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Archive for September, 2015

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 31st

September 1, 2015 | No Comments »

The Leader as Beacon- Part II

One might ask: What if I don’t seek to master myself and move from technical expertise towards the higher ground of emotional intelligence? What’s the harm if I don’t become that beacon of excellence? The answer is simple and stark: You will fail yourself, and you will fail those you lead. As documented by Daniel Goleman’s research on this topic, leaders who failed to navigate the transition to emotional intelligence failed because of self inflicted “fatal flaws.” Like the blind spots on a vehicle moving down a busy highway, fatal flaws prevent leaders from successfully projecting resonant leadership because they destroy the trust and deep bonds necessary for championship performance. Leaders with emotional intelligence nurture things like camaraderie, companionship, mutual affection, and esprit; leaders without emotional intelligence destroy them. And as Goleman also documented, the two primary fatal flaws that ruin such leaders are rigidity (inability to adapt) and poor relations (alienated their teams).

The Leader as Architect- Part I

It’s essential that leaders first focus on mastering themselves and developing their vision; however, we must then shift focus to execution: How do we realize our plan? How do we make it stick? It’s a mistake to focus only on vision and forget the concrete actions needed to materialize end states. When we move to creating execution plans, we are now moving into the realm of management. Here a leader operates somewhat like an architect, creating the blue print and mechanism to build an organization to last. We begin by properly seeing the organization as a “system of systems,” an ecosystem, comprised of three core elements: (1) an ethos (culture, climate, atmosphere), (2) authority (allocation of responsibility), and (3) technical elements (policy and procedures). As an ecosystem, each of these three elements has its own nature but the entire ecosystem must be understood and managed as a whole. The key architectural action is this: Create mechanisms to measure the entire organization, and create mechanisms that endure. People will leave, mechanisms endure.

The Leader as Architect- Part II

Previously, we talked about leaders creating mechanisms to measure the entire organization’s health, vitality, and readiness. Why is that vital? Because teams don’t last; people will move on. Moreover, we never want to build an organization reliant solely on one individual leader. Yes, great leaders make a difference, often profound differences; however, organizations dependent upon a single great leader will likely atrophy and collapse once that leader departs if mechanisms are not built to effectively enable succession, knowledge transfer, organizational resiliency, and the creation of internal talent pools of younger leaders ready to assume the mantle of leadership. Enduring excellence cannot rest solely on the back of a single charismatic leader. To ensure a single leader doesn’t ultimately become a single point of failure, we must create, and then align, mechanisms to sustain our ethos, constantly renew the allocation of authority, and adapt technical policies and procedures to agilely respond to change.

The Leader as Learner- Part I

I often refer to leadership as a master craft, and heroic leaders as a master craftsman. I do this to remind myself that, like all other pursuits of mastery, leadership is a life-long journey in which we never stop honing our craft. Therefore, leaders should never think of themselves as a finished product; we must remain students of leadership, stay fully open to new knowledge, and seek wisdom by availing ourselves to a broad spectrum of experiences. When I reflect on heroic leaders of the past such as Lincoln, Jefferson, T.E. Lawrence, Churchill, and Gandhi to name a few, they all shared these two attributes in common: (1) An unquenchable curiosity, and (2) a bias for learning and understanding. Moreover, their curiosity and passion for learning never waned during their lives. They constantly renewed themselves, renovated their vision, and courageously converted themselves into more wise and effective leaders. When leaders personally model a passion for learning, they in turn create organizations with a similar passion to learn and grow—the true wellspring of enduring excellence.

The Leader as Learner- Part II

To effectively become students of leadership, and to grow as heroic leaders, we must embrace the crucial need to create quiet time and solitude to read, reflect, and discern. Our society often down plays the need for solitude because we erroneously equate busyness with productivity and effectiveness. We think: The busier we are, the more we must be getting done. Wrong! Busyness is a chimera, and being trapped in the chaos of busyness is the antithesis of great leadership. Great leaders, therefore, must discipline themselves to balance “to do” with “to learn.” In doing so, great leaders apportion time and energy to reading, learning, and thinking; they find a place of solitude to disengage from the work-a-day world; and they consider quiet time not only sacred but essential to remaining vital in their lives and in their leadership. Heroic leadership is a marathon, not a sprint; our objective is to be effective across time and to retain a consistent and dependable positive vitality across a broad arc of engagement.

