I used to puzzle over an expression I haven’t heard in a while – “the exception proves the rule.” How can we say this, I always wondered, when an exception by definition would seem to defy the rule. Later I read that the old meaning of “prove” was “test” as in “proving grounds.” So an exception tests the rule. and certainly if you find the rule still applies, it adds to the proof that the rule makes sense.

One can write off any success to luck and it’s always a key factor, but Jobs clearly was successful several times and clearly followed rules of his own, whether they seemed understandable to us or not, so it’s unlikely to have been pure randomness. The core question remains – was that good leadership. and, if so what does that mean to my leadership theory or the many others that would seem to say his style is unlikely to succeed (and certainly wasn’t pleasant for employees)?

In the wake of Jobs passing I put off drawing conclusions because I felt I was missing something. In the interim I’ve read two Jobs biographies, a number of reviews and a good many articles because I think it is important to answer such puzzles. Ultimately I’ve come to conclusions.

My leadership theory says three relevant things. First, luck is always a factor, but you increase your chances of success if you (second) include five key elements in your leadership style – balancing positive with honest, and strategies with habit-building or implementation skills (those are the five in italics). And you improve your odds further if you either develop great strengths in all five areas (rare) or develop them in some areas and find partners to assist you in the areas where you lack strengths.

Jobs is a very, very extreme case of this, but it worked, albeit in a rather odd way he certainly never planned out. I conclude he wasn’t a great leader by himself nor by knowing how, just through sheer determination and somehow sensing the need for the five elements in strength and finding ways to supplement what he didn’t have.

What he did bring to the party was mostly a rather strange twist on emotional intelligence abilities – those being the positive/honest dimension in my model. His staff used to say he could create a ‘reality distortion field’ in any lengthy conversation or presentation. He was amazing at presenting his arguments in such a way that people walked away totally pumped, completely positive he would succeed, wanting to participate. They ‘drank the cool-aid’ as some would say, time after time – and so did analysts at conferences and trade shows. He even pushed Apple to design top notch presentation software as a key priority, many say, in order to use it to further this over-the-top skill of his.

One reason he was forced to this super-positivity was because he constantly went over the top on the other end of the EI or EQ spectrum. He aimed to be so brutally honest that it was extremely painful to work with him. He would rip people to shreds the second they failed to deliver to his image of what he expected, often highly unrealistic expectations. The latter is typical of great leaders who ‘get away with it’ – to push for results that seem to almost everyone else beyond the realm of what’s even possible – but it’s also typical of wild visionaries whose whacky dreams fail miserably. Jobs stumbled into a very extreme balance, but balance nonetheless, by accident I think.

On another key axis – IQ, the ability to generate workable ideas and implement them, I think Jobs was much less adept, but no less extreme, perhaps even weaker would not be too strong. The defining feature that made his initial fortune through the Mac for instance was the concept of the computer ‘mouse’ with its ability to point, click and activate menus, commands, highlights and more. He didn’t invent this, but saw it at the Xerox PARC labs and recognized – that was his skill in the strategy area – recognized that it had world-class appeal and function. It did, but he couldn’t build it or implement it himself, lacking all the skills needed to do so.

Through his belief that one truly good employee could deliver fifty times the actual implementation of a poor one, he triaged through computer geniuses, insulting and humiliating many in the interests of finding a few who would buy into his reality distortions and deliver fabulous technical machines in a fraction of the time everyone imagined was necessary. It seems certain he was never happy with the results or the speed, but settled for the best he could get by cracking his whip and driving toward the idea he’d spotted that would appeal to consumers.

His strength in the strategies (or ideas) area was to spot and in the implantation area was to drive others since he had absolutely no skills there himself except to see when something wasn’t yet good enough to appeal, wasn’t simple enough to be mass marketed to non-technical individuals. In that respect you have to say his inability to do any of the technical stuff himself was actually an asset – he would simply keep pushing until something worked simply enough even for him.

So in a very odd way, Jobs does in fact fit my theory of leadership, albeit in a way I never imagined and would never recommend. He found a peculiar balance of the key elements, requiring that to balance them he had to be beyond optimistic on the other to balance brutal on the other and capable of identifying the one core idea that was better than every other on one end and driving the associates he could bamboozle into joining to produce it ever more simply, quickly and cheaply on the other.

But it didn’t always work. In several tries – with his Lisa computer, NEXT and in film animation he nearly bankrupted himself or the company because a reliable overall balance never really there. Nevertheless he believed in his own distortion field to the point of nearly losing his house investing in a new idea before it caught on barely in time and took off.

