Strategy. Innovation. Brand.

leadership

Developing Leaders Through Broccoli

Leadership potential

Leadership potential

When I worked for Lawson in Sweden, we ran a leadership development program called the Greenhouse (or Växthuset in Swedish). Students participated in yearlong projects that stretched their skills and got them out of their comfort zones. They swapped roles, did stints in different departments, and spent a lot of time with customers, including some disgruntled ones.

The students were overwhelming positive about the program. But I always wondered if it was effective. After all, it’s not so hard to get good evaluations from students.

Did we really develop better leaders? Or did we just select natural leaders and show them a good time for a year? And, if they were better leaders, what were they better at? Were they better, for instance, at acquiring and integrating other companies (which was part of our strategy)? Or did they improve their ability to promote innovation? Or did they improve their ability to implement financial controls during economic turbulence? Or what?

Could they really be better at all these things? Which ones were most important? I thought about all this as I read a recent McKinsey report, titled “Why Leadership Development Programs Fail”. According to McKinsey, they fail for four reasons. Let’s look at each.

1) Overlooking context – McKinsey calls it context but I call it strategy. Many leadership programs are decoupled from company strategies. McKinsey notes, for instance, that programs often “…rest on the assumption that one size fits all…” and consist of “…a long list of leadership standards…” and “…corporate values statements.”

McKinsey suggests that managers ask a simple question, “What, precisely, is this program for?” For instance, one of Lawson’s strategies was to target specific verticals (and ignore others). So the Greenhouse curriculum helped students understand how to identify and develop verticals. On the other hand, we probably didn’t give enough emphasis to acquisitions, another part of our strategy.

The key is to ask what skills are needed to execute the strategy successfully. There may be only two or three. Make sure the students work specifically on those behaviors.

2) Decoupling reflection from real work – retreats are nice but they don’t change behaviors. Indeed, McKinsey estimates that adults retain only 10% of what they learn in lectures. Instead of lectures, focus on workshops, collaborative projects, and exercises that require students to learn by doing.

We created fictional exercises for the Greenhouse. The students, for instance, had to “sell” a major contract to a “customer” who was using a competitor’s software. That’s not bad but, of course, real projects are better.

3) Underestimating mind-sets – to become good leaders, students will often need to learn new skills and change their behavior. Yet, changing behavior is one of the most difficult teaching objectives imaginable.

Let’s say, for instance, that your strategy is to decentralize authority and push decision-making outward and downward. Your leadership program should reflect this. But, if the student’s mind-set is I have to be in control at all times, you’ll need to change the mind-set before you can change the behavior.

How do you change mind-sets? Remember the broccoli tip. If you can convince a kid to eat broccoli, you can convince a manager to delegate effectively.

4) Failing to measure results – leadership development programs are often exciting (and even fun) and so they get high marks from the participants. But that’s not the point. More importantly, what happens to the participants after they leave the program? Do they rise in the ranks? Do they depart for other companies?

You’ll still have the selection versus value-added conundrum. Did the program actually add value or did you simply select natural leaders to include in the program? The only way to sort his out is to put a few randomly selected in the mix and see how they fare.

I have a lot of faith in leadership development programs. The bottom line: tailor the program to your strategy. If you don’t have a strategy, work on that first.

Seven Leadership Styles

Alchemist

Alchemist

I’ve often thought of leadership as the ability to motivate people to work together toward a common goal. My definition is not far from Dwight Eisenhower’s quote: “Leadership is getting people to do something because they want to do it.”

Of course, there are different tactics to use in different situations. I study rhetoric – the art and science of persuasion – because I find it very helpful in convincing people that they want to do something. I also like to lay out goals and make them clear as possible. I’m not much of a yeller but I can understand (intellectually at least) how yelling might be a good leadership tactic in some situations – like an emergency.

I hadn’t thought much beyond that, so it was good to rediscover a 2005 Harvard Business Review article titled “Seven Transformations of Leadership”.  The authors, David Rooke and William Torbert, identify seven “action logics” that can help us understand what kind of leader we already are.

I’ll summarize the seven here – using Rooke and Torbert’s terminology – partially because I think they’re important but also because I want to refer back to them in future posts.

Opportunists – “characterized by mistrust, egocentrism, and manipulativeness”, their goal is to win in any way possible. Only 5% of leaders are deemed to be opportunists (thankfully).

Diplomats – “seeks to please higher-level colleagues while avoiding conflict.” They rarely rock the boat and comprise about 12% of leaders.

Experts – “try to exercise control by perfecting their knowledge … watertight thinking is extremely important.” Experts comprise the largest single group of leaders, about 38%.

