Category Archives: Leadership

Quick summaries of practices to increase leadership capacity and capabilities.

Leaders build relationships to help others.

Leadership

Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on (at least) two things.  The first is seeing the world from another person’s perspective.  The second is thinking about how you can help and collaborate with the other person rather than thinking about what you can get from him or her.  ~Reid Hoffman (co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn)

Maybe what’s most significant about this quote is who said it—the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn.  We seem to live in a world that’s become more focused on the quantity of our “relationships” than on the quality.  One of my favorite television commercials features a young woman, likely in her 20s, feeling sorry for her parents who are Baby Boomers because they have so few “friends” on a social networking site.  While the young woman is sitting, alone, reading someone’s latest nonsensical post, her parents are out having fun and interacting with real people.  (Course, it was their new car that allowed them to have all this fun.)

But I smile each time I see that ad because it does make me wonder if our “relationships” have really become more like “transactions.”  In his book, The Start-up of You, cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, says:

Old-school “networkers” are transactional.  They pursue relationships thinking about what other people can do for them.  And they’ll only network with people when they need something, like a job or new clients.  Relationship builders, on the other hand, try to help other people first.  They don’t keep score.  Networkers think it’s important to have a really big address book.  Relationship builders prioritize high-quality relationships over a large number of connections.

Have we gone astray with our approach to relationships?  Using LinkedIn as an example, I periodically get requests to connect with young graduates from my college alma mater.  I’ve never met these young people, or for that matter, have never even heard their name.  Do they want to connect with me because they believe they can help me?  I doubt it.  Or, is the person who just requested to connect with me who already has more than 500 connections (the maximum number that LinkedIn will report) doing so because they believe they can help me?  Unlikely.  To be fair, I have to ask myself, how often have I reached out to someone through social or professional networking because I thought I could help them?

After reading this quote from Hoffman, I thought about a number that tends to stick in my head – the number is 12.  In my own study of how adults learn, I’ve found over and over that the magic number of an adult cohort of students is no more than 12.  When I moderated focus groups years ago, again the ideal number was a minimum of 8 and maximum of 12.  Jesus, one of our ultimate examples of leadership, had 12 disciples.  How many people report to the average CEO, around 10, but not more than 12.  In research on what we would consider traditional “networking,” it was determined that even the jump from 5 to 15 relationships shows a decline in the quality of the relationship. 

I’d assume that Hoffman is happy with how we’ve embraced the use of LinkedIn.  But I do wonder if he also thinks most of us have missed the point of using it as a tool to develop genuine and authentic relationships so we can help one another.  Imagine how leadership development in organizations would be different if each leader focused on 12 really quality relationships, as opposed to viewing the number of relationships they can maintain as a competitive scorecard.   

Leaders intentionally, deliberately and consistently think positive thoughts.

Leadership

Research indicates that as much as 75 percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us.  ~H. Norman Wright adapted from Shad Helmstetter

I read this statistic recently in A Better Way to Think: Using Positive Thoughts to Change Your Lifeby H. Norman Wright and I had to reread it several times.  I kept thinking, is that really possible, really?  Seventy-five percent of what I think could actually be working against me?!

I was recently introduced to the idea of positive psychology and also discovered that the University of Michigan has a Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship in their school of business.  I’m intrigued by the concept and have been reading several books on the topic.

At the University of Michigan they conducted a study and identified the single most important factor in predicting organizational performance, more than twice as powerful as any other, was the ratio of positive to negative statements: 5.6 to 1 for high performing companies.  In other words, the organizations that are performing at an exceptionally high level are quite likely to have leaders who are making nearly six positive statements for every negative statement.  In medium performing organizations the ratio was 1.85 to 1, in poor performing organizations it was .36 to 1.

