Minding Gaps

March Madness and a Structure for Leadership

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Two days ago, using the coincidental timing of March Madness, we discussed the importance of structure as a means of framing and anchoring so many aspects of life. You can read that column here.

In particular, we established that the work of leadership and change in business needs a coherent structure to help leaders make sense of it. Unless and until they apply such a structure, it is hard for leaders to put their hands on the levers of change.

Regular readers are familiar with the GearBox, a conceptual and visual scaffold we have developed that you can use as a structure for leadership and change. It is a simple but powerful analytic model that imposes a straightforward structure on the work of leadership to build engagement for change or breakthrough performance.

The GearBox consists of a 4 x 5 matrix. The four column headers—Awareness, Understanding, Acceptance, and Commitment—refer to dimensions of employee orientation and disposition toward  an organization’s success and growth. The five rows represent levels of alignment around leadership vision and strategy.

The best level is at the top: strategic focus, curiosity, passion, and courage. The worst is at the bottom: alienation, denial, cynicism, and resistance. In between are three middling levels, the higher the better. Here it is:

 

	Awareness	Understanding	Acceptance	Commitment
Overdrive	Focus	Curiosity	Passion	Courage
Drive	Attention	Clarity	Trust	Cooperation
Neutral	Acquaintance	Familiarity	Ambivalence	Inertia
Park	Distraction	Confusion	Apathy	Neglect
Reverse	Alienation	Denial	Cynicism	Resistance

 

Think of the top level as creative engagement. For casual reference, we have dubbed it Overdrive. We regard this as an operational definition of engagement in the work place: employees in a state of strategic focus, curiosity, passion, and courage.

This is where you find high-engagement organizations like the Mayo Clinic, Apple Computer, Nordstrom, Google, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, championship sports teams, victorious political campaigns, and the legendary Skunk Works R&D operation of Lockheed Martin.

The next-best level appears one level down. Think of it as active engagement. For the sake of the metaphor, we call it Drive. We regard this as basic employee support: attention, clarity, trust, and cooperation. It is hard to imagine a cohesive, competitive work force in a dynamic market without this basic support.

Importantly, any organization competing on the basis of innovation, service, technology, creativity, culture, research, speed, or quality must minimally be at active or creative engagement. Anything less runs the risk of abrupt defection of key customers or employees and the sudden erosion of market share.

The middle level is Neutral. You can think of it as passive engagement. It is really mediocrity. We regard it as a sense of affiliation, not much more. The descriptors we chose for this level are: acquaintance, familiarity, ambivalence, and inertia. A work force at this level may be enough to survive in commodity or generic markets, but it is inadequate for competing on turf any more demanding than price discounting.

Another level down is Park. Think of it as passive disengagement. It is inferiority, a state of internal, corrosive disregard. Here you will find distraction, confusion, apathy, and neglect. It is dangerous territory. Unfortunately, all too many organizations find themselves here after years of treating their people like depreciable assets. From here, it is imperative to climb out and up, lest you stagnate or even slip further down.

The very worst level we call Reverse. Think of it as active disengagement. We regard it as an operational definition of toxins in the work place. It consists of employees (or even the executive suite, as in the cases of companies whose management was corrupt) in a state of alientation, denial, cynicism, and resistance.

Only the saddest organizations find themselves here. This is where non-represented labor forces are actively seeking to organize, where unions threaten to strike at any perceived offense, or where particularly venal employees engage in sabotage or other demonstrations of contempt. It is possible to climb out—indeed, I have seen it—but it does require a sustained and concerted effort.

 

*           *           *

 

For professional application of the GearBox,

contact us by email at info@arceil.com.

 

 

Coming on Friday

Core Competencies in Communication for Leadership 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The NCAA Brackets and Your Leadership

by Thomas J. Lee

If it's March, and it is, many if not most Americans are watching far more college basketball than they normally watch. For three straight weekends, from mid-March into early April, the annual rite of spring known colloquially as March Madness and formally as the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament dominates conversations everywhere.

I offer myself as a case study. Apart from the Wisconsin Badgers (I took my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin), I haven't really paid attention to college basketball since—well, since the NCAA Tournament last year at this time. But this past weekend I watched all four games. The winning teams—Butler, Kentucky, UConn, and VCU—will compete in next weekend's Final Four, which culminates in the championship game on April 4.

Something else about the NCAA Tournament is relevant to the subject of this blog. It is the tournament's brackets, like those in the photograph above. In the abstract, the full brackets look a little like the branches of a tree extending out in four directions, one for each of the four sectionals that feed into the tournament's final weekend.

Each of the 64 teams that earned berths in the tournament began on one of the far branches. The winner of the first round of games, which winnows the field to 32, advanced to the outer limb. The progression continued until only four teams are surviving, then only two, and finally only the champion. Last year it was Duke.

Here is how the brackets apply to leadership. Those brackets create a skeletal structure for the tournament. Without the brackets, no one would know which team was playing which other team. The whole tournament would be meaningless and pointless. The brackets impose structure and order on chaos and ambiguity. That's how important structure is.

People take structure for granted, but it is everywhere. You depend on structure whenever you walk into a grocery store, because it tells you where the cereals are, where the fruits and vegetables are, and where the milk and butter are. You rely on it when you get behind the wheel of a car, because the structure on the dashboard tells you your speed and fuel supply and mileage.

You need structure to read a menu in a restaurant, to surf the net on your computer, to balance your checkbook, to find a book in the library, to book a flight, to pick a TV show, to read a map, to pay a bill or apply for a job or weigh yourself or make an appointment—really, to do just about anything.

In business, we have plenty of structure, too. A balance sheet has structure. A bill of lading has structure. A computer algorithm has structure. A Gantt chart has structure. A contract has structure. A manufacturing process has structure. An organizational chart has structure.

One thing in business, however, does not have structure: the very work of leadership. There is no structure for a process of leadership, or for a culture of leadership, or for the training and development of leaders, or for any aspect of the work of leadership.

Moreover, because leadership is the hard work of envisioning, articulating, supporting and driving change, it follows that there is no structure for change.

Now in my experience, most companies are intensely interested in change. They recognize they must change just to keep pace with their customers and their competition, let alone exceed the expectations of customers and build a competitive advantage that puts them ahead of their competition.

