Leaders In London

There’s a fight going on at the moment in leadership theory. It’s a quiet one. You might not have noticed it.

On one side are the determinists, who say we are hardwired from birth and can’t change - Robert Hogan and Marcus Buckingham (who was a star turn at Leaders in London), for example. “We all love tales of personal transformation,” says Buckingham. “But, in truth, we don’t change as we grow older. We just become more of who we already are.”

On the other side is the personal change lobby: Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - and also at Leaders in London 2007, albeit by video link)), Anthony Robbins (the ‘change yourself and change your life’ guru) and the canon of personal improvement books that just grows and grows. You can throw in the Neuro-Linguistic Programmers, probably, on this side of the scale.

Who you are is just an accumulation of how you behave. If you don’t like who you are, act differently and become someone better, is the rallying call on this side. Personality, for the personal change gurus, is something to be bent to your will.

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago to the UK’s Northern Leadership Forum that brought these two sides clashing together, which wasn’t my intention. The subject I was asked to talk on was how great leaders behave.

The group had spent some time in the morning studying Robert Hogan’s work on how personality drives what we do. Hogan is the psychologist behind the Hogan Assessment Systems that are grounded in the assumption that the primary driver of behaviour is personality. I argued in the afternoon that it (personality) is not the primary driver of how we behave; at least not to the extent Hogan claims.

Other external forces - the personalities of people around us, the situation, the culture, expectations, just for starters, all act as forces that affect how leaders behave as much as, if not more than, the leader’s own personality. Most of all, our values, conscience and aspirations - what we believe in rather than our personality - drive how the best leaders behave.

I was heckled a lot by a Hogan fan. A bit cultlike some of these Hoganites. But, as we learnt at Leaders in London from transformational leaders like Ben Zander, of course people can change. Possibility is just a sentence away, as he put it. And we are not prisoners of our personality; that applies to leaders as much as anyone.

The assumption that some people are hardwired to lead just doesn’t stand up for me, and is a lingering whiff of the old ‘great man’ school of leadership. I find the idea of ‘acts of leadership throughout the system’ as being where leadership lives, as Max Weber put it sixty years ago, far more compelling than the usual notion that leadership lives solely in select individuals labelled ‘leaders’. Leaders can embody that spirit of leadership and initiative and model it, showing the way. But, they are not exclusive owners of it.

Weber’s emphasis on ‘acts of leadership’ rather than ‘leaders’ is an idea whose time has come, it seems to me. And as for ‘can people change?’ I’m with George Eliot:

“It’s never too late to be the person you could have been.”

Phil Douradoof The Leadership Hub

on behalf of www.LeadersinLondon.com

“Some people are deluded about what they are best at. But delusion doesn’t matter (up to a point). If you think you are best at something, it improves your performance. In 360 assessments, there is one group that is the most accurate about assessing their own performance versus how other people assess them. And that’s depressives. The most highly productive people, by contrast, are slightly positively deluded about how good they are. So, self-awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Marcus Buckingham, speaking at Leaders in London 2007*.

Shame, because part of my schtick about the problems with leadership is that leaders don’t ‘confront reality’ enough (as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan put it). According to Buckingham, it’s not as simple as that. I still think there are more downsides than upsides with self-delusion. And that most managers and leaders being deluded about their own performance causes a dissonance between them and their colleagues that outweighs the boost to their own performance that a slight blindness to their own deficiencies might create.

What’s the most powerful force in the Universe? Denial.

*That’s my paraphrasing based on my shorthand notes, rather than a direct quote from Buckingham.

What do you think? The absolute, honest, truth? Or a spot of useful self-delusion? Which works better in leadership for you?
Phil Dourado

of The Leadership Hub

on behalf of www.LeadersinLondon.com

I’ve put together a few New year’s Resolutions for Leaders. Hope one or two are useful for you…

1. STOP TAKING DECISIONS. START MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

‘Too many managers mistake decisions for action. A decision is not the same as action. Use plans, analysis, meetings & presentations to INSPIRE deeds, not as a substitute for action.’

- Stanford Professor Robert Sutton

* * *

2. TRUST MORE

‘Do you trust enough to be trusted?’

- Lao Tzu, from ‘Understanding The Mysteries’. The more trust you give in 2008, the more you’ll get.

* * *

3. BLAME LESS

‘Blame or finger-pointing and lack of personal responsibility
Keep the gloomy game going.
They keep stealing your hidden genius and potential wealth,
Giving them to a dimwit on the sidelines with
No leadership, heart or financial skills.
Dear one,
Wise
Up!’

- Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet. The less blame you mete out in 2008, the more personal responsibility your people will take.

* * *

4. MORE RESOLUTIONS

From Robert K. Cooper’s great book, ‘The Other 90 Percent’…

‘In my family it is a tradition that each New Year, someone will say a few words about what we have learned from the past or hope for the future. On the eve of the millennium…I wrote a short poem…and read it to them:

To lead by example…
Love as if you will live forever
Work as if you have no need for money
Dream as if no-one can say no
Have fun as if you never have to grow up
Sing as if no-one else if listening
Care as if everything depends on your caring
And raise a banner where a banner never flew.’

I’m not sure if Cooper did actually originate that, but we’ve all seen versions of it doing the rounds by email, with extra lines added such as

‘Love like you’ve never been hurt’
and my favorite
‘Dance like nobody’s watching’

* * *

5. EVEN MORE RESOLUTIONS

This one first surfaced in 2000. I know we’ve all seen it and I’m pretty sure it didn’t come from the Dalai Lama, but it’s the right time of year for a reminder. It’s supposedly the Dalai Lama’s recipe for starting your year afresh…

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

* * *

6. AND A SHORT ONE FROM EINSTEIN: BREAK YOUR HABITS

‘How many people are trapped in their everyday habits; part numb, part frightened, part indifferent?

To have a better life we must keep choosing how we are living’.

- Albert Einstein. Challenge inertia and your own habits, and the habits your organization practices to change ‘the way we do things around here’ at work in 2008. Your colleagues and customers will be the happier for it.

* * *

7. AND, FINALLY: TOP TEN FUNNY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

1. I resolve to work with neglected children (my own).
2. I will answer my snail mail with the same enthusiasm with which I answer my e-mail.
3. When I hear a funny joke I will not reply, “LOL… LOL!”
4. I will not ring the steward/stewardess button on airplanes just to get his/her phone number.
5. I will balance my chequebook (on my nose).
6. I will think of a password for my computer other than “password.”
7. I will try to figure out why I “really” need 11 e-mail addresses.
8. I will go into McDonald’s and order a McSpreader
9. I will go into McDonald’s and order a McSlurry
10. I will find out why the correspondence course on “Mail Fraud” that I purchased never showed up.

* * *

THAT’S ENOUGH RESOLUTIONS!

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM LEADERS IN LONDON!

And, if you feel compelled to add your own New Year’s Leadership Resolution - something you will stop doing, or start doing, or do more of, or do less of, or do better…Add it as a comment to inspire other members of The Leaders in London community.

Phil Dourado

of The Leadership Hub

on behalf of www.LeadersinLondon.com