Dear SEA Member - May 24, 2013
BECOMING A LEADER Part 2
Success Leads to Leadership
There are many definitions for leadership. Why do we need it? Because eventually managing things just isn’t enough to ensure success. Just solving problems and maintaining the status quo isn’t enough. Some simply say leadership is being someone who others will follow. I like the example of the informal leader. Sometimes there are certain people who others just naturally listen to. I’ve seen people try to fake that by using recommended tricks and techniques. That doesn’t seem to work well. Being someone who others want to follow seems to be who you are – it’s in the bones. For those who watched the hit series LOST ending in 2010 after 6 successful seasons, Jack Shephard was the unquestionable leader even though many times you had to wonder why anyone would follow him – but he was the guy that everyone just wanted to follow in spite of many obvious flaws.
It takes a decision to be a leader.
You must decide with confidence that you will step out and lead. We see this informally all the time as we watch kids on the playground and people at work. Everywhere we see the challenge of leadership picked up by someone – the group looks around at faces that say, “it’s not me you’re looking for,” and one person steps forward and says, “OK, let’s get started.”
It’s very comfortable being a manager once you contemplate the transition to leadership. Leadership is so much less tangible. As a manager you can place most of your focus on maintaining the status quo. You solve problems to bring things back to a norm. You “project manage” the business, the customers, the employees.
A leader is mainly concerned with challenging and changing the status quo. As a leader, you’re operating from a vision of the business where breakthrough performance is normal and daily miracles are common.
As I said in the beginning of this paper, there are plenty of good books on leadership – servant leadership, principled leadership, situational leadership, and more. What I want to do is focus specifically on how a small business owner can transition from doer to manager to leader. How do we focus our efforts and develop ourselves to become that leader that people wish to follow?
Small companies eventually stagnate under a manager. Sometimes that becomes a generational issue. For instance, the father manages the business until retirement and at retirement the transition to the son or daughter comes after they have acquired an MBA at a top business school and are prepared to take over the business. But the father wants to see continuing revenue and the business has declined under management control for so many years. The future survival of the business depends on leadership but the father insists on management to ensure future success.
In one case I watched the father eject the son because he feared that the son could not manage the business when clearly their survival in the market would require a transition to leadership no matter how “rocky” that transition might be.
So I will suggest that in order to transition yourself to leadership – to become that person that others wish to follow - this pathway or roadmap may resonate and make sense to you. To gain the trust and respect of others there are certain “foundational” values and skills that must be adopted. I am suggesting that you focus on the following values.
Authenticity
There are widely varying views on the meaning of authenticity. You hear words like reliable, truthful, genuine, trustworthy. In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures. In the more general sense, people refer to authenticity as being true to oneself.
It is perhaps easier to identify in-authenticity as a way to define authenticity. We have all experienced a manager who says he has our interests at heart but behaves immediately in a manner that tells us he doesn’t. Or a leader who claims humanitarian motives but behaves consistent with self-serving ones.
Perhaps an authentic leader is one who has resolved the inner and outer conflicts to arrive at the truth about their core motivation and then is able to speak from that in a manner that instantly strikes everyone as true and accurate.
Another way to say that is to say that it is where you come from that’s important, not what you say.
We all have a kind of “radar” that works reliably almost 100% of the time if we listen. Some might call it a “BS Meter” but it mainly ignores the words (which according to psychologists holds only about 20% or less of the meaning of any communication) and seems to work off the non-verbal cues and even things that occur subconsciously and unexplainably in the background.
When a leader has internal conflicts between what they value and believe, and what they are saying, those conflicts are apparent. “Go ahead – it’s safe,” takes on different meanings spoken by different leaders and we seem to have a sixth sense about who we can trust when we hear these words and who we can’t.
So when a leader pretends to be unafraid, but is secretly afraid, a statement like, “Come on, let’s go – this is going to work,” raises the needle on the BS Meter while a statement like, “I’m feeling afraid, but I’m going to overcome that fear and move forward. Are you with me?” rings true as the authentic representation of the leader’s thoughts and feelings.
Leaders who try to appear confident when they’re not, fearless when they’re not, strong when they’re not, etc. just keep triggering the BS Meter until everyone with any self-worth at all has found other places to be. One of my favorite quotes is from a poster I saw, it said, “Once you lose all your eagles, you’re left with nothing but vultures.” It shows an office building full of vultures with green eye-shades and outside the windows eagles soaring free.
