Naked Leadership

“The Emporers New Clothes”

When you first found yourself making a presentation or a speech in front of a group, what was the advice people gave you?  I am sure, like me, it was a universal phrase, “Picture them naked.”  That way you will not be as nervous.  Not doubt we have all had this kind of advice and some may have actually tried picturing their audience with no clothes.  Fyi:  if I have been in your audience, please don’t tell me….keep it to yourself.  I can’t say I have followed this advice specifically but after all the presentations and classes taught over my career, I still get nervous and conjure information about my audience that will calm me down.

Fear and doubt are natural human characteristics.  These traits are what can keep great leaders grounded.  It is what keeps them in touch on a personal level with those that work for them. But, fear and doubt are also the two most common barriers to leaders being successful.  Fear and doubt can result in behaviors that create an untenable and non productive environment where no one wants to work.  Leaders who have learned how to handle nerves and approach new experiences using fear and doubt as agents for personal development tend to be admired by those who follow them.

Bobby Knight may be one of the most recognizable examples of leadership gone bad.  For a time he was able to form teams of highly talented and motivated players who executed as a unit, who graduated within four years, and won 902 games, more than any other Division I team.  At Indiana, the Hoosiers won three national championships under his leadership and he also coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal.  He motivated his team through fits of temper, irrational outbursts, arrogance and mean spirited temper tantrums. Fear of losing?  Doubt in his ability to get a win? 

Abraham Lincoln on the other hand is an example of a cool head under pressure.  He was aware of his own fears and doubts and had the ability to control his emotions and work through his team to great effect.  According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Lincoln biographer, he treated those he worked with well. However, he did get angry and frustrated, so he found a way to channel those emotions. He was known to sit down and write what he referred to as a “hot letter” to the individual he was angry with and then he would set the letter aside and not send it. If he did lose his temper, Lincoln would follow up with a kind gesture or letter to let the individual know he was not holding a grudge, said Kearns Goodwin.

After reading the Time Magazine article titled “What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly,” you wonder how many leaders have taken fear and doubt to an untenable extreme.  How many of us has been at the mercy of a narcissistic boss and how many have had promising careers derailed as a result.  It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female, the impact to your self esteem is devastating and only the brave survive.  I mean by brave those who have the guts and wherewithal to look the ego laden, power hungry boss or leader in the eye and walk away knowing there is something better to be found.

In the extreme, fear and doubt manifests as pure selfishness.  A purely selfish boss says by his action that only what he thinks and feels is what counts. No one else, especially those who report to him, matters. Ultimately people get tired of the boss and they do the one thing that such bosses fear the most; they tune them out. They simply stop listening and stop following. Oh yes, they comply in order to get the work done, but they fail to commit to excellence.  And then, the team fails.  And the boss is laid naked, fear and doubt for all to see.

 See Time article: http://ti.me/jWZioz

The Blind Spot

How is that some people grow up hearing praise for their abilities and wind up with an ego that wouldn’t fit inside the biggest football stadium and others wind up modest and unpretentious?

It would be hard to imagine a great leader without a healthy sense of self worth and confidence.  But there is a fine line between confidence and abrasive ego.  Once you cross that line, how does someone give you the feedback to cross back?  How can this person be convinced it is necessary?

I spent a few hours yesterday with a group of coaches talking about this very thing.  One of them described a young executive who grew up hearing he could do anything, nothing and no one could stop him.  The kind of confidence he has makes him fearless in tackling any kind of challenge.  A wonderful attribute and one that can be attractive to both the boss and the followers.  It is this attitude that can spread inside a team and create a “can do” spirit, an innovative environment for pushing the envelope and making things happen.

But, he doesn’t know failure, has never felt it and has never had constructive feedback that caused him an ounce of self doubt.  This person plows forward, fearlessly

Having confidence in yourself is a prize beyond measure.  Thinking you cannot fail, is a particularly harmful blind spot.  People follow leaders with confidence in themselves and their beliefs.  People get hurt by leaders who think they cannot fail.

So how can we provide the necessary feedback to leaders who have a blind spot but are not open to feedback?  Can it be done?  Are the followers of this leader just simply doomed?  Is there a check a boss can put on this leader to open their eyes and ears to be responsive to feedback?

The check is in the culture of the organization.  The check is in placing this person with a boss who will force failure to happen and will be there to pick up the pieces, allowing the person to learn, finally, from failure.  Failure is the ultimate leveler.

In Control….or Controlling?

Think about a leader you have worked for.  The one that you would walk through fire for, you respected beyond measure.  Now think about how that leader got results.  Did this leader delegate detailed instructions and put you in charge of tasks?  Or did this leader delegate decision making and authority?

The former describes a leader who needs to be in control of every detail, who uses knowledge as power and only reveals information on a need to know basis.  And although this person may thank you for your assistance and make you feel part of the team, this person is driven by pride and ego.  Don’t get between this person and their goal and their accolades.  Typically, I have found this person to have such a sense of self importance that the term “it’s all about me” is an understatement.