I’m far more interested in tamer applications of my model, ones that anyone can learn and succeed with, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this exception does ‘prove the rule.’ It also could have been disastrous had luck not clicked at the moments it did for Jobs because there was absolutely NO balance in the third dimension – how fast you go. As with riding a bicycle (an example of balancing several skills that I often liken to leadership), if you don’t go fast enough or if you go too fast the balance is in danger of being lost. Jobs risked going far too fast for safety, but that was simply another of his personality quirks and unlike many, many other entrepreneurs he got away with it big time. At the end of the day, it appears he was driven somewhat like Alexander the Great, by believing he might die young and so had to achieve greatness in the short time he had. and, like Alexander, the prophecy seemed to come true unfortunately, just when Jobs had matured more toward the point of planning the balance instead of crashing into it and nearly wrecking everyone along his way. We can thank his indomitable impetuousness for speeding us along the digital path, but we should be glad we weren’t part of the painful process.

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Entrepreneurs, they say, are ‘lone wolf’ visionaries who make grand, risky promises they often can’t keep, thus letting people down as many or more times than they hit it big. Leaders, on the other hand (effective ones at least) work through and as part of teams. The good ones are ‘humble’ as Jim Collins observed because they recognize everyone contributes and they are just one among many. Although they may be ‘lead dog,’ a dog is still one of the dogs.

From this succinct description, you can draw a number of observations. Who wants to be a dog if you can be a wolf? Just in that seemingly silly comparison alone is captured a key reason why we revere the knight on the white horse CEO who is expected to ride in and fix everything – knights, like wolves, are seen as lone operators. Isn’t it odd how we create these metaphors, ignoring that wolves typically hunt in packs? No matter, it’s that image of greater aggressiveness and ‘doing exactly what you want without limitations of cooperating with others’ that we focus on. In reality knights needed elaborate teams to make them successful, dress them and get them on their horses, too, yet we bypass that in our thinking.

The only thing I disagreed with in this article is the characterization of Steve Jobs as one of the rare people who could meld both entrepreneurship and leadership successfully. Without beating this too hard, if you read some of the biographical material about Jobs, you soon see a pretty pure entrepreneur. Ultimately he returned to Apple, the company he founded, where he had to be fired previously due to his lack of cooperation, let alone effective leadership. Was he a better leader on his return or had he simply learned finally to let others handle such ‘details’ while he continued to drive the entrepreneurial promises of tinier, consumer-friendly machines to be delivered on deadlines no one else thought possible? Being first in the market is definitely an entrepreneur’s

dream and promise they may not be able to keep, not necessarily a leadership vision. Luckily Jobs later tenure at Apple was heading an already seasoned team.

So should we be duped by Jobs spectacular success into honoring entrepreneurship over leadership? Or does it have to be one or the other?

In my own career I once led a startup where we attempted to build a leadership team to support and further the entrepreneurial vision and style of one individual who had a gift for deal-making. It would have worked well even after we discovered he’d lied to us about the profitability of many new, large clients we were setting up with. Within a year or so of learning the truth we could have made them profitable, but in his drive to be the lone wolf, mister entrepreneur kept reporting to the CEO above us that our operation would lose money because ‘those guys in the lead’ had allowed non-profitable clients to be taken on. Get the picture? It didn’t matter we were his colleagues and, so he kept assuring us, friends. He was willing to shaft us so he could be seen as the honest one when the CEO asked him how things were going. It didn’t matter we took on those clients because of his wild lies to us about big profits, nor could he trust that we’d catch up and fix things so they worked. Ultimately we couldn’t survive in a turbulent environment. Talk about the frog and the scorpion.

Personally I’d rather seek effective leaders in the top spot who have the courage and risk-taking ability to promote the ideas of subordinates who have an entrepreneurial streak than try to work with an entrepreneur in the top spot who can countermand the common sense solutions his leadership team attempts to put in place. But you see the conundrum. Whichever is the top boss needs a team that includes the other skill set. It is indeed rare to find any one person with both although I do agree with Russakoff and Goodman when they include Kelleher of Southwest Air and Walton of Walmart.

It seems futile to spend much time looking for the extremely rare combination in one person. Better to spend it building succession plans that put the right mix together, with the right person at the top. and, ideally, a team of people who understand their strengths and weaknesses and how to help everyone function productively together. As always we will never be perfect, so erring one way or the other is the norm and not fatal as long as one can recognize and fix mistakes.

