LEADERSHOCK, RULE 8: DEMAND THE TRUTH

I’ve watched leaders on three continents suffer needlessly as they tried to sidestep embarrassment, conflict; and hurting others’ feelings by avoiding the truth. Instead, they embrace a subtle, discreet, and withholding posture that sometimes parades as politeness, in an attempt to protect themselves and others. Unfortunately, their efforts only backfire and they end up with a loss of credibility, cynical employees, and a colossal case of LeaderShock. The trap in Rule No. 8 is the Well-Meaning Withholder, a vestige of a more naïve era in management history, held over at great expense. We must usher in a

new era.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 7: GIVE, DON’T TAKE!

‘Tis better to give than to receive. Everyone supports the theory, but few put it to work when times turn turbulent. Under the sway of LeaderShock, managers tend to take, rather than give. And at first glance there appears to be logic to their strategy.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 6: FOCUS ON YOUR PEOPLE FIRST

The devoutly held belief that customers come first turns out to be one of the most surprising LeaderShock traps. Rule 6 replaces conventional wisdom with this basic premise: Focus on your people before anything else. When you take care of them, they take care of the customers. And when you don’t, they disengage and you’re left with even more pressure on your shoulders. Imagine what would happen if the conductor of a symphony orchestra, in an earnest desire to please the paying public, turned around and conducted the concerto while facing the audience leaving the hard-working musicians to fend for themselves.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 5: REPLACE PLANS WITH POSSIBILITIES

Rule 5 can best be illustrated by two equations:

Rigidity = LeaderShock

and

Flexibility = Leadership

In terms of their immediate impact on you, consider two more equations:

Rigidity = Disappointment

and

Flexibility = Exhilaration

In this era of widespread LeaderShock, the Rigidity Trap is everywhere. Why do we become unbending in our beliefs and why are our plans seemingly etched in stone? The causes are threefold.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 4: RECAST STRESS INTO STRENGTH

Every leader knows that despite Herculean efforts things can go terribly wrong. Just when you least expect it, something explodes a key employee quits and blames you, you’re passed over for a promotion in favor of someone less qualified, the boss blows up after you lose a key account and fail to make your numbers. There’s no way around the fact that the leadership role brings with it a certain amount of emotional pain and anxiety.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 3: REFUSE TO CONFORM

“How will I get everything done?” is one of the most frequent and most baffling questions managers ask. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work, the proliferation of meetings, and suffering from information overload, disheartened managers turn to the only solution modern business culture prescribes: Better time management! The grand illusion suggests it’s all about better prioritizing of those meetings, better planning of the workflow, and better organizing of all that information. It isn’t.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 2: OWN IT ALL

Anyone in a leadership role is subject to the whims of other people and the capriciousness of unforeseen events. The competition sneaks up from behind to steal our best accounts and most valued people. New technologies bury us in unwanted information. And unlike years past, a collapse in Tokyo’s money markets can now trigger layoffs for a small manufacturer in Cedar Rapids. With each year that goes by, I’ve watched the spiraling complexity of the business environment take its toll on managers, pushing them ever further into the maelstrom of LeaderShock.

LEADERSHOCK, RULE 1: ACTIVATE INTENTIONS

In the throes of LeaderShock, we merely react to one event after the next. With so many demands coming from so many directions, our business culture kicks in and demands rapid fire responses. It insists we do something, anything, to fix each problem.

Smart Leadership for Intelligent Organizations

Bibliography

Agocs, Carol. “Institutionalized Resistance to Organizational Change: Denial, Inaction, and Repression.” Journal of Business Ethics. June 1997. Vol. 16. No. 9. Agocs addresses the issue of change from the perspective of change agents within organizations attempting to change the organization itself. She identifies three ways that institutions resist: denial, inaction and repression.

HUMILITY AS A LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE

THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY is often overlookedin leadership discussions. Humility is not brought up when studying some of history. greatest military leaders (such as George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Napoleon Bonaparte and Erwin Rommel). But as the military becomes involved across the spectrum of conflict, this misunderstood leadership trait becomes more important.

LEADERSHIP SECRET

LEADERSHIP SECRET 1: HARNESS THE POWER OF CHANGE

FROM THE FILES OF JACK WELCH

The mindset of yesterday’s manager accepting compromise, keeping things tidy bred complacency. Tomorrow’s leaders must raise issues, debate them, and resolve them. They must rally around a vision of what a business can become.

EXECUTION PART 5: The Job No Leader Should Delegate—Having the Right People in the Right Place

Given the many things that businesses can’t control, from the uncertain state of the economy to the unpredictable actions of competitors, you’d think companies would pay careful attention to the one thing they can control the quality of their people, especially those in the leadership pool. An organization’s human beings are its most reliable resource for generating excellent results year after year.

