Executive Coaching Blog

What it takes to be a successful, extraordinary leader in this century is vastly different than what it took in the 20^th, and light years beyond what it took in the 19^th.

In a global society of ever expanding connectedness and volumes of freely available information, the fact is that it is the shift in the ‘follower’ that now demands a shift in leaders.

200 years ago societal position was what qualified one to be a leader.  100 years ago leadership theory, based almost entirely on the military model, was added to societal position and hence command and control was further entrenched.

Command and control has dominated the practice of government and business leadership for the past 100 years and in 2011 we witnessed the spectacular beginning of that model's death throws. The 'mexican wave' that travelled, and is still travelling, across the middle east, is fuelled by the expansion of information and communication that has rapidly accelerated in the past 10 years.

Command and control is predicated on a specific relationship with one’s followers.  The command and control leader has some level of control of information, the withholding of which allows for manipulation and domination.  The perspective insinuates a view of superiority over others, often ‘for their own good’.  Arrogance, narrow or bloody mindedness are viewed as strong leadership qualities – seen as decisiveness, a willingness to be accountable and take action.  To not be swayed by others view is seen as a strength of character, something to aspire to.  No wonder women have struggled in this world.

If the paradigm is leading by telling others what to do, then of course you have to be the ultimate authority on what is the right thing to do.  The command and control leader’s power is founded on his/her being all knowing, and the gathering and withholding of information is necessary to sustain that position.

As information becomes freely available and the general population gets smarter, this foundation is getting eroded and the command and control style of leadership is fast becoming bankrupt.

So what’s leadership in this new era?  What does it take to be a successful, extraordinary leader today?

If it is not about dominating, manipulating, withholding information, controlling, having all the answers – then what?

For centuries there have been real examples of the kind of leadership that’s being demanded in today’s world.  There have been many ‘prophets’ of leadership and in fact there has been volumes written about these people and yet their version of leadership has not been the one most commonly emulated.  They were before their time, their time is now.

Being a Leader, Not Doing Leadership

Have you ever known someone who is a leader in terms of their position, like CEO/Scout Leader/Manager, but who doesn’t BE a leader?  What is it that is missing?

Let’s look at some of those ‘prophets’.  People like Jesus Christ/Buddha/Mary McKillop, or Haile Selassie/Nelson Mandela/Golda Meir/Ben Disraeli.    What are the ways of being we can observe in these people?

Are they deeply connected to their followers?

Are they serving others?

Are they open, inclusive and collaborative?

Are they willing to speak the truth without being righteous about it?

Are they generous with themselves?

Are they compassionate?

Are they tough when toughness is required?

Are they aware of and responsible for their flaws?

Do they stay with what they are passionate about, even in the face of adversity?

Are they focused on ME or WE?

Do they take responsibility for their failures or blame others?

Are they authentic?

Authentic Leadership

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”   Victor Frankl (1905 – 1997)

Leadership is a privilege, not a right or a position.  You must earn the right to lead and never lose sight of the gift you have been given by others to do so.

In today’s highly connected and informed world there is no longer any space for a leader, or someone aspiring to be one, to avoid dealing with the tough questions like:

Who am I?

What are my motives as a leader?

What are my shortcomings?

What are my aspirations?

Being a successful, extraordinary leader today demands an authenticity, firstly with oneself and then with others.  It is about evolving as a human being, never resting on ‘I’ve made it’, continually pushing oneself beyond limitations in the areas of knowledge, expertise and relationships with others.

Leadership is not the exclusive domain of those in leadership positions.  The world today needs lots of leadership.  It is a way of being that’s as accessible to the homemaker as it is to a corporate CEO.

There is great value in having a coach. Anyone who is committed to performing beyond their current level knows that they need someone to help them get there. They seek out a coach or, in some cases, a replacement coach if their existing coach has taken them as far as they can go.

However, exponential and extraordinary value for an individual and the business gets created when leadership teams are coached together.

If, as a result of coaching, an individual identifies unproductive behaviours and actions but goes back into a team where those behaviours and actions are endemic, then the value of the personal coaching will be lost rapidly.

Organisations expect great things from their executive and management teams. The stakes are high. Performance is regularly and rigorously scrutinised, and the best executives and managers thrive in that environment.