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The good news is that most ways the data are sliced show it’s a matter of degree between countries, government versus private sector, family run, large companies, etc. In all areas managers are distributed over what look to be normal curves that overlap. So in any given group there are at least some great managers, doing as well or almost as well as the vast majority in the ‘best’ groups. So some of the 20% get into whatever management situation you care to name and no single country or type of company can claim to have much more that this share of excellent managers in its stable.

The profs conclude that three things cause their findings. First the US has more competition among open markets for managers (anyone can buy the best) so individuals strive to improve and so win the big salaries. Second the US values education of its ‘human capital’ such that a higher percentage get solid schooling for longer. This is interesting given we tend to focus on how many engineers are produced by our major competitors like China, for instance, but percentage-wise for education overall the story seems different. This could be related to Richard Florida’s debated findings that vibrant, creative cities require more kinds of educated, artistic people than just engineers. Let’s hope we can keep our edge.

Finally the third advantage they cite for the US is the ability to hire and fire essentially at will – meaning poor performance or poor fit will eventually catch up and sink those individuals so they can be replaced with potentially better suited managers. Certainly 1 and 3 would go some distance to explaining the systematic issues behind the poorer performance they show in government versus business and in family owned versus other companies.

It would be great to see historical data showing how fast other countries and sectors might be catching up, but again the major observation needs to be that there is lots of room for groups that want to get ahead to do so. That 20% estimate for effective leaders is the most enlightening figure in all of management education and leadership development. It ought to be a really easy target to beat, yet all the potential financial rewards, all the willingness to fire poor performers, the development of more effective talent management and the drive to educate more people more widely hasn’t yet taken us to new heights as far as we can see.

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To get the best results you almost always have to risk looking foolish at least some of the time. If you’re truly taking risks, as necessary for better than average results, you have to face the fact you will actually lose a significant number of those attempts. A great, innovative idea rarely emerges fully formed with all the details perfectly worked out. Often as you try to make it work, the very foundation of it shifts to something you didn’t expect. Not only will others be quick to point out all the risks initially, they will be quick to point out your failures along the way.

It’s all very well to say leaders need to develop thick skins, but when your critics turn out to be right and you have to reverse course and do things their way, it stings no matter how you try to convince yourself this is the only way to make progress. Reminding myself of the principle of ‘no pride’ has often been helpful in getting through those moments. It makes feeling humble a virtue, which it is. Making progress toward the objective is more important than who is right or wrong. Your ability as a leader to stick your neck out first and be the first to be wrong and admit it is a critical part of your ability to move things forward.

It’s great to be right. Ideally we build a track record of being right more often than not, but even more important is a track record of trying stuff. Calculating risk is valuable, but so is forging ahead steadily whether you have time to fully evaluate the risks or not.

One of the psychological factors I believe we overlook in leadership is that the higher you go on the ladder, the farther it feels like you might fall. At the outset, the rashness of youth pushes many budding leaders to take the risks that turn them into strong executives. Experience is a necessary teacher no matter how well we design classroom training. Rotating potential leaders through increasingly challenging roles and exposing them to risky situations and occasional failure is critical to developing well-rounded skills that will be essential for higher levels of responsibility and broader challenges.

It’s a truism, recognized in all leadership development literature that leaders must learn through some sizable failures along their career paths or they won’t really be effective further on. But there is a danger of evolving in either of two fatal directions. Down one path they may become risk averse, which can take different forms – either allowing risks, but blaming all mistakes on subordinates or simply preventing their departments and subordinates from taking risks at all. Down the other path ironically, they may become unrealistic about the potential for failure. This may result in faster, more spectacular failure from blindingly stupid mistakes (can you think of any, say, in the financial industry recently) or it may simply mean choosing a flawed long term strategy and riding its inevitable downhill trajectory despite continual signs of slowly, but steadily declining performance.

Do your leaders fail to risk or risk too much? How do we help them through these flaws?

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Colvin refers to Gladwell, but takes the subject in a useful new direction. What he focuses on is debunking the common belief that some people are simply ‘born with talent.’ He covers eye-opening stories of ‘geniuses’ that can clearly be explained as due to hard work and consistent, life-long application to a particular subject.

Of course, if you aren’t the person who started singing, dancing or playing the violin at three years old and kept at it religiously into your teens that doesn’t change the fact you aren’t likely to perform at Carnegie Hall. But what it does impress on us is that continuous lifelong learning is the route to becoming better and better at whatever our chosen ‘talent’ area is. and those who don’t do it are destined for mediocrity. Of course we’re all born with or learn some skills early, but to be really good at something a tremendous amount of practice is necessary.

