Look in the Mirror—The Truth Receiver

In leadership circles, a lot is made about the importance of leaders being surrounded by people who are willing to be “truth tellers.” These people give honest feedback, without sugar coating, about things like the organization's direction, its latest strategy, or the leader's ability to motivate and guide others. While this is certainly important, it is missing one essential element: The leader must be a “truth receiver.”

As Gary observes in this book, leaders must begin the day by taking a good look in the mirror. They must see themselves—their strengths and their weaknesses—clearly and with unblinking honesty. To look in the mirror, leaders cannot be ruled by their egos—which I define as “Everything Good Outside”—nor can they think constantly about their own performance and the opinions of others. If they do, their self-worth is up for grabs every day, because no one's performance is great all the time, and people are fickle.

Looking in the mirror also reminds the leader of the “why” that is being served.

If leaders look in the mirror and think only about their own needs, their leadership journey is in serious danger of becoming hijacked by self-interest. Leaders who look in the mirror and ask themselves, “How can I best serve others today?” will have a rewarding adventure of taking people on a quest that will help them see, accomplish, and become more than they ever thought possible.

For the leader, the journey renews at the start of each day with a little quiet time and simple but profound questions: “What kind of leader do I want to be today—serving or self-serving? What do I want to help others accomplish today?” Then, at the end of the day, the leader reflects on how things unfolded. “Did I live up to being the kind of leader I said I would be in service of others? How can I improve tomorrow?”

Embody Purpose—Serving the “Why”

Leadership is a high calling, one that demands the best in us. The key is having what I call a compelling vision. Gary calls it the “why.” As he explained to me, “CEOs think they are in the “what,” and the “how” business. Ultimately, though, they are in the “why” business. They have to identify the why to get people aligned and moving in the same direction.”

I couldn't agree more. Establishing the “why” is the leader's job—putting forth a compelling vision that tells people your purpose (what business you are in), your picture of the future (what the future will look like if things are running as planned), and your values (what will guide your journey). All the leading organizations I have worked with over the years have a clear vision that everyone understands and attempts to live by.

When I wrote Lead with LUV with Colleen Barrett, former president of Southwest Airlines, it became clear to me why Southwest is the only airline in the industry that has made money consistently over the last four decades. If you ask anyone at Southwest what business they are in, they will tell you, “We are in the customer service business. We happen to fly airplanes.” When it comes to their picture of the future, they are clear: “We want to democratize the airways. Our dream is that every American can be with a friend or a relative at a happy time or a sad time.” As for the values that guide their journey, their number-one value is safety, because of the industry they are in. They have three values they want all their people to engage in every single day. The first is a Warrior Spirit. This is not combative. It means if you have a job, do it with all your effort. That's why they can turn a plane around faster than any other airline in the industry.

Their second value is one I have never seen in any other organization—it's a Servant's Heart. They hire for character and train for skill. Obviously, they aren't going to hire pilots who can't fly, but they are also not going to hire pilots who show a lack of character. A while back, a pilot from one of the top airlines in the country was applying for a job at Southwest, because pilots love to work there. On his flight down to Dallas for the interview, he was rude to the crew on the plane. When he got to corporate headquarters, where guests are greeted by two wonderful receptionists, he continued his self-serving behavior with them. As he headed upstairs to the People Department (HR), one of the receptionists called and said, “There's a guy coming up who just came through here. I don't know what he's interviewing for, but he was very rude to us. I got a report from the flight crew on his plane that said his behavior was bad there, too.” Not only did he not get the job, he didn't even get the interview. The interviewer told him, “I hope this will be helpful to you in the future,” adding that Southwest wasn't interested in hiring pilots who think they are a big deal.

Another value at Southwest is a Fun-LUVing Attitude, which follows founder Herb Kelleher's philosophy that you need to take what you do at work seriously but yourself lightly. That's why they are having fun all the time. They had to deal with the FAA for a while because some passengers reported that flight attendants fooled around too much when doing the in-flight safety presentations. In fact, research showed that when the crew used humor during safety announcements, passengers actually paid more attention than if the presentation had been a typical boring monologue.

When the why of an organization is as engaging as Southwest's vision, people will connect with it to derive their own sense of purpose and satisfaction. People will give their all because they understand that their efforts really do matter.

The best organizations I've worked with understand their “why”—the reason they are in business, which is not about making money. Pleasing Wall Street can't be the only “why.” Great organizations share the common understanding that their number-one customer is their people. If they take care of their people—train and empower them—those people will go out of their way to take care of the second most important group of people, their customers. Then their customers will become raving fans and spread their enthusiasm, which will take care of the third group, their stockholders. To me, profit is the applause you get for creating a motivating environment for your people, so they will take good care of your customers. When that happens, the why is clear and performance soars.

