CHAPTER 24 LEADERSHIP

“Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.”

Colin Powell¹

A leader is someone who leads, and in organizations, this is more often than not associated with a particular position or function.

We are fascinated with the idea of leadership and what makes a great leader. There are numerous definitions of leadership, diverse models describing the required qualities of leaders, instructions on how to lead across different contexts and much more. Organizations globally spend billions to develop their population of leaders.

Becoming a leader definitely requires attention to models, frameworks and making personal sense of the skills and capabilities required. But this alone will not produce a leader.

As we search for the leadership Holy Grail, we focus on what is external to us; we look to experts and gurus in the field. This approach has its merits, but where are the experts when a decision is required, when action is called for, when a difficult message has to be shared?

In an increasingly unpredictable and uncertain context, where tried and tested methods no longer deliver, command and control is simply not possible (even if it was likely to succeed), content so rapidly changes, and what was true once is rarely repeated, this requires leaders to identify and develop their own model of leadership, and be their own guide.

Rather than looking to experts, you need to work out your own approach, do your own thinking and learn from your own practice. What is your purpose and identity? What is meaningful to you? From this basis, integrate what is helpful and relevant from the swathes of leadership concepts, and through a process of curiosity, explore your own leadership practice and the impact you have on those who you work with.

In this chapter, we don’t share formal models of leadership; we want to encourage you to explore your own thinking and approach. What can you do to make sure that you are leading well in the context you find yourself in?

WHAT TO THINK ABOUT

So what might be important to think about? We have covered much already that explores how we think, feel and what we do. From those chapters there is a lot to explore about your inner world and the relationship between your inner landscape and outer experiences.

In this section, looking at complexity, change, wisdom, neuroscience and choice, we suggest that you may like to consider the following:

•     things exist in relation to other things, cause and effect is not linear, what we do can enhance the energy in a system or dampen things down, and paying attention to patterns can help us notice how we are doing this. As a leader, it’s important to “notice” interactions and patterns. How might you develop your complexity “habits of thought”?

•     change is happening all the time, and it is personal. How as a leader do you attend to the personal impact that you have on others in order to facilitate change?

•     self-awareness and self-knowledge are core to wise leadership. How might you build your wisdom to enable you to collaborate with others, to act with integrity, to know how (and whether) to respond? How can you cultivate a beginner mind, which offers the possibility of collaboration and exploration, rather than holding onto the view of “leader as expert” which leads to individual heroics?

•     choice builds learning and motivation, ownership and responsibility. What might you do to cultivate choice for yourself and others?

•     How can you use what we know about the brain and how it’s structured? Explore how it “works” in your leadership: develop habits of leadership, optimize your learning and that of those around you; pay attention to the blinkers and expectations that you have that might get in the way of what is really happening. And, as other leaders are starting to do, perhaps develop your own mindfulness practice so that your brain “fitness” is improved.

From an organizational perspective, leaders are “given” their role, through position. Some do brilliantly, leading in this space; many do a good job; and still others fail miserably – suffering personally. Letting go of the view of the leader as separate to the context in which they are leading is likely to reduce the focus on individual heroics and open up the possibility of a shared endeavour and greater success. Peter Hawkins² comments that leadership is relational – leaders are not separate at all from the context in which they lead. Leaders are fundamentally people stepping into a space that requires a leader. Leaders are volunteers responding to a need in the system.

LEARNING TO BE A LEADER

The ability to learn is often quoted as a core trait of successful leadership – our experience working with senior teams underlines this. Learning from adversity is a repeated theme in stories of success that we have witnessed – clarifying priorities and strengths. Whether it’s learning through overcoming a difficult childhood or youth, or learning from business failure, learning was a core theme underpinning success in our team assessment work; not only for business leaders, but often for the entire leadership team.

Learning in this way is different to the traditional expert-based learning, and requires you to notice and reflect on what you are doing, making your own meaning of expert input and experience, becoming an active shaper of your development, rather than a passive recipient of the latest fad.