Conviction and commitment are powerful things. They can overcome feelings of fear and most other reservations in a very authentic manner.
When conviction and commitment are where you come from, people can read that and will follow.
For most people, developing authenticity might take multiple lifetimes of practice. The shortest route to authenticity is to hire an executive coach who can observe you and provide candid feedback about how you are doing day by day. In this respect, feedback is the “breakfast of champions.”
Integrity
Some will understand the word integrity to mean honesty, truthfulness, honor, frankness, candor, or openness. I dislike these words that describe integrity because when someone says you lack integrity you feel like they are insulting you and miss the point. I like to think about integrity in other terms that are less laden with emotion and potential disrespect.
Integrity is the degree of consistency between your words and your actions. Consider these examples:
- You schedule a meeting with someone and at the appointed time they are nowhere to be found. You know they have a cell phone – they have your cell number – they can also text you – and they can call someone else and enlist aide in contacting you. But they simply “no-show” without notice and when you finally speak to them they tell you a story that’s equivalent to “the dog ate my homework.” No integrity.
- You have a project planning meeting and work out a schedule of activities. Everyone agrees that the timeframes are reasonable and can be met. All of the tasks are due to be completed with two weeks. At the end of the first week you check in with someone and they haven’t yet begun their tasks. Two days later they begin talking about why they will never complete in time because the dog ate their homework. No integrity.
- You meet with someone to discuss a project you’re working on together. You agree on five requirements. The person takes notes – you watch them. Several days later you check in to see what they’re doing and their work has omitted 3 of the 5 requirements. When you ask why they didn’t observe their notes from the meeting you discover that the dog ate their homework – again.
People who lack integrity have a plethora of excuses that they themselves believe to be adequate. Everyone else knows these excuses are just that. People who use excuses like this are labeled unofficially as people who cannot be counted on – they lack integrity.
But integrity is the thing that nobody will speak about openly because everyone understands it to be an insult to their character.
Leaders who lack integrity are surrounded by people who have given up on you. These people have signed up to the “willing to be let down every time” club. Like the night watchman who sleeps in the park every night and doesn’t wake up for the clock chiming, they have steeled themselves to your supreme lack of integrity. You’re surrounded by people who do not give you feedback and do not call you to account. They’re comfortable because they know they can get away with the same thing – like having infinite “get outa jail free” cards.
In fact, some people get so good at failing to keep their word, that they make a new persona about it. So you become the guy who doesn’t have to keep his word because he’s so important and important people don’t keep their word – they’re creative, they’re spontaneous, they’re dynamic, energetic, and surrounded by people who can live with that.
Your considerations about the integrity of others un-communicated keeps them stuck the way they are.
And if you work for someone like that and don’t give them feedback, you get to have them exactly the way they are forever.
Leaders who lack integrity feel extremely uncomfortable around people who expect integrity.
Managers who wish to become leaders must focus on moving from keeping things in their head or on “things to do” lists to keeping a calendar. Modern PDAs like an iphone make this very simple. Put something in your calendar on the computer and two seconds later it’s on your phone. Everything in your calendar can have a reminder. No excuse for not knowing you’re about to miss a meeting or phone call. No excuse for missing a project deadline. Everything you promise to do is moved into a calendar that warns you in advance that you need to do something. You can ask someone to send you a calendar invite so you know that it will get into your calendar.
Moving from a list to a calendar is square one for being a leader with integrity.
Taking notes in every meeting in a log, notebook, or daily diary is square two for high integrity leaders. You can’t be expected to remember everything you hear and everything you agree to. But consider this question – which of these two leaders do I believe has integrity? Which is more likely to impress me? Which am I going to trust and which am I going to follow-up on constantly? Which am I going to promote?
- Someone who takes detailed notes during a meeting and references those notes later.
- Someone who doesn’t take notes and has a track record of forgetting to do things.
Let’s face it, the beginning of integrity is when someone behaves in a manner that demonstrates a commitment to do what they said they would.
Continued on Part 3 Back to Part 1 |
Michael Beason
Chairman, CEO
Supplier Excellence Alliance |
