1
What Is Leadership?
To lead people, walk beside them.
—Lao-tsu
You may not realize it, but you already have an image of what leadership looks like. If you brainstorm a list of exceptional political leaders over the course of history, you would probably name such figures as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan—you probably can think of more.
What makes a good leader? What characteristics do good leaders all have in common? Where do they differ? Does the task make the leader or does the leader make the task? In short, what is leadership? The great leaders of history come from every walk of life; what unites them is their ability to inspire others to achieve beyond what is expected. When you look at leaders in the business world, the same characteristics hold true. There is not one career path to make a leader, but all good leaders share the desire to develop their business and their people—they know that both are essential to their effectiveness and their business results.
A Brief Review of History
The earliest views of leadership centered on a belief that leaders were born not made. This thinking fostered research designed to isolate the personality, as well as the physical and mental characteristics of leaders. It is interesting to think that one of Napoleon's greatest challenges to overcome was his height; an interesting early finding was that height was an important criterion for leadership! Early research concluded that key leadership traits are self-confidence, intelligence, determination, integrity, and sociability.1 By 1983 Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences2 had surfaced, followed by Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence, which stressed the importance of awareness of self and others and relationship skills as key components of leadership.3 During this time period, personality research also described leadership traits, such as arrogance, that are detrimental to leadership effectiveness. 4
Ultimately, leadership research expanded beyond an examination of the individual leader to include the group or culture the leader influences. One aspect of this research focused on relationships between the leader and followers. James MacGregor Burns5 and those who succeeded him believed that leadership was a process that focused on the performance of followers and also the development of followers to their fullest potential.6 Studies of group dynamics as well as concepts about shared leadership helped organizations get the best results. Craig Pearce and Jay Conger showed that shared leadership has a greater influence on team effectiveness than the more traditional leadership approaches.7 All of this work focuses on the group's productivity and development rather than a single focus on the leader.
The good news is that whatever your personality profile or individual characteristics, you can be an effective leader—and, thank goodness, there's no longer a height requirement. The differentiating factors can be assessed, trained, and developed that contribute to making great leaders even better. What can be taken from this quick review of leadership history is that leadership has become very complex. There are many variables that will impact your success. Just to list a few:
- Your personality
- The organization's culture
- Your followers or the group you work with (skills, personalities, understanding of roles)
- The distance between members of the group geographically and culturally
- The goals you must achieve
- The resources you have to accomplish the goals
- Your leadership skills
- Technical skills
- Technological support for accomplishment of goals
- Special considerations in your organization, e.g., multicultural workforce
How you pull all these qualities together will determine your success.
Transformational Leadership
Bruce Avolio and Francis Yammarino are among those who have shown that certain types of leadership behaviors produce better results in every setting and business sector. That is, whether you work in a factory or an educational setting, there are leaders who respond to their followers’ needs, which in turn produces better results. These leaders are known as transformational.8 Transformational leaders look at each member of their staff and help them grow and develop into leaders in their own right. Transformational leaders respond to individual followers’ differences and needs, and then empower each individual to align his or her objectives and goals to the larger organization.
A model of leadership influenced by the theory of Transformational Leadership includes five main components necessary for a strong leader: Communicating Direction, Inspirational Motivation, Problem Resolution, Building the Team, and Trust (see Figure 1.1). The core of this model is trust because this is the foundation of any effective leader.
Trust
The success of Ricky Gervais's BBC show The Office, as well as the U.S. spinoff, attests to the popularity of depicting the boss as an insufferable moron. The lead character, played by Steve Carrell in the United States, does not hesitate to lie to his employees to try to further his own cause. It makes for funny television because it is based on the reality that only about one-third of office workers consider their own leaders to be honest. Life often is more extreme than art; just think of headlines involving such well-known business people as Kenneth Lay of Enron or Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco. These two businessmen turned criminal in their deceit and show just how far the trust deficit can go in the business world today. This is unfortunate, because trustworthiness is the top attribute that people want in their leaders.
Figure 1.1 Model of leadership influenced by transformational leadership theory.