The absence of a structure for that work means that people are lost—even bright, hard-working, serious managers who want to do the right thing by their company. Without a structure, they have no road map, no compass, no plan that tells them what do.

Make that didn't have a structure. We have just the structure they need. We'll take you through it on Wednesday. 

 

Coming on Wednesday

A Structure for Leadership 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Refreshing Humility of Butler coach Brad Stevens

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of you are watching a lot of exciting college basketball this weekend, as first the surviving sixteen and then the surviving eight men's teams compete in the second weekend of the annual NCAA Division I Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. Yesterday's two games were both thrilling. Butler defeated Florida by just three points, and UConn defeated Arizona by only two, to advance to next weekend's Final Four.

After the Butler-Florida game, I was struck by the humility of Butler coach Brad Stevens. Looking at Stevens, who is all of 34 years old and appears to be even younger, you just wonder if he is remotely up to the task of big leadership.

I'll admit to being a little jaded. In the consulting and training I do, it's common to come across ambitious young managers whose instincts on leadership are about as wrongheaded as they can be. They are so eager to get things done, they make every mistake their elders made and then some, and all the while they just assume they are smarter, wiser, and better. It's a shame. Ego can be a powerful driver of performance, but it can also be an obstacle to learning and to professional or personal growth.

Something about the young Butler coach is different, profoundly different, from those young managers. Not only has Brad Stevens proved his mettle by taking a team to the Final Four two years in a row, he has done so with a refreshing humility and abundant self-effacing tribute to others.

Talking to a TV reporter on the basketball court moments after the final buzzer yesterday, Stevens was ever classy. He said he was plainly "out-coached" by Florida's Billy Donovan, and he credited his Butler players with coming to his own rescue.

Curious about that rare humility, I did a little digging on the Internet. I quickly learned that Stevens is "not about the money," in his own words. He isn't in coaching for fame or glory or riches. He is in it because he loves the game. It is that simple. After four winning seasons he signed a long-term contract with Butler University despite its modest size and obscurity. He is there through the 2021-2022 season.

I also learned that Stevens was humbled early this season after his team, which had gone all the way to the championship game a year ago and ultimately lost to Duke on a buzzer-beating shot that almost went in, got off to a disappointing 4-4 start last fall. Butler was dragging a three-game losing streak.

Stevens knew that Donovan was a man of uncommon generosity and good will, always eager to help other coaches. He also knew that the Florida Gators had gone to the Final Four two years in a row under Donovan in 2006 and 2007, and he knew that he wanted his Butler Bulldogs to replicate that feat against some very long odds. So he put in a call to Donovan for advice.

Here's an interview with both coaches, taped the day before yesterday's big game, about their conversation last December. After that conversation, Butler went on to win 23 of its next 28 games, including Saturday's overtime victory that kocked Donovan's team out of the NCAA championship. 

 

 

Refreshing, isn't it?

Stick with me now: As regular readers know, over the preceding two weeks in this space we have discussed the concept of robust credibility, a higher level of credibility that leaders require in order to lead effectively. (You can begin reading those essays here.) I wasn't remotely thinking of Brad Stevens when I wrote those essays, but as a leader he certainly is working at the intersection of authentic trust, organic respect, and a bond of affinity. There's no question about that. If you want a role model, he is a good one.

We will have more to say about March Madness and leadership communication tomorrow. Be sure to come back.

 

Coming on Monday

March Madness and Leadership Communication 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Robust Credibility Requires Respect, Affinity, and Trust

(Part Five of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

By now you understand that the challenge of building leadership credibility goes well beyond walking the talk. Simple credibility—doing what you say you will do—is enough for most people, but not enough for anyone who aspires to lead.

Leaders must reach for something greater: robust credibility, or the intersection of authentic trust, organic respect, and the bond of affinity. Over the preceding ten days, we have explored each of these three cornerstones in greater depth; just scroll down to read those essays.

Robust credibility acknowledges that the credibility of leadership is large because the commitment a leader asks of people is large. It isn't enough that people believe their leader. They must also believe in their leader—in her ability and in her nobility—lest the flame of leadership begin to flicker.

To appreciate the importance of all three components—trust, respect, and affinity—ask yourself what attitude would predominate in the absence of each. So visualize a big Venn diagram in the sky with three circles that partially overlap. In the middle, where all three circles converge, we see the robust credibility that is the product of all three. One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Leaders need all three.

Let's take a moment to review these three fundamental components briefly.

By trust, we are thinking of just the veracity of a leader's word. If you trust someone you believe that the person is telling the truth. The truth may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of one's opinion, values, or perspective.

By respect, we have in mind a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, and perseverance. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. This shared well-being takes the form of mutual interests, needs, and concerns. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

Now in the absence of trust, people who would otherwise be inclined to follow a leader are left in a state of doubt. In the absence of affinity, they are left in a state of opposition. And in the absence of respect, they are left in a state of skepticism.

Many organizations have such weak and ineffectual leadership that they are running low on all three. Thus their people are in a state of full rebellion: doubt, opposition, and skepticism. In the last few weeks alone, I have worked with three companies that recently received low engagement scores on employee surveys. When we begin digging into those surveys, I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of doubt, opposition, and skepticism.

But even just one of those three is a reflection of less than robust leadership credibility. It alone can stymie the force of leadership, and it often does. Leaders require robust credibility: trust, respect, and affinity, and they cannot get any of it by ordering people to show it.

 

Coming on Monday

March Madness and Leadership Communication 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Leader's Robust Credibility Requires Authentic Trust

 

 

(Part Four of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Now we come to the issue of trust. As we have already seen in this series, trust is not the whole of leadership credibility. Two other cornerstones of credibility—organic respect and a bond of affinity between leader and led—are also critical.

(We addressed the bond of affinity last Friday, March 18, and we addressed organic respect last Wednesday, March 16. Just scroll down for both.)

We call the intersection of all three cornerstones robust credibility. It recognizes that the credibility of leadership is larger than everyone else's ordinary, garden-variety credibility, simply because the commitment a leader is asking of people can be so great. It isn't enough that people believe their leader. They must also believe in their leader—in the leader's ability and in the leader's nobility. Otherwise, the spark of leadership goes out.

