Focal Leadership

Leadership

Leadership and making great decisions

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decisionsInability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure. John C. Maxwell

Analyzing critical qualities of leaders often invokes much debate. Decision-making is arguably near the very top of the list.

There are many things that characterize good decision-making; timing, justification, judgement, and outcomes, to name but a few. There are also many elements that lead to good decision-making; experience, collaboration, insight, and analysis. The many qualities that result in excellent decision-making appear to contain some intangibles, e.g. wisdom as well as knowledge, and intuition as well as understanding. But it is essential to consider this leadership trait as a learned quality as well as an innate one.

A case study highlighting the implications of decision-making

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011, a White House commission blamed oil giant BP and its partners for a series of cost-cutting decisions and an inadequate safety system. In November 2012, BP plead guilty to the U.S. government on 11 counts of manslaughter, two misdemeanors and a felony count of lying to Congress. In July 2015, BP agreed to pay $18.7 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history. The neglect and poor decisions that led to the eventual spill may have been prevented if the company hadn’t ignored the warning signs that something was going wrong on the rig and had evaluated critical data better.

This example shows how leadership decision-making is critical, not just at executive levels. It also illustrates that the consequences of decision-making are rarely limited to the immediate timeline and persons. The environmental, personal, and financial fall-out to this disaster were far-reaching.

Developing decision-making skills

Developing leaders to become better-decision makers is a major challenge. Some of the ways that this can be achieved are:
• Secondment – experience in diverse organizational roles, e.g. international assignments. This broadens the exposure of leaders to other environments thus expanding knowledge and understanding, leading to more informed decision-making
• Mentoring – access to a more senior leader who can guide, advise, and recommend a leader in decision-making
• Shadowing – working alongside another leader in an unfamiliar role which adds learning and understanding to facilitate more informed decision-making
• Case studies – practicing decision-making using a classroom scenario and receiving feedback from experts on the quality of decision-making
• Projects – Tackling a specific assignment that requires collaboration and action to develop decision-making behaviors
• Learning – Expanding the cognitive and emotional intelligence of leaders through formal and informal learning to provoke more informed decision-making
• Methodologies – Establishing formal methodologies such as project management, change management, and strategic planning can all lead to better, more collaborative decision-making

Leadership development initiatives need to incorporate elements of the above to be effective. It is important to evaluate any investment in developing leaders as a bottom-line impact arising from better decision-making. A McKinsey report of January 2014 titled Why Leadership Development Programs Fail, highlights the need for context, real work, considering mindsets, and measuring results, as the best environment for building such initiatives.

Helpful development tools

Apart from the “activity-based” initiatives above, it can also be helpful to consider techniques in developing better decision-making. Chip & Dan Heath provide a helpful pneumonic in their book Decisive – How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (2013) …… WRAP.

• Widen Your Options – You encounter a choice. Narrow framing can make you miss options (unduly limiting the options considered)
• Reality-test Your Assumptions – You analyze your options. Confirmation bias can lead you to gather self-serving info (information that bolsters beliefs)
• Attain Distance Before Deciding – You make a choice. Short-term emotion can often tempt you to make the wrong one (being swayed by emotions that will fade)
• Prepare To Be Wrong – Live with it. You’ll often be over-confident about how the future will unfold (too much faith in our predictions)

Using a framework such as this to test decision-making can be a helpful exercise, especially as an objective balance to the instinctive or traditional ways decisions are made.

Benjamin Franklin had a model for decision-making which he called “Moral Algebra”:
• “Divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns, writing over the one Pro and over the other Con. Over the next three or four days, add factors to the two columns as they occur to you. Estimate the respective weights of each factor and where two, one on each side, appear equal – strike them both out. If a Pro equals two Cons, strike all three out – follow this pattern based on respective weights on either side. Find where the balance lies, and if nothing of further importance arises over the next day or two, come to a determination accordingly.”

Whilst Chip & Dan Heath’s model might appear broader in design, any model that enhances the quality of decision-making is helpful.