When you choose to pursue what you love, practice comes naturally. You simply do more of what you like, so getting people into jobs they really enjoy is critical in talent management and leadership.

Another key learning to draw from this for organization strategy is that internal candidates for leadership have a distinct edge due to longer experience within the industry and operation. Colvin makes a very good start, if not a totally researched argument, that their ‘practice’ is hard for outsiders to duplicate. It’s an interesting challenge to the idea that innovation requires outsiders to be brought in. He acknowledges the truth is that both are needed in some proportion. Insiders can get stale and simply repeat the same routines year by year, learning and developing nothing better, but they are the backbone of the operation and setting an outsider in the CEO role where everyone has to do as told by the new guy or woman rarely works.

Colvin promotes the idea of deliberate practice – choosing a target area to improve and working hard, trying hard. He points out most people do not do this. I can certainly confirm that many appointed to leadership positions don’t do this with the skills of leadership. These appointees rarely get training and even more rarely practice to improve after the first years, which are mostly pure trial and error. A few have some prior skills, but hardly the level of practice Colvin finds necessary.

Instead many managers settle into routines that get them by. They apply their own brand of psychology of handling people – ‘don’t give too much praise or they’ll get lazy; keep them on their toes; challenge everything because people can always do better than their first effort.’ Many executives apply such shorthand guidelines blindly to every one of their people as if every person responds to the same approaches. They argue doing otherwise ‘takes too much time.’ Well, Gladwell and Colvin are expecting 10,000 hours or ten years – not just of experience, but of deliberate practice at this critical skill that most people don’t start developing until their mid-twenties at the earliest. Sure they may have had some leadership experiences to copy or draw on from earlier days and some are truly insightful, but there is rarely dedicated or guided practice in these key skills. What are we doing to promote the extensive learning periods and continuous struggle to grow that this reveals is required to turn out the best?

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We have a crisis – of leadership, or rather the unfortunate lack of it. Only 18% appear to fit the description of what is most effective and many of them are likely working in cultures and job situations where their effectiveness is stymied. That accounts for the fact that so few organizations, especially bigger ones, have leadership we could hold up as a model.

Isn’t it time for all great leaders at every level of every organization (and they are there) to identify each other and plan together to change their cultures. This clearly isn’t coming from the top in very many organizations. We know that division heads and group leaders can make a huge difference in their divisions. They can choose to work with like-minded division heads to expand the sphere of coaching and positive leadership, to avoid, turn around or get rid of the weak, ineffective, unacceptable leadership behaviors in their areas. They can model, coach and require better behavior in their units whether or not it is formally recognized in the organization’s bonus system or performance appraisals (as it should be).

We know there is considerable public sentiment against old-style, command and control leadership that doesn’t listen to employees or customers, that dishes out orders for ‘my way or the highway.’ People have seen what that sort of leadership produces in terms of massive bank and corporate failures resulting in millions of layoffs. I see the frustration in every presentation I do, but then of course I’m presenting to people who come out to find out how to improve themselves and others as leaders, not those who won’t waste a moment on this objective.

After a presentation recently an audience member described how their head of R&D believed lab work was the only solution for innovating and stifled other ideas and suggestions from his staff with the result that, in the economic downturn, the company decided R&D was too costly and not producing enough useful ideas. Where they had once been innovative leaders in their industry, they re-strategized to become just a day-to-day service organization and not surprisingly lost out to others who already delivered better in that area. They ultimately went out of business.

When every organization is innovating as fast as they’re capable of a decision to eliminate innovation is fatal. Only with engaged, motivated people delivering ideas beyond getting everyday work done can companies survive and thrive today. We owe it to our companies to get that message out and develop the learning, coaching, growth oriented cultures that will ensure our own as well as our companies’ well-being into the future.

OK, that’s two soap-box posts. I’m happy to entertain comments.

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The issue: we see mountains of research proving engaged workers deliver vastly superior financial and company results that accumulate dramatically over time. Still 82% of leaders seem to ignore these results and in almost every company only about 20% of employees are substantially engaged in their work. It seems not a coincidence that these figures work out as they do – the 18% of effective leaders are reaching about that proportion of staff apparently.

The conclusion: by the time executives gain top authority they either believe employees contribute and need to be engaged and treated so they will be. or they don’t (and most still don’t despite the concrete evidence). Those who don’t still find many ways to slough off the figures – doesn’t fit my industry, wouldn’t work in our culture, too difficult, expensive or time-consuming to be bothered, too slow, too distracting from ‘the real business.’ You name it, you’ve probably heard it. And yes, Boards demand quarterly results, so CEOs have to dish out orders, not wait and hope creative leadership will produce results sometime.