But just because respect and affinity play key such roles does not mean that trust is unimportant. To the contrary, trust is the granddaddy of all three cornerstones. It enables the other two to be of consequence.

In a sense, trust is a little like the Golden Rule. Both are all-purpose bromides that everyone pays honor to, and well they should, but that sooner or later everyone also honors in the breach.

For most of us, the violations are few, sporadic, mundane, and incidental. We miss a deadline or exceed a budget or run late for a meeting—that kind of thing. Even these misdemeanors can be problematic, however, for they may be a harbinger of relational difficulty, and they may be perceived or regarded with outsize significance. Remember, the first and final judge of trust is always the person who was made vulnerable by trusting, never the person who was emboldened by an investment of trust.

For some other few, and fortunately only a few, the violations rise to the frequent, the routine, the material, the notorious, or even the criminal. These are profiles in deceit, their names familiar headlines of the last decade: L. Dennis Koslowski, Jeffrey Skillings, Bernie Madoff, Richard Scrushy, Joseph Nacchio, Bernard Ebbers, and too many others.

Certainly in the bruising battles of board rooms, trust can inadvertently be the first victim of a power play. Management, after all, must do what it must do, and managers are naturally concerned first and last with their own self-preservation.

The same is true in politics. Rare indeed is the politician who fulfills every campaign promise. (The last U.S. president to do so was James K. Polk, who made only four promises on the 1844 campaign trail—yes, the 1844 campaign trail.) Instead, candidates and officeholders promise what they need to promise, regardless of whether they mean it and regardless of whether they can fulfill it. In contemporary American politics, we would remind Republicans of Medicare Part D and Democrats of Guantanamo.

Moreover, anyone who has been close to the action at a senior level, in either business or government (or, for that matter, any other sector), knows all this to be true. Often, the clash of interests leaves someone else to clean up the mess, and it isn't unusual for that person to walk straight into one of the five classic talk traps. 

So let's bring some clarity to the challenge of trust—first as a general notion, then specifically with regard to leadership.

Generally speaking, trust is just a high regard for the veracity of one's word. It is the confidence and belief that someone is telling the truth. The truth may be objective or subjective; but in either case it must be real. It may be a list of facts about something, or a straightforward description of something. Or it may be a candid statement of intentions and capabilities, or it may be a frank and honest expression of opinion, values, or perspective. Preferably, it is consistently all this.

With regard to leadership specifically, trust is an open window to the soul of the leader. It reveals where the leader is coming from and where the leader is going. It anchors the purpose of the leadership, and it gives real meaning to the work that people are doing. It strips away the mask of command that so many ersatz leaders wear, and it takes everyone, including the leader, to a place of authenticity, humility, empathy, and reality.

Getting to trust is not always easy, for a wide array of pressures conspire against it. Some of them are in the environment: insufficient information, cultural constraints, procedural or legal requirements, poor training. But others, as for Brutus, are in ourselves: pride, greed, shame, fear, insensitivity, arrogance, expediency.

How often have you retreated from speaking truthfully because you didn't want to hurt someone's feelings? Or because you didn't want to reveal your true motive? Or because you sensed duplicity in yourself? Or because you pitied a person? Or because you feared losing face or authority? Or because you didn't want to take the time to explain complex reality? Or because you didn't believe it necessary to justify yourself to someone your junior?

So you paraphrased, you reached for euphemism, you danced the old two-step, you retreated to silence. If there is comfort in numbers, take solace, for you are not the only one.

No leader is perfect, and none has perfect trust. We err when we expect any leader to have it. At best, we merely tease ourselves into believing that a leader who commands our support does have it.

It is especially easy to look past the flaws of leaders with a charismatic appeal: a John F. Kennedy or a Pierre Trudeau, for example. By the same token, it is easy to dwell on the flaws of leaders without that charismatic appeal—a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon, for example—in spite of the fact that both Johnson and Nixon proved their mettle as leaders by compiling records of prodigious accomplishment, even as both proved morally wanting. 

Organizations and their leaders can go a long way toward building or rebuilding trust by following a few simple precepts:

• Demonstrate trust in the first place by realizing that employees can handle the truth, prefer the truth, and want the truth. So give them the truth. (Another contemporary case study: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose straight talk is popular YouTube video.)
• Recognize that, for yourself as for all of us, the first and biggest step toward relationships of trust is a brutally honest self-examination and commitment to change oneself.
• Abandon the level-by-level cascade of information through the organization, and put the dissemination of strategic information on autopilot. Better yet, at the risk of really mixing metaphors, prefer a rain forest of constantly sharing incremental information so that the work force is always well-informed and always expecting to learn truths about the business from the mouth of senior leadership.
• Appreciate the importance of implicit as well as explicit communication. By implicit communication, we do mean nonverbal messages, but body language is the least of it. Rather, acknowledge the powerful messages implicit in decisions, behaviors, routines, priorities, schedules, agendas, budgets, and so much more.
• Question the smooth talk of any consultant or advisor who suggests you say things that are not completely true. Almost always, you will find yourself or your company in greater difficulty by choosing gentle evasion over hard truth.
• Express yourself and train managers throughout the company to express themselves with simplicity and directness. That is not to say you must dumb down information before sharing it. But certainly remove unnecessary jargon and ambiguity.
• Make few promises, but do everything humanly possible to keep promises that you and your predecessors have made. (Yes, a promise made by your predecessor is your burden to keep.)

Finally, if you are accepting all this as banal, but telling yourself the real problem is the other guy—the CEO, the labor union, the regulatory agency, the news media, the clamor of investors, the recalcitrant employee, the cheap customer—then you have found the real problem, and you have found the one person who is most responsible for the real problem.

You can begin an important conversation with that person first thing tomorrow morning. And we do mean first thing tomorrow morning: gentlemen, when you shaving; ladies, when you are applying your makeup. Be sure to speak up, and be sure to ask the tough questions.