A leader’s ability to make empathetic, collaborative, and strategic decisions which positively impact their employees, organization, and all stakeholders, is one of the most critical qualities of great leadership. Investment in building this ability is time and money well spent!

Why character always matters in leadership

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characterCharacter is a much-debated aspect of leadership. There are many who consider exemplary character to be important for good leadership. There are also many who don’t care, as long as a leader is delivering results.

Let us consider the trajectory of each argument:

• Important: Leadership with an integral moral code based on integrity, honesty and transparency will develop a culture that reflects this. In fact, the whole argument concerning the importance of character is about outcomes. Leadership with these character traits requires followers to consider values, standards, and behavior as significant in the way results are achieved.

• Not important: Leadership that considers a good and upright character as optional, will encourage followers who regard the end as always justifying the means. Values, morals, or methods do not matter. By definition, this type of leadership will develop an “anything goes” type of culture.

An interesting case study is the recent scandal consuming the Australian cricket team. Leaders decided that cheating is ok in the pursuit of success. A culture of spitefulness, abuse, and aggression develops in that sort of environment, or maybe this culture spawned cheating as an acceptable strategy. Not that all other national teams are paragons of virtue – far from it! Has the need to win at all costs resulted in the death of good sporting behavior? Thankfully there are still leaders in the sporting world who maintain a virtuous character.

Politics is a murky world that I’d rather not delve into too much. But leaders who lie, deceive, and besmirch, rather than show a passion for truth, integrity, and praise, do not endear themselves to many. Maybe that’s why voting often seems to be either, (a) the lesser of evils, or (b) policy regardless of leader.

In the business world, the character of leaders has the potential to impact many. Not only members of the leadership team, but all employees, customers, and suppliers. Leaders of good character will encourage a good culture. These leaders develop a way of working and relating that has a moral foundation. Those who interact with these leaders get to know and understand their basis of operating. Recruitment of new employees requires a standard based on good character, not just competence.

Character isn’t just a moral consideration. Character is also defined by how people serve, speak, and show-up. Character can be described as personality, pedigree, or practice. It is the “whole person”, not just what a leader does or achieves. Character is rarely aligned with charisma but is often associated with caliber.

There are many examples of leadership character being excused when results are good. It takes a lot of courage to challenge character even when results are outstanding. Thankfully, there are also examples of organizations where character is paramount in the way results are achieved.

Bringing the spotlight onto character cannot simply be achieved by adopting a competency model or defining a set of organizational values. Although both are excellent. When leaders of character are promoted, honored, and rewarded, organizations and everyone connected with them benefit. Keeping the focus on character will ensure high caliber leaders in the 21st century.

Does mentoring work?

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mentoring“Companies with formal, longstanding mentoring programs claim tangible increases in productivity and efficiency”, states David Clutterbuck in his book Everyone Needs A Mentor. Clutterbuck’s definition of mentoring stem from the origins of a “master / apprentice” relationship where more experienced individuals pass their knowledge and wisdom to learners.

When evaluating Clutterbuck’s claim, there are many questions that arise. For example, “how formal and longstanding does a mentoring program need to be to deliver results?”. Or, “how can a company make direct correlation between tangible increases in productivity and efficiency, and a mentoring program?” These might seem to be somewhat cynical challenges, but they lie at the heart of a legitimate evaluation of such mentoring programs. This evaluation is necessary to test any parochial opinions that mentoring is good, bad, or indifferent.

A case study

A telecommunications company introduced a mentoring program for its first line managers in the early 2000’s, with mixed success. After the program had been running for a while, participants were surveyed for their assessment of how it was going. The major areas of feedback were:

  •  Introduce mentoring schemes with clear guidance, training, and support
  •  If the organizational context is unstable, be very critical as to whether mentoring is the right development discipline to maintain at that time
  •  Provide structure around the matching of mentors and mentees
  •  Encourage regular evaluation of mentoring relationships – if they aren’t working or producing the anticipated results, seek support to fix the relationship or move on to something different

What is interesting about this case study, is that the organization had gone through a time of intense change, numerous acquisitions, and strategic realignment. The organization was trying to establish a progressive culture and build a pipeline of leaders who would secure future growth and maturity of the organization. Fons Trompenaars says in his book Riding the Waves of Culture that, “understanding our own culture and our own assumptions and expectations about how people ‘should’ think and act is the basis for success”. His assessment suggests that developing the culture of an organization is directly linked to its success. Mentoring employees in assumptions and expectations as a means of facilitating this is one of many legitimate initiatives.

