What’s Courage, Whose Courage?

Author: Dave Crisp

21 Aug

From “old blood and guts” Patton to the newest entrepreneur, the media idolize courage – the sheer guts to initiate an enterprise and take the risks needed to pursue it persistently and make it work – as if it is all personal, all the ‘guts’ of just one individual.

But are we understanding ‘raw courage’ fully with this ‘over the top’ message? Is it all about just pushing ahead ourselves and shouldering all the responsibility of sending the troops out to do our bidding?

I’ve written a few times now about Proust’s ’seeing the world through new eyes’ and Einstein’s ‘need for a different level of thinking than the one that created the problem.’ Here’s one more. By promoting this ‘manly courage’ model in which the sole hero on a white charger rides in with the answers, the media are overlooking the many other ways to solve a problem, including many that are just coming to be understood – like crowd-sourcing, for instance (asking a great many people to make their best guess or toss in their best ideas or pool their thinking in various ways).

As we enter an era in which no one person can come up with all the necessary ideas to survive and thrive in any particular enterprise, we have to shift to a leadership style that calls forth the best ideas from everyone and is willing to try them out – to risk – to put faith in others instead of shouldering all the responsibility oneself.

Maybe the level of courage we need today in leaders isn’t so much the individual hero who risks everything he or she owns in one shot and leads their troops into a new strategy, but the “humble” hero (to borrow a word from Jim Collins’ excellent leadership strategy book, Good to Great) who has the courage to ask for help and will back ideas from subordinates who seem to have a handle on what could work. It takes no less courage to shoulder the responsibility when a subordinate’s idea goes wrong than to face the firing squad when it’s your own failure.

Why do we persist in these military analogies if not for media hype about the rawness of courage required of great CEOs and leaders? In fact, it’s the day to day small decisions to encourage an employee with a potential solution and make it clear you’ll take the blame if need be. Of course, we want those to be carefully thought out, but the risk ultimately isn’t really different.

Are we just missing choosing the ‘lower level’ of risk-thinking because we revere the ‘higher level’ so much that we can’t be seen to do less? Does it have to be our idea for us to feel we’re seen as risk-takers. I fear that’s exactly what stops many bosses from taking risks on subordinates ideas. It doesn’t feel like a risk if you think you can off-load the blame on someone else. Who said ‘no guts, no glory?’ And did they mean there are no ‘guts’ involved in supporting your team’s ideas as if they were your own, without them having to in fact be your own?

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future

What Level Was Einstein Imagining?

Author: Dave Crisp

8 Aug

Here’s another Proust-like ’seeing the world with new eyes’ example that fits leadership and HR. This came to mind when a speaker at SCNetwork’s recent Diversity forum, Brenda Nadjiwan of Indian Affairs, opened her presentation with a quote from Einstein. It’s one I’ve often treated with impatience, partly because it seems almost obvious (have to say, though, we miss lots of obvious things) and partly because it suggests a new struggle and gobs of time may be needed to find a brand new solution. But wait, here’s what came to mind..

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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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching Issues, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks

Napoleon’s Glance

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Feb

Strategically it sometimes pays to step back from daily routine and read or experience something different… but not necessarily too different – the busman’s holiday they call it – as when you work for a charity, gaining pleasure and learning from doing more of what you do at work. Reading for pleasure, I stumbled on a book by William Duggan, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, an expert on strategic thinking and author of three books in the field – The Art of What Works (2001), Napoleon’s Glance (2004) and Strategic Intuition (2007). The gist: Napoleon and other amazing leaders followed a route to highly effective strategy that is very, very different from what is normally thought of as strategic planning or strategic thinking.

The principles apply directly to HR strategy. Oddly, just recently, one of the many HR/Learning & Development blogs out there published “Four tips for Effective Leadership,” namely: Be counterintuitive, live comfortably in gray areas, learn by doing and exercise soft skills – exactly what Duggan points to with his great strategists. Strategy isn’t arrived at by ‘planning’ in the sense of laying out exact steps and stages with time lines and benchmarks. Napoleon and the others ‘put their teams in motion,’ ‘looked for small battles they could win decisively,’ ’stuck to the course with firm resolution,’ and learned to evolve strategies as they went rather than work them out in detail beforehand.