For a brief time you may feel you are learning from this person, gaining business acumen, understanding processes, rubbing elbows with others who are on the team.  And then the light bulb comes on and you realize, you have been left out of meetings and communication and now have no concept of the bigger picture.  In the end, you have not been prepared for a larger role and ultimately, leadership.

I am going out a limb here by saying most of us have worked around, with or for the controlling leader.  But once we have had the opportunity to work for a leader in control, the difference is breathtaking.  The leader in control is that person who paints the big picture, delegates meaningful work, allows for you to learn from mistakes without fear of reprimand, and knows what is going on so that results are achieved and everyone involved knows how they contributed and is recognized for their efforts.

Who do you want to work for?  And more importantly, which of these leaders do you want to be?

How Do You Stack Up?

Whether you lead or you follow, great leadership, its impact on people and business results, is still a critical factor in how you perceive your worth.

As followers we take our cues from our leaders.  Those that are great make us feel valued.  They listen to what we say, they ask for our opinions and they care that we show up to work, not just to make them look good but to make us feel good.

As a leader, we feel our worth when we can produce results.  But, a great leader will get results not through people but with people, gaining trust and respect along the way, finding they never have to ask for help, it is given freely.

I have read too many explanations and definitions of great leadership to count but they all seem to have the same five attributes.

1. knowing who you are, what you stand for and how your actions affect others, good and bad; knowing your actions will be a model for others and set a tone for the workplace
2. being true to your word and deed, doing what is right even when no one else is watching, enabling others to do what they do best
3. inspiring others to see the bigger picture and understand how what they do adds to the greater cause, holding people accountable for their actions
4. challenging the status quo, never being happy with “that is the way we have always done it” and expecting bigger and better from everyone around you, thanking people for thinking outside the box and trying new things at every opportunity
5. paying it forward by mentoring and coaching those who report to you and influencing continued growth and development of everyone to be their best (chances are people will achieve greater things than they knew were possible if motivated by a great leader)

In my experience working with leaders, great is not an adjective I would use for most.  If great leaders have all of these attributes and bad leaders have none, the majority of leaders will have some of these attributes.

Be honest.  If not with me, then with yourself.  When is the last time you held a mirror up and ask yourself, “how am I doing?”, “what do my employees see in my leadership?”, “how could I be better, even great?”

How do you stack up?

Ripple Effects

I just came across a report, The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything By Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, edited by Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary | October 16, 2009, which reported a statistic that both surprised me and confirmed my growing suspicions.

Now for the first time in our nation’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.

 

I am a wife and a mother and a co-earner in our family. I just re-entered the workforce a few months ago after the birth of our third little girl, now eight months old. I am proud to be a working mom and co-contributor to our household income, so you might imagine, this subject is near and dear to my heart. The report contains multiple “reflective essays” and data points from multiple contributors on how the growing number of women in the workforce, or in some cases, women re-entering the workforce has a ripple effect on everything – from a macrosystem’s perspective to a microsystem’s perspective.

The report–broken into digestible, thought-provoking essays that touch on specific issues facing American families in this “new reality”–calls for a need for new policies to address this “new reality”.

Here are a few excerpts from the Executive Summary:

o   “…men and women are indeed negotiating everything—from the daily struggle over whether the husband or wife will drop off their child at school in the morning to major life decisions about whether a family will relocate to further one spouse’s career even if it hampers the other’s”.

• “…institutions have failed to catch up with this reality….there is still a long way to go”.

• “Up until now, government policymakers largely focused on supporting women’s entry into a male-oriented workforce on a par with men…who presumably had no family caregiving responsibilities. Too many workers—especially women and low wage workers—today cannot work in the way traditional breadwinners once worked with a steady job and lifelong marriage with a wife at home”.

• “Child and parental care, home maintenance, food production, and cleaning—once done by unpaid wives of male breadwinners…is now the work of immigrant women…hardworking immigrant women have helped make possible other women’s mass entry into the workforce”.

• “women’s outstanding performance in educational institutions, especially higher educational and professional schools, demands that employers create, workplaces that attract, retain, develop and exploit (in the best sense of the word) this tremendous resource”.

• “…mainstream media outlets often suggest that women have “made it”…yet in real life there are far too few women among the highest ranks of the professions and millions of everyday women struggle to make ends meet and juggle work and family”.

• “…most men have chosen the path toward acceptance of greater gender equality and often relish the extra earnings women bring into the family—but that some groups of men continue to struggle with the idea of widespread employment of women and mothers as it has made them question their very notion of masculinity”.

•  “…most stable, high-quality marriages are those where men and women share both paid work and domestic work. This is a shift from generations ago when the most stable marriages were those where husbands specialized in paid work and wives did all the domestic work.

Does this resonate with you and your family or what you observe in your workplace or neighborhoods? We encourage you to share your thoughts and experiences…..

If you are interested in accessing the 454 page report it can be found at      http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/10/womans_nation.html