Mentoring impact

So, it can be argued that mentoring is a key element in developing organization culture, a strong leadership bench, and a continuity of expectations. Indeed, without existing leaders adopting a mentoring approach, the growth of the leadership pipeline could be stunted. There is often a valid discussion about the difference between coaching and mentoring, but both these leadership approaches involve interventions that develop someone who is benefiting from the relationship.

Ralph Stacey, in his book Strategic Management & Organizational Dynamics considers “ordinary management”, the same process as single-loop learning, as leading to more efficient performance of current primary tasks. “Extraordinary management”, the same process as complex double-loop learning, is where people change their shared mental models that drive ordinary management. With “extraordinary” management, leaders need to develop skills of using feedback to develop new paradigms, encourage self-organizing networks, build value propositions, and break free of existing boundaries to innovate and transform the business. It is in these areas that mentoring adds value as a powerful development tool in the hands of leaders.

A good mentoring program

In Everyone Needs A Mentor David Clutterbuck is very clear in stating that participants knowing what they want out of mentoring is critical to getting what they want. This lies at the core of establishing mentoring relationships that will add value. Selecting or choosing good mentors is also critical in extracting value from the relationship. Clutterbuck suggests 10 mentor competencies:

Self-awareness (understanding self), Communicating, Sense of proportion / humor, Interest in developing others, Goal clarity, Behavioral awareness (understanding others), Conceptualizing, Business / professional savvy, Committed to own learning, Relationship management.

This list of mentor competencies is helpful in two ways: first in choosing suitable mentors, and second in evaluating self-suitability to be a mentor. Organizations need to be cognizant of these elements when designing a mentoring program.

While there is are opinions that leaders and organizations grow organically, without an overlay of formal processes, there are many examples that support the notion of structured, targeted, and intentional interventions having a major impact in the pace and trajectory of growth and development. This is also the case for mentoring. Informal and self-directed mentoring relationships are very creditable, and undoubtedly add value. But structured mentoring programs have a very valid place in an overall talent development strategy, especially if they are integrated into enterprise programs as a targeted development intervention to grow leaders aligned to the organization’s culture and expectations.

Resources:

David Clutterbuck, Everyone Needs A Mentor – Fostering Talent At Work Third Edition, (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2001)

Fons Trompenaars, Riding the Waves of Culture – Understanding cultural diversity in business, (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1993)

Ralph Stacey, Strategic Management & Organizational Dynamics Second Edition, (Financial Times Pitman Publishing, 1996)

Building diversity into cultures

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diversityThere are many examples of well-defined organizational cultures that bring significant clarity to brands, values, and behavioral expectations. There are also examples of organizations where the culture has been defined extremely well, but where this has in fact led to stagnation and homogeneity rather than rich diversity.

Edgar Schein points out in his book Organizational Culture and Leadership that, “culture is deep, wide and complex. Leaders should avoid the temptation to stereotype organizational phenomena in terms of one or two salient dimensions, and they should be sensitive to the power they have to influence the groups with which they work.”

This specific case study illustrates this:
A successful financial services company was facing the challenge of diversifying its products to remain competitive. The company was over 100 years old and had a deeply embedded culture of financial rigor (thankfully!), pragmatic decision-making, and pride in robust legacy products. The challenge of innovating and diversifying did not come easily to the senior leadership team. A comprehensive profiling of this senior team revealed some of the reasons why. For example, using the Myers Briggs profiling framework, everyone was an ST. For those unfamiliar with this vernacular, everyone was focused on solid facts and data, thoroughly analyzed in consistent and logical ways. Not a bad thing for a financial services company one might think! But there was very little customer understanding, creativity, interest in trends, or inspiration. The leadership group had become so consistent in their narrow cultural and behavioral alignment, that they had squeezed out diversity and innovation.

