Leaders In London

OK, I normally pour scorn on the ‘Are you a leader or are you a manager?’ question, as you have to be both. they are different modes, not different people. But, Warren Bennis, in ‘On Becoming A Leader’, captures my attention with the opening distinction here, which reinforces the fact that you need to lead your organization to succeed through the downturn: you can’t manage your way out of it.

“I tend to think of the differences between leaders and managers as the difference between those who master the context and those who surrender to it. There are other differences, as well, and they are enormous and crucial:

• The manager administers; the leader innovates.
• The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
• The manager maintains; the leader develops.
• The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
• The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
• The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
• The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
• The manager has his eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon.
• The manager imitates; the leader originates.
• The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
• The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his own person.
• The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.”

Reminder: Reserve your place at Leaders in London by the Friday of this week to save up to £400.

For most of us your company story has to change right now.

I’m reading Christopher Booker’s ‘The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories’. He says there are, as you can tell from the title, just seven basic plots to all stories. While you look at his list of the seven plots, think of your ‘company story’ and which of these it fits most clearly into. (What do you mean ‘we haven’t got one?’ Every organization that wants to go somewhere, that wants its people to be engaged and motivated, has to have a story it tells about itself - who we are, where we are going, why we come into work each morning). Here are Booker’s seven plots:

1. Overcoming the Monster

2. Rags to Riches

3. The Quest

4. Voyage and Return

5. Comedy

6. Tragedy

7. Rebirth

Your corporate story might have been ‘Rags to Riches’ or the pursuit of power (traders and investment bankers), it might have been ‘The Quest’ or the mission, like Harley-Davidson’s “motorcycles by the people for the people”. It might have been ‘Rebirth’ if you are going through a merger or acquisition. But, whatever your story was, you need to adjust it now. Not lose it completely, just adjust it.

For all of us now, the primary story is ‘Overcoming the Monster’.

Now, some would say ‘the Monster’ is the tough trading climate, the impending (or for some, the actual) recession. That’s the story you need to unite people behind, because they are feeling unsettled and powerless in the face of it.

I’d say that’s part of it. But, as we all know, the danger is that in fighting the monster, you become the monster too. How you behave and act as a leader in tough times dictates whether you will engage your people (and I am aware that part of what some of you have to do is let people go, so your ‘remaining’ people, perhaps) to fight the monster.

Or, you can treat people as expendable, put on your hard face, slip into ‘tough times demand tough leadership’ cliche mode, and wield the axe where you can - Cutting what’s easy to cut rather than involving people in working out what’s smart to cut. Once you start doing that, for many on the outside, you’ll be looking monsterish yourself.

What do you think? How should you lead through the current downturn?

I was reminded again yesterday, when working with a large company on their leadership development, that a lot of managers have never been through a downturn and simply don’t know what to do in the face of one. A lot of the sales managers at the company I was visiting yesterday have only ever sold into a booming market, where customers snatched what they were selling from their hands; marketing likewise, operations the same.

Managers simply don’t know what to do

They simply haven’t experienced a tough market before, and don’t have the skillset or the experience to handle it, I was told. They are confused, don’t know what to do for the best. They don’t know what to do or say to their direct reports who, like them, are worried about mortgages, savings, whether they will be laid off or kept on. So, they struggle to maintain morale - their own and their colleagues. And, as morale dips, so does performance. In many ways, this is their first real, big challenge.

This is our crucible

Then I remembered Warren Bennis, the leadership guru, saying the tough times, when you look back on them, are where you learn your leadership. It may not be pleasant, but it’s necessary. He calls it ‘the crucible’ in which you are forged. So, this is the ideal time to help your people strengthen their skillset, get them back to motivated, for those of them who are now demoralized and feeling powerless in the face of the global financial juggernaut. The downturn in other words, is your ideal training ground to develop your people’s skills, harden their resilience, nurture future leaders.

So, where do you start?

So, where to start? This is from Alan Zimmerman’s Tuesday Tip:

“I have learned … to get through great loss and great tragedy … you must believe in something bigger than yourself and your circumstances. You must believe in something so good, so grand, and so powerful, that no matter what, you won’t be brought down…Whatever it is, you need a belief or a purpose that will get you through these tough times.

I learned that from Dr. Vicktor Frankl, who was shipped off to the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. There … in the worst of conditions, with little food, inadequate shelter, and horrendous torture, thousands of Jewish prisoners were forced into labor that went on month after month.

What amazed Dr. Frankl was the fact that some of the laborers survived … while others, in the same conditions … did not. Dr. Frankl found that the ones who made it through those terrible times had a purpose. They had a purpose that said, “I will do whatever it takes to get out of this place, to find my wife, to find my kids, to reunite my family.” It was that kind of belief that got them through the crisis.