Your own view of leaders and leadership will impact on your approach to learning as a leader. So what do you think about leaders and leadership? We share our position on a number of leadership points below – what is your position?

Is leadership personal or positional? Determined by the individual – a way of being in the world; or determined by the system that the person is in – dependent on position and context? Your position on this dimension will determine where you look for leadership, where you look for input, perhaps who you listen to. It takes no title to be a leader; a leader is someone whom people choose to follow. And having the title of leader doesn’t mean you automatically become someone people will choose to follow. Leaders emerge from any place in society and are distributed³ across organizations regardless of position.

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

John Quincy Adams⁴

Are leaders born, or do people develop into the leaders you see around you? Your response to this question will dramatically impact on whether you are prepared to invest personally in your own development, and in the development of those you lead. Warren Bennis⁵ believes “leaders are made, not born”, and that “there are many possible selves”.

From our work in the area of Management Due Diligence for private equity investors, we know that leaders are not born. There is such diversity among successful leaders of business teams, it is a challenge to pinpoint a set of characteristics of the “leader” that equates to success.

“The roles we play in the course of our lives have more to do with our successes or failures than our personal histories.”

Warren Bennis⁶

How do leaders develop? Through learning a relevant set of skills and behaviours or through development of self-knowledge? Where you sit on this dichotomy will determine what you spend your time investing in and how you assess the leadership qualities of those around you.

Our view is that leadership comes from the person and the situation they find themselves in. A leader has to develop as an individual;⁷ this means raising self-awareness and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge requires learning, allowing you to face your vulnerabilities, to grow through success and failure – driving personal integrity and an authentic leadership stance. Yet, different skills are required in different contexts and a core repertoire of interpersonal skills is likely to be useful across a range of situations.

“If you can become the leader you ought to be on the inside, you will be able to become the person you want on the outside. People will want to follow you. And when that happens, you’ll be able to tackle anything in this world.”

John Maxwell⁸

To what extent is leadership a quality belonging to individuals, requiring “heroes” or a quality that is enabled through shared endeavour? Your beliefs here will impact on your focus as a leader – how do you try to impact?

We see leadership as fundamentally relational. Leadership happens in the spaces between. Leadership is not something that is possessed by an individual, but is something that is created by the way the leader interacts with those they “lead” (who they are, their history with that leader, assumptions about each other and more). In the words of William Tait⁹ “Leadership is foremost a social activity, an empathic as much as a cognitive pursuit, one conducted through relationships.” A leader is a different leader within a different context, with different followers, colleagues and bosses.

In Management Due Diligence work, it is no mistake that the focus is on the leadership team as well as the leader of that team, and on the context of the business – financial and commercial as well as the team of leaders – neither operates in isolation. Risks inherent in one leader are off-set, minimized or magnified when you look across the whole team, the relationships within the team and the relationship of the leader and leadership team to the context of the organization, market niche and business sector. Investors take a systems view of leadership – because they want the odds stacked in favour of success.

“Leadership requires a leader, followers and a shared endeavour”.

Peter Hawkins¹⁰

SO, WHERE DO YOU START?

Given that the simple answer to most of the questions posed above is “both and”, what is the starting point?

You.

LEADERSHIP PURPOSE

Leaders with some form of purpose will have a strong “anchor”. The starting point is to build the self-knowledge required to lead with purpose. A leader with purpose can contribute more fully to the organization’s purpose, the what and how of the organization’s vision.¹¹

Some of the big questions to explore: What is your purpose as a leader? What is the difference you want to make? What are you here for? What role does the world need you to fulfil? What inspires you, and in what ways do you want to inspire others? Identifying your core purpose as a leader – what are you here for? – connects with what’s really core to you – and raises your self-awareness and self-knowledge.

