires that we arrange what we observe and know, and create meaning from it, is also requires that we consider what we need to unlearn as well.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:27 AM
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Humility

Just over 60 years ago in April 1945, Harry Truman was thrust into the presidency by the death of FDR. On his first day in the White House, Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) then Speaker of the House, came over to deliver some sage advice. "I have come down here to talk to you about you," Rayburn began.

"You have got many great hazards, and one of them is in this White House. I have been watching this thing a long time. I have seen people in the White House try to build a fence around the White House and keep the very people away from the President that he should see. That is one of your hazards. The special interests and the sycophants will stand in the rain a week to see you and will treat you like a king. They'll come sliding in and tell you you're the greatest man alive—but you know and I know you ain't."

This is the entanglement that any leader can get into without half trying. Only an externally directed leader can remain close to their followers and on track with their true function. In line with Rayburn, Socrates’ companion Antisthenes advised, “It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour only the dead — these the living.”

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:37 AM
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The Managerial Moment of Truth

We often equate the telling of the truth with the statement made by Jack Nicholson's character in the film A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth!” It’s true. People don't often want to hear the truth. The problem is that as a general rule, the truth is not communicated in a way that is productive and helpful, kind and supportive. It usually comes across as an attack.

In The Managerial Moment of Truth, authors Bruce Bodaken and Robert Fritz claim that “truth is one of the most important competitive advantages there is in building a business.” It’s vital for creating an organization of learning individuals. Knowing what’s going on in reality gives organizations a better chance of success. “Without perceiving reality, it is next to impossible to succeed because invariably decisions are made in a vacuum.”

The phrase managerial moment of truth refers to that moment when the leader has the choice to ignore or call attention to something that has occurred. They observe, “Too often, managers think they have only one of two unpleasant choices: to have a contentious confrontation or to avoid addressing the situation. Whichever path they choose, real or lasting change rarely happens.”

They caution that telling the truth isn’t the same as “spouting our opinions or sharing our feelings. Groups that really tell each other the truth are the ones that ask each other questions, seriously seek to understand opinions that are different than their own.”

The authors developed a practical procedure that has been used successfully at Blue Shield of California where Bodaken is Chairman, President and CEO. It's a way of telling the truth and getting to the bottom of an issue without hurting people. The technique has four steps:

1. Acknowledge the Truth — Entails the awareness that there is a difference between what you expected and what was delivered and the decision to do something about it.
2. Analyze How it Got to be that Way
3. Create an Action Plan
4. Establish a Feedback System

The idea is to deal with these moments while they are small issues and before there is a need for a full-blown confrontation. Truth telling is a powerful agent of change. This system gives people the best chance to learn in a positive and safe environment. In the end facing reality is a lot easier than all the fancy footwork required in avoiding it.

Great leaders are also great mentors. Greatness is hard to achieve without a substantial amount of learning built into the fabric of the organization. Mentorship is the most direct path to learning because it is done within the context of real work set against the realities of the world.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:19 AM
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Remains of the Day: Leadership in a Crisis

One-hundred years ago today San Francisco was struck with what is estimated today to be a 7.7 to 7.9 earthquake. The first shock hit at 5:18 A.M. Perhaps more devastating than the quake were the fires that broke out almost immediately. With the main water lines broken, firefighters were virtually helpless. By April 21 when the last fires died out, the earthquake and the events that followed destroyed 2,831 acres of the city, more than 490 blocks. It consumed 30 schools, 80 churches, and 250,000 homes. It killed at least 3,000 people. (No one knows how many people actually died; the intense heat—up to 2000°F—incinerated bodies. Almost all of the records in City Hall had been destroyed the first day.)

Catastrophes or a major crisis of any kind are a breeding ground for bad decisions due to the swiftness with which they must be made. Time becomes the enemy and buying time to think becomes a luxury. Just hours after the earthquake, and acting on what turned out to be more rumor than fact, San Francisco’s mayor Eugene Schmitz posted a proclamation declaring that local police and troops were to "shoot to kill" any looters. A decision that is unconscionable and certainly illegal. Needless to say, widespread looting never materialized.

Then as now, catastrophes also bring out the gainsayers. While constructive criticism and reflection is mandatory to bring about improvements in handling such disasters, the obsessive babblings of the uniformed only distract from and impede this process. The problem of self-restraint is always with us as it is part of the human condition. Civility and maturity don't seem to be as highly valued today as are unfettered access to media and the right to speak ones opinion even if that opinion is lacking in thought and wisdom.

Unlike 100 years ago, today we can be inundated with bits of information totally removed from its context before the leaders involved can even make sense of it and move constructively in a direction that benefits the greatest good. Leaders will make mistakes. A leader collecting their thoughts and not dashing out the door is prudent and not a sign of weakness. That's a job of a leader: to keep their head when all about them others are losing theirs. Leaders who take advantage of a crisis for their own gain need to be dealt with to be sure, but not for the personal gain of those individuals given the solemn task of reviewing that leaders behavior in the aftermath.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:16 AM
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Servant Leadership

In Peter Temes' remarkable new book, The Power of Purpose, he gets to a fundamental point of servant leadership right from the get-go. He writes:

[I]magine the man or woman who looks at the world and understands, this is when I should push, here is the opportunity to reshape the world in some small way, and knows too when to say, here is when I must step back, here is when my desire has to yield to patience. The real power lies in being able to see both visions.

He’s writing about the balance between ambition on one hand and humility and patience on the other. Being able to read a situation is fundamental to this balance and it comes from having both self-knowledge and a quality best described as mindfulness. This is the essence of servant leadership; an outward focus. More on this book later. (By the way, a often quoted book on mindfulness is that by Harvard professor Ellen J. Langer.)

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:30 AM
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