It would be easy if making random positive statements counted as part of the ratio, but it’s not that simple.  The positive statements should build and strengthen relationships.  UM says there are at least seven techniques and the first three are critical.  The first three include: being authentic and sincere, remaining objective and nonjudgmental, and validating others’ perspectives as being worthwhile.  This isn’t something you can just add to your to-do list; it’s something you have to become, habits to be developed over time.
Martin Seligman (University of Pennsylvania), one of the initiators of positive psychology, said “One of the most significant findings in psychology in last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.”  As leaders, how are we thinking?  How do our behaviors influence how/what others are thinking?  Are we creating a positive or negative climate?
For some, positive might mean upbeat, hyped, charismatic, competitive, etc.  But those aren’t the descriptors of a positive work climate.  Being positive in the workplace takes on a different tenor than what many of us might expect.  A positive work climate is described by behaviors like compassion, forgiveness and gratitude.  In a study of various not-for-profit and public organizations, including General Electric, National City Bank, and OfficeMax, across 16 different industry groups, companies with more positive climates (that is, those that scored higher on compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude activities) performed significantly better in profitability, productivity, quality, innovation, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. (Unleashing Positivity in the Workplace by Ann Pace in T+D Jan2010)
Returning to Norman Wright, he also says that depending upon how active your mind is you may produce more the 45,000 thoughts per day.  Leaders certainly can’t control the hundreds of thousands of thoughts produced each day in their organizations.  However, they can create a culture with a high ratio of positive to negative statements and shift the overall climate of their organization from counterproductive to meaningful, encouraging and flourishing.

Leaders can see “enough.”

Leadership

If you ever had enough, could you recognize it?  Leaders can.  ~inspired by a bumper sticker

A phrase I hear repeated frequently is you’re either growing or your dying.  I’d like to go on record as respectfully disagreeing with that concept.  I believe that our culture has taught us that “more” is a sign of success, that growing has not only become a symbol of competence but of respect and admiration, and anything less is failure.  Where has this culture of continuous and infinite growth gotten us?  More Americans now declare bankruptcy than graduate from college.  The self-storage industry (where we store all our “growth” that we can no longer fit in our homes) is bigger than the motion picture industry.  According to the Ecological Footprint, humanity’s consumption of natural resources first exceeded the planet’s stores in 1985, and by early in this century we were consuming over 25 percent more than our supply.
By now I’m sure some of you are asking: what’s that got to do with organizational growth?  Well, I think a lot.  As a society, we seem to have lost our ability to recognize “enough.”  As a result, we’ve all seen organizations grow themselves right out of business and individuals grow themselves into utter ruin.  They couldn’t recognize “enough.”
In my academic career I’ve had my share of statistics and economics courses.  Sometimes I think I’ve studied a bell curve from every possible perspective.  Whether it’s the law of diminishing returns, the product life cycle, or plotting a standard deviation, there’s always a common pattern – an incline, a peak and a decline.  I would like to suggest that the peak of that bell curve represents “enough.”
Imagine a leader who can recognize when his/her organization has reached that peak, and instead of continuing to press on with yet more growth, they focus on adapting and sustaining that peak as long as possible. They can recognize “enough.”  I’m certainly not suggesting that they become complacent, to the contrary.  Sustaining a peak is a balancing act incorporating discipline and adaptability.  Being at the point of “enough” doesn’t mean you’re not changing; in fact, you may be doing a great deal of changing and adapting in order to stay at that peak.  The key is that you’ve recognized “enough.”
In Jim Collins’ book, How the Mighty Fall, he describes this phenomenon as the “unsustainable quest for growth.”  “Success creates pressure for more growth, setting up a vicious cycle of expectations; this strains people, the culture, and systems to the breaking point; unable to deliver consistent tactical excellence, the institution frays at the edges.”
Collins adds to the idea of growth with what he calls “undisciplined discontinuous leaps.”  He defines these leaps as, “dramatic moves that fail at least one of the following tests: 1. Do they ignite passion and fit with the company’s core values?  2. Can the organization be the best in the world at these activities or in these arenas?  3. Will these activities help drive the organization’s economic or resource engine?”
Are we growing or are we dying?  Maybe, we simply have “enough.”

Leaders live their values. Every day. All the time.

Leadership
If you have to agonize over determining your values then maybe they aren’t really your values at all.  ~Kathryn Scanland

If values are the guiding principles for how people behave, interact, and function in your organization, then it should describe how they are currently acting, not how you wish they would act.  One of the best descriptions I’ve come across to determine personal values is to look at your calendar and your checkbook.  How you spend your time and your money is a real indicator of what you value.

