On the Topic of Leadership

On the Topic of Leadership

Leadership in corporate world is a word that is tossed about like a Frisbee in a park on a hot summer day. You hear it all of the time in management circles, articles, surveys and in training classes. In my experience, this is one of the most misunderstood, least effectively applied and yet one of the most important aspects of survival within corporate America. One needs some basic provisional knowledge of this concept and one should be savvy to some of the myths around leadership. Leadership, in its purest sense is about change. It’s about people changing things and moving the needle in some direction. But the overall concept of leadership is an enigma to most managers.

I continuously wonder about the mystery of leadership. I have worked for years trying to define leadership—beyond the simplistic dictionary explanation. As a manager for more than 30 years, I’ve attended various leadership classes, sat at the feet of authors on this and related topics (James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner, Tom Peters, Dr. Edwards Deming, among others) and read many leadership books. Within this quest to learn, however, authors seem to offer many characteristics of leadership and can provide a litany of good leaders, yet they seem to avoid positing a definition.

Some scholars indicate that leadership is something that is provided. Some indicate that leadership cannot be taught; you either have it or not.  Very few schools have classes on the topic, yet simultaneously offer studies about great leaders and stress the importance of effective leadership. In many cases, large organizations seem to make the tacit assumption that high-ranked managers are also good leaders (how else could they have achieved such lofty status?). Value judgments are typically associated with leadership being of the positive nature and not the vice.  The paradox is that the many axioms of leadership are simply fabricated notions with little or no empirical data for substantiation. Short-term positive organizational results (profits, market share, earnings per share, customer satisfaction, group morale, etc.) are typically correlated with effective leadership comments, but over the long-term, such results may not be sustainable. Let’s look at a few of these so-called axioms, or more accurately termed, myths.

Leadership Myths:

1.    High ranked managers/officials/officers typically are good leaders. 

2.    You are either a good leader or a good follower.

3.    Leadership is about getting people to follow you.

4.    There exists no solid leadership acumen.

1.) High ranked managers/officials/officers typically are good leaders. 

This myth stems from simple logic that if one is promoted to a position of authority, then clearly such an individual must possess some leadership attributes. The simple logic continues and then appoints such individuals to teach on the subject where the myth is perpetuated and substantiated through the positional power of the presenter.  Our recent CIO was not a good leader. People everywhere made fun of him and even passed very politically incorrect cartoons depicting the man. It became quite embarrassing. At some of our large department meetings (called Tea Talks), people would ask him pointed questions of which he had no answers! He looked like a buffoon in front of the department! Our recent CIO achieved many accomplishments, however, and won many industry awards based upon these accomplishments. Ironically enough, he even gave seminars on the topic of leadership! Was he a good leader? Not in my estimation. Did he get a lot of things accomplished for the organization? Absolutely.  People followed him because they had to, not because they had respect for him or that they wanted to go in the direction that he was headed.

Positional power or authority wields mandated followership, else pay the consequences! (In the example above, failing to follow would result in losing one’s job.) I manage, therefore, I lead. Our business world is replete with examples of powerful managers that get short-term results, yet may or may not be effective long-term leaders. People do not genuinely follow such managers; they simply obey commands.  “Obeying commands” is simply a self-preservation activity, which may/may not be associated with the concept of “following” someone because we like where he or she is going.  This type of leadership is pure, consistent with behavior and values of the leader and truly motivates people to follow. Examples of this type of leadership can be found in professional sports teams where players will be traded to another team such that they can be under the leadership of a desired coach. Depending on our age, we may all be able to reflect about someone that we really wanted to follow. Think about the following questions within the context of this individual’s leadership style and why it was that you wanted to go her/his direction:

v  What attracted you to this individual?

v  Was this individual “walking her/his talk?”

v  Did you trust this individual? (Acid test for trust: would you let this individual baby-sit your two-year old child for a weekend?)

v  Was it easy to follow this person?

v  Was the individual’s motivation altruistic?

v  Did they motivate you without even knowing it?

v  Did you genuinely care for the success of this individual?

v  Did you genuinely feel that this individual cared for your success?

v  Did this individual flaunt power or was this individual arrogant and proud?

v  Did this individual “give up” credit for accomplishments?

v  Did this individual periodically let other people take the helm of leadership?

By whipping through some of the above questions it should become clear whether or not this person was a genuine leader, or merely a manager with positional authority (or simply a manipulator).