James Kouzes and Barry Posner have surveyed over 75,000 people around the world on the topic of credibility and found that people consistently say they want leaders who are “honest, forward-looking, competent and inspiring.”9 When you think about your own idea of what makes a good leader, you'll probably find that qualities such as integrity, honesty, and trust are most important to you as well. This is because a team that operates with trust as its foundation is able to provide a sense of reliability and confidence that other teams lack. Therefore, it is important to recognize what helps to encourage trust and what destroys it.
SCENE
Suppose your company is about to lay off 10 percent of the workforce. As a manager, you want to try to maintain trust throughout this process. Isabel approaches you in the break room and says, “I heard that there might be a layoff. Do you know anything about this?”
You do know something about the layoff, but do you fill her in? What are some possible answers to this question? Which response will help maintain your trust? Here are some ideas:
- “Yes, there are discussions of layoffs, but nothing is firm right now.”
- “You know management has been looking for ways to run our business more efficiently for some time—I think this is just more of that initiative.”
- “No, I have not heard anything.”
- “I am not at liberty to discuss that right now.”
Answers might vary depending on the internal situation. Sometimes managers are advised of a layoff and specifically told not to tell their direct reports. While internal Human Resource people will coach managers on what they are and are not allowed to do and say, many leaders who want to keep their trust and credibility high will find a way to tell their employees something without betraying Human Resources. The worst choice in this list of answers is to totally deny the rumor—this is a flat-out lie, and the employee will feel betrayed because of it. When the culture in the organization is one of distrust, like during times of downsizing or restructuring, it is critical that managers tell their employees as much as they can as soon as they can.
If employees believe their leader cannot be trusted they will divert energy toward “covering their backs,” which can detract from employees’ work performance. Good leaders recognize that trust results in higher performance and good citizenship. This is supported by the findings of a large meta-analysis that summarized research over the past four decades.10 In this study, the author, Kurt Dirks, finds that trust can positively impact an organization with benefits like increased cooperation, more collaboration, more pride in the work, increased innovation, and reciprocity in negotiations, as well as affect the positive attitudes of employees, which in turn helps customer relations. Conversely, when trust is not present or is lost through a betrayal, the business impacts include distress and anger in the workforce, which leads to decreased productivity. People spend time trying to seek justice or put things “right” rather than on the business mission.
Trust can be hard to foster as part of a regular work group, and it comes as no surprise that when groups work virtually, trust becomes a bigger issue because it is harder to gain and easier to erode when working in multiple locations. Regardless of circumstances, though, people want a leader that they can admire, a leader they can emulate, a leader they can trust. Chapter 3 will focus on ways to develop trust and respect among teams. While trust is essential, the four other components that build from a leader focused on trust are critical too.
Transformational Leadership Model Components
Communicating Direction
The best leaders not only set goals and milestones for themselves and their teams they also communicate these goals to all the stakeholders. The leader needs to have a vision and to be able to articulate that to the other members. Further, when specific details are added to the vision, it helps employees reach their goals, and this direction is critical to successful leadership. The leader also assesses the employees’ understanding of the work and figures out what they need to develop further understanding or skill. The leader provides personal attention to each person in the group so that everyone is aligned with work goals and direction.
Analyze your own language to make your communications effective. An optimistic explanatory style should be used for both adverse and positive events. The number one reason people give up is they believe in the permanence of the bad event. People who resist helplessness believe bad events are merely temporary setbacks or challenges to overcome. For good events, just the opposite approach should be taken by leaders. Don't water down an effort by describing your team as “lucky” or having a “good day.” Rather, speak in universal terms: “I knew this team could do this; you guys are always tops.” As a leader, try to find permanent and universal causes for good events and temporary, specific causes for misfortune.
Through continuous communication, leaders monitor goals, provide feedback that is both positive and constructive, and empower employees while accomplishing organizational goals.
SCENE
Spencer is a manager from a research firm. He told his staff, “We are all washed up. We will never get this thing through the FDA approval process.” This statement uses general, universal language that leaves little hope. Instead, try: “We're all exhausted. Let's try to figure out later why the FDA did not approve this thing and get them the information they need.”