For many, however, the environment can lead to behaviours such as self concern, attachment to personal agenda, ‘silo’ mentality, isolation, staying within their comfort zones, being protective of their ‘turf’ etc.

When these kinds of dynamics are at play, teamwork, creativity, collaboration and even financial performance can be severely weakened.

It is easy to look at the problem like it's the fault of one or two individuals.

In fact, it is a team problem.

In a team, there will always be times when difficult emotional or interpersonal discussions are required.

A team that does not know how to deal with these conversations is going to find themselves wanting to avoid or suppress them – which will result in no, or slow, forward movement and the persistence of an unproductive team dynamic.

A team that has the ability to tackle the ‘tough’ conversations and have them turn out will outperform other teams every time.

I recently attended a conference on leadership and heard Rob Murray, CEO of Lion, speak about their cultural journey. What I found inspiring about Rob’s presentation was both what he talked about and who he was being - authentic, committed, inspired by creating a high performing culture and clear about the difference it makes to business outcomes.

As Rob shared about the work they have done, and continue to do, with the development of leadership in their business it was very clear that he was talking as ‘we’, not as ‘I’. There was 100% congruency between who he was and what he was talking about. He also had a grounded, balanced understanding of the relationship between developing leaders who can create an engaged culture and bottom line business results, and a full appreciation of the ongoing nature of that journey.

For a lot of the last 20 years talking to businesses I encountered many leaders who were unable to see the relationship between leadership/cultural development and high performing businesses - or who got the connection at a very superficial level. Yet the data and evidence for that is overwhelming and has been around for years.

For a recent event with 50 leaders we put together some of that data from recent studies done in Australia, to newspaper and HBR articles. We did that in order to provide evidence to the group that working on the so-called ‘soft skills’ produces real results, thinking that may not be obvious to all the attendees. Interestingly, everyone got it and they didn’t need the data to get it.

I know this is ‘mother-in-law’ research, but it seems to me that in the past few years a corner has started to be turned in Australian businesses. It could be partly due to the shift in connectedness as a result of things like Twitter and Facebook – both of which give an immediacy of feedback never before seen, or maybe the facts are starting to sink in.

Businesses are getting that if they want to be successful, they have to engage with their people and that engagement has to be done by leaders who are real and available. Its not about having a set of values or an ‘open door policy’, its about listening, being truly interested, able to connect and ‘walking the talk’.

It’s a thrilling time to be around. There is an openness and a willingness in more and more of Australia’s largest businesses to developing and truly valuing what makes business work – people and their relationship with their peers, their managers, their leaders and their customers.

One of the most exciting things about what is happening now is that we are witnessing an era where business is moving from being only about profits to being institutions where individuals get to grow and expand and become better friends, partners, family members and citizens.

There is an overwhelming amount of conversations and data available that validates the direct link between leadership based in integrity and accountability driving a high performance engaged culture that in turn produces unrivalled results.

The September 28 HR Daily blog about Dr Travis Kemp’s research into the subject is extremely powerful and definitely worth a read.

An authentic leader is someone who empowers rather than dominates, and they also know that at times their job requires the right amount of demand on others for them to be effective.

The difference is that the demand isn’t coming from a narrow self-interest – like the leader’s concern for how they look to the Board or the Shareholders.  It stems from a desire to truly empower others. It’s authentically coming from a concern for the team winning, and the individuals in that team excelling and experiencing success.

A core aspect of empowering someone is relating to them as capable of more than they themselves see they are capable of - and demanding that level of performance from them. 

Indicators of relating to someone as less capable are:

•  Avoiding asking them to take something on because you think "they already have enough on their            plate", "they didn't do this well last time I asked them to", "I don't think they're ready for this", etc.;

•  Taking back inferior work and deciding ‘I’ll just do it myself’;

•  Accepting "I ran out of time", "I didn’t get the support I needed from …" - or any other excuses for             someone not getting their job done.

When we talk to people about who has made the greatest impact on them in their careers, it is never the nice guy. It is always the person who demanded more of them, who was fair and compassionate but unrelenting in their commitment to having them be as great as they can be. The people we've talked to report that it was not their experience that the leader didn’t have any interest in them, quite the opposite, they didn’t back down - they didn’t give up on them.