 

Addendum on Friday, 25 March 2011:  A reader in Copenhagen, Denmark wrote to ask whether there was any kind of trust other than authentic. Wasn't "authentic trust" redundant? I replied: "You would hope authentic trust would be redundant, but to so many companies, trust is something they think they can buy through public relations, advertising, media spin, catchlines, smooth talk, etc. I have heard executives say their companies are "trusted by millions" because millions buy their products. Well, yes, but that doesn't mean their leadership is trusted by employees. So that's where I am going with 'authentic.' "

 

Coming on Friday

Why Robust Credibility Requires All Three Cornerstones:

Organic Respect, a Bond of Affinity, and Authentic Trust

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Few Companies Have a Bias for Innovation

 

by Thomas J. Lee

In your personal and professional relationships, are you more inclined to look for excuses to say yes or reasons to say no?

In my experience, too many business people look for reasons to say no. They say no to customers. They say no to suggestions. They say no to innovation.

Largely because of their propensity to say no, they don't try out enough new ideas, and they keep on doing the same old thing in the same old way.

What a shame. Hubris never opens the door to tomorrow.

 

Coming Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

© Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

{Numbers} The Tyranny of Meetings

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. Formerly known as By the Numbers, it appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

The popular humor columnist Dave Barry once remarked that if you could summarize in a single word the reason civilization hasn't made more progress, the single word would be meetings.

Probably almost everyone with a job would agree. Many people spend much or even most of their day in meetings, and few meetings have the satisfying air of getting something, anything, done.

In fact, Bain & Company research has found that two out of every three meetings end before participants can make important decisions, and 85 percent of business executives say they are dissatified with the efficiency and effectiveness of meetings in their organizations.

I like to remind myself that some of the most important things in history happened in meetings: writing the Magna Carta, signing of the Declaration of Independence, and adopting the Bill of Rights. Granted, that's only three meetings in a thousand years, but it's a start.

 

Coming Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

A Leader's Robust Credibility Requires Affinity With People

(Part Three of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

You can slice and dice leadership in a lot of ways. One useful way is to distinguish between transactional and transformational leadership. This distinction is both important and instructive, for it helps shed light on the role of affinity in the work of leadership.

As you will recall from the first two articles in this series, a bond of affinity is one of the three cornerstones of robust credibility, which is essential for leadership. The other cornerstones are organic respect and authentic trust. We addressed respect last Wednesday, and we will look at trust next Wednesday. Today we will examine affinity.

Transactional leadership is a quid pro quo: You, as a leader, are asking me, a potential follower, to do (or refrain from doing) this thing in exchange for that thing: either a reward or a penalty as the case may be. It is a transaction, like a purchase or a barter. It is based on the classical behaviorist thinking of B.F. Skinner. Rational, thinking people do that for which they are rewarded, and they avoid doing that for which they are punished.

Usually, transactional leadership has a specific purpose and a tightly focused bore. It often reaches for changes in personal behavioral patterns: earning a sales commission or losing weight or doing household chores as a child. Still, in certain circumstances it can be highly productive on a large scale. A few prominent examples are offering the GI Bill of Rights for World War II veterans, or persuading people to quit smoking, or inoculating millions of people against a disease. 

Transformational leadership is different. It is an inspired, emotional journey of change. It is big, and it is all about a better tomorrow. It doesn't offer anything in compensation for the dedication to a cause, because the cause is its own reward. Think of people flocking to the polls on Election Day in support of a candidate, or donating money to a favorite charity, or protesting a government policy, or boycotting a company's products.

The thing of it is, even transformational leadership must address the WIIFM question: what's in it for me? If the only or the primary beneficiary of the change is the leader, and if the potential follower is out in the cold, then people will be much less willing to go along on the journey. Rather, the transformational leader must demonstrate that he appreciates and shares the interests, needs, and concerns of the people he seeks to inspire and lead. He can lead only if, and to the extent that, he does.

All this is the fodder of what we call affinity. By affinity, we mean an important bond between leader and followers that recognizes and respects their individual interests, needs, and concerns, even and especially in transformational situations. The hand is never far from the head and heart.

Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose, passions, and priorities run counter to their own. Rather, people look for a leader who is compatible with their own well-being. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

Moreover, the mutuality of interests, needs, and concerns is the foundational clay of something we call nobility of intent. In the context of transformational change, followers decide for themselves whether a would-be leader is a person of noble intent and thus worthy of following. It is important for any transformational leader to realize that followers, and followers only, pass judgment on the leader's nobility of intent. It is never, and it never can be, a matter for leaders to decide.

Now a word of caution. My thinking on leadership is decidedly Western, and it is heavily imbued with an American and (lower-case d) democratic frame of reference. It does not necessarily hold true universally, as I am reminded from time to time.

Once I spoke to a conference in Africa. Afterward, a well-dressed gentleman from Nigeria (if memory serves) approached me and explained that, in his country, leaders are strongmen who rule by fear. No strength, no fear. No fear, no leadership.

I acknowledged the limits of my thinking. On further reflection later, I had to admit that, certainly in extenuating circumstances, the Nigerian gentleman's equation can prevail even in a Western environment.

In a turbulent situation—a pitched clash of factions in a street gang, perhaps, or a tussle on a school playground, or the violence of an urban riot, or an insurrection, or a military battle—power and ultimately the mantle of leadership can accrue to whoever is perceived the strongest. In those circumstances, though, people are choosing more as a matter of survival. It is the rawest kind of transactional leadership: You get to reign, I get to live.

But all that just proves the rule, it seems to me. Far more often than not, we are seeking to lead or deciding whether to follow in a transformational context, and that requires an alignment of interests, needs, and concerns that enable people to acknowledge the leader's noble intent and to choose to follow in part because of it. Leaders who ignore this will be unable to forge or sustain a leadership direction. 

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} We Have the Data on Meetings

 

Coming next Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

© Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   Arceil Leadership Ltd.

A Leader's Robust Credibility Requires 'Organic' Respect

 

 

(Part Two of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Probably everyone of a certain age (ahem) can remember the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield for his on-stage persona—"I can't get no respect, I'm tellin' ya"—and probably everyone who has ever aspired to lead can relate to it just a little, too.

As a leader, you know that your team or organization must change to meet the demands of the future. You naturally want to show the way. You believe you are speaking truth, and you are confident that you have the best interests of your people at heart. Still, it can seem as if no one is hearing and heeding your call.