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 24th

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The Leader as Adapter- Part I

A mistake leaders often make is thinking of change as an event, or thinking of change as simply a future planning component that can somehow be isolated from the present. A better metaphor for change is to picture a boat riding on a swift-running river, with a helmsman at the rudder of the boat. The river represents change: It is ever-present, constantly rolling, and always moving forward. The boat represents the organization, and the helmsman the leader. We cannot do anything to alter the nature of the river; however, can learn to build better helmsmen and better boats. We do this is by developing leaders and organizations who are comfortable with uncertainty and learn to master adaptation. Adaptation is a mindset in which one correctly understands and accepts the ever-present and uncertain nature of change. Adaptation is also a habit where leaders purposely develop hardiness and resilience in themselves and their groups which, like an immune system, enable us to “bounce back” when change occurs–yet still retain our cohesion, integrity, and core purpose.

The Leader as Adapter- Part II

Leadership author Steven Covey used the image of a group assigned the mission of cutting through a dense jungle, and the need for the leader of that group to remain above the tree line to properly maintain a leader’s perspective. Covey’s metaphor illustrates a leader’s need to adapt; to keep our attention “above the tree line” in order to sense and detect change, and more importantly, to make necessary course corrections. Sensing and detecting are attributes allowing the leader to assess current conditions while also making the necessary corrections to our course, such as speed, azimuth, and tempo. For leaders to effectively adapt we must learn to scan our environment and pay attention to context. Leaders must avoid the temptation to stare at data and fixate on mind-numbing metrics, for in doing so, they risk becoming change blind. If leaders condition themselves to constantly scan and pay attention to changes in context, they will create an agile, flexible, and resilient organization capable of aligning inputs to end states, and outputs to course corrections.

The Leader as Communicator- Part I

Communicating is one of the key distinguishing qualities of great leaders. It is through communicating our vision, our purpose, and our aspirations that leaders create deep resonance with their people and galvanize unity within the group. Like a great melody, communicating with others should touch people deep in their hearts and souls and result in genuine commitment. And in constructing that melody, leaders should always seek to strike these three chords: who, what, and why. When leaders communicate answers to who, what, and why, they help move people from purely transactional, tit-for-tat thinking into a more expansive communal feeling characterized by esprit, camaraderie, and mutual affection. When communicating, I believe we must always start with hearts before minds by creating mental imagery depicting a mission that is elevating and an atmosphere producing peak experiences. These are the qualities creating champions. And when we communicate, we must do so live, on stage, and in person, enabling our people to see our authenticity, our trustworthiness, and our vitality.

The Leader as Communicator- Part II

There is such as thing as the language of leadership—a vocabulary peculiar to great leaders and necessary to unleash championship performance. One good way to understand the language of leadership is to understand what it is not: it is the opposite of technical or bureaucratic language. Technical or bureaucratic language (think here of those long mission statements or multi-page policy letters) are overly passive, impersonal, and burdened with complex terminology and techno-babble that neither inspire heroic action nor create a sense of ownership (beyond the person who drafted them). Conversely, the language of leadership uses basic conversational tones; speaks in the active voice; and is highly personal and contextual. The language of leadership uses stories, parables, metaphors, and analogies to create vivid mental images listeners can relate to deeply and feel intuitively. The language of leadership connects the listener to outcomes worth the effort of pursuing.