But leadership of a team, group or an organization is bigger than you. What’s the context you are in? What are the qualities of the system?For example, stable or unstable, emerging or established? Who are the stakeholders and what do they need from you as a leader and from your leadership? Who are the stakeholders of the future and what does that future perspective need you to consider here and now?

What is the role that you’ve been asked to play? Where are you in the leadership pipeline?¹² Are you an individual contributor, functional head, or leader of a global enterprise? What does this level of leadership require you to deliver? What do your followers need from you in this position?

Leadership purpose is not a singular entity – it encompasses you, the organization context, the future context, the system and your role within it.

LEADERSHIP IDENTITY – WHO ARE YOU?

Leading-self comes as part of the leadership of others. But who are you? What’s you – what’s not you? Knowing more of the answer gives you more power, as you have greater clarity in any context about what you bring, what others are bringing and how to create the path for people to follow.

How do you develop this knowledge? Through a process of working with your own experience and stories¹³ – noticing what it is that you are doing, thinking and feeling and how these impact on those around you. Once you’ve accepted the strengths and the limitations that you bring as a person and a leader, and stopped trying to be omnipotent – you can show more vulnerability – and in the words of Damien Hughes, vulnerability = power.¹⁴

It’s hard to notice what you do when everything is familiar and comfortable. Instead, you need to step out of your comfort zone. There’s no prescription about how far you need to step out, it needs to feel like a safe enough space for you to be stretched a little, feel a little uncomfortable – and not so safe that you can stay firmly wrapped in your personal security blanket of knowledge and expertise. This “learning space” is necessary to notice yourself, and gain insight and awareness. You start to notice what you’re holding on to – the ideas and beliefs that you have about yourself and others. It’s then a case of sorting through – which beliefs/ideas and notions about yourself are still relevant and helpful given what you have set as your purpose – and which are outdated and get in the way.

One company we have worked with starts the journey of leadership discovery with a group experience that strips away the comfort blanket of technical and professional knowledge and expertise. Instead participants are brought together in a music studio and, with a team of professional musicians, producers and coaches, create a music track that really builds from the individual contributions in the room – no musical capability required.

If you want to understand the things that really get in the way of you being the best that you can be – the internal saboteurs, fears and limiting assumptions that you might be holding onto – this kind of group experience brings that into sharp relief. It also brings out the resourcefulness in you and the strengths that you can build on to formulate the foundations of your leadership.

With careful attention to the wraparound necessary support and contracting, for groups of leaders who are on an ongoing learning journey together, this event fast-forwards people’s experience of themselves and provides an increasing self-knowledge that they can build on moving forward. It’s not the only method for gaining insight into who you are as a leader – but it is a powerful one.

Understanding who you are, gaining that self-knowledge and insight and embracing all that you are (including the things that you would rather weren’t part of you, like that envious streak, the destructive competitor within, the gratifying pleaser, the passionate critic) – enables you to have more control and choice.

LEADERSHIP IMPACT – WHAT HAPPENS AS A RESULT OF YOU?

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

Anita Roddick¹⁵

What is your leadership footprint? What impact do you have? This is the point at which it’s really useful to carry around a notebook specifically for you to gather data (what really did happen when you set a clear purpose for that team meeting instead of allowing it to drift through the agenda?); and reflect on some of the questions you might be asking yourself about leadership.

Perhaps you’ve identified your leadership purpose. Once crafted, how do you best voice and communicate that purpose to motivate others? What works even better? What works less well? Noticing yourself – and noting things down (because we really don’t remember them) – can provide a new perspective, giving you more ideas on how to build and hone your craft as a leader.

To fast-forward your impact as a leader, be the leader that you want to become. Rather than just having an idea of the leader you are aiming to be – make it real. Step into the “best you” that you are imagining – act the part. Feel what that feels like, sounds like, thinks like – and centre yourself in that experience. This might feel a little odd – it’s not a new idea.

