What is effective leadership?

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What constitutes effective leadership? If you ask ten people you’ll probably get a variety of answers. During my leadership development programs we spend a great deal of time defining what leadership means to the individuals in the session.

The simple fact is you can define it in many ways, it almost becomes an individual preference of what each calls a great leader. That’s understandable because different people respond to different things.

We begin by establishing the attributes of  effective leadership. We ask each participant to think if a person that they consider to be a great leader. We then ask them to list the main characteristics of that person that makes them a leader. We always get a variety of the same answers:

Integrity

Great communicator

Innovative

Intelligent

Decisive

And many more.

We then discuss each of these traits and decide if their choice of leaders was born with that skill or acquired it. The answer to everyone except possibly native intelligence is they are acquired skills. So the inference is made, ‘leaders are made not born”.

But a lot of people are smart and not great leaders, or honest and not considered leaders, what makes one person with those attributes a leader and another not?

If I look back at my career I can honestly say I met hundreds if not thousands of managers, but a handful of people I would consider leaders. If I were to try and define the difference from my experience I would have to say leadership is certainly defined by getting positive results, but that’s too narrow. I’ve known many managers and executives that got positive results but were hated by their employees. I think it has to go further than that.

To me great leadership is getting the best possible results from all the resources  available to him or her, human and capital, by developing focused commitment by all stakeholders on attainment of the primary vision.

Put plainly it means getting the best from everyone and everything through commitment, communications and buy -in.

Now ask yourself the question how many managers or executives have you known or worked with in your careers that fit this profile?

If you are like me it’s down to just a few.

The bigger question is why can’t you name more than a few? If nearly all leadership traits are learned, and well known to most of us, why aren’t there more great leaders?

I can think of several ways to answer that question based on my own experience.

One is ego. People get put into a position of authority and ego takes over. They no longer listen to advice, facts, metrics or much of anything. They are the supreme leader, nobody can tell them anything.

Another is fear. If I commit to a vision it might not work so I’ll allow the direction of the business to be decided for me.

Still another is commitment to results. Many executives confuse being busy with being productive. They over schedule themselves in meetings and micromanage every task. They are “too busy” doing what they feel comfortable doing to do what needs doing.

All of the patterns above lead to poor results. Those poor results are too often the only thing that they delegate well, leading to morale issues, turnover, poor customer satisfaction and more poor results.

My management career spans over thirty-five years and I learned many things good and bad from many people. One gentleman told me something early in my management career that has always stuck. “If you want to be a great leader give everyone else credit for the good things and take the blame for all the bad things that happen”.

I don’t know if it’s that simple but it’s a good start.

Is there any leadership left in large companies?

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Everyone is familiar with the horrible public image projected by BP’s CEO during public talks on the gulf oil disaster. For an educated, experienced executive I don’t see how he could have come off any worse than he did. And that was his public image. I wonder what he’s like inside the walls of BP?

I was thinking about that this weekend while discussing management and job related issues with several friends and family members. It appears last weekend was the time for all job related concerns to surface.

What surprised me about the conversations I had with two of the people was I really wasn’t surprised. I have experienced so many similar occurrences in my history I almost expect it.

Both people were to say the least de-motivated. I’m not sure de-motivated is a word, but I can’t think of another that’s better suited. I say that because both people are self-driven, hard working, and results driven individuals that I’ve known for many years. What their management has succeeded in doing is converting a highly motivated employee into a disengaged employee.

I spent some time thinking about how that happens, and I have to admit it wasn’t that hard to understand. They both report to mid-level managers and middle management in a large company is not a great place to be. They are for the most part afraid. They make a decent to great salary and have a nice benefit package, they are usually middle aged or later, and they know if they get shown the door, the chance of them duplicating their current situation is slim. So they develop the “hunker down” mentality. Don’t make waves, don’t take risks, don’t do anything that might result in making a mistake. They become caretakers of their own organization filtering information up the chain of command. Innovation, creativity, leadership are all things that are best left to someone else, what if I make a mistake? Worse yet what will happen to me if I have a top performing employee that is visible to my bosses, they see that as a risk to themselves not as an asset to the corporation.

Leadership defiantly starts at the top, but effective leadership makes sure it’s carried through the entire organization. Top management is all too often fed sanitized data, and is unaware of employee issues, customer issues or anything other than earnings and stock prices. If the numbers are good all must be well. That’s how a guy can get so out of touch with reality like our friend from BP, but he isn’t alone.

I wrote an article a few years ago saying that I believe the large corporation is outdated and cannot survive in it’s present form. I have seen nothing that makes me believe otherwise. Large corporations are afraid of lawsuits. They deal with this fear by not delegating anything below a certain level of management. They try to offset this lack of delegation by volumes of processes and procedures to limit the exposure of middle management, wrongly thinking that level will escalate any exceptions.