Part of that may be just a matter of time and place, but part of it may also be insufficient respect. Not respect as in esteem or admiration—yes, we know you are an awesome dude—but organic respect, or the recognition by others, on their terms, of your good judgment, your seriousness of purpose, and your capacity to make things happen.

In this sense, organic respect is one of the three cornerstones, along with authentic trust and a bond of affinity, of the leader's robust credibility. In the colloquial, it is often referred to as "chops" or "street cred." In more elevated terms, it is akin to what people mean by the term "gravitas." It is the credibility of being taken seriously.

Think of this organic respect as a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: ability, energy, knowledge, experience, initiative, judgment, and perseverance, all of which add up to situational authority. People must recognize and respect this situational authority in order to believe a leader is capable of accomplishing whatever he is setting out to accomplish. Otherwise they would be foolish to put themselves on the line for the leader.

The leader's capability, at the foundation of this organic respect, may be a matter of legal or other official authority, or of a demonstrated track record, or stirring oratory, or technical skill, or political clout, or negotiating savvy, or adequate resources brought to bear, or a compelling theory, or personal influence, or a bedrock of values, or even raw power.

Whether, and if so to what extent, people accord you this respect is up to them. They have an open choice of whether to follow any leader and, if they choose, of which leader they will follow. Because it is up to them, because it is completely discretionary, and because it cannot be wished into being, we call it organic respect.

The sources of this organic respect are largely functional. They include mastery of subject matter, a solid reputation, the ability to speak at length with deep insight and without extensive notes, perhaps public or professional recognition through honors and awards, the dedication to a cause, and productivity and sheer hard work.

It is probably also true that personal attributes come into play here. Reputable academic research has demonstrated that people are more likely to acknowledge expertise and commitment among other people who visibly resemble themselves. That is consistent with my own experience, but I frankly find it sad.

All leaders encounter great barriers to this respect, and they must work their way around each one. The barriers include the natural inertia of people before a leader emerges, the welter of cynicism that has accumulated because of inadequate leadership in the past, and the technology that keeps us apart from one another and unable to look at each other in the eye—and that is just for starters. Leaders must work around all those barriers.

You must also avoid putting any more barriers of your own in your path. These self-induced barriers can include such things as rash decisions, thoughtless comments, off-color (and so-called) humor, taking all the credit for oneself and placing all the blame on others, any violation of professional standards or of the law, risky or dangerous or abusive behavior, favoritism, shortcuts around requirements of a process, and double standards. Avoid all that stuff. It's toxic.

Organic respect by people for your leadership is absolutely essential to your success. Any leader disregards it at her peril. Recognize it and nurture it, and it will pay dividends for a long time to come.

 

Coming on Friday

A Closer Look at Affinity

 

© Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   Arceil Leadership Ltd.

For a Leader, Credibility Is More Than Just Trust

 

(Part One of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

By the very nature of leadership, a leader must work in murky territory.

Leadership is all about big change that often requires significant risk amid great uncertainty. A leader asks people to do extraordinary things that they are not otherwise inclined to do. In order to emerge from their comfort zone and take on the burden of doing extraordinary things, people must believe in the leader.

We call that belief credibility. Ordinarily, most of us associate the word credibility with the word trust. Someone you trust is said to be credible, and someone who is credible is thought to command your trust. For the sake of leadership, however, credibility goes beyond trust. Leaders must reach for something more than it alone.

Trust is a cornerstone of credibility, to be sure, and indeed it may be the most important element. But two other components are also important: respect and affinity. Together, we call the intersection of all three of these cornerstones robust credibility. Every leader needs it, and every leader should devote a great deal of effort to building it.

Let's look briefly at all three components today, in the first installment of this five-part series. In the second, third, and fourth installments, we will examine each of the three more closely, one by one: first respect, then affinity, and finally trust. In the fifth and final installment of this series, we will explain why all three cornerstones are necessary.

Here is what we mean by each of these three terms: trust, respect, and affinity.

By trust, we have in mind a high regard for the veracity of one's word. People who trust someone believe that the person is telling the truth. The truth may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of one's opinion, values, or perspective.

By respect, we're referring to a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, and perseverance. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. This shared well-being takes the form of mutual interests, needs, and concerns. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa. Remember, it is always the potential follower, never the putative leader, who judges the nobility of intent.

Imagine a Venn diagram with three circles that partially overlap. In the middle, where all three circles converge, we see the robust credibility that is the product of trust, respect, and affinity. One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Leaders need all three.

 

Coming on Wednesday

A Closer Look at Respect 

 

 © Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   Arceil Leadership Ltd.

What Is Your Change Quotient?

by Thomas J. Lee

Everyone is familiar with IQ, and anyone who keeps up with popular psychology is familiar with EQ, a parallel calculation based not on cognitive ability but on emotional intelligence.

Today we are introducing another, similar metric. We call it CQ, for change quotient. It reflects neither intellectual capability nor emotional strength. Rather, it measures capacity for change.

You apply it not to individuals but to whole organizations. It measures how much and how well your entire company (or association, or team, or batallion, or garage band, or whatever) is changing, not how well a particular person is doing.

It is only intended as a rough, quick measure. What it lacks in academic rigor, it makes up in ease and convenience.

Here is how it works.

Just poll a cross-section of managers and employees. Ask them all to give the entire organization three subjective scores between 1 and 5—whole numbers only, the better their assessment the higher the number—on how fast it moves through change, how much it needs to continue or begin changing, and how wise or prudent its present course of change is.

Add the three numbers together; the sum will be a whole number between 3 and 15. Multiply it by 10. We'll call it A. This is your numerator.

Now invite the same people to answer the same questions about your competition generally. Ask them to assign a single score to all the entities in your marketplace (despite the likelihood of variability among them), giving any benefit of the doubt to better and faster-changing companies, as they are setting the pace for the future. You are seeking a composite score for the entire marketplace.

Calculate it similarly (taking care to multiply the sum by 10, just as you did before) and write it down. Let's call it B. This is your denominator.

Now divide A by B and multiply by 100. The result is your CQ, your change quotient.

Theoretically, it can be as little as 20 and as high as 500. We expect most companies to score somewhere between 50 and 200.

