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Dear SEA Member - May 24, 2013
Did you check any of these? If you did, you’re the guy we’re talking about. None of these are insurmountable. None of these keep you from contacting someone to communicate that you will not be able to keep your promise. The way people judge your integrity is not absolute. They don’t expect you to keep your promises every single time. What they do expect is that you will behave in a manner consistent with a commitment to do what you said you would. Everything that interferes with your power to become an authentic leader rests on a lack of integrity. Therefore I would call integrity like authenticity, a foundational skill. It’s part of the bedrock on which you can build credibility as a formal or informal leader. Some managers develop the belief that having the prerogative to blow off meetings and phone calls demonstrates their power and standing. They come to believe that everyone must wait and swallow hard while they indulge themselves in doing what they want when they want to or not – like a whim. I can admit that you see a lot of this in the movies where everything is on a script and employees seem to ignore these abuses. But in real life that isn’t the case. Leaders who act like that wake up one day and the only people who are still with them are those who have no possibility of getting a job anywhere else. Movies and TV series are not reality when it comes to running a company. I’m surprised how many people haven’t realized this yet. Another type of integrity comes when we vouch for others. If I tell you that Jim works for AT&T and later you find out that Jim does not work for AT&T, you wonder about my integrity. This is because in sharing a fact with you, you expect me to at least make sure my facts are accurate. As a leader, this is a standard that always applies, while as an individual contributor – not an analyst, accountant, or attorney – I might get away with this. Leaders are held to the same standards by those they lead as you would an attorney, accountant, or analyst. These are folks you expect to be certain about events, details, facts, etc. People in these roles have a form of “due diligence” that includes checking sources of facts they consider to be important. They may adopt a personal policy of checking facts with more than one person. If Jim says he works for AT&T, you might look at Jim’s business card, or ask someone else if they know where Jim works. People expect a higher standard from their leaders. Leaders who cannot ensure that information they use and communicate is accurate within reason will not be trusted by those that follow them. How can you lead and serve? More than one book has been written about this starting with the bible. “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:42-45 Robert Greenleaf is credited with coining the phrase “servant leadership” from an essay he authored in 1970 called “The Servant as Leader.” “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“ For a small business owner this may be too esoteric – obscure, cryptic, conceptual. Those who are the second and third generation family to manage a company that has grown tend to be more practical and pragmatic – their roots are strongly connected to the “Captains of Industry” – the leadership styles of the early 1900s. Employees do or don’t do. The job is simple. Fire those who can’t do. Give those who can but don’t a second chance. Reward those who can do and do by letting them keep their jobs. What could be simpler? National discretionary effort surveys have long identified the gap between the energy and effort it takes to remain employed and what people can really give when both their hearts and minds are present. But the Captains of Industry rarely captured the hearts of the workforce. You may recall that was the same era that unions were born and perhaps for very good reason. What level of effort does it take to remain employed? Perhaps 60-70% effort at most. If everyone silently collaborates to keep performance expectations low, the 60%ers can be superstars. The 90%ers who join the company quickly get beaten down or ejected with prejudice. You have to “fit in.” What if there is a 30-40% gap as most industrial psychologists agree? The performance differences are astounding between high performing companies and those who are just status quo. “We are going to win, and the industrial West is going to lose: There’s nothing much you can do about it because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves.” - Konosuke Matsushita Our competitors have long believed that American business leaders do not know how to lead. We simply manage the business to a status quo but don’t do the hard work of inspiring high performance and the problem is rooted so deeply inside us that we cannot see it much less exorcise it. We really, fundamentally, don’t want to believe that our job as leader is to free the intellectual resources of our enterprise. We believe that perhaps somehow good enough will be good enough, and we believe it is a risk to try to ask for more. We believe that control is the only thing keeping it all together. “When we are no longer able to change a situation—we are challenged to change ourselves.” - Viktor Frankl So what is the one thing that I can do that changes everything? What is the one thing that if I do it consistently, everyone will know that I intend to be a good leader – one that people will eventually follow? Notice I said “eventually” because those you lead have a strong interest in you remaining the way you are. You’re predictable and can be manipulated based on that predictability. Continued on Part 4 Back to Part 1 Part 2 |
 Michael Beason Chairman, CEO Supplier Excellence Alliance |
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