After the war, Dr. Frankl wrote a fascinating book about his experience. In essence, he said, “If you know your ‘why,’ any ‘how’ is possible.”

In other words, if you believe in something bigger than yourself, bigger than the times, bigger than Wall Street, bigger than your circumstances, you can make it through almost anything.”

What do you stand for?

Now, you don’t have to go all religious. Rene Carayol, our Leaders in London chairman and facilitator, has always said the test of a leader is the one question “What do you stand for?” If you have an answer to that and are passionate and sincere about it, there’s your higher purpose. And if you can inspire people to feel the same, you’ve begun your own upturn at work.

OK, not wanting to sound ‘Pollyanna-ish’ or hopelessly optimistic in turbulent times, but just a reminder to start your week, that stress - and for many of us, with the current market turbulence, these are the most stressful times we have faced in recent years - isn’t always a bad thing.

This is from Michael McKinney’s ever-readable Leading Blog over on his Leadership Now site:

“…not all stress is bad. We need to look for opportunities within our circumstances to expand our capacity. Loehr and Schwartz write in The Power of Full Engagement, that ‘Any form of stress that prompts discomfort has the potential to expand our capacity—physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually—so long as it is followed by adequate recovery.’ It’s part of learning to manage yourself exceptionally well.”

‘Self-leadership’ or ‘personal leadership’ or ‘mastery of self’ is the jargon used in leadership development circles to describe what Loehr and Schwartz are talking about there. This is a great time to develop this core foundation of your leadership.

So, that did sound Pollyanna-ish after all. But, what would you rather: more bad news on a Monday morning? And it’s t-r-u-e, so that’s good.

As we are in the middle of turbulent times - getting more turbulent by the minute judging by Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Alitalia, Lloyds TSB/HBOS…the list goes on - more than ever we need to be clear on what leadership actually is. Because it’s leadership that’ll haul us out of the current situation, sooner or later.

Your leadership of your organization, or business unit or whatever you lead, is part of this. Cumulatively, the decisions we all make help set a direction, shape the climate. So, listen up on how to lead through turbulent times, to help us make the right decisions. First up, Rene Carayol, our conference chairman:

Management vs Leadership

In predictable times, management is often enough, Rene tells us. But, turbulent times are when you need to push leadership to the fore. What’s the difference?

“If management is what we do, leadership is how we feel.”

“Managers talk strategy. Leaders tell stories.”

- Rene Carayol, Leaders in London Chairman

Next up, Ben Zander, who reminds us that leadership comes down to three things:

“1. Realise it’s all invented. Don’t follow the rules.
2. Radiate possibilities
3. Take the work seriously, but not yourself.”

- Orchestra conductor Ben Zander, speaking at last year’s Leaders in London

Lastly, Al Gore, also from Leaders in London 2008, with perhaps the most important lesson for leaders in the current situation:

“Leadership means inspiring us to manage through our fears.”

Up until the past year or so, most of us have been leading our organizations through optimistic times. Up until the past year, even a muppet of a CEO could return double digit annual growth in some sectors. That was then, this is now. That was easy, this is…something new.

It’s a time for real leadership. People are scared. You may have to deliver bad news, deal with situations you’ve never faced before, reassure and inspire people who are unused to such uncertainty and need steadying. You can’t manage your way through this one. Take that management hat off. Time for you to step up. This is a time for leaders.

Related Post
How to lead in a downturn: the most important lesson of all

Leaders in London

“Be gracious with people and ruthless with time.”

- Martin Addison, MD, Video Arts, in the FT

A nice reminder of what a leader’s approach should be, in contrast with the mindset a lot of leaders fall into in a downturn: time to be ruthless with people to show how strong you are as a leader. You need to rethink that one if that’s the mindset you are in at the moment.

Tom Peters’ 26 Rules for Leading in a Downturn…

…which you can find in full here, include these wise words from Peters, who interviewed Larry Bossidy on stage for us at Leaders in London.

”
*Take advantage of others’ timidity; tighten the belt with a mighty tug, but in a key area or two, double the strategic project budget rather than halve it.

*Painful decisions must be made—make them as gracefully as possible; doing so is the best investment in the long term possible. Your reputation will be shaped by the long memory of how you behaved when the fan was covered with yogurt.

*Tough decisions mostly affect other people’s families. You must still make the tough decisions, but the minute they cease to be agonizing, resign—you’re not worth saving.

*Character rules in adverse times.

*Now is when investment in relationships pays off—and now is when you pay the full price of not having invested in relationships when times were good and you didn’t “need to be nice” to others.

*Keep good people—if it kills you.

[Don’t mess with your franchise players. Nurture them as never before.]

*Practice transparency to a fault.