Being demanding will be extremely uncomfortable for someone whose comfort zone is being ‘nice’. You aren’t being nice because you were born that way, babies aren’t ‘nice’, they’re babies. You’ve developed that way of dealing with things to avoid experiencing certain negative feelings and emotions.

You’re avoidance of having uncomfortable conversations with people has nothing to do with helping people out (because it doesn’t), or making people feel better (because in the end that doesn’t happen either), it’s only about you being comfortable. 

Being an Authentic Leader takes confronting what makes you uncomfortable and breaking through.  It takes taking on whatever you need to take on with yourself to be as great as you can be.  

Firstly, what is employee engagement?

Well, the Wikipedia definition is: “Employee engagement, also called work engagement or worker engagement, is a business management concept. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests.”

An enormous amount of writing and research has gone into employee engagement over the past 5 or so years, and most of it will reinforce the fact that as a business improvement tool, it is one of the best. Any company that does not have its attention on engaging its employees is unlikely to be around in the future.

What’s rare though, is fully understanding what has people remain neutral or actively disengaged at work. The engagement tools that have been developed to date are, in the main, comparable to the stone tools invented by cavemen thousands of years ago. They do the job, but the full potential of what’s possible is nowhere near realised.

Coming up with new and quirky programmes and activities to keep employees engaged may keep Human Resource Managers employed, but they won’t leave a business with the capacity to create deep and sustainable engagement with their employees.

The source of employee engagement is relationship, and the success of any relationship is commensurate with the state or basis of that relationship. If a company attempts to get their employees engaged from a basis of ‘use’, as in “what do I have to do to these people to get them to be more useful to the company”, the job is over before it has started. With that view as the basis of any relationship, the relationship is weak. Strong relationships are based on mutual exchange, each providing what the other sees as valuable.

We are in relationship with everything. Most of us talk about relationships only in terms of other people, however we have relationships with inanimate objects are well – including the companies we work for. Yet people’s relationship with a company is in fact made up of their experience with the people who manage and run that company. The touch points of that experience can be direct conversations with their manager, but can also be the systems and processes they are required to use, the rumours and gossip about leaders that they listen to, the press the company receives in the world, the corporate messages that are circulated etc.

Many companies make the mistake of assuming that what their employees value most is money. That may have been the case with ‘builders’ and ‘baby boomers’ who saw work as a means to an end. But it doesn’t hold up today. What the X, Y and Z generation value is different.

Perhaps the most important question a company can ask today to begin the process of true engagement is – ‘what is it that my employees value and how can we provide it?’.

The term ‘comfort zone’ is something that most people are familiar with. Yet on the Webster’s Online dictionary the only definition you get is: “The temperature range (between 28 and 30 degrees Centigrade) at which the naked human body is able to maintain a heat balance without shivering or sweating.”

I kind of like that definition because it conjures up what people experience when they get jolted outside their comfort zone in the terms described by Wikipedia: “The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk (White 2009).”

In other words, when we get pushed outside of our comfort zone we experience being vulnerable (naked) and very likely we have associated physical reactions to that state such as increased heart rate, sweaty palms, reddening face, feeling sick in the stomach, tight in the chest etc. and then we do stuff to deal with that experience – we might make a joke, or blame someone else, or withdraw, or pretend we know something, or justify ourselves.

The funny thing about comfort zones is that whilst it is generally accepted that we all operate within them, if I asked you to describe what yours is you would probably have a hard time doing that with any kind of accuracy. The truth is that the only way we know we operate inside of a comfort zone is through the experience we have when we are outside of it, when we are uncomfortable. The experience of being uncomfortable indicates we are outside of our standard ‘behavioural, ‘anxiety-neutral’ condition, and for most of us that is a rare occurrence.

Not knowing what constitutes and defines your Comfort Zone can be a handicap in the game of being a better manager or leader. It means you have a blind spot and until you have identified what it is that is dictating your behaviours and actions you cannot effectively interrupt them to adjust and impact your effectiveness and performance.

Here’s 3 things you can do in the space of 30 minutes that will help you to define your Comfort Zone:

Reflect on and write down in what situations, including which conversations, do you feel uncomfortable?

In each of those situations, what do you experience physically?

In each of those situations, what do you do to get yourself back to feeling comfortable again?