Reading these, I realized that, yes, most successes I ran into along the way evolved ‘in the midst of action’ (a phrase I also recognized from a Zen master talking about finding your way calmly ‘in the midst of action’). Does this apply to HR? My former company got into elearning early and heavily, with great results, because we were asked to look at ‘expert systems’ that the CEO saw at a conference (a different computer technology) and we jumped to use the budget and just get going, without being in the least sure where we were headed, but seeing some possibilities in using technical systems to leverage more people learning more things.

If we’d waited for our IT process that called for developing a technical plan in detail, with projected costs three to five years out, we’d never have gotten off the ground. Yet planning is valuable. In the words of Eisenhower, the top allied General of WWII, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The difference, in other words, is active versus passive. Get going, planning as you go, through the unexpected twists and uncertainties – don’t wait for “a plan” designed to resolve something you think may happen – it won’t.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Mintzberg’s New Book “Managing”

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Nov

Wow. This is the next “Good to Great” – and only 7 years after that, not 20 as Collins’ book was after “In Search of Excellence.” Mintzberg once and for all establishes that management and leadership are immensely complex and have to be learned in the heat of practicing them, not from books or traditional courses. It’s one thing to say this to people and quite another to assemble a massive review, in very short, but dense form, proving it in the words and findings of a century of researchers.

I wrote the rest of this post to a friend, another keen observer, David Creelman of Creelman Research, who brought it to my attention. I realize this is actually a review:

Just finished Managing and have some thoughts it seems good to put down here. It’s an impressive assembly of far-reaching thinking. I think it will probably frustrate and confuse a lot of readers, which is too bad, but possibly an inevitable step in recognizing what really works. The management/leadership complex is just that – very, very complex without any clear single answers, very situational and requiring unique fit or adaptability to succeed at. I agree with the general premise, but would word it a bit differently. I would say not have said we are wrong to hold up leaders as worthy of examination and sometimes praise, but we are wrong to deify the idea of leader and leadership (and wrong to talk about it as a set of things that can be learned by the usual rote learning we get in schools). However, I believe that leaders do make a difference if they operate as Mintzberg outlines – constantly learning and reflecting and by trial and error efforts to improve things. I’m sure he would agree and wonder a bit why he didn’t make that more clear.

As I see it, organizations solidify the ossified structures they form in hopes of sustaining themselves as the original driving leader(s) move on. Theoretically the structure that worked should be able to adapt with new people coming into the slots and changing them to fit changing circumstances, but we haven’t paid nearly enough attention to that concept. We treat the structure almost as sacred once it’s in place (despite the tendency to constantly ‘re-organize’ to solve every problem, which really amounts to re-arranging the deck chairs – it doesn’t really change much – the power hierarchy is too attractive to those rising in it). To some extent the organization structure does ensure some continuity, but for how long if it doesn’t evolve?

It’s easy for those appointed to assume that they somehow inherit the stature of those who built the organization in the first place, not realizing it wasn’t a one-person show, but a cooperative effort that may be seen from outside to be one person. The fact that some initial leaders are strong-man types who create by force and maintain power by force leads to confusion as well. When we know that 90% plus of leaders believe they’re in the smartest 10%, it’s easy to see why they are so willing to try to impose their vision as Mintzberg points out is so common among those newly promoted. At that moment you’re at the peak of confidence in your infallibility; it’s just been proven, so why not impose it? Then it’s hard to back down and reveal your uncertainty as things begin not to work. You may not even realize it isn’t working and just apply more force to drive things the way you ’see they will work if only everyone cooperates (with your vision).’

We need to help people see that maintaining and developing existing organizations is no less challenging, but very different from the initiating, entrepreneurial phase, that a different type of leader, adept with equally difficult, but different challenges, is needed – one who needs to manage and lead in a very different way, with more visible involvement of others typically, building a truly learning organization, which has to start with a learning leader.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, All That We Know, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Missing the point makes the point

Author: Dave Crisp

9 Oct

My professional association’s magazine published a very small note about a new study done at University of Chicago: Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter? They express surprise (shock might be a better word) that “warm, flexible and team-oriented people are less likely to thrive [sic - they really mean 'get results'] than organized, structured, attention-to-detail types.”