[People in the know—from receptionist to EVP—are far more likely to be positively engaged and supportive during a nasty downturn. “In the know” means “the works,” not just a few breadcrumbs of sanitized info.]

Leadership is a hard-nosed thing, right? Especially in a downturn. If you’re too soft, people will take advantage, won’t strive to hit their targets (aka to please you, in these days of evaporating bonuses) and you won’t be a strong leader, right? Well, it’s not really as simple as that, is it.

Being a ‘hard but fair’ leader, a disciplinarian who keeps on top of people to ensure they do what they are supposed to do, and that they constantly report back to you for a pat on the head and try hard to avoid your temper if they did wrong…It’s all a bit old-fashioned and uninspiring, isn’t it; both for you and the people you lead. Yes, you need some of the elements of a ‘hard but fair leader’ - setting expectations for yourselves and others and ensuring you and others strive for high performance - but all the baggage that goes with it is increasingly outmoded.

If you’re anything like me, you want people to perform to a high level and do the right thing regardless of whether you are there or not, whether you will know about it or not, whether you will shout about it or not. You want them to do it because they are inspired to do it, not because they are afraid of the boss if they don’t do it.

Over on his Leadership Now blog, Michael McKinney re-visits this whole ‘tough leader or kind leader’ thing and says it’s not a case of opposites, not a case of hard or soft leadership. Michael looks at the book LEading With Kindness, to ask if it’s possible and to break the idea that tough/hard/demanding leadership is the opposite of kind/soft/undemanding leadership. Michael says:

Bill Baker and Michael O’Malley have done a service with their book, Leading With Kindness. As awkward as that title might seem at first blush, the authors aren’t suggesting that kind leaders have a soft personality, or are sissies, or are well liked at all times. (“You can be hard-nosed and kind.”) Leading with kindness is not a hot-tub leadership where the participants pass the torch singing Kumbaya. In fact they write, “They muddle through life much like the rest of us, mostly unnoticed except by those around them who are keenly aware that they are in the presence of someone special.”

(That last sentence reminds me that great leaders are not great because they are super-human. Instead, they are ordinary but growth-oriented people with character that have chosen to make a commitment to a bold course of action that is in the best interest of those they serve despite the odds.)

Gets my vote. Click on the blog link, above, to read more. Just because trading conditions get hard, doesn’t mean your leadership style has to.

The leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith has produced a list of 20 common failures in leadership behaviour. Spend a minute mentally ticking off which ones you are guilty of. Be honest. If you can’t be honest enough, ask someone else to do it for you:

• Winning Too Much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
• Adding Too Much Value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
• Passing Judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
• Making Destructive Comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
• Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these qualifiers, which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”
• Telling the World How Smart We Are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
• Speaking When Angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.
• Negativity: The need to share our negative thoughts, even when we weren’t asked.
• Withholding Information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
• Failing to Give Proper Recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
• Claiming Credit We Don’t Deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
• Making Excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
• Clinging to the Past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.
• Playing Favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
• Refusing to Express Regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.
• Not Listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
• Failing to Express Gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
• Punishing the Messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent, who are usually only trying to protect us.
• Passing the Buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
• An Excessive Need to Be “Me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they exemplify who we are.

So, take the ONE thing that you know you do from that list…and stop doing it this week. If you are brave and disciplined enough, come back to the list next week and take another ‘habit’ and focus on undoing it. And so on…

Source: I spotted Marshall’s list on George Ambler’s excellent blog The Practice of Leadership:

So, holiday/vacation time? Are you taking any? Did you/Will you take the Blackberry and check in by phone or get the office to call you if they really need you? Ah, me, how essential leaders think they are. Actually, as I learnt from the co-founder of Pret a Manger, Sinclair Beecham, great leaders make themselves inessential.

Sinclair said that he used to welcome the phone ringing with store managers and others bringing him problems to solve. It made him feel essential. As Pret grew, his phone didn’t stop ringing and he realized his idea of leadership doesn’t work. It’s not scalable. He changed his attitude. Instead of seeing himself as chief firefighter and problem-solver, he stepped back and gave people space, permission, indeed insisted, that they find their own solutions.

His phone didn’t ring so much. He felt less essential. At first, this was a bother. But, leadership isn’t about ego and how important you are. It’s about the high performance organization, and that comes from, paradoxically, making yourself inessential as a firefighter and problem-solver. A recent report says true leaders free up 50% or more of their time - they don’t schedule in half their week in their diary. They use that time to lead rather than firefighting. How do you do that? By creating more leaders, of course.

It may make you feel indispensable to be on call when on holiday. But, it actually shows you have a long way to go to be a great leader. If your deputies and the system aren’t coping and leading themselves in your absence, you aren’t doing your leadership job properly.

Nick McCormick, who runs the Be Good leadership blog, has a nice post on this in The Leadership Hub