‘He was exactly what this company needed, at exactly the right time’ explained a lead director on the board of the revived and once-dominant General Motors (GM). Describing his new CEO, this director added: ‘He simplified the organisation, reshaped the company’s vision, put the right people in place, and brought renewed energy and optimism to GM.’¹

To lead the way you need a strong personal commitment to both setting things in motion and also not waiting for others to give you a sense of direction. This is what we mean by initiate. Being ‘action-minded’ has long been a leadership expectation. But in the rest of this century sustainable leaders like you will need to do more than know the mechanics of setting things in motion.

To initiate change is to be far more proactive – it is an expression of your commitment and passion to improve the situation around you. It involves a level of self-assurance and sense of direction that ultimately puts your own reputation on the line. At its most basic, it’s your ability to turn reflection, information, analysis and management discipline into a sharp instrument of active response. This might have a short- or long-term perspective but the essence is a bias towards making something of value happen.

In the complex world facing companies this century, there will be many pressures to stay risk-averse. Of course there are areas of endeavour where this is appropriate, such as insurance, engineering, health, construction and charitable projects. All of these, and areas such as investment banking, are clearly regulated for a good reason. But there is a danger that many organisations allow their risk-averse systems and processes to prevail in areas where innovation and boldness are requirements.

“Without initiative, leaders are simply workers in leadership positions.”

Bo Bennett, author and politician

For some would-be leaders, stepping into the unknown will have few attractions when the world seems so unpredictable. Constant change means never being sure that what you start will result in what you originally intended. How do you feel about this kind of uncertainty? Does it turn your stomach, make you uneasy, or perhaps the reverse? Perhaps it sets your juices flowing. Leading the way means you know how to thrive in a world where organisations must be highly flexible, results-oriented and with fast decision-making processes.

Almost everywhere you look organisations seem to be reaching out for leaders who are comfortable with this kind of environment – they are able to handle the anxiety and resistance that may arise. This kind of leadership has the core capability of being able to promote fresh thinking – to initiate. When you initiate something, you do so within a context that might range across a broad landscape, as shown in the box.

Taking the initiative can be good for morale, as well raising your own profile within the organisation. Your actions can set you apart from more passive and purely reactive colleagues. When you do initiate change you:

• accept responsibility
• research
• take risks
• instigate direct action
• follow through.

Accept responsibility

“I have always been fallible. I have always felt fallible and I have always acted fallible. If I have a bit of an edge it is because I know what I do not know. I did make a mistake predicting a serious calamity.”

George Soros, business magnate, investor and philanthropist

To lead the way with initiative means you readily accept responsibility. You can build this capability by constantly seeking new opportunities to volunteer, participate in projects, be accountable for results and take centre stage.

Volunteer

This means saying ‘yes’ whenever a job needs doing, or a problem needs someone to solve it. Sometimes these will be the worst jobs or the ones with the least apparent kudos. Despite this, step forward and treat these demands as an opportunity, not as ‘yet more work’.

For example, be willing to handle a difficult interpersonal issue rife with potential conflict. Or offer to find a solution for some problem that others have failed to resolve or have no time to tackle. When you say ‘Yes, I’ll do that’ you set an example for others and show ‘this is how it should be around here.’ That is, you demonstrate an aspect of your culture in action. By volunteering, you model how others should perform, and inspire them to take responsibility too. Try saying:

• Leave that to me.
• I’ll solve that.
• Nobody else is handling this, so I will.
• I’ll be responsible for that.

Participate

Take part in other people’s projects. You get a chance to practise your leadership when you willingly join a task force, support a project group, attend a committee, become part of a team activity, and so on. Look for opportunities to add value. This is not always about being in charge. It is more likely to mean collaborating and being part of someone else’s leadership initiative.

You can add value in all sorts of ways. You might contribute ideas, take on some of the donkey work, support someone with a task, do some research or simply lend a hand. It’s a choice to get involved. This is proactive participation, where you undertake to do things, rather than merely going along with the crowd, which is a form of passive participation. In contrast, proactive participation shows, by your behaviour, attitude and actions, that you want to contribute.