EXECUTION PART 4: Creating the Framework for Cultural Change

When a business isn’t going well, its leaders often think about how to change the corporate culture. They’re right to recognize that the “soft” stuff people’s beliefs and behaviors is at least as important as hard stuff, such as organizational structure, if not more so. Making changes in strategy or structure by itself takes a company only so far.

EXECUTION PART 3: Building Block One: The Leader’s Seven Essential Behaviors

What exactly does a leader who’s in charge of execution do? How does he keep from being a micromanager, caught up in the details of running the business? There are seven essential behaviors that form the first building block of execution:

Execution part 2: The Execution Difference

Every great leader has had an instinct for execution. He has said, in effect, “Unless I can make this plan happen, it’s not going to matter.” But the selection, training, and development of leaders doesn’t focus on this reality.

EXECUTION PART 1: WHY EXECUTION IS NEEDED

The Gap Nobody Knows

The CEO was sitting in his office late one evening, looking tired and drained. He was trying to explain to a visitor why his great strategic initiative had failed, but he couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. “I’m so frustrated,” he said. “I got the group together a year ago, people from all the divisions. We had two offsite meetings, did benchmarking, got the metrics.

How to turn the core leadership functions into skills

In this Article I shall consider each of the main eight leadership functions in turn, and help you to identify ways in which you can perform them better.

Remember always that  because the three areas of task, team and individual overlap so much   any function will tend to affect all three circles. Take planning, for example. At first sight that appears to be solely a task function. Yet there is nothing like a bad plan to break up a team or frustrate an individual: it hits all three circles. Another general factor to bear in mind is that as I have mentioned already – leadership exists on different levels:

Leadership and Communications

The art and practice of managing requires leadership and communication skills, a breadth of knowledge related to the position, proactive attitudes toward meeting goals and objectives, and personal characteristics that meet the requirements of the organization. We’ll consider leadership from the perspective of the newly appointed manager and not the organizational executive. Although the same fundamentals apply, the application of those fundamentals takes place at a very different level. We’ll consider communications from the perspective of what is being communicated. The entry-level manager is most likely not leading a department that’s looking at the next acquisition or merger or developing the organization’s cost reduction plan, and is probably not involved in high-level organizational decisions.

Leadership Game : Rubber Banding

ELEMENTARY:

Key Leadership Understanding

Leaders inspire others around them to work together to achieve a common goal.

Leadership Game: “Beengo!”

ELEMENTARY:

Key Leadership Understanding

Leaders seek to fulfill the goals set for the team. Leaders direct the team’s strategy.

Leadership Game : Guess the Number

ELEMENTARY:

Key Leadership Understanding

Leaders listen and ask pertinent questions. The art of listening and asking questions is important in being an effective leader.

Leadership Game: Addition

ELEMENTARY:

Key Leadership Understanding

Leaders depend on others. Interdependence and teamwork are crucial elements in leadership.

A leadership checklist

Achieving the task

§  Purpose. Am I clear what my task is?

§  Responsibilities. Am I clear what my responsibilities are?

§  Objectives. Have I agreed objectives with my superior?

§  Working conditions. Are these right for the group?

§  Resources. Are there adequate authority, money and materials?

How to grow leaders in your organisation

When you are young, or at least upon the early rungs of your career, you are understandably focused upon developing to the full your own potential as a leader, but once you are in a leadership role at team level you have a responsibility for developing the individuals in your team (the third circle), and that includes their abilities as leaders. At the strategic level, so important is this work of fostering effective leaders for today’s performance and tomorrow’s growth that it constitutes one of the seven core functions that together make up the role. How do you do it?

How to lead at the strategic level

It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of

lions. (Daniel Defoe)

Earlier in this book I mentioned that leadership takes place on three broad levels: team, operational and strategic. The essential nature of leadership as response to the three circles – task, team and individual – remains unchanged at all these levels.

How to develop yourself as a leader

Much of my professional life has been spent in trying to persuade organisations of all sizes to grow their own leaders. In that work, as I once heard a US bishop say, I have had enough success to prevent me from despair and enough failure to keep me humble. But from experience and observation I have to tell you that most good leaders emerge and grow in spite of their organisations rather than because of them.

Leadership quotes

What some people have had to say about leadership

Leadership is making happen what wouldn’t happen anyway and this always entails working at the edge of what is acceptable

Richard Pascale

Leadership is not rank, privileges, title or money. It is responsibility

Peter Drucker

The leadership tool box

Some thoughts on leadership and managing

The following chapter provides a wide range of miscellaneous quotes, checklists and ideas involving the concept of management and leadership. Use it to stimulate your own thinking and ideas. Perhaps the ideas might help you to reflect on your own leadership style and approach, or provide some stimulus for a discussion with colleagues or a presentation of some kind.