Conversely, when the team did get one of their products approved, Spencer said, “Wow, we were lucky today! I can't believe we snuck that one through.”
Instead try: “This team is the most hardworking team I have ever met. I knew you would do what it takes to get this thing through to the end!”
Inspirational Motivation
In the Scene, the manager, Spencer, not only communicated directions, he tried to motivate and inspire with his language. Inspirational motivation is the ability to influence others. For individuals toº give leaders their best work, they need to feel that the leader truly wants the best for them as individuals. This is achieved by leaders who successfully communicate and, thus, inspire their associates. These leaders reward and recognize people for their accomplishments. In addition, they also address the associate's sense of self-worth to engage him or her in true commitment and involvement in the effort at hand.
When leaders inspire, they are able to motivate employees to do more than those employees originally intended and often even more than they thought possible. Leaders empower followers and pay attention to their individual needs and personal development, helping associates to develop their own leadership potential. Through motivation, leaders are able to encourage innovation in their teams. This is important if setbacks or problems occur along the way.
Problem Resolution
One thing is certain: Problems will develop. Strong leaders can avoid or resolve problems because they have the ability to challenge their own thinking as well as that of the team, to develop new ideas, interesting solutions, and innovative approaches. Leaders know how to ask thought-provoking questions and listen to the answers; they challenge the status quo and stimulate creativity to better handle problems that arise.
Good leaders are instrumental in removing obstacles to achieve goals and seek input from those who are closest to the work. This can take the form of talking with senior people in the organization to “clear the way” for involvement with another department. It could mean making sure resources are available to the team or that budget is released for the project. Leaders remove barriers to productive work and cooperate to solve problems. This enables the team to move forward. Notice that all the components in this model encompass the development of the individuals on the team as well as the group as a whole; in this way the team grows as each individual grows.
Building the Team
Since so much of the work in today's business world is done in groups, an effective leader knows just how to build a team. This includes the ability to develop each individual on the team to work better as an entire group. This is done through joining the right people for a task, then assisting them and empowering them to pursue a goal. If you have the luxury of picking your team, make sure that you include individuals with the skills you need for the job but also with the ability to work together with different people. A leader will also help the team develop key relationships and manage any conflicts. Leaders build relationships with all key stakeholders. They think about their actions in terms of the impact on people and groups or systems and then choose actions that will produce the best results for the organization.
SCENE
A virtual team at an international bank included the leader from France, a systems expert from London, two accounting specialists—one from Hong Kong and one from the United States—and a designer from Singapore. When the team “met” on their conference call, the same dynamic always took place. The leader, Françoise, asked a question of the group, and the U.S. specialist, Kate, started talking. Kate answered the question, and then threw in all the questions she had collected in the last few weeks. She left little room for the other team members to speak. Fortunately, Kate only stayed on the international line for one-half hour, as it was early in the morning in her time zone and Kate had to transition to get her kids off to school. When she hung up, the leader realized the conversation changed. Instantly, the others on the team would begin to speak. The specialist in Hong Kong would often have a different perspective than Kate, and that led the designer to chime in with design issues and the U.K. systems expert with system issues to the solution the U.S. team member had suggested. What should the team leader do?
In this case, the leader tried a new approach, and on the next phone call Françoise posed specific questions to each member of the team before opening up the discussion to comments from all. On this team, there were cultural concerns as well as distance concerns that made the leader build the team in a very structured, deliberate way to ensure success.
As a leader, the context will change your responses.
Context of Leadership
The ingredients of a good leader do not change, but you will see your focus shift as the context of your leadership changes. Review the unique challenges that you face in your business. You might see that if the context of these obstacles were to change, your leadership responses would change, too.
Consider the highly successful technical expert in a marketing or sales group: Tricia is seen as high performing, so she's offered a promotion because of her obvious success in her current position. However, if Tricia continues doing what made her successful in the current job, it will not guarantee her success in the next job. In fact, it's likely to guarantee frustration and maybe even failure. Why? Because the new job requires a different set of skills, competencies, tools, and approaches. The context of the challenges has changed.