A score of 100 would mean that, in the view of the employees you polled, your company is just keeping up.

The higher the score, and especially if it is well into the triple figures, the faster you are already changing relative to your competitors, the more your people recognize the need to change, and the more likely your change is on course.

The lower your score, and especially if it is mired deep in the double digits, the less all that is true, and the more work you have to do.

Try it out and let me know how it works.

 

Coming on Monday

Part One of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility

 

 © Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Turbocharge Your Change with Our Boot Camp for Managers

  

For more recent posts on leadership, communication,

change, and engagement of employees, just scroll down.

 

 

You may work in a high-performance organization. Perhaps your company is already on a list of best places to work, either locally or nationally. Perhaps your employee survey scores are above the norm. Perhaps you are an employer of choice.

Or you may work in a challenging environment. Perhaps you have a rumor mill that moves at warp speed. Perhaps you have front-line supervisors who are openly cynical. Perhaps your employee surveys come back with low marks for "open and honest communication."

Or—and more likely—you may work at an organization, large or small, that is good but could be a whole lot better.

Wherever you are on this continuum, you and your managers can benefit hugely from our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication. High-performance companies can move to the next level. Struggling organizations can begin to get their act together. Middle-of-the-road companies can identify their next opportunities for improvement.

A great deal is at stake. Because the competition is always changing, no organization can remain where it is. Always, you are either improving or worsening relative to competitors. Product quality, personnel costs, employee engagement, and ultimately customer satisfaction and your profitability are on the line. At the very least, as our economy recovers, every company must worry about retaining the loyalty of its talent.

We have a solution: our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication, an intense, sophisticated, on-site workshop that changes the way managers and supervisors communicate business strategy and information, manage their own priorities, and build affirming relationships of mutual dignity and respect.

Here are just some of the benefits of Boot Camp:

Bottom Line Value. Research shows that between 2.1 and 2.5 percent of an organization’s revenue is lost to the active disengagement of people. That’s as much as $2.5 million for every $100 million of revenue, and it is just for the active disengagement. (Passive engagement adds still more to the cost.) Recover it, and it goes straight to the bottom line.

Big Impact. Leadership and management are two different things. So are engagement and alignment. (Remember this: “Assign to align. On page to engage.”) The communication that drives each is different, too. Use the wrong one, and you get the wrong result. We bring clarity and explanation to these important distinctions. Executives will understand the importance of distributive leadership—after all, no one can be everywhere—and managers will understand why they must stand up as collateral leaders of the enterprise.

Practical Examples. We have scoured top-tier companies for best practices, and we bring them to you. Your managers will see practical examples from companies like Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, and many others. Your people will remember the vivid stories for years to come.

Quantitative Data. We present hard, factual, quantitative data to support our argument on the power and value of communication around business strategy. You and your managers will get facts and figures on change, trust, engagement and disengagement, perceptions of managers by employees, ROI, message clutter, employee frustrations, rumors, and so much more.

Simple, Powerful Models. Our flagship models, the Rainbow and the GearBox, have been used by such iconic companies as Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch, Harley-Davidson, Royal Dutch Shell, FMC, John Deere, Northwestern Mutual, and the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The Rainbow Model identifies unintended, and previously unnoticed, credibility gaps: mixed messages, muddled messages, mute messages. Another model, the GearBox, serves as both a structure and a self-assessment tool at the intersection of strategy and employee engagement. We guarantee you will find them enlightening.

Robust Credibility. Any leader is communicating constantly, often (and most especially) when he is least aware of it. We hammer home the point that communication is anything—verbal or nonverbal, explicit or implicit—that either conveys information or creates meaning. That forces managers to rethink their routine, their habits, and their own unnoticed behavioral ticks, for those nasty, inadvertent messages they didn’t intend to send—but did, more than once.

Talk Traps. The work of leading people isn’t easy. If it were, anyone could do it well. But we have been around long enough to know the landscape of difficulties—and talk traps are a big one. Inexperienced or unskilled leaders often run into the classic talk traps: small talk, sunny talk, scare talk, sweet talk, smart talk, simple talk, song and dance talk, slick talk, snarky talk, self talk, or snarl talk. What they should rely on is straight talk. But even that isn’t easy. We’ll take your team through the challenge of straight talk, so that they can do it right.

Healthy Culture. Good communication of business information in a company is more than a process. It is a culture. In a healthy culture, communication is clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. For each, we have powerful diagnostic questions that will open eyes, minds, and hearts to change.

Practical, Proven Strategies. We have distilled our teaching down to neat lists of strategies and tactics. They all make abundant good sense, but many of them never occurred to managers beforehand. 

 

Boot Camp is available in a one-day or two-day format. It can be customized to your industry, your strategy, and your legacy. Leading companies in manufacturing, technology, finance, retail, and service industries have made it a staple of their professional development.

Evaluations of our workshops are consistently high. After sitting in a windowless room for a day or two, more than 95 percent of participants recommend the experience for their peers and superiors. Here’s what past participants have said:

 

“This was a top-notch program directly geared [to] the success of managers. It was a continuing education program among peers.”

—a senior manager of a Fortune 100 consumer-products company

“I have worked for this agency for 25 years, and I have never had a day of in-service training as valuable as today’s.”

—scientist, agency of the U.S. government

“Excellent presenter, measured pauses, superb, enthusiastic, thought-provoking, excellent material, first-rate, will definitely recommend.”

—a guest participant

“I have gone through a lot of leadership training. This is one of the two best. The other was at Carnegie Mellon, and this workshop is more applicable to my day-to-day work.”

—senior engineer, aerospace company

“Tom is terrific! Original, enthusiastic, motivating . . . the lessons are applicable, useful, and real.”

—senior manager for an international food and beverage company

Call or write now for special pricing and best availability.

 
+1-847-247-2241
info@arceil.com 

What, and Who, Is a Communicator?

by Thomas J. Lee

Who is a communicator? What is a communicator?

The short answer is: someone who communicates. But everyone communicates, for better or for worse. Yet we don't call everyone a communicator, do we?

Maybe we should.

