Focal Leadership

Leadership

SMART leadership re-focused

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SMART leadership has been underpinned by the traditional definition of setting SMART goals (both for self, others, and the organization) …. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound. Or – defining work, how to deliver it, understanding resource requirements, aligning to strategy, and focusing on targets. Of course, leadership is a vast topic and there are many other ways of defining it, e.g. values, competencies, traits, etc. For the purposes to sticking with a familiar mnemonic, a re-focus of SMART is suggested for critical aspects of leadership.

Self-aware

Most research suggests that self-awareness is critical for great leadership. Being secure in knowing strengths and development areas requires considered reflection, insight, feedback, and an open mind. Leadership presence is more than charisma, it is displaying authentic, honest, and vulnerable traits which make a distinct impression. Knowing oneself and being know by others is the sweet spot for a leader who others will follow. Being self-aware enables a leader to be comfortable in their own skin, to be believable, and exemplifying integrity.

Motivated

A leader with energy, purpose, and focus, is personally motivated and motivating to others. Often leaders need to discover their own passion through personal journeys before they really come alive. For some, transitioning from college into a well-defined career is straightforward. For others, leading through repeated transitions is what fuels their motivation. Leaders are very different, but it is critical to find the field and direction that provides deep fulfilment and inspiration. A motivated leader builds enthusiasm and commitment in others, as well as having personal drive.

Agile

Everyone knows that change is constant. For leaders, developing learning agility is essential. This is defined as the ability and willingness to learn from experience and subsequently apply these lessons in new or first-time situations. Being agile in breadth and/or depth of applying learning is the mark of a leader who can roll with the punches of organizational reality. Leaders who learn from experience and use that learning to make better decisions and wiser judgments inspire followers. Another aspect of agility is to be able to flex leadership responses when faced with diverse situations. A leader needs to demonstrate self-awareness as well as a mature ability to practice different approaches in leadership style.

Resilient

Pressure to perform, lead others, and juggling a plethora of organizational challenges is the life of a leader. How to recharge, maintain composure, and build leadership muscle, are secrets that many seek. The need for leaders to maintain energy and stamina is important. A leader needs to learn how to lean on others, develop personal techniques for recharging, and demonstrate an ability to bounce back from setbacks. For each leader this learning will be different. Some are blessed with stamina and others thrive on short bursts of making an impact. Whatever the leadership style, resilience is needed to keep moving forwards and bring others along.

Teachable

Being curious, willing to learn, and constantly expanding horizons, are essential leadership traits. A recent quote from a senior leader eludes to this: “if you refer to events more than 5 years ago when asked about your career journey, you are not focused on continuous improvement.” A leader needs to build an appetite for learning, use time constructively, and engage with others in a network that stimulates learning. A leader can never stop exploring or seeking out others who can expand knowledge and experience – to do so would mean stagnation.

Being a SMART leader, according to the definition above, is not just desirable but essential to be a leader who others will delight to follow. For insight into a specific genre of SMART leaders, Rise of the Gig Leaders provides a detailed analysis of interim leadership. Please check-out the YouTube link as an introduction to the book https://youtu.be/iHMesdPFbro  

3 Dimensions of Savvy Leadership

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savvySavvy – shrewdness and practical knowledge; the ability to make good judgments

Defining great leadership is often less tangible than check marks against competency or value frameworks. The concept of savvy leaders is one that can be defined as simply, “leaders who get it”. Leaders who know how to navigate organizations, relationships, and cultures. Leaders whose decision making is sound and well-intentioned. Leaders who have a “je ne sais quoi” about them (a quality that cannot be easily described or defined).

 

Here are three dimensions of savvy leadership that make distinctive leaders:

Organizational
Organizations are complex and unique. They can be incredibly mature and have existed for more than 100 years, maybe metamorphosing on many occasions. Or they can be vibrant start-ups. Of course, there are variations in between.
Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow discuss the subtleties of organizations in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: “To identify adaptive challenges confronting an organization, look beyond what people are saying about them. Listen to the song beneath the words.”
Leaders who “listen to the song beneath the words” have a profound organizational savvy about them. These leaders detect the ebbs and flows of an organization. They understand the pulse, the rhythm, and the direction of an organization. In their leading they have a passion and belief in the organization – to grow or change it.

Relational
Relational savvy is critical in leadership. Navigating through relationships with skill, sensitivity and selectivity is a core leadership capability.
Emotional intelligence is the heartbeat of relational savvy. Knowing oneself profoundly, understanding others in a deep way, and having an intuitive antenna to read context, are all part of being emotionally intelligent. Often the best leader is one who draws from his or her maturity, insight, and foresight to ensure that relationships support the mission and goals at hand, rather than undermine or damage them.
Demonstrating a collaborative, engaging, and curious mindset is a great way to build a rapport that leads to trust. Trust is a commodity that lies at the root of relationship savvy. Inspiring, believing in, and empowering others are all ways to develop trust. There is also a very personal element to trust and relationship savvy – leaders who show vulnerability, personal interest, and intentional purpose have a solid foundation for strong and meaningful relationships.

Cultural
How does a leader “read” the culture of an organization? “How things get done around here”, is a useful definition of culture.
Edgar Schein describes culture in Organizational Culture and Leadership as operating at three levels: artefacts, espoused values, and the deepest level of basic assumptions. It is important to understand the impact of artefacts, values, and assumptions in the way an organization operates, relationships are built, and work gets done. Schein expands his definition of culture as, “a multidimensional, multifaceted phenomenon, not easily reduced to a few major dimensions.” Leaders who have cultural savvy are truly skillful, connected, and effective.
Reading, imbibing, and interpreting culture are essential for a leader to navigate the nuances of daily decision making and relationship management. Being in touch with organizational tapestry and patterns ensures intelligent and insightful leadership behavior.

Savvy leadership may not be easily assessed in scientific ways, but it is observable – hence the need for leadership assessment to be a continual process and not just an aberration of talent management.

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.

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.