The recommendation: (this is where it gets frustrating) Not a lot you can do except hold up examples of positive, people-oriented leaders who are getting good results and then try to make the connection. Even then most nay-sayers will do their best to find other reasons for the success that do not suggest the nay-sayer should improve their behavior.

Two days later this posting appeared on a learning officer site:

Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to sustain participation in leadership development offerings? We have a lot of great programs and a wonderful framework in place to continue to develop our leaders. We have monthly lunch and learn type exchanges, bulletin boards, blogs, wiki sites, book clubs, on-line learning, mentor programs and formal classroom style learning. We select topics either from leader suggestions, developmental gap areas, or from business driven timelines. We have some leaders that are actively seeking self-development and they attend and participate in almost all of the offerings, and other leaders will either attend sporadically or infrequently. Any suggestions on how to truly engage all the leaders in their own development? Does anyone else see the same things in their organization?

My answer: Everyone sees this. (I recounted the SVP conclusions above and said.) We have to convince all our positive leaders to coach every possible individual they’re in contact with. I believe the message is spreading, but if we hope to see a ‘tipping point’ in our lifetime, where the majority of leaders take this stuff for granted and keep on improving themselves and their staffs, we all have to get this message out. Period. A single powerful CEO can influence major improvement, that we know, but we also know there are very few of these and developing more probably waits for new generations to make it to C-level. In the meantime all any of us can do is try wherever we work to influence as many as possible.

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What can be so new? New opportunities, input from the Internet and far more instant sharing of information place us still at the early stages of finding out what human kind can do. Are we going to be burned out by it, overwhelmed or outpaced by our own technology? Will machines start to ‘think’ faster than we can on topics we traditionally excelled at? Would that be a blessing?

In this hustle a number of fierce debates rage about the meaning of some of the things we find. A very interesting, relatively new book, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind, by professor Gary Marcus, raises some fascinating questions that can be applied to how leaders think. Along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, Marcus points out we are subject to many automatic reactions to information and situations due mostly to the way in which our brains evolved, with more or less instantaneous emotional reactions to events not entirely balanced by higher level logic functions.

The book is an easy and well-balanced assessment of the good and bad resulting from this uneven power of two styles of ‘thinking.’ Others argue our brains are still actually evolving as opposed to discovering what can be done with the mental machinery we’ve inherited.

Reading this could be depressing. Human thinking clearly is limited, often flawed and subject to so many competing interpretations one wonders if we can trust conclusions any of us reach. On the other hand, clearly our thinking ability is what got us to the level we’ve reached and what keeps us learning day by day. and both types of brain activity contribute – both logic and emotional reactions, something machines aren’t going to be able to attain and blend quite so easily.

How we balance our thinking modes is so idiosyncratic it’s questionable whether we’ll ever fully understand the way the human brain ‘thinks.’ Yet the patterns Marcus points to emerge consistently. For instance, our tendency to see things primarily as they affect us has clear implications for leaders’ behavior. At an event a few weeks ago I was struck again, listening to a CEO, how even the best individuals in that role for any length of time develop a distinct way of looking at the world that those not in the role don’t relate to in quite the same way. In this case, this verifiably good copy of the type spent much of his presentation focused on pay and perks. specifically those for CEOs and senior executives .and the difficulty that new regulations pose for making changes (read ‘increases’), something he feels VPs of HR definitely need to work on.

The discussion was unquestionably relevant to how leadership works and fascinating. It took me back to the days when I expected to be fired for continued failure in one very important part of my job – getting the CEO more compensation. It occurred to me to wonder how much of the accusation that HR doesn’t understand business revolves around not properly understanding the importance of higher pay in the front office and for line managers in general. The book is certainly enlightening about how completely we have to expect this and what, if anything, we can do about it.

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Unfortunately for these CEOs the next piece was some “industry news” -a survey by OI Partners, “a global talent firm,” reported in Talent Management online magazine, which is linked here in case you want to read more of the stats yourself. They comment that, “CEOs and other top-level executives who lose their jobs usually need to overcome three big hurdles before they can get on with their careers.” They name the three: poor understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, too long with one company [to change easily], lack of ability to accept a lesser role – with one or more cited by 33% to 60% of organizations these executives move to (where we know from other surveys about 80% of these senior recruits fail within 18 months).