Achievers —  “create a positive work environment and focus … on deliverables, the downside is that their style often inhibits thinking outside the box.” About 30% of leaders are achievers.

Individualists – often seen as “wild cards” with “unique and unconventional ways of operating”.  Yet they also “contribute unique practical value” and “communicate well with people who have other action logics.” They make up about 10% of leaders.

Strategists – “focus on organizational constraints and perceptions, which they treat as discussable and transformable.” They are “highly effective change agents” but account for only 4% of leaders.

Alchemists – are able to “renew or reinvent themselves in historically significant ways.” They have “an extraordinary capacity to deal simultaneously with many situations at multiple levels.”  Rooke and Torbert identify Nelson Mandela as an exemplar of the alchemist, which may help explain why only 1% of leaders fit the category.

Leadership and Motivation

Napoleon once said, “When I realized that men were willing to die for bits of colored ribbon, I knew I could rule the world.” It’s a wholly cynical sentiment but Napoleon was famous for creating and distributing military awards, citations, ribbons, medals, and orders. And for many years, it worked — his troops were highly motivated.

Several hundred years after Napoleon, Tony Blair said something quite similar (though I can’t find the exact quote). A journalist noted

Over to you, Tony.

that Blair was quite the egalitarian and asked if he might not abolish the English system of knighthoods and lordships. Blair responded (more or less), “You must be joking. The system is the most productive, least costly innovation engine in the world. It’s amazing how hard people will work for a tap on the shoulder from the Queen.”

Surprised that the English and the French might agree on something? Perhaps they’re on to something. The moral of the story is that praise and recognition can motivate people even more than money can. I’m surprised that we don’t use it more. I’ve seen far too many managers who are slow to recognize achievements and grudging with their compliments. I’m surprised because, as Tony Blair notes, praise is an inexpensive and productive way to motivate people.

Here’s an experiment. Ask a married couple what percentage of the house work each one does. Ask them separately so one doesn’t hear the other’s answer. Add the two percentages together. Almost certainly, the sum will be greater than 100%. Why? Because each member of the couple has a very good subjective sense of how hard they work. On the other hand, they don’t have that same sense for the other member of the couple. Each one knows how hard they work. It’s quite common that each one feels they deserve more recognition.

Similarly, after a complex project is concluded, ask each member of the team, “What percentage of the value did you personally deliver?” (Again, ask them separately). If the project team has six or more members, when you sum the responses the answer will very likely be greater than 200%. Each person has an inflated sense of how much they contributed.

As a manager, what should you do? The simple answer is to give more praise than you think is absolutely necessary. In fact, give about twice as much as you would normally do. After all, the French and English can’t both be wrong.

Leadership, Stress, and Communication

Even in the best of times, it’s hard to communicate effectively within an organization. There’s a lot of “noise” and your message can easily get drowned out. If your organization is like most, there are a lot of distractions. So, instead of listening to your presentation backed up by 100 Power Point slides, your employees may actually be daydreaming about lunch. Never assume that you can deliver your message once and everyone will just “get” it. As every marketer knows, repetition is required.

But what if it’s not the best of times? What if your organization is stressed out? Perhaps you’ve hit a rough patch. Perhaps your customers are upset. Perhaps a competitor is threatening to acquire you. If you’re a leader in such a situation, how do you communicate effectively? The short answer: you have to double down. Watch the video to learn more.

Wisdom and Leadership

I just re-read a terrific 1998 Harvard Business Review article by Daniel Goleman titled, “What Makes a Leader?” Goleman argues that, while experience and IQ are important, it’s emotional intelligence that makes the crucial difference.  Managers without emotional intelligence tend to maximize only their own performance. Managers with EI tend to maximize their performance and their followers’ performance.

What struck me about the article was that the five components of EI are very similar to the five components of wisdom that we discussed back in April.  Here’s how Goleman defines the components of EI:

  • Self-awareness — knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses and their impact on others.
  • Self-regulation – controlling or redirecting disruptive emotions
  • Motivation – being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement, a passion for work and challenges
  • Empathy – considering others’ feelings, especially when making decisions
  • Social skill – managing relationships to move people in desired directions, persuasiveness, expertise in building teams

And here’s what we said about wisdom:

  • Willingness to resolve conflicts;
  • Willingness to compromise;
  • Recognition of the limits of personal knowledge;
  • Awareness that a given problem may legitimately be seen from different perspectives;
  • Understanding that things may get worse before they get better.

There’s not a complete overlap but the two lists are very similar.  My conclusion: it takes a lot of wisdom to be a good leader.  Now, the question I’d really like to understand is, how do we teach wisdom?

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