Be accountable

The famous phrase on the desk of US President Harry S. Truman saying ‘The buck stops here!’ is a good reminder that as a leader you take responsibility by letting people know you are ultimately accountable. You do this when you tell colleagues:

• I’ll make sure that gets done on time.
• That was my fault.
• This won’t happen again.
• I give you my word.
• Let’s set some specific targets for me.
• This is down to me.

These need to be more than mere words. Tobias Fredberg, a fellow at the TruePoint Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, spent four years studying 36 highly ambitious CEOs from major companies around the world. He concluded that: ‘higher-ambition CEOs assume personal responsibility when things are bad and they give collective credit when things are good’.²

If you become accountable for a task or project, make sure your levels of responsibility are recorded. Be specific about your commitment and what you are agreeing to. It is then easier, down the line, to measure success and feel proud of your achievements or to be apologetic for any shortfall in results. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver.

Take centre stage

When you accept the challenge of accountability, you do not blame others, act defensively or hide behind processes. To do so would be disastrous. For example, when Tony Hayward, the ex-CEO of BP, declared in a fit of frustration over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that ‘I want my life back’ he failed to accept responsibility, and paid the price by losing the top job.³

As Hayward discovered the hard way, you cannot be a leader and remain a shrinking violet. Ultimately, you must be willing to stand in the limelight of people’s attention. To be an effective leader means being prepared to be visible – in whatever form that takes.

For some leaders this turns into a narcissistic approach to being in charge. However, it need not be that way. Progressive leaders are visible, but not because they are self-serving or attention seeking. They just want to demonstrate accountability. As the seminal study on outstanding companies by Jim Collins found, high-level leaders are a portrait of duality: modest yet wilful, humble yet fearless.⁴

Research

Before you embark on any initiative take time to identify the stakeholders who will be involved in the process. They are the context for the action you are about to instigate. Finding out in advance how they might respond to the initiative is an important part of your planning process. So open the communication channels with your stakeholders as soon as possible.

Few attempts at communication within an organisation succeed if they simply inform people without really hearing what they think and feel about what is being attempted. An often neglected aspect of initiating is therefore the ability to really listen hard to what others say.

Focusing on your stakeholders will give you information that will make your chances of a successful initiative infinitely better. It is always worth taking some time to explore the impact of your initiative on the people who will be involved in it. Ask yourself:

• How will they be affected by the initiative?
• What questions will they ask?
• What are the barriers and challenges they will face?
• What’s in it for them? (What are the benefits?)
• What’s not in it for them? (What are the problems and losses?)
• How well do you know them?
• Who might support you in influencing them?

“If you want to persuade me you’ve got to think my thoughts, feel my feelings and speak my words.”

Cicero, Roman orator

Take risks

In 2009 the consulting firm Booz & Company helped GM department chiefs to identify middle managers who were unafraid to take risks. You might think that these would be confident, high-powered executives or those on the ‘fast track’. In fact they were often maverick types, who knew how to get things done by manipulating the system so as to get things done right.⁵

While leaders commonly endorse the virtues of risk-taking, in practice many cannot tolerate mistakes and tend to punish daring. There is often a wide gap between rhetoric and reality. This inability to take risks usually arises from fear of failure, losing control and attracting criticism. However, there will far less room for this type of behaviour in successful companies in the rest of this century. If you work in an organisation that punishes risk-taking or clings to the status quo then, as a leader, you will ‘need a dose of extra courage’ as one report on innovation observed.⁶ Future successful organisations will need not only courageous leaders, but ones who are comfortable with risk.

There is also an important distinction between being risky and being reckless. Those who lead the way will appreciate the difference – for them risk-taking is part of the creative aspect of their role. For example, the CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fred Goodwin, was reckless, because his leadership eventually undermined the entire existence of the organisation. Contrast that with the risk run by Tesco’s Terry Leahy in choosing to enter the US market where so many others have failed. The venture, still unproven, was merely a reasonable business gamble, not a matter of corporate survival.