Middle management is “hunkered down” and isn’t about to take the risk of telling anyone anything. So the system is flawed from the start.

Effective leadership doesn’t foster fear, and it allows innovation, open communication and even failure. Fear of failure results in no risks, no risk taking results in no innovation and no change. On change results in a slow certain demise of the organization.

WIIFM for better leadership results

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In order to get the most from your employees, and from your staff you need to learn and communicate WIIFM. (What’s In It For Me). In order for employees to embrace organizational goals they must view them as their own. To do that they must clearly understand how meeting the goals of the organization is tied to achieving their personal goals.

It is much more difficult to separate personal and professional lives than it was even twenty years ago. Money alone is not the primary motivator but a short-term benefit quickly absorbed and forgotten. With the commonality of the two job household, work is a huge part of personal conversation and thought.

Leaders who take the time and make the effort to understand employee wants and needs, and helps the employee set personal goals that complement organizational goals will find better leadership results very achievable.

Goal setting is not a common practice among most of us. It starts by defining what you want in clear and crisp terms. Most of us have great difficulty in understanding or accepting what we want. Needs are easier to define, I need $500 more per month, I need a new car. Once the need is met the problem goes away and along with it the motivation.

Wants are very difficult to define. If you haven’t tried it you may be surprised. One of the exercises in our Leadership Development program is to develop a “dream inventory”. It’s a list of anything and everything you want to achieve or own or whatever your dreams are. We tell the participants to stop at fifty.

I have seen very few got even ten.

We are programmed to take care of needs and forget about most wants. If you can understand your employees wants and tie the achievement into attainment of organizational goals, you have a long term recipe for leadership results.

WIIFM starts with your personal goals and ties into your professional goals why should it be different with your employees?

Leaders need to encourage goal setting on a personal and well as professional level. Most people don’t have a plan for their lives, they just allow life to happen. They give more thought and planning to a two-week vacation than they do for the most important journey of all the journey through life.  If you can help your direct reports understand this and set goals, then have them take it down throughout the organization, how effective do you think that might be?

Explaining your organizational goals so al understand and giving everyone the opportunity to buy-in and develop personal goals that they can achieve through attainment of your goals is a win-win for everyone.

Improved leadership results start with changing culture

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I recently wrote an article on achieving better strategic planning results. It was a look at how Toyota became number one in the auto industry through effective long term strategic thinking and execution. It touched on the subject of culture but didn’t go into any real detail.

Just this week I asked a group of people why they thought Toyota had enjoyed so much success and growth. The answer was of course their Toyota Production System (TPS), lean manufacturing and attention to detail. That is exactly what General Motors came away from the Toyota / GM joint venture at NUMMI. Learn the TPS and we’ve solved our problems. And it’s exactly what most U.S. companies feel, that lean manufacturing, or Six Sigma or some other program will make them world class.

They are all missing the point.

Toyota recognizes that the TPS is an excellent tool but is not a silver bullet. Real excellence comes from developing a culture that engages and empowers employees.

This was further emphasized by conversations with a friend that works for a large Fortune 1000 company. He told me about the repercussions he got from escalating a problem with a major account. The company actually put him on a communications improvement plan to work better with his peers, even after the major account told his VP that the performance of one of his peers was preventing them from doing more business together. The old “shoot the messenger” adage is alive and well.

Toyota has a carefully cultivated culture of employees being expected to report problems. Development of that culture begins with the hiring process and continues through training and constant reinforcement. In Japan it is actually considered shameful not to report a problem when it’s noticed.  However saying you want to have employees report problems and actually being receptive and following up on problem resolution is where most managers and executives fall short.

Toyota’s culture employs a term called “Genchi Genbutsu”, translated as go and see for yourself. Employees are expected and required to report problems and managers and executives are expected to go to the source and see for themselves. They are taught not to rely on hearsay.

That’s as far from “shoot the messenger” as you can get.

If you truly want high quality products, excellent customer service, engaged and empowered employees, leadership has to “walk the talk” every day.

The overall culture of the organization has to clearly and visibly support open communications, and a blameless approach to problem solving.

In my book, “Bottom Line Focus” I talk about my own experience with continuous improvement training and implementation. I worked for a then Fortune 500 computer manufacture and was sent to an expensive training session on Total Quality Improvement. The very first time I tried to implement it back at the plant I was told “ship it, it’s month end and we need the sales”. That attitude prevails in the majority of companies I’ve been associated with.

If you really want to see improved leadership results, be a better leader. Don’t just say something live it.