Let’s put two and two together. These are the most senior executives we could recruit. They have to have “talent” of some sort or they wouldn’t have succeeded (certainly true if they’ve stayed so long at their previous company). Yet to succeed in a new environment, well over half need special help to adjust and perform – coaching, feedback, impartial evaluation and other sorts of adaptation assistance. in addition to ‘talent.’

If such highly talented executives need these supports, how much more do lower level, arguably less talented recruits need. And do we think everyone gets this. or do we think a majority of CEOs wistfully imagine HR will magically choose people who not only have the talent, but who figure out for themselves how to fit in with no help from the organization, let alone from the CEO or other senior team members who are frequently ‘too busy’ to spend time with new recruits?

A further article discussed how CEOs see great needs for more ‘talent and speed’ in their organization. Translation – get me some great people quickly so new projects and lagging performance will be instantly pushed to success. Oops, darn, the inconvenient stats show that new talent is going to need some help and time to settle in, adapt and start to contribute. and it may take some concerted effort to coach them if that is to happen. Unfortunately it can’t be “talent AND speed” but has to be “talent OR speed.” Can’t HR manage both? Well, how can it if we believe the many senior execs who claim HR doesn’t understand the business. In fact, perhaps this is one of the reasons they make that claim – because they perceive HR as failing to hire the right people who would ‘hit the ground running’ and they have no appreciation that even if HR could find time to provide the coaching that senior execs can’t or won’t, it will still take just that. time. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t!

Sound familiar. We let everyone get away with these sorts of comments: hit the ground running, talent and speed, etc., without pointing out that even CEOs themselves can’t be counted on to ‘hit the ground running’ in new jobs (not your CEO, of course, oh yes, he or she must be the exception). All of a sudden that little piece of research, which looks on the surface like just a couple of vaguely interesting paragraphs, takes on much greater significance. Do you think you’ll have any luck using it to educate your powers that be?

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A blog I ran across recently, The Rare LeaderT, for example, asks, “.Do I Have To Like People To Be A Leader?” Just asking the question signals the message – the answer is more complicated that liking or not liking people. The short answer is no. You don’t have to socialize a lot or even actually like people, but you do need skills to relate effectively. Blogger/coach, Steve Riege, makes a useful distinction between Social skills and Relationship skills and points out the danger of assumptions based on whether you score as an Extravert or Introvert on the numerous tests we’re inundated with. I like his tone and there seem to be more good posts about style, leadership behavior that’s effective and what it takes to succeed today.

We hear more and more that you don’t have to have a particular style or personality to be an effective leader – simply effective behaviors – and we see tons of books, articles and other material about what those are. What’s missing is a framework to make sense of so much advice. We know the elements cited are the same time and again. So why does each consultant, coach, speaker seem to have to reinvent the wheel. If we know the behaviors so clearly and we now have an idea why this evolution is occurring, why doesn’t everyone who’s handed a leadership role simply apply these skills?

There seem to be two key blocks. Overload – most of the advice looks similar, but is tied to examples that are unique. Lots more books are routinely produced because it can be hard to see how the behaviors of a top military General, a President or band leader actually apply to how you should handle your team in IT or marketing. It’s hard to sort out the key useful parallels from just interesting stories.

Second block – psychological inertia – is it really going to be worth the risk and time involved to change to new skills. It means you have to “unlearn” some comfortable, present habits that conflict with what consultants say are better. The problem here is that leadership is complex, involving multiple skills coordinating together, so learning one or two without a complete new set can feel (and may well be) pointless. Again, having a clear model would help clarify how much or how many skills we need to work on.

First, there are only a few skills – maybe two or three of a total of five that most leaders might need to concentrate on. They’re not rocket science, but basic things anyone can do. Second, they’re written about so much you can pretty much choose any leadership book off the shelf and get a reasonable idea of what will work better than our most ‘natural style’ (telling people to ‘do it my way’ – the approach most people naturally use when first promoted).

In my work I describe the five skills as ‘being positive, being honest, thinking strategically, building habits. in balance.’ Only two – developing creative strategies and good judgment for balance are areas where people may conceivably need help or so we might thing. But it’s amazing how many managers are uniformly more positive or optimistic than realistic or ‘honest’ about their failings – or vice versa – dyed in the wool optimists or pessimists. It really shouldn’t be so hard to find a balance, but many people have this problem and it holds them and their teams back. And it’s always surprising how many executives come up with decent strategies, but fail to execute because there in to big a hurry to build habits through conscientious repetition. Some of this seems ‘baked’ into personality, but anyone can learn skills in these straight forward areas. Yet time and again when people analyze what went wrong in some project, they’ll conclude it was a leader who omitted one of these five keys. Nothing here says you have to like people, but you have to respect their needs enough to ensure all five keys are attended to.