Oops, that’s an article I have to read! It didn’t take long to find (link above), but, even double-spaced, 54 pages isn’t an easy-to-digest document. This is a great example of why leadership is so often misunderstood.

The key is to understand that when someone misses the point in an article it sometimes helps reinforce the real story when you go dig it out. This is a point I’ve continually tried to make and it comes into very clear focus when you dissect this study.

The researchers, themselves, are very, very clear about several things. 53% of leadership impact comes from one group of skills, which they describe as follows:

“The first and most important factor is a general factor, explaining 53% of the
variation in the ratings. All individual characteristics [emphasis mine] load positively on this factor, ranging from a loading for “integrity” of 0.33 to a loading for “efficiency” of 0.68. It is natural, therefore, to interpret this factor as capturing general talent or ability.” And THEN they go on to identify the second most important factor, which explains 20% of leadership results and is much more difficult to understand. It contrasts warm, team-builders with hard-driving, conscientious types who follow through details and gives preference to the latter for achieving results.

By highlighting what they said, I’m prefiguring the better conclusion. We know from many studies that the most important work trait among the so-called “Big Five” personality characteristics is ‘conscientiousness.’ We also know it’s not the only contributing factor to success. To be highly effective as a leader or in any other challenge involving people, the best results come from having a complex of skills WORKING TOGETHER.

Duh, that means the best solution is NOT the ‘either/or’ one. If you have a choice of only one skill set, of course select the hard-driving, one-man-band, the charismatic if possible, the analytic person who dishes out orders. provided they have one even more important element from that group – they’re consistent. If you want the best results, however, find someone with ALL the contributing skills in a good balance. an ‘all rounder,’ a leader who also coaches and builds effective teams and relationships in addition to these. Get it? Look for the #1 skill set, not the #2 where, if you have to make a choice, you should absolutely pick the hard-driver over the warm team-builder.

Why is it so darn hard for reporters of good research to pick out the key fact not the most explosive? Every leader, to be worthy of the basic name, must drive hard toward the end goals. They need passion and constant attention to details. but the best leaders, the very best, go beyond only that to add in the team-building, coaching abilities. If you can’t find the best, settle for the drive, but don’t suggest those traits are the only ones that count. Don’t make it either/or.

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Filed under: 5 Skills - Instant Leadership, Building A Career, Coaching Issues, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Who Makes Bad Leaders?

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Aug

Or are leaders bad all on their own? Among recent blog posts one asked whether employees are setting bosses up for failure by expecting perfection on every issue. Can bosses actually succeed? Why does it seem so many are vilified? What can be done about it? It does sometimes seem as if bosses can never please employees. How much is up to the employee?

These are powerful, important questions that we’re finally beginning to see asked and answered more often. I like this practical answer at Chief Learning Officer magazine online. But it’s important to understand the role employees play and what anyone can do about it.

This came to mind again with a phone call from a colleague wanting to know what makes a good leader and venting about two hours they’d just spent listening to a manager gripe about their CEO in a small company. “The boss is selfish, lazy, uninterested in anyone’s ideas for improvements,” went the complaint, “My great talents aren’t being used; I’m only staying for the money.” Sound familiar? We’re told about half of all employees or more feel this way much of the time.

In varying degrees we hear this everywhere. I’ve quoted Bob Eichinger of Lominger/Korn Ferry before – that only about 18% of managers have the key people skills for leading and developing others, that these skills fall in the lowest 20% of skills among most managers. Yet, to answer my friend’s question about what leadership is, people skills ARE leadership, so the scarcity of them indicates exactly how scarce effective leadership is in organizations. If we could raise that just 10% or 15% across the board, results would skyrocket.

Once a company grows beyond about 25 to 50 employees in size, employees can no longer be simply extensions of the leaders abilities. Until then a really hardworking boss can probably get around and tell each employee exactly what to do and how every day. Above that size the futility of that should be obvious. Employees have to be empowered and entrusted to take initiative and do things the boss hasn’t specifically ordered or blessed, so the leader’s role becomes encouraging, stimulating creativity, coordinating and supporting initiative where it makes sense – a very different job than controlling every activity day by day.