Sydney Pollack¹⁶, an actor and director, turned himself into a director by playing the role of a director. “The first time I directed anything,” he said, “I acted like a director. That’s the only thing I knew how to do, because I didn’t know anything about directing. I had images of directors from working with them and I even tried to dress like a director – clothes that were kind of outdoorsy. If there had been a megaphone around, I would have grabbed it.”

How do you lead a team, lead change? Being a leader is not the end result, leadership is something that changes, needs honing and attention in order to stay fit for purpose.

“Earn your leadership every day.”

Michael Jordan¹⁷

Clarifying your leadership approach and your leadership practice enables you to both understand the type of organizational context in which you thrive and contribute, and also, for any given context, to have greater choice and greater impact on the people you are leading.

LEADERSHIP FEARS AND VULNERABILITY

It’s worth noting something about fear and vulnerability as a leader – and worthiness – as these can be critical to success (and failure). Brene Brown has explored the meaning, purpose and power of vulnerability¹⁸ through 12 years of research. She notes that, as social beings, we gain meaning through connecting with others. BUT we fear that we are not perfect and therefore won’t be acceptable to others. Fears about not being good enough, and about worth often emerge for those in leadership positions.

This fear is fuelled through TV, film, advertisements and social media – we’re bombarded with the message “You can be perfect if only you focus harder, learn more, be better”.

So instead of accepting our imperfections (because no one is perfect) – and accepting that some people won’t like us (by the law of averages alone), and that life can be tough (and often is), we get more worried about exposing our vulnerabilities – keeping ourselves locked in – hiding what we fear might drive others (and that promotion) away.

Until you can really embrace the idea that you are enough – no matter what gets done and how much remains un-done – you will be bowed down by the possibility of shame and vulnerability.¹⁹ Getting over the fear of shame and vulnerability will unlock your ability to live and lead wholeheartedly. Indeed, we have experienced situations where a leader who is open about their imperfections and exposes their vulnerabilities is respected much more. Authenticity has more power than fabricated perfection. And the choice is yours.

There is a more sinister side to our fears – a legal term described “wilful blindness” discussed by Margaret Heffernan.²⁰ Wilful blindness is what happens when people are reluctant (fearful) about confronting uncomfortable facts. On the positive side, wilful blindness helps us ignore small blemishes and smoothes social interaction. We are able to maintain optimism in the face of significant difficulties – the optimism can at times help us survive.

At its worst, fear – fear of conflict, fear of change – keeps us living in the dark.

“An unconscious (and much denied) impulse to obey and conform shields us from confrontation and crowds provide friendly alibis for our inertia. And money has the power to blind us, even to our better selves.”

Margaret Heffernan²¹

The sheer scale of damage that can be caused by organizations who are wilfully blind makes this issue significant. It is present at every level – and the antidote starts with the individual who is prepared to reveal central truths and ask uncomfortable questions.

LEADERSHIP AND 31PRACTICES

31Practices as a methodology is designed to build the leadership of the organizational system itself – building an enabling (rather than disabling) culture and context within which individual leaders can optimize their leadership impact.

As an example of this, we return to the story of Zappos. The core values identified by Zappos, and the way these values were operationalized and integrated into the culture of the organization, drove a system that enabled Zappos leaders. Core values were important guidelines that managers used in their decision making.²²

The “hire and fire” criteria applied by Tony Hsieh is one that we use with our clients now in order to refine and prioritize what is truly core to them.

As a leader, 31Practices requires you to embody the values and practices that you expect in others – first you have to lead yourself in order to create an enabling system. To lead others, you need to take the risk – model the daily Practices and share stories of not only what that felt like, but what the impact was – and how you have started to develop your habits. Keep reminding yourself that culture in an organization is the shadow of the leader… your shadow

“Given all the hard work that goes into developing and implementing a solid values system, most companies would probably prefer not to bother. And indeed they shouldn’t because poorly implemented values can poison a company’ culture.”

Pat Lencioni²³