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The Einstein quote is well known enough: Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. But perhaps Einstein had something different in mind than the obvious meaning that you have to rise up to a higher level of thinking to solve a problem created at a lower level. What if it’s the reverse?

In management strategy we frequently encounter the problem that the solutions we propose are “too simple.” For instance, we point to the tremendous power of simple recognition by senior managers as a powerful force for engagement and performance of staff. Just acknowledge good work we say. It isn’t rocket science. All it takes is literally saying something as simple as, “wow, thanks, that was great” or “I really appreciate your taking the time to think that through, I’m not sure I could have found such a great answer.”

What stops managers from saying stuff like this and reaping the benefits of improved performance from people who will strive like mad to do even better the next time just for a few more words of praise? Can we ever get enough praise? Do we ever get enough so we don’t need more for weeks and weeks and weeks? No. Most of us can absorb that kind of comment almost daily and still crave more. We know what this feels like personally, but we somehow don’t ‘get it’ that others who report to us respond the same way.

Managers argue that employees will tire of this, take it for granted, be even more upset when they don’t get praised next time because we established a baseline (and, oh, it’s work, it takes time, it’s hard to remember to do it – true until it becomes habit!). Many worry that most of the praise would be false, provided for work that’s just a basic expectation of the employee to do a job. Well, I’ve seen tons of employees not do the basics, so it never bothered me to thank people for doing their job and doing it quite well. I never seemed to have too much trouble distinguishing something I could thank someone for and make an even bigger fuss over something truly unique. Psychology tells us repeatedly that positive reinforcement works. So why not?

Isn’t this exactly a case of a problem being solved at a different, but ‘lower level’ of thinking – basic human needs – than the level that created it – expecting all employees to be so ‘grown up’ they just do their jobs because, after all, isn’t that what they’re paid for? Maybe managers are hung up looking for ‘higher level’ solutions when ‘lower level’ would actually work better. Maybe I’ll be accused of ‘lowering the level’ in organizations or in HR, but if it works, if everyone is happy and productivity increases, why not? What do you think?

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The most diverse teams come up with the widest range of ideas and offer the wide range of skills needed to implement them. But they are a challenge to manage, so better leadership is required.

What’s clear as well is that a single leader at the top of an organization or function makes an enormous difference. Only when the CEO (or function leader) puts an issue on his or her agenda, talks about it personally and follows its progress, does anything happen. This should be obvious, but like so many “obvious” facts, it is overlooked in a vast number of organizations.

The problem is you can’t talk about and monitor everything at once. You can’t make everything a priority. That confuses people, wears them out and makes them change priorities frequently as each item comes to the fore, so ultimately nothing is actually a priority except keeping your head above water – another “obvious” fact that is constantly ignored.

So what should a leader do? Again it sounds easy, but isn’t – pick the top three or four things and use them to drive results. Diversity today has to be among them because of the need for innovation, let alone that our employees, customers and other stakeholders are now more diverse and will work for, shop with and invest in only those they believe are on the right path (the latter being the good and sufficient reasons normally cited by diversity experts). Of all of these, it is the over-riding need for innovation that will ultimately drive the point home, but that hasn’t struck many organizations yet.

I’ll offer two examples that popped up on my screen recently. First is Antonio Perez talking specifically about how he learned the value of diversity and used it to resurrect Eastman Kodak, a company most of us thought was doomed for lack of it’s recognition that film was a fading commodity: http://bit.ly/9VbSkB and second, Clay Shirky, the media guru, talking about why newspapers have been even slower to recognize and find solutions for their dilemmas with the Internet eating their lunch (or more specifically their subscribers): http://bit.ly/18tDhy.

The more hidden point all this makes is that executives, human as they are themselves, tend to overlook basic human reasons why things are important. We see that diversity is valuable and can contribute, but we set up a ‘program’ for it and expect that will suffice. It won’t because our employees need reminders that matter from a boss that really cares about the issue and about them. We hesitate to make a ‘touchy feely’ item like diversity one of the top three objectives because we can’t quite overcome the feeling that today’s sales or marketing initiatives are more important. The fact is those will get done. done better than any one of us could do alone. if, but only if, we have a diverse and capable team around us. Get the right people in place and keep them motivated, that comes first. Is it something you can see in operation in your organization?