In large companies, communicator is shorthand for all those people in staff positions who bring their talent and skill to bear on communicating for the companies that employ them. They are speechwriters, publicists, editors, designers, producers, Website managers, technicians, photographers, and public-affairs representatives. (Full disclosure: I myself worked as an executive speechwriter for the CEO of a Fortune 25 company some years ago.)

The same word is also used, approvingly, to describe senior executives with a knack for speaking clearly, perhaps even eloquently, to large audiences and to the news media. Just as Ronald Reagan was once described as "the great communicator," so a CEO may be described. Alas, not many are.

But I am going after a bigger point.

Especially in a time when social media can so greatly amplify anyone's voice and so heavily influence public opinion, shouldn't all employees be regarded as communicators? For that matter, shouldn't all stakeholders of any sort be regarded as communicators: customers, investors, suppliers, retirees, employees, and more?

The question, it seems to me, is whether anyone is not a communicator. At the risk of confusing things with a double negative, I think not.

I recall a best-practice benchmarking visit I paid some years ago to 3M, the diversified manufacturing company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. When asked how many communicators the company employed, a senior executive replied: 72,385 or thereabouts (I forget the precise figure, but that's close).

I thought he had misunderstood the question, as I was expecting an answer in three digits, not five. No, he replied emphatically, he had clearly understood the question, he had already given it some thought, and he was standing by his answer.

Of course, the figure he cited just happened to be the number of people employed by 3M. And that was before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were dominating our day-to-day reality.

His point was that all employees communicate with and about the company. Moreover, because the company took seriously the importance of two-way communication, it couldn't very well label as communicators only those few people who communicate officially and professionally on behalf of the company. The people they were communicating with—not just to, remember—had to be communicators as well. If they were not, then the conversation was rather lopsided.

Ever since, I have been bemused whenever I hear the word communicator applied only to staff professionals, and all the more so now that social media are so central to our lives. Every company has a lot more communicators than it pays to communicate. They are already communicating quite well, and all the more loudly today than just a few years ago.

 

Coming on Friday

 What Is Your Company's Change Quotient?

 

(c) Copyright 2011     Thomas J. Lee     All rights reserved.

{Numbers} Shareholder Return Rises With Employee Engagement

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. Formerly known as By the Numbers, it appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

The financial value of employee engagement has long been obvious to some managers, particularly those who appreciate the importance of psychological anchors such as pride, belonging, and meaning on both the quality and the quantity of work, and those who understand the systematic role of communication in creating engagement.

But to managers who focus first and last on mechanical drivers of performance, such as unmistakable authority and the certainty of accountability, the financial metrics of engagement are not so plain to see. To them, engagement has largely seemed a wasteful annoyance.

Now we have new data to prove the business case for high employee engagement. It turns out to go beyond the bottom line and straight to the curve on the shareholder return graph.

New research by Hewitt Associates, which was recently acquired by Aon Consulting, has found that companies with relatively high levels of employee engagement (at least 65 percent) outperform the total stock market. They posted shareholder returns 19 percent higher than the average in 2009, the most recent year for which comparisons are available.

Meanwhile, companies with very low engagement (less than 40 percent) underperformed the total stock market. They posted returns 44 percent lower than the average for the same period.

That's a total difference of 63 percentage points attributable to employee engagement, which, as we know from other reputable studies, is driven by nothing so much as clear, compelling, credible, collaborative communication.

If this doesn't make the business case for a strategic process of internal communication in support of engaging employees, nothing will. After all, how many other processes or improvements can even come close?

 

Coming Wednesday

Just What, and Who, Is a Communicator?

 

(c) Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Are Our Attention Spans Actually Growing Again?

 

by Thomas J. Lee

For the last two or three generations, ever since television invaded American homes, the average attention span has been shrinking. Everyone bemoans it, even as Madison Avenue copywriters specialize in the 30-second advertising spot and political handlers in the 10-second soundbite. The entire public is just assumed to be suffering from attention deficit disorder.

With the advent of the Internet and especially social media like Facebook and Twitter, attention spans were assumed to be shrinking even more. Web sites are routinely "optimized" to appear among the first few on a Google search. Tweets are confined to just 140 characters. Text messages abbreviate you as u.

Now comes Peggy Noonan, a gifted speechwriter who gave President Reagan so much of his eloquence, to suggest that perhaps we have seen the worst of it. In a recent Wall Street Journal essay, she suggested that our attention spans just might be growing once again, and that we may have the Internet and speeches to thank for it.

She cites huge numbers of visitors to online speeches by politicians, authors, and academics known only to relatively small numbers of people. One example: An online speech by Wisconsin businessman Ron Johnson was responsible for his candidacy for the U.S. Senate; a few months later he sailed to victory over a three-term incumbent. Another example: Links to countless TED talks land on just about everyone's Facebook page and in just about everyone's email inbox, and people actually click on the links and listen to the entire speeches.

Noonan concludes: "A funny thing about politicians is that they’re all obsessed with 'messaging' and 'breaking through' and 'getting people to listen.' They’re convinced that some special kind of cleverness is needed, that some magical communications formula exists and can be harnessed if only discovered. They should settle down, survey the technological field and get serious. They should give pertinent, truthful, sophisticated and sober-minded speeches. Everyone will listen. They’ll be all over the interwebs."

A former speechwriter myself, I think Noonan has correctly observed and commented on a real phenomenon. She is absolutely right about the clips and links arriving by email, and she is absolutely right about people clicking on those links and patiently listening to entire speeches, too. I just hope business executives are paying attention.

Besides, when was the last time anything you came across on Facebook or Twitter has actually influenced you to think or behave differently? Have you ever purchased something because of what you read or saw on Facebook or Twitter? Have you ever done anything, let alone cast your precious ballot, on the basis of what you read or saw on Facebook or Twitter? Neither have I.

I, for one, am all in favor of lengthening our collective attention span, and it sure looks as if that is exactly what is happening, thanks in part to the Internet, of all things.

 

Coming Monday

 New Data on Engagement and Shareholder Return

 

(c) Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   All rights reserved.

Just What Is Executive Bearing, and Why Does It Matter?

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed an odd thing about highly successful leaders? A great many of them have something in common. Not all of them, certainly, but enough of them to be noticeable.