We shouldn’t be vilifying weak leaders as much as asking ourselves how best to improve their skills and help them transition from command and control styles to coaching and developing. Companies, even many of the biggest and best funded, some of whom spend millions on leadership training, are doing a lousy job of this in the main. How else to account for the finding that 82% of leaders lack the most critical skills for their roles. Hopefully the blizzard of articles and books on what it takes to get results with people will start to make a dent in that gap.

Are times really changing for HR?

Author: Dave Crisp

16 Nov

Listening to Kevin Cashman this week on the update of his well-known leadership book offered a chance to reflect on the extent to which the climate in which HR (Human Resources) operates is changing… or isn’t. Interesting that Cashman’s writing retains its Zen flavor, something one might think wouldn’t sell well in the corporate world, but he’s been consistent for more than ten years now.

Cashman updated his book to include more research and case studies that confirm the value of its recommendations – that to create change, a leader must first change him or herself. It’s a message more leaders need to hear. In fact, in my piece for Canadian HR Reporter, I make the point that this is why there are so many bad leaders, a question we constantly hear. A leader who thinks their role is to tell others to change, but has no intention or expectation of changing themselves is a bad leader and there are lots.

Cashman’s point with the update is there are many companies beginning to notice this principle and use it to hire or promote better CEOs who in turn create and lead better executive teams, who in turn lead more effectively for results. The problem is that “many” is a relative term. Where before there might have been a handful of such companies, now there are twice or three times as many – still a handful compared to the vast number of organizations out there.

Listening to Cashman and knowing he’s been stumping the world at conference after conference for years makes one wonder how many of have to push this message out before it becomes everyday stuff for leaders in organizations. Somewhere there is a tipping point, to borrow Malcolm Gladwell’s book title and concept. It can’t come too soon for all the people who continue to struggle in companies that haven’t picked up on this message.

As it happens, it’s my pleasure to MC a Gladwell book launch event shortly after his new book, Outliers, hits the shelves finally next Tuesday. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to finally meet him as well as hear directly what he has to say. Of course, I’ll be posting about it shortly after that.

Times are really changing for leadership and HR when such information is absorbed so readily and more people seek to put it to use. How Outliers is received will be the next measure of how much.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Coaching Yourself, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

When to Coach; When to Lead

Author: Dave Crisp

5 Oct

Maybe the title gives this away, but maybe not. With Coaching-style Leadership, there are still times when more directive leadership makes the most sense. Speaking at the HR program I mentioned a few days ago, there were a number of professional coach trainers in the audience. One who is totally committed to coaching as the best solution for all situations took me to task on this after my presentation, zeroing in on this one comment.

I’d said there are times when command and control is still the most appropriate style – and used an example of a sinking ship where you want the person who knows best what to do to assume control and direct the best actions for everyone, the more firmly the better – no panic, life Emergencies require direction jackets, lifeboats, line up here!

The coach trainer insisted that even on the Titanic, if the captain had coached, everyone might have been saved. In fact, it would undoubtedly have led to a better outcome if the captain had coached the crew sufficiently before the emergency so they knew how to take charge, but I can’t honestly see the opportunity to coach once the iceberg was hit. If you think about the coaching process and questions, is it really an appropriate time to ask people “how’s it going, what do you really want, what should our strategy be, what needs to be different and what will we do now?” Or do you hope the crew lines people up firmly, guides them into lifeboats and tells them how to launch?

The one antidote to panic is clear confidence from a leader who remains calm and balanced and seems to know what to do when you don’t. This is true for any situation, but in true emergencies, it can take a pretty directive leader to convince people. Once things are underway, you hope individuals will take initiative and you may be able to coach that once everyone’s in boats and away, but in those first stages of crisis finding the right balance of command first before coaching seems wisest.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching over Command Leadership, How Simplicity Works

Wise Words straight from a CEO

Author: Dave Crisp

3 Oct

A benefit of being invited to speak at events, albeit as a last minute fill-in, is you get to hear other presenters. At the Conference Board of Canada HR 2008 annual conference last week, it was a pleasure to hear Bill MacKinnon, CEO, KPMG Canada, discuss how he’s helped them embrace great leadership as a true objective throughout the organization. He keynoted the main conference theme – Influential Leadership – anchored to how this improves results.