The corollary to myth #1 is that some of the most keen and brilliant leadership is demonstrated in the lowest (organizationally speaking only!) echelons of organizations between and within small groups or teams. Rarely are these brilliant talents either recognized or harvested but instead are simply mislabeled as teamwork or some other non-descriptive term. This is probably why performance evaluations fail to contain evaluative leadership language at the lower echelons of organizations. After all, why would the hourly production worker need any leadership skills? Theirs is to follow, not lead!

Clearly we all have examples of people we know that work entry-level type of jobs, but are stellar at what they do. They lead by their performance. These informal leaders are one of the organization’s greatest assets, yet rarely are groomed for higher level positions because they may or may not possess the ‘appropriate degree paper-work.’

Probably the best example of a very powerful leader that worked for one of my production lines was a young man by the name of Colby. Colby was a single guy that was also a volunteer fire-fighter for our community. He took no crap from no one and was a very tough, but kind young man. Each day on my daily rounds on the floor, 90% of my information for that day was obtained directly from Colby. He knew where the bottle-necks were, where they would be at 3PM and who was hung over from partying too long last night. Colby also influenced the group morale and output very significantly. Colby was my best leader and had an inside ‘line’ to management via me. We knew this and it worked fine.

2) You are either a good leader or a good follower.

Leadership = Followership. This is the complete model of leadership, knowing when to do either. Followership, however, must be a desired condition, not a forced one. If one desires to follow another there must be a foundation of trust.

Effective leadership requires effective Followership and the quality of leadership knows when to do either. It’s a dynamic model shifting as needed. Wisdom, experience, humility and the desire to succeed help each of us determine when to be a leader and when to be a follower. Wisdom is knowing when to follow and when to lead. 

 3) Leadership is about getting people to follow you.

If this myth is true, then the pied piper was a brilliant leader. I would submit that to simply get people to follow is managerial at best and manipulative at worst.  This is a very shallow perception/definition of leadership, one that fails to grasp the totality of deep and true leadership. Leadership isn’t about artificially coaxing people to follow. Leadership is about creating a future environment that becomes another’s shared aspiration or vision. While it is true that an effective leader garners the respect of people and results in people desiring to follow, such results of “garnered followership” are a byproduct versus the end result.  In short the leader’s goal is not to get people to follow, but to provision people a future direction.

4) There exist no solid leadership acumen.

Leadership is the art of affecting change. Leadership is neither good nor bad. Leadership produces change in a non-manipulative, non-threatening manner that is not solely based on power. Leadership is relationship centric and will only exist where trust has been banked for a substantial amount of time. Leadership cannot exist in an environment that is even slightly littered with behavioral inconsistencies, lack of individual respect or ineffectual communication.

 TRUST--> RELATIONSHIPS --> DESIRE TO FOLLOW --> CHANGE -->CONFIRMATION---> TRUST... 

The Leadership Success Spiral is built on the foundation of trust, which is defined as a reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person. Trust takes years to build and nano-seconds to lose. Once trust is broken, the Leadership Spiral is halted; until such time that the trust is restored or re-manufactured. The degree to which the trust is lost is a function of the perceived severity of the trust infraction.

After a solid trust foundation is built, a leadership-relationship may be established. This relationship may be personal in nature or span across an entire organization. The relationship always rests on the foundation of trust in all cases.

Next in the Spiral is the genuine desire to follow. This desire stems from a heartfelt desire to follow the leader. This supports the aforementioned notion that some of the most effective and influential leaders are found within the lower echelons of the organization. As mentioned above, Colby’s informal leadership helped the group center on their work, accomplish their objectives and keep happy.

The genuine desire to follow then enables the follower to seek out change. Seeking out change is taking a proactive role toward change itself, being in control of events and destiny. The typical response to change is usually negative; given people feel a loss of control. Seeking out change turns this reaction into a proactive process of self-destiny selection. Affirmations are created, soon to be fulfilled. Having control over one’s destiny breeds security and feeds upon itself.

The final step involves individual/organizational affirmations coming to fruition. This comes as no surprise to the individual/organization and serves to simply confirm and bolster the faith in the leader, resulting in more banked trust.

As time moves on and such trust is continually banked by repeated Spirals of Success, the maturity and mental health of the individual/organization becomes solid. The art of affecting change may even move dynamically from the leader to the follower where their roles swap. This symbiotic relationship continues to grow, allowing the leadership to move to the most logical position within the organism (large scale or small), where change may best be orchestrated.  At this point in the maturity of the organization/organism, power is never a central issue and control is dynamically shared where it is most needed.