A curiously high percentage of senior executives, retired generals, three-term U.S. senators, judges, network television anchors, Cabinet secretaries, college presidents, law-firm partners, diplomats, and McKinsey consultants just seem to have the ineffable bearing of leadership.

They may not have the drop-dead good looks of Jon Hamm on Mad Men, or the gentility of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., or the captivating beauty of Julianna Margulies on The Good Wife, or the silver hair of U.S. Senator Dick Lugar, but they definitely stand out.

Something about them proclaims they aren't typical. Women and men alike, many of these leaders just stand an inch closer to the polished, the classy, perhaps even the distinguished.

Whatever it is that sets them apart, it is much more than appearance or posture or anything else so insubstantial. By bearing, I have in mind a sense of being that reaches for something profound, something important. After all, anyone can put on a neatly pressed suit and a polished pair of shoes, but not just anyone can invoke values, describe a necessary future, and inspire people to do the extraordinary. What so many highly effective leaders have in common is a way of talking, behaving, and relating to other people that enables, drives, and sustains their impact as leaders.

Before we go any further, let's stop and quickly admit the obvious. I am not suggesting that these leaders are perfect or even uncommonly close to it. No leader is, and in any case that is not the point. Indeed I have argued previously that the popular expectation of perfection in leaders is unrealistic. We need to back away from it.

Moreover, it is equally true that thousands of good leaders lack this bearing, so it must be a nice-to-have thing, not a must-have. For every Mitt Romney stepping out of the pages of a Brooks Brothers catalogue and striding to the board room, you can find a Mark Zuckerberg in T-shirt and jeans and in need of a comb. We know that.

Still, this executive bearing is seen so often that only the cynical and the blind among us would deny it. So let's explore it. Here are nine cornerstones of executive bearing that I believe set the highly effective leader apart from the rest:

 

• Communication (Verbal). Communication is the energy of leadership. Nothing is more important than the ability to speak with clarity and to listen with interest and sincerity. Regardless of position, a putative leader who lacks this capability is merely keeping the chair warm. You cannot expect people to read your mind, and you cannot expect to read anyone else's mind. You need not be as eloquent as Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill, but you must learn how to express yourself and how to listen with genuine concern, intensity, and curiosity.
• Communication (Nonverbal). By nonverbal communication, we are referring to far more than body language and facial expression. They can send messages, for sure, but they pale in comparison with the nonverbal A-B-C-D-E communication of attitudes, behaviors, character, decisions, and empathy. Every leader must become fully aware of the myriad ways she communicates implicity and unintentionally, every day, all day long. Behaviors so incidental as where and with whom you eat lunch are apt to send important social cues that ricochet through your organization.
• Appearance and Image. This part is about the visual, insubstantial as it may be. The basics are good grooming, neat and clean attire, generally looking nice enough to meet with the CEO. Impeccable manners are elementary, too. For gentlemen, that entails opening doors, yielding on entering and exiting elevators, even pulling out chairs. And don't even think of disrespecting or disregarding anyone in a position of service: waiters, chambermaids, customer-service personnel, custodians. To the contrary, be sure to greet everyone with a smile and pleasant acknowledgement. This is the ethic of recipocity as it applies to leadership.
• Conviction and Confidence. Leaders deal with complexity in many forms: ambiguity, nuance, multiplicity, change, and uncertainty. A leader's self-confidence helps followers cope with that complexity. While there is a fine line between self-confidence and arrogance, the former is a strength when borne of conviction to core principles, whereas the latter is a severe character flaw that has doomed leaders for millennia. The thing to recognize and remember is the importance of core principles as the only true foundation for conviction and confidence.
• Respect and Humility. Leaders have to be accountable for the work of the organization they lead, but no leader deserves full credit for the organization's success. Indeed, without the earnest support of your people, no leader is a leader. It follows that any leader worth the title must fully respect the work of the team. You can accomplish just about anything as long as you accept all the blame and give away all the credit.
• Congruence and Authenticity. It's one thing to pay rhetorical tribute to lofty values, another thing to think through their implications and then honor those values consistently. Take diversity. Does it merely mean putting an African-American on the cover of your annual report or in your TV commercials? Or does it mean making certain that your senior management team has diversity of color, gender, and nationality? Still better, does it extend also to project teams, promotions, succession planning, and restructurings without regard to age, educational pedigree, current assignment, employment grade level, shift, and so much more? 
• Presence and Accessibility. There are four types of presence and four types of accessibility: the physical, the intellectual, the social, and the emotional. Leaders need to understand and appreciate all four. Each of the four conveys powerful messages of inclusion or exclusion.
• Clarity of Purpose. In the private sector, most senior executives will tell you their primary purpose is to ensure a substantial return to investors. That is an essential thing, needless to say, but the organization's purpose must be viewed through the lens of the customer, not the lens of the investor. It must drive the repeated decisions of customers to start or continue to do business with this organization. Without that, the return to investors is moot.
• Support and Servancy. Unfortunately few managers are familiar with the concept of servant leadership. It is the notion that the leader serves the followers, not the other way around. It is President John F. Kennedy's famous dictum—"Ask not what your country can do you; ask what you can do for your country"—applied to leaders with regard to the people they would lead. 

There's more to the puzzle, of course, but these are the cornerstones. Devote time and attention to these nine attributes of executive bearing, and you will be well on your way to greater impact as an exceptional leader. 

 

Coming on Friday

Our Growing Attention Spans

 

(c) Copyright 2011     Arceil Leadership Ltd.     All rights reserved. 

Minding Gaps Welcomes Its 40,000th Reader

 

At some point today, probably before noon, Minding Gaps will welcome its 40,000th reader. Almost all of you are looking for insights to help your leadership in business, government, nonprofit associations, churches, fraternal clubs, social networks, and advocacy organizations.

We hope you are finding what you are looking for. If not, please alert us. If so, we always appreciate hearing of your satisfaction.

We are humbled that so many of you have placed your confidence in us. Thank you.

 

Thomas J. Lee                

 

Addendum:  Whoever accessed the post on John F. Kennedy's quote on myths at precisely 11:00 a.m. CST today was our 40,000th reader. Call us (at +1-847-247-2241) and introduce yourself and we'll give you a 10 percent discount off the fee for a workshop.