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That’s a testament to a number of key observations. First, you can set out to and succeed at creating a great place to work. Second, it’s hard to retrofit once cynicism has started if you haven’t created one from scratch (but I’ve seen it done). Third, line officers have to get involved to drive the process and walk the talk. You can’t just task HR with it and walk away.

He goes on to draw out the idea that engagement can actually go up in difficult economic times, but only with specific attention to making employees feel safe, valued and not hopelessly over-worked. Companies that have managed this are clearly positioned to get the best from everyone and are far more likely to outdo those who don’t believe it’s possible.

He also pokes fun at another common myth – that managers shouldn’t have to ‘engage’ employees, that staff should just take care of that themselves, presumably along with being grateful to have a job. He quotes an astonished CFO who notes, “. an epiphany; I realized for the first time that managing
people is a big part of my job.” When did we allow ourselves to promote people to manage others who didn’t realize this? Forever, unfortunately. We don’t expect financial results to manage themselves, or new technology or marketing.

Pretty well everyone knows perfectly well we normally don’t give people the title “manager” unless they are being promoted to a position with people reporting to them, but somehow about 80% fail to notice that actually managing them is a key part of the job and most companies fail to ensure any specific training is provided in this. Most act as if it comes automatically. Duh! We know many people learn finance and marketing in school. We also know nearly no one learns leadership there. so how do we suddenly presume them to be effective at it? This would be amazingly funny if it wasn’t so sad. and so universal.

Does anyone see this changing?

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It’s a UK organization called Four Groups and the article that particularly caught my eye is this one. Issues like portability of talent, the futility of individual bonuses and other myths surrounding top talent are not only topical in the HR field, but apply to any organization that wants to maximize performance. This piece also contains a link to an interview with Dr. Karen Stephenson, the only speaker at the San Diego conference to get a standing ovation from the human resource professionals present.

Dr. Stephenson spoke from years of research about the current trend toward emphasizing trust within organizations. These are all timely, of course, in light of how much trust and confidence have been lost by the public in business generally, and these are highly related to my theme of ‘fix the jerks’ that emphasizes how poor leadership destroys value in organizations of all shapes and sizes.

What also comes out of this is how wide spread the move to more detailed understanding of HR is and how much there is to study.

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Readers, it turns out, prefer frequent, short, clearly written tips. But many small business bloggers especially are stuck for how to keep up with the commitment to do a post every few days, which is what the experts recommend if you’re going to do a blog for serious marketing.

One solution is to engage a service to help. You can still write key pieces related to your business, but to fill in the ‘tip sheets’ readers come back for, a writer like Toronto’s Vera Held is an option. Vera is a professional writer who also writes a monthly column in The Toronto Sun called "Make it Work".  She just let me know she’s begun a new writing service for her clients. This service consists of (a) a weekly blog and (b) a bi-weekly media release for prices ranging from $149 per month for a 12-month contract. Topics are developed to highlight client priorities.  If you’d like further information, she can be reached at (416) 785-3556 or vheld@sympatico.ca.  Please have a peek at the following ‘how to’ blog Vera has just written on why leaders really have to listen—to lead effectively. You may find you appreciate the reminders, just as I did the reminders on clear writing, another of Vera’s advice specialties:     

Why Leaders Need to Listen, Actively

by Vera N. Held

Listening actively maximizes your value to your organization. It’s a key business skill that everyone needs to hone—especially the VP, GM and the CEO.

Contrary to popular belief, listeners are “active” participants. Educator John Dewey said, “The hearer is an indispensable partner” in any conversation. Why? You can only share a mind set, concept and idea, persuade someone or be persuaded when “true” listening occurs. Without the desire to listen to another perspective or point-of-view, little gets accomplished.

Indeed, good communicators listen more than they talk. And it is vital to treat all staff with the respect and appreciation that comes from being paid attention to and listened to. Listening actively is the one sure-fire way to keep staff motivated, and to continually build positive work relationships.

In return, staff will not only carefully listen to you, but generously answer your questions. In fact, staff may even provide you with some terrific unsolicited ideas to allow your business to grow by leaps and bounds.

5 LISTENING TIPS

1. Listen to gather data and gain knowledge. Learn.

2. Ask for clarification to make sure both sides are on the same page. Bond.

3. Always let the other person finish his or her thought. Build a bridge.

4. Show respect and interest—even if you disagree. Be polite.

5. Listen with an appropriate amount of empathy. Be open, confident and share.

Leaders are expert at connecting the 18-inches between head and heart. In the words of French writer and philosopher, Voltaire, “The road to the heart is the ear.”

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