Clearly, the above model is seldom achieved, due to external factors that may impede the Spiral to succeed. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Political positioning or gamesmanship
• Cut throat competitiveness
• Lack of teamwork in favor of self gratification
• Overall lack of consistency of purpose
• Lack of mission understanding
• Lack of vision
• Lack of faith in the future
• Too much focus on management activities v. leadership
• Power imbalances
• Low individual/organizational self esteem

Leadership = Followership. This is the complete model of leadership, knowing when to do either. Followership, however, must be a desired condition, not a forced one. If one desires to follow another there must be a foundation of trust.

The foundation of trust is built upon the consistency of behavior and communications. Many call this “walking the talk.”  When so-called leaders say one thing, then behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their message, the “trust bank” is robbed and will take many time periods to re-build, depending on the magnitude and severity of the inconsistency. Once, however, the “trust bank” is large, it grows upon its interest much like a cash savings account; the greater the bank account balance, the faster it grows. Furthermore, as the “trust bank” becomes larger, it can withstand some inconsistencies, still continuing to grow over time.  As the foundation is built and as the “trust bank” continues to grow, the natural leadership model emerges allowing people to be comfortable either leading or following. The trust, therefore, is bi-directional; leaders trusting their followers and followers trusting their leaders. 

Leadership, or the ability to affect change, is a massive asset for any organization, if realized and harvested at all levels within the organization. Getting caught up in the politics of work many times occludes objective reasoning when trying to move the change needle. Acknowledging what leadership truly is, dispelling the myriad of myths, is one small step in truly seeking out effective leadership. Once the organization has a clear distinction between the differences of management versus leadership, progress may be achieved. 

The Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to help people successfully adapt to the corporate/organizational/business world within which they may work. After effective adaptation, then individual growth may occur. This growth can take the form of job enrichment, promotions, pay increases, job satisfaction or simply feeling good about contributing.  Whether we work in a hospital, newspaper, service garage, not-for-profit business or the typical (what ever that is) Corporation, there are some axiomatic behaviors that, when effectively applied, will result in positive personal outcomes. And the converse is true! Becoming familiar with your behavior and the expectations of management is something that we all must master, else become slaves to a master.  

This blog is not specifically aimed at taking cheap shots at  management, yet many citings make specific references to mid-level management foibles. For the individual contributor, there are dozens of practical and useful lessons that are contained within the next pages. 

Joining HT as a buyer I truly had  died and gone to heaven, but didn't quite realize it. HT was the darling progressive corporation that was based on an inherent belief in people, and that, if given the proper training and care, people usually will exceed expectations. We had flex time, no dress code and were paid to think. 

Corporate life is a system. It’s a game. We play many roles. We speak a different language. We live in a different world. The intricacies of the corporate organization are a dynamic set of systems, processes and relationships. Many will be touched upon in this blog, some will be obviously glaring omissions and left to the reader to figure out on their own. Corporate “truth” varies from each institution, yet there may be some common threads. 

My dad worked as an office manager for a small mid-western construction company where he worked an 8 hour day, went home for lunch with my mom and made a decent income for our family. He knew his boss personally, knew where he went to church, the type of liquor he liked and visited with him every day at the office. They socialized together, played golf at the local links and enjoyed a classical and traditional Boss/Subordinate type of relationship within a small business context.  

Contrast to that model our working environment where many of us haven’t even met our boss face to face because the organization is “remote,” our interactions with people are via electronic signals (IM, e/vmail, teleconferences, etc.) and our teams are virtual. Our work organizational environment is non-natural and our relationships are more nebulous and protracted. It’s a novelty to have a “F2F” (face to face) staff meeting here at HT!

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that I feel compelled to write this. Now, more than ever, fundamental relationships with people are of utmost importance and our day to day organizational working relationships are tested beyond conventional standards. Early on in my career I created a file where I collected models, learning experiences, papers that I wrote and miscellaneous things that I noticed to be useful. 

One of the tacit assumptions throughout this blog is that most managers are competent and caring individuals. When we discus the axioms, we are referring to such competent managers. As in any distribution, however, if you lined up 100 managers, 10 of them would be bozos and are in the wrong profession. This is something we learned in Statistics 101.

This blog is written from the “American” business perspective, taking into full consideration that cultural variances may alter the applicability of the lessons. Notwithstanding this, however, our “American business model” has permeated the world and we are seeing diverse cultures adopting some of our best and worst practices. To the non-American reader take what is applicable and then leave the rest. 

I have found my years in Corporate America to be very fulfilling, changing jobs about every two years, organizations almost every six months and physical locations on the average of two times per year. It’s been a good ride and if I were to do it all over, there’s only a few things that I would change. Corporate America works. It works well as is attested by the brilliance of our economic social standards. Obviously, it is not a perfect system and I am not familiar with any perfect system anywhere.