Adversity is often a great stimulus to responsible risk-taking. Faced with a supplier who was demanding excessive prices, the entrepreneur James Dyson refused to be held to ransom and to the supplier’s amazement made alternative arrangements. This was certainly risky but not reckless. Similarly, Eric Schmidt, who famously turned round the fortunes of Novell, was unafraid to run risks to alter the company’s performance. ‘You know it’s a natural reaction to turn cautious when your company’s in trouble’, he said, ‘but that’s precisely the wrong tack to take. You have to give your people freedom to pursue their passions. That’s the only way to keep them focused and inspired.’⁷

Step out of your comfort zone

As we have said, people learn through experience. New experiences, especially, tend to feel uncomfortable. However, if you have ever had a very powerful or challenging experience in your life, you are likely to look back on it with the realisation that it changed you in some way. You were never quite the same again. It is one of life’s potent lessons.

Stepping into leadership is often one of those powerful new experiences and is likely push you out of your comfort zone. So, you might as well prepare yourself as best as you can so that you stand a good chance of not just surviving, but thriving. This can be an exhilarating process, as you set out to make something important happen.

Future successful organisations will have a great need for leaders who are willing to take on potentially scary assignments. High levels of uncertainty demand a different kind of leader than during times of stability and minimal change. We can expect these organisations to seek leaders willing to experiment, put themselves in danger of failing, be ready to do what others least expect, and to do what is right.

If stepping out of your comfort zone fills you with dread, it is time to start practising. That is how you will start developing the internal psychological resources to deal with it. The more often you do take on new experiences, the less uncomfortable it will feel. It will probably never feel easy, but at least it won’t stop you. Practising can take many forms. For example, here are some challenges that other leaders have found useful:

• Physical challenges: ride in a hot air balloon, be a blood donor, make a bungee jump, go dancing somewhere strange.
• Social challenges: attend an unusual sporting event, help disabled kids, organise a community activity.
• Emotional challenges: confront somebody with a difficult truth, express honest feelings to a person.
• Political challenges: phone a talk radio show, make a speech, support a local charity campaign.

Can you think of some activities that might make you feel stretched and challenged?

Be assertive

Sometimes speaking up in a meeting and asserting your point of view feels very risky. In fact, every time you lead the way, you are asserting yourself and what you believe to be the right thing to do. In doing so you will always risk lack of agreement or even disapproval. Nevertheless, if you have something to offer that will add value, then you need to assert yourself.

Many leaders, however, consider themselves assertive when in reality they are aggressive or secretly defensive. For example, outspoken Michael O’Leary, head of Ryanair, takes no prisoners and always seems confident. Yet something in his manner might suggest that perhaps he is rather less certain of himself than he would have us believe. And what can we conclude from the response by ex-Channel Five chief executive Dawn Airey on being asked why she was the CEO: ‘I’m just bloody good!’?

The need to promote collaboration, virtual teams, flatter organisations and talented employees suggests there will be declining tolerance in future successful organisations for seriously aggressive or nasty leaders. Instead, there will be a growing demand for assertive leaders able to resist pressure to do what is expected, but willing to say what they think is right, and initiate it without appearing aggressive or intolerant of others’ views.

Research suggests that being seen as under- or over-assertive may be the most common weakness among aspiring leaders.⁸

Handle reverses

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Samuel Beckett, playwright

Dealing with rejection, disagreement and failure is another way leaders show initiative. How do you handle these inevitable experiences? What happened last time when things failed to go your way? Did your reactions undermine your leadership confidence? How readily did you bounce back after facing adversity?

In the face of rejection or failure, effective leaders use various ways to sustain their morale. For example, they use techniques such as persistence and keeping many projects going simultaneously. Few of us succeed in life without some setbacks or finding that some people disagree with us. There remains a fundamental truth in the famous IBM adage: ‘To double your successes, double your failures’.

Non-personalising is another effective way leaders persist with their initiatives. That is, they realise that setbacks are seldom aimed at them personally. Instead, they acknowledge that most arise from forces beyond their immediate control.

Reframing is yet another useful method. For example, suppose you conclude that your organisation is weak on marketing and needs to invest in a new approach. If your idea hits resistance, rather than give up, you might reframe the issue as ‘a need to conduct an experiment to learn more about what works in marketing terms’. Repositioning the issue in this way and re-presenting the cost as the price of learning may change other people’s reactions.