I’ve found leaders who struggle to identify their organization’s values are struggling because what they are really listing are principles they wish were their values.  Unfortunately, the reality is, if you aren’t currently doing it, then it’s not something you value.  It’s something you want to value.  For example, on a personal level, I might say that I value generosity, but a quick glance at my checkbook might tell a very different story.  Maybe generosity is something I admire, but until I actually do it, it’s not something I really value.

Here’s another example from a young CEO featured in Fast Company.

Everyone knows culture is critical to a company’s success. Think Google. What is less obvious is that leadership has to consciously create that very culture.

When we first started Okta, we tried to “manage” culture. We wrote down our company values, we often reiterated them in meetings and thought long and hard about how we could build a company culture that reflected them. 

And while all of that is well and good, over the past three years, I’ve found that what really matters in creating company culture is how I conduct myself. Every day. All the time. It comes down to which actions and attitudes that I validate and reward, and which behavior I discourage, as well as the kind of people I choose to hire.

If I came to visit your organization, what would I experience in the first ten minutes of my visit and what would that tell me about your real values?  One specific organization comes to mind whenever I pose this question.  They’re a publisher and when I walk through the main entrance I hear the sound of a crowd of people cheering and applauding.  Do I have to even wonder if one of their values is to have a friendly and fun environment?  No, I don’t, because I experienced it first-hand.  It’s who they are, not who they want to be.

Culture and leadership duo Argyris and Schon as well as Edgar Schein make the distinction by calling espoused values those values that people say are their values but may be out of line with what they actually do.   Without delving into too much academic mumbo-jumbo, Schein says that leadership is the source of the beliefs and values that get a group moving in a direction to solve a problem.  These values are built not on what is said to be valued, but on what is valued, in action.  And the values that a group assumes by action are very difficult to change, regardless of what we say we’d like our values to be.  As the young CEO at Okta said, “It’s how I conduct myself. Every day. All the time.”

Leaders humble themselves.

Leadership
Relax as we face this fact together: When those who report to you disappoint you, it’s probably your fault.  ~Pat Lencioni
Several weeks ago I read an article by Pat Lencioni entitled Humble Yourself at Work.  It’s one of those articles that stays in the back of your mind and kind of nags you during specific instances when you realize the author was right about their assessment.  Pat points out that we all like to say that we aspire to be humble leaders, but unfortunately, aspiring to be humble usually doesn’t get us there.  As I’ve learned over the last number of years, humility isn’t something you can aspire to; it’s something you have to go through.  In other words, there’s usually a little (or a lot) of pain that accompanies the journey to humility.
Pat provides a wonderful, and probably hard to accept (that’s the humility part), illustration.

I don’t really teach my sons to misbehave. It’s not as though I sit down and give them instructions on how to provoke their brothers, break dining room chairs, or talk back to their parents. But I must have done something to give them the idea that it would be okay to do those things—or more likely, that the consequences for doing so wouldn’t be significant. 

In that moment of realization, I have a choice: I can either humble myself enough to acknowledge that the first person I need to address if I want to change my son’s behavior is me, or I can go on venting about how ornery he is and watch the orneriness continue. 

The same thing happens to me—and to all leaders—at work. On a bad day, we often find ourselves complaining about something people in our organizations are doing. We turn to our colleagues on the leadership team (or our spouses) and vent. “The mid-level managers in this company are terrible at giving constructive feedback to their employees.” That’s just one of the common complaints I hear from executives. 

Now, if we’re lucky enough to have a colleague on the management team, a consultant, or a spouse who is upfront with us—or if we are somehow struck with a blinding ray of humility in that moment—we will realize that we’re ultimately complaining about ourselves. As a consultant, my favorite way to remind leadership teams of this inescapable conclusion is to ask them: “How many of the people you’re complaining about report to someone outside of this room?” 

Many times when I think of being a humble leader, the first example that comes to mind is admitting when we’re wrong, which does require a dose of humility.  But I think Pat’s example of owning the fact that when our reports disappoint us, it’s our fault, takes humility to an entirely new level of character building.  As leaders, are we willing to address ourselves (and our behaviors) first, when others disappoint us?