There are no guarantees with what you are about to read. Each organization has nuances and behaviors that comprise its own culture; hence, there are neither cookbook answers nor guaranteed counsel contained within. This is my disclaimer! What works in one organization may not work in another. The information contained within, however, should conservatively apply in the range of around 50% at worst, based upon my observations of human behavior, management (sometimes different than “human behavior) behavior and the overall concept of leadership.

From the outset, let’s first focus on the concept of leadership and management, which are two distinct functions, each playing critically and equally important roles within any organization. Being a student of leadership, I am very frustrated with how loosely the term “leadership” is tossed around and, consequently, I have devoted an entire blog chapter to it. Clearly leadership is vital to any organization that is moving forward, yet it is my strong conviction that most individuals do not even have a solid definition for the term!  I have come to define management as the science of administration and organization of social organisms whereas leadership is the art of affecting change.

Context

Playing the Corporate System

Context: 

After completing my MBA in 1976, I had high aspirations to change the world, in general, and to make significant changes to the corporate world via the possibility of becoming a CEO for a large corporation. In retrospect, I feel that I have made good progress helping to do my part in making the corporate world at least a bit more pleasant but my aspirations toward the CEO spot changed dynamically (and positively) as I matured and as my personal values materialized. From purely a philosophical perspective, it “wasn’t in the cards for me to acquire such organizational status.” Upon the completion of my MBA, I joined a high tech company (hereafter referred to as HT) as a buyer, made multiple vertical promotional moves and nestled into a sweet career spot from which I retired at the age of 55. During my over 3 decades of experience inside the corporate machine, I have discovered some of the secrets to

Corporate success within the lower echelons and now wish to share them with people either entering into this funky world or to those that are in need of some help in terms of employment survival.

My educational background and experience places me in somewhat of a position of experiential authority, yet I am continually learning the nuances of corporate life and the subtle ways of succeeding and failing. I have taught classes at the college level and throughout my past thirty-plus years, my aspirations to become a CEO, or for that matter any high ranked executive, diminished as I learned that the commitment to do such requires too many personal sacrifices and compromises of which I was not ready to offer.

Hats off to those that make such commitments! Now as I look back on my career within the comfortable confines of first and second level management, I am fully convinced that this was the right decision for me. One reaches a point at which money, status and power has to be traded off for other values. For some, the route of the CEO or high level management works fine and I commend these individuals for such accomplishments. For others, however, they may not want any part of management (so you should probably stop reading this right now and return it to the bookstore for your money back). Still others, however, the coziness of mid-level management may just be the right medicine for their life affording the balanced trade offs of work, life and decent (not huge amounts) of money. This is where I landed and I am very proud and thankful as a result.

When I retired at 55, I had done my due diligence and planned out a nice way to exit. Just like life, those plans changed thousands of times during my work career. Finally, during one of our Work-Force (farce?)-Management programs, my IT Supply Chain Management job went to a “lower-cost geographical strategic location,” or in lay terms, I was laid off. There was no shock as I spent the last few years of my job flying around the world laying off people. I did this 9 times till the ‘cat’s life’ ran out and my number came up. By then, however, I had it planned out and had saved enough to take the WFM package and bolt.

I never looked back.

Now 10 years post retirement, I’ve dredged out this book that was a living document for me whilst working. I’ve realized that I truly should publish this as the truths and axioms seem to be more alive now than ever! I base this on some past working experiences during my retirement, including teaching at a local college for a few years, some international business consulting and listening to my colleagues that are still inside the corporate machine. Also, my vast interactions, as the President of our own non-profit organization, continually resurrect the same corporate craziness that, I erroneously assumed, would NOT be found in such an organization.

My wife and I own free and clear a beautiful large house in the country, drive new cars, we have put both of our kids through college, travel frequently to exotic places and have zero debt. We don’t live extravagantly, but we have fun and enjoy life to the maximum!

Given that I am still fearing some of the perils of working for HT (even post retirement!), I cannot reveal my true name, else I may jeopardize my good standing with The Company, and hence I have taken on the pen name of John Doe for this publication. Also, it is with zero regret, malice or indignation that this piece is published while I have enjoyed many of the spoils of corporate slavery including a very nice and continually increased salary, stock options, cash awards, fringe benefits, world wide travel opportunities, training and development and some degree of employment security for at least the first 25 years of employment. My Corporate home is a wonderful place. I go there to rest after tough weekends on the golf course or on my favorite fly fishing stream!