Instigate direct action

How focused are you on action? For example, people differ in their leadership preferences. Some like to push for short-term, tangible action; others enjoy communicating and making contact with people; others are most comfortable with planning, long-term strategy and innovation; and yet others lean towards administration, with their attention on systems, procedures and details.

How much of this do you do? What is the balance you strike between being action-minded and allowing time for reflection about an issue before initiating action? Do people regard you as action-minded?

When it comes to direct action, the commercial world can learn a lot from campaigning activists in the voluntary sector. Take Franny Armstrong and Lizzie Gillett for instance. Having made the powerful climate-change documentary called The Age of Stupid, uniquely financed by ‘crowd funding’, they then came up with the idea of challenging people and organisations to cut their carbon emissions by 10 per cent in one year. The idea took hold and soon thousands of individuals, companies, organisations, towns and even countries joined the 10:10 campaign and signed up to the commitment.

And then there’s Eugenie Harvey who created ‘We Are What We Do’, a brand and movement that she launched in 2004 with the book Change the World for a Fiver. A serial initiator, she then started the ‘I’m Not a Plastic Bag’ project, which has led to an increase in awareness about unnecessary plastic bag usage all over the world. The movement recently published Change the World at 35,000 ft in collaboration with Virgin Atlantic, and in 2010 they brought out 31 Ways to Change the World – a book created by children and young people.

Sometimes it is important to simply get an initiative under way so that it can leverage support and grow in its impact. For instance, a small group of people at the philanthropic charity Network for Social Change was concerned about the crippling levels of third-world debt. They raised money for a researcher to explore what could be done. This then led to a lobbying campaign to influence key decision makers. Within a few years their plans were adopted by the global Jubilee 2000 campaign and resulted in the removal of billions of pounds of African debt.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. For boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer and polymath

Follow through

How good are you at following through? This is the Achilles heel of many leaders and can potentially be the source of a myriad of problems: botched projects, broken trust with employees and higher-ups, wasted money and time, and even lay-offs or firings. Become an expert at following through, either doing it yourself or making sure others do it on your behalf.

It is common to find weak follow-through on new initiatives. Each initiative is piled on top of another with seldom a systematic review of whether it is succeeding, failing or has adequate support. The result is scepticism about each new initiative. A common reaction of people is consequently: ‘Don’t respond to this new one – there’ll be another along in a minute!’

For instance, when a new chairman of Shell was appointed some years ago, he reviewed the initiatives of all those in whose footsteps he was following. Without exception, he discovered they too had conducted reviews, followed by announcements of major new programmes of change. Yet his research showed that virtually none of the previous initiatives had taken hold. He was confronting the raw truth that in senior positions one easily becomes a prisoner – marooned in the executive suite – handling the tidal flood of information, requests and communication, rather than initiating and pursuing anything of substance.

In contrast, when BP’s new CEO took over in 2010 he promised, like his luckless predecessor, to change the company’s safety culture. But he did more than proclaim the intention. He geared fourth-quarter employee bonuses to whether people were turning the intention into a reality.

Taking the initiative is not enough. You need to back it up with tangible follow-through.

¹ GM News, ‘GM announces CEO succession process: Dan Akerson to become CEO, Whitacre remains Chairman’, 12 August 2010.

² T. Fredberg, ‘Why good leaders pass the credit and take the blame’, Harvard Business Review Blog Network, 6 October 2011.

³ The Times, ‘Embattled BP chief: I want my life back’, 31 May 2010.

⁴ Jim Collins, Good to Great, Random House, 2001.

⁵ John Baldoni, ‘How to buck the system the right way’, Fast Company, 16 March 2010.

⁶ Blessing White Intelligence, Innovate on the Run: The Competing Demands of Modern Leadership, 2007.

⁷ Daniel Goleman, ‘What makes a leader?’, Harvard Business Review, January 2004.

⁸ Science Daily, ‘What makes a good leader: the assertiveness quotient’, 5 February 2007.