In this example, the change involves the task of the job, but in the earlier case, the contextual challenge was a virtual team. Over the distance, emails and text messages can change the cues a leader receives. Trust is even more difficult to gain on virtual assignments, and it is much easier to lose. It is important to check that all parties have the same understanding and that messages are not lost in translation. Leaders who discuss with their team what is required and specify the conditions and rewards others will receive ensure good communication. This will help their employees develop their full potential.
A change in the way companies now hire and promote managers can also cause contextual challenges. In a more traditional work world, leaders were always the most senior people. Today, often young people are tasked with leading those with more seniority. This can cause serious challenges for the team and the leader. If there are generational issues involved, thoughtful leadership is essential. Here's a brief summary of the attributes for each leadership characteristic (Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 Leadership characteristics/attributes summary.
LEADERSHIP SELF-ASSESSMENT
Here's a chance for you to evaluate your leadership strengths and development needs. If you are not currently leading a group, you can answer based on past experiences—it need not be a “fresh” leadership role. You can even go back to some experience in high school or college. If any examples still don't come to mind, you can answer how you think you would behave in each of these situations. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer. Rather, there will be things that are easy for you and areas where you can improve.
Assess items 1 through 20 below and rate each item in terms of how frequently you use the behavior.
Another way to assess where you are on your leadership journey is to see if there is a pattern to your responses. For each section consider the highest score you could have achieved then look at your actual score. This will help you identify your strengths and development needs.
Communicate Direction Possible 20 Actual_____
3. Sense of purpose
4. Communicate direction
5. Enthusiastic and positive about what needs to be accomplished
7. Plan carefully
Build the Team Possible 20 Actual_____
9. Open communication and trust
13. Address conflicts
16. Build relationships with key stakeholders
19. Others are respected
Inspire Others Possible 15 Actual_____
10. Increase productivity and loyalty
18. Developing others
20. Build on strengths of others
Solve Problems / Get Results Possible 20 Actual_____
6. Find ways to overcome obstacles
7. Plan carefully
12. Provide the group with information, time, and resources to get their work done
15. Respond quickly, provide guidance
17. Ask others what they think when solving problems
Leadership Character Possible 20 Actual_____
1. Self-confident
2. Think about the moral and ethical implications of decisions
11. Demonstrate personal energy, initiative, and integrity
14. Decisions are fair
Total Possible 100 Actual_____
Strengths: (my highest scores)
Development Needs: (my lowest scores)
Career Enhancement Tool Mentors
Part of your challenge as a leader is to increase your ability to assess your impact on others, to “read” how your behavior has influenced others. This can be accomplished through self-assessments like the one you just completed. Another opportunity to grow your leadership skills is to find a mentor to guide and coach you.
Senior leaders often say no one gives them honest feedback. This can be cultivated with the ability to encourage others to point out what you are doing well and what needs to improve. This is where a mentor can help. A mentor is a trusted person who can advise you on personal or professional matters. A mentor serves as teacher, sponsor, guide, exemplar, and counselor.
A mentor can help with basic advice like goal setting, performance feedback, and brainstorming solutions to problems. The benefits of a good mentor, however, go way beyond these tasks. Often a mentor can warn of a problem or protect you politically within an organization. This person should see your strengths and inspire you to continue in the hardest of times. But he or she should also verbalize your weaknesses and help you develop as a leader. Finally, if necessary, a mentor can provide a critical introduction or referral if you should need outside help or to transition to another position of leadership.
It may sound like a good mentor is impossible to find, but if you consider a few things prior to selecting a mentor, you too can have a successful relationship. Consider if the person listens well and asks probing questions. Like a coach, a good mentor doesn't tell you the answers but guides you through the provoking questions to reach your own answers. A good mentor is not the person who says, “That reminds me of a story” and shifts the focus to him- or herself, rather a person who uses his or her experiences and your own to relate to your dilemmas and challenges. Above all, a mentor provides encouragement; he or she is a fan of yours. A mentor can help you calibrate where you need to focus your developmental efforts and give you honest feedback as you work on your leadership goals.
Take a minute before you move on to Chapter 2 to review the components of a strong leader. Come up with a plan to find a mentor for your own leadership development.