Bob Garratt, in his book The Cultural Contexts, cites Argenti when he suggests the main reasons for corporate collapse are, “too many people of the same sex, age, education, and nationality at the top, with too little authentic information about the changing environment, and few managerial information systems.” Given that this insight is now over 40 years old, shouldn’t lessons have been learned?

Organizations who narrow their focus on cultural imperatives should also be mindful that cultural diversity can expand and not threaten the success of their business. Defining a differentiating culture does not mean that diversity is jettisoned. Culture is often about behavioral norms and not the rich tapestry of a diverse workforce. A well-known insurance company conducts an employee engagement survey every year. Comments such as, “run by old white men”, should cause the company to consider deeply the demographics of the senior leadership team and the implications for its culture.

The challenge of creating inclusive cultures that are also distinctive, can also be seen in organizations such as churches. A large suburban church defined by its all white and all male senior leadership team, faces a challenge of diversity. Organizations such as this can develop over many years with leaders who tend to see things in a similar way. Just by hiring a senior leader who may have a different background, doesn’t necessarily change the culture. In fact, changes arising from an external hire can be very unauthentic if not integrated in a very careful way. It is important to grow an organization authentically, develop leaders from a diverse spectrum, and foster a risk-comfortable environment of constantly growing a culture dynamically.

Cultures that embrace diversity are more likely to lead to long-term success and fulfilment than those that hold onto a narrow set of cultural principles.

Disruptive leadership of the interim kind

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disruptiveMarshall Goldsmith famously authored a book titled, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and disruptive leadership is a worthy application of this sentiment. The need to bring disruption to the supply, application, and performance of leadership has never been greater. Organizations need to consider who is leading, what they are leading, and how they are leading. Along with these considerations, they need to look at options for engaging the best leaders.

Why is it that many organizations still only rely on permanent leaders or consulting firms to lead major transformations? Permanent leaders are known resources, and they know the organization well – so it makes sense for them to lead. But, as John Kotter discusses in his book Accelerate, maybe a dual operating system with hierarchies and networks should be considered when considering leadership of organizational change. This is a proposed remedy to leading change and business as usual in parallel and tackling the limited supply of good change leaders. Consulting firms certainly have talented resources to help organizations through change. They also have overheads, proprietary methodologies, and scale, which may or may not be advantageous to the client. Serious consideration of interim leaders is way over due in the USA.

If the term “interim leader” is used in a conversation with many recruiters these days, it is rarely understood. It is either interpreted as a temporary job filled with a holding resource until someone good enough can be found for a permanent role. Or it is interpreted as a mere contract job or a short-term consultancy position.

Interim leaders are serious players in facilitating and leading organizational change. Hiring an interim leader is like engaging Nick Foles as a quarter back to lead the Philadelphia Eagles on a Super Bowl quest when your franchise quarter back is sidelined for the rest of the season through injury. And we know how that one turned out …! An interim leader has proven leadership skills, outstanding technical and strategic capability, a tested personality, and a focused mindset.

It’s time for recruiters to consider the option of an interim leader way more seriously. They need to get educated on what an interim leader is so that they can lead the discussion about what’s best for the organization. Recruiters need to become familiar with interim leader skillsets and capabilities. Maybe reading a few case studies of what interim leaders can deliver would be a good start. They certainly need to know how to source interim leaders.

Disrupting the way that organizational change leadership is resourced is a game changer. Hiring an interim leader can liberate the permanent leadership, inspire the workforce, and accelerate strategic goals. Hiring an interim leader to provide strategic change leadership through a major transformation, or to deliver significant projects, is a contemporary way to get the best out of the best. In Kotter’s model of hierarchy plus network, the occasional interim leader is a major asset.

Focal Leadership is now offering a 1-day workshop for senior business, HR leaders, and recruiters. This workshop is based on the upcoming book, Rise of the Gig Leaders, which defines the business case for interim leadership. If you would like to know more, please use the contact form on the Focal Leadership website www.focalleadership.com.