He kicked off with the emphasis on why paying attention to leadership is becoming so much more important – because organizations, the challenges they face and the tasks of managing and leading them have become so much more complex. He proceeded to virtually itemize the same five key elements I build on.
Most striking of all, he very much emphasized the importance of leaders remaining “calm” (to use his term) in the face of the daily onslaught of challenges we now face. In other words, developing and maintaining the skills of balance in the midst of furious activity ended up being the point he stressed more than any other. I couldn’t agree more.

And balance, of course, involves including all the elements that must be balanced together so you don’t get blindsided by something you’ve forgotten about… like people’s attitudes and engagement, for instance, while you are nonetheless pushing for results. “Both/and” becomes a big challenge of complexity that many managers struggle with. Practice makes perfect. It was great to hear a CEO of a major organization put it in such a “must have, every day” light!

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership

Good News on the Horizon for HR

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Aug

A steady stream of items reflecting progress in human resources arrives every week now. Momentum is picking up. Each step takes us further on the way to full recognition that HR is, in Jack Welch’s words, “the second most important job in any organization.”

Widely reported in the past week, major retail jewelry operator, Zale Corporation, promoted it’s EVP of HR, Legal and Corporate Strategy, Theo Killion, to President. Now you might expect as in years past this would be a legal expert serving as in-house counsel who makes deals and plans strategy from a legal-financial perspective and, oh yes, happens to have HR tucked under his wing. In this case Mr. Killion is a 30-year HR veteran who worked his way up to over-see the other jobs. HR is first in his background. Moreover he is tasked in part with continuing to promote diversity, which he personally exemplifies – a forward-looking strategy for results as well as doing the right thing.

Then the mail bag brought the latest “People & Strategy” – the journal of the Human Resource Planning Society – filled with a series of articles about CEO succession (and pay).

No great news on managing pay better I fear. Boards continue to struggle with the best ways to pay CEOs. Although the theory is firming up they should be paid for on-going performance once they’ve been attracted with a competitive base salary, the problem is how to measure the connection with performance. One article proposed a system that was then nearly universally dumped on by a half dozen experts.

So, what’s good on the horizon for the future? Looking for better on the horizon

As an aside, I hear from sources in various industries that top HR salaries are getting into the ozone, too, giving CFOs some concern they might be eclipsed pay-wise. The same group noted they are seeing more MBA students who have chosen the HR track in the belief this is where the action will be. They are right. Hopefully they are getting that advice from their MBA schools, too. The goal really isn’t to get paid well just for the money, but to see HR and what it does for organizations recognized and given the clout at least on a par with other senior roles.

The four main articles on succession were right on, backed up well, agreed on the same key points and made sense. What really stood out were two listing competencies for CEOs of the future – among them both explicitly emphasized a heavy dose of humility along with confidence – in balance. It was refreshing to see it clearly spelled out as a specific requirement!

CEOs need courage to take risks in rapidly changing environments and at the same time the ability to listen, absorb advice and ideas from others in the Board and the organization and meld all of that into best guesses. All this requires the humility to understand no one person has the ultimate right answer to any situation any more and Boards seem finally to be getting that. Complexity is the driving factor and makes the ability to assimilate diversity of opinion, knowledge and experience increasingly crucial.

And why is humility in a CEO such a gain for the HR perspective? For a dozen reasons including primarily that people work best when they are included, listened to and worked with cooperatively. HR struggles to promote this in vain in many organizations where the whims of individual leaders take precedence over team work and cooperation, where the majority of senior executives quite often follow the (bad) example of the CEO. With the right choice of CEO, having senior execs copy the new behavior would be a huge advance.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Building A Career, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Archive for the ‘Coaching over Command Leadership’ Category

What’s Courage, Whose Courage?

What Level Was Einstein Imagining?

Napoleon’s Glance

Mintzberg’s New Book “Managing”

Missing the point makes the point

Who Makes Bad Leaders?

Are times really changing for HR?

When to Coach; When to Lead

Wise Words straight from a CEO

Good News on the Horizon for HR

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