Don't Walk Alone—The Greater Good

I learned a leadership lesson early in my life about the importance of your people. When I was elected president of my seventh-grade class, I came home and proudly told my father, the admiral. He said to me, “Congratulations, Ken. But now that you're president, don't ever use your position. Great leaders are great because people respect and trust them, not because they have power.” That was the beginning of my realization that great leaders recognize they are only as good as their people.

Leaders who realize their people are their most important customers tend to be servant leaders. When I mention servant leadership to business audiences, they often think I'm talking about the inmates running the prison, leaders pleasing everybody, or some kind of religious movement. What they don't understand is that there are two parts of servant leadership: vision and direction (doing the right thing) and implementation (doing things right). Vision and direction is the leadership part of servant leadership. The traditional pyramidal hierarchy is effective for this visionary aspect of servant leadership, because people look to the leader for vision and direction. While the leader should involve experienced people in shaping the vision and direction, the ultimate responsibility remains with the leader and cannot be delegated. That's why establishing a dynamic purpose for an organization—or as Gary puts it, the “why”—is such a key role for a leader.

But when you realize that your most important customer is your people, the second part of servant leadership, implementation, takes on real meaning. Unfortunately, it's in the implementation role—living according to the vision and direction—where most leaders get into trouble. The traditional pyramid is kept alive and well, leaving the customers uncared for at the bottom of the hierarchy. All the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchy as people try to please and be responsive to their bosses, leaving the customer-contact people to just quack and say, “It's our policy,” “I just work here,” or “Do you want to talk to my boss?”

The implementation phase requires turning the pyramid upside-down, so that the customer-contact people are at the top of the organization and can be responsible—able to respond and soar like eagles. Now leaders are at the bottom of the pyramid, where they can serve and be responsive to the needs of their people, helping them to accomplish goals and live according to the vision and direction of the organization.

Implementation done well is the servant part of servant leadership. Because now you Don't Walk Alone; you walk with your people and you serve them in a way that makes a difference. If you do that, you'll help people be high performers. And remember: People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

Navigate Beyond the Horizon—Grasping the Situation

Every organization is anchored in the present and the pursuit of current opportunities, while continually envisioning the future. The two skill sets are entirely different, which is why I think organizations ought to have a “president of the present” who is taking care of business today, and a “president of the future” who runs the equivalent of an internal think tank to envision what tomorrow will look like.

In essence, we have that in The Ken Blanchard Companies. When my wife, Margie, was president of our company, I wrote a book with Terry Waghorn entitled Mission Possible: Becoming a World-Class Organization While There's Still Time. In the book, Terry and I talked about how a lot of organizations have the same people managing the present and creating the future—which isn't a good strategy. If you send people with present-time responsibilities away to plan the future, they'll kill your future, because they are either overwhelmed with the present or have a vested interest in it. With that, my wife decided to step down as president—she actually said, “I've promoted myself upward”—to head the Office of the Future. She has a small think tank whose full-time job is to look into the future and find out what's happening in the leadership field, technology, and the world at large—anything that could impact our business. The Office of the Future has saved us many times. When people stopped flying after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a number of our competitors had major problems or went out of business because they were familiar only with face-to-face training. But we already knew about teleconferencing and virtual training, things we learned through the Office of the Future.

A key role of a leader is to constantly Navigate Beyond the Horizon and not miss out on new directions the organization needs to go in to stay viable. Having an Office of the Future helps you course-correct in real time so you can avoid the unexpected developments—giant storms, hidden rocks, and treacherous shoals, to use Gary's analogies—that could get you off course.

While it's great to have an Office of the Future, leaders also need to keep their eyes and ears open to learn—and encourage others to do the same. The most successful leaders are helpable. If leaders establish an environment in which people are willing and able to help, the organization is far more likely to become innovative and creative. Most people are brimming with ideas and observations, especially those who are closest to the customers. As Gary observes, in cutting-edge organizations, anticipating and navigating are a team sport.

The Journey of the Servant Leader

As you can tell, I'm a big fan of servant leadership. Why is that? Because our research shows that people want to be in an environment where they can gain three things:

First, autonomy. People want to be engaged and make decisions. And the leader needs them to do just that in order to propel forward momentum in supporting the organization's goals and values.

Second, relatedness. People want to be known as human beings. We find this to be particularly true of people in the younger generation, who want to know that they count and that their lives matter.

Third, competence. People want to keep learning and gaining new skills. This supports autonomy and enables people to make better and more productive decisions.

These three things define the journey for the leader and for the followers. People know that they are really important, the group is only as good as everyone together, and the group is committed to every individual becoming as good as they can be—and that includes the leader.

To be the leader, you walk with others. You give guidance when they need it, and accentuate the positive with praise every step along the way. Nothing motivates others more than, as I like to say, “catching people doing something right.” If people only hear how they did at the end of the journey, they'll lose heart when the going gets tough.

Leading is a succession of day-to-day coaching, reinforcement, and when necessary, redirection. While your focus is on those who journey with you—who are engaged with you in the game—your influence may very well extend beyond that. You just might make a lasting impression on some unknown spectator watching in the stands.