Leaders In London

Leadership is…

In the current climate there’s no room for lack of clarity. People talk about ‘leadership’ with a whole range of meanings in their heads, most of them out of date. It’s leadership that will navigate you through the downturn and increase your performance as an organization by, on average, 15% (according to Warren Bennis ‘The Dean of Leadership’, The FT). So, get clear yourself on exactly what good leadership is and make sure your managers and people know it too. See below for some help.As for me, I’m with the US Army on this one (see below).

Warren Bennis:

“Leadership is like the Abominable Snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen.”

Dwight Eisenhower:

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Daniel Goleman:

“Leadership is the act of getting something done well through the actions of others.”

The U.S. Army:

Leadership is “Influencing people- by providing purpose, direction, and motivation- while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization.”

Yep, I’m definitely with that last one. At the moment, that’s the challenge facing everyone. What about you. How do you finish the sentence ‘Leadership is…‘

Hat Tip: David Hasenbalg, over at The Leadership Hub, provided the definitions.

Over at Slacker Manager, Phil Gerbyshak has been blogging about how to improve decision-making. As we are in a less forgiving economic environment, it’s all the more important that your decisions as a leader are mostly right. So, here are a few quick ’sources of power’ on making better decisions:

1. Don’t assume the best decisions come from you. ‘The leader as decision-maker’ who answers everyone’s questions and makes the final decision at the end of every meeting, is old hat and based on the outdated notion of the infallibility of leaders.

2. Gary Klein’s book Sources of Power, despite its title, isn’t about power, but is actually about decision-making. It’s a powerful analysis of decision-making by people in life or death situations - firefighters, soldiers, doctors - and the techniques (often sub-conscious) they use. Klein experimented with getting a bunch of marines to work in a trading pit, applying the military’s decision-making system for battlefield situations. The trader who were also part of the experiment trounced them. No surprise there. However, when he took the same traders and the same marines and put them in a war game exercise…the traders trounced the marines again. Their use of 80% information plus instinct in a fast-moving situation beat the military’s need (at the time: they’ve learnt since) for 100% information before making a decision.

3. Take your time when you can. Yes, I chose the ‘trader’ example in 2., on purpose. The turmoil in the financial markets shows that what looks like great, fast decision-making - if you’ve been in the bearpit of a trading floor, you’ll know how fast and furious it is - can, when scaled up and cumulatively, be disastrous for overall strategy. It can even de-stabilize the structure. So, our third and last thought on this subject comes from Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, who is coming to share his leadership insights with us at Leaders in London in a couple of months (naked plug: book by tomorrow - Friday 26th - to save up to £500).

Giuliani advises us not to make decisions until you have to. The ability to reflect and ponder outcomes before acting is a sign of strength, not weakness, he stresses:

“One of the trickiest elements of decision-making is working out not what, but when. Regardless of how much time exists before a decision must be made, I never make up my mind until I have to. Faced with any important decision, I always envision how each alternative will play out before I make it. During this process, I’m not afraid to change my mind a few times. Many are tempted to decide an issue simply to end the discomfort of indecision. However, the longer you have to make a decision, the more mature and well-reasoned that decision should be.”

These are from the book The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, by Oren Harari, who is the source of a lot of material on Colin Powell’s leadership that people often assume comes direct from Powell himself. A lot of it does; the rest is Oren Harari’s interpretation of General Powell’s leadership. The next post down contains a video clip: 13 Rules for Leadership that do indeed come from General Powell himself.

1. Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
2. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
3. Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
4. Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
5. Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
6. You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
7. Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.
8. Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fall because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
9. Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
10. Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
11. Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.
12. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
13. Powell’s Rules for Picking People: Look for intelligence and judgment, and most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego, and the drive to get things done.
14. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
15. Part I: Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Part II: “Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
16. The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
17. Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it: Spend time with your families. Corollary: surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
18. Command is lonely.

General Powell is a past Leaders in London speaker.