The Leader as Beacon- Part I

Because heroic leaders focus on significance as the end state of their leadership, they become beacons to those they lead—true examples of expert leadership. Like a lighthouse on a high cliff, these leader’s example shines through the chaos of the daily grind, pierces the fog of an uncertain future, and elevates above the banal politics of petty cultures. As beacons, heroic leaders stand steadfast as examples of excellence regardless of time, circumstance, convenience, or political correctness. Leaders become trustworthy beacons of excellence by transforming their leadership fulcrum from technical expertise (TE) to emotional intelligence (EQ). Yes, early in our careers we need a firm grounding in cognitive intelligence and TE; however, as we expand our leadership frontage we must move beyond purely threshold technical capabilities and learn to master ourselves. If we are able to successfully navigate this movement from TE to EQ, then we’ll become that resolute beacon, that vital example, because we’ll be firmly grounded in self control, self regulation, and resonant social skills.

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation…for the Week of August 17th

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Significance

The ultimate measure of leadership effectiveness is significance: Did we leave a legacy that is elevating, worthy of following, and enduring? Does our example stand the test of time? Did we make the group better for having led it? I like to think of significance like footprints in the sand. If we are significant as leaders, we leave a trail of trustworthy guideposts for others to follow once we are gone. This residue of example is crucial because we will not always be there to personally shepherd the group. Moreover, enduring organizational excellence is never determined by a single charismatic leader. Greatness has to be cultivated into the group, deep in the groups’ ethos, so the group can thrive even without the presence of the senior leader. Heroic leaders become significant by creating a self-disciplined pattern of behavior based on noble purpose, honorable aspiration, right action, and a commitment to something greater than self. This is the road less taken, but it’s the only path enabling the leader to become the lesson.

The Leader as a Visionary- Part I

One of the core roles of a leader is that of Visionary—clarifying the future for the groups we lead. All groups, regardless of mission, vocation, size, or function want to know this from the leader: Where are we headed, and why? And they want leaders to answer those questions with absolute clarity. The concept of leader’s vision is often misconstrued to mean a soothsayer or prognosticator, which is wrong. A leader’s vision does not predict the future. Rather, a leader’s vision describes what we will be in the future. An effective leadership vision therefore has these key qualities: (1) it provides the necessary context; (2) it is compelling and hard to resist; and (3) it makes the pain of changing worth the effort. In this sense, vision is an ideal end state—a clear point of aim and an azimuth of march. But here’s the really important truth all leaders must embrace with regard to their vision: Initially, the messenger is more important than the message! People must first buy into you, the leader, before they will accept your vision. A leader’s credibility and trustworthiness is crucial. First you, and then the vision.

The Leader as a Visionary- Part II

Aristotle said, “The Soul never thinks without a picture.” This reminds us of the need for mental images in conveying our vision. A leader’s vision must resonate with people’s hearts and souls, more than their heads. Human beings are deeply drawn to meaning as expressed in mental pictures and imagery. Therefore, great leaders often make use of stories, parables, and pictures in delivering their vision. Stories, parables, and pictures help us imagine the vision in both a personal and group context, and more importantly, move us out of our rationalizing minds and into our intuitive souls—the source of all heroic action. That said, once leaders clarify their vision, they should make maximal use of group gatherings and explain their vision through compelling stories and mental images. And in doing so regularly, and consistently, this storytelling helps remind leaders that vision is often more a matter of renovation, than creation. Become a great storyteller, touch people’s souls, and you’ll move people confidently towards your vision and into the future.

The Leader as a Mentor

All great societies throughout history have had at their core a cadre of wise elders intentionally serving as mentors to the younger generation. Classic mentoring was seen as a way of life, not simply an act; a deep personal conviction—a sacred obligation—to obtain mastery and then give it away freely for the benefit of others and for the enduring elevation of the group. Mentoring is thus the essential means through which deep perennial knowledge is passed from generation-to-generation and the mechanism through which communal roots are established. In this sense, the mentor and the protégé become a braided cord, where the development, growth, and excellence of the protégé is seen to be a direct refection on the quality of the Mentor. A classic mentor serves as advisor, champion, guide, and teacher. Great leaders must fully embrace their role as mentor and create for their people opportunities to practice leadership, prepare for increased responsibility, and grow as responsible citizens.