Kairology

Introduction by Ian Williams

I recently came across this very challenging checklist in an article, but could not find who wrote it. If anyone knows, please tell me! Whoever it was has really given us all some interesting things to think about. I have just purchased a new business in the hospitality industry, taking on a new team of about 15 people, plus my own three sons! In setting up a family business, including non-family employees, it will an interesting time for me to demonstrate as a leader what I expect of other leaders! See how you measure up on this lot!

Ian

A Checklist for Changing Me to Change Them

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.” — Robert Lewis Stevenson, 19th century Scottish poet, novelist, and essayist

We can’t build a team or organization that’s different from us. We can’t make them into something we’re not. Failing to follow this principle is the single biggest reason that so many team and organization change and improvement efforts flounder or fail. The changes and improvements we try to make to others must ring true to the changes and improvements we’re also trying to make to ourselves. The following is a checklist:

Are You Trying to Make Your Organization or Team Into Something You’re Not?

To What Extent am I:

• Attempting to change my organization or team without changing myself?
• Prodding my organization to be more people (customer/partner) focused when I am a Technomanager (driven by management systems and technology)?
• Driving for industry or market leadership when I am afflicted with the Pessimism Plague and/or Victimitis Virus?
• Striving to stimulate and energize others when I am not passionate about my own role and life’s work?
• Promoting organization or team vision, values, and mission when my own picture of my preferred future, principles, and purpose aren’t clear and/or well aligned with where I am trying to lead others.
• Pushing for a customer-driven organization while controlling and dominating, rather than serving (servant-leadership)?
• Aspiring to develop new markets and fill unmet needs while spending limited time with customers, partners, or those serving them?
• Trying to build a learning organization when my own rate of personal growth and development is low?
• Declaring the urgency of higher levels of innovation while I stick to familiar personal methods and traditional command and control management approaches?
• Aiming for disciplined organization or team goal and priority setting when I am not well organized, a poor personal time manager, and fuzzy about my own goals and priorities?
• Setting organization improvement plans without an improvement process of my own?
• Promoting teamwork and a team-based organization without providing a personal model of team leadership and team effectiveness in action?
• Supporting high levels of skill development for everyone else?
• Forcing accountability, performance appraisal, and measurement on others while I defend, avoid, or half-heartedly gather personal feedback?
• Proclaiming empowerment and involvement while controlling and limiting people with a centralized structure and systems that constrain rather than support?
• Talking about the need for better communications without becoming a strong and compelling communicator?
• Establishing formal reward and recognition programs when my personal habits of giving sincere recognition and showing genuine appreciation are weak?
• Espousing support for change champions while suppressing “off the wall” behaviour and pushing people to follow my plans and stay within in my established system?
• Advocating reviews and assessments while doing little personal reflection and contemplation?

What do my answers tell me about my leadership? Does this exercise help explain the positive, negative, or so-so results of the team and organization improvement efforts I lead? My reflections are important, but an even better source of feedback are the people on my team or those in my organization who know my leadership behaviour well enough to give me some feedback. Ironically (and tragically), managers who need it most — the weakest leaders — are the least likely to ask for this kind of feedback.

Last month I left you with some thoughts about the common lies around leadership, and how they impact on people and business. As promised, here is the other side of the coin – the truths that underpin good leadership.

The 7 Truths of Liberating Leadership by Ian A. Williams

This article was published in NZ Business Magazine Jan/Feb 2010

In business and life, we are always on the lookout for key information to help us with leadership. I believe is keeping this simple rather than looking for over-complex solutions to relatively simple issues. My passion for good leadership often leads me to observe and reflect on what happens in the workplace for individuals and teams. I listen out for success, quality and enjoyment, and have collected some common threads of successful leadership, which I have summarised as the seven truths of liberating leadership.

1. The focus of leadership comes from the heart

While management comes primarily from intellect and thinking, leadership is governed from the heart – using the head of course! Leadership is driven from values and spiritual core, and from real self. Emotional intelligence is also more akin to leadership, while IQ more akin with management thinking. You carry in your heart what drives your head, and carry in your head what drives the heart. Both are important and need exercise. Using both demonstrates balance.

2. The drive for results is often the wrong focus

While results and outcomes are essential, the route to reaching them can often be misunderstood. Task focus will keep minds on the goal, but without ‘people-thinking’ a dead horse is being flogged! What really gets results is focus on the individuals and team; people are the route to achieving anything. It seems obvious, so why do so many leaders and managers overlook it constantly. John Adair’s action-centred leadership model demands the need for balance between task, team and individual. This provides the integrity for success.

3. Leadership is a journey, not simply a skill set for the individual and the team

The word leadership is derived from an ancient word associated with taking a journey. Ancient people used this work in connection with planning a route over land, or a course across the seas. This implies heading for what was unknown territory, with a mysterious adventure to be had. That required huge vision, imagination and faith. That’s the excitement and terror that leadership can produce.

4. Calm, humble, servant leadership is king

When you really think hard about the best leaders you’ve ever known or heard of, who did good things for the planet, a nation, a cause, or just a damn good job, you will find they are all likely to have one thing in common. That is a sense of humility and calm in their leadership. The best leadership role models are likely to be those serving others, and serving their cause. That’s how they get people on board, and that’s how they become loved and respected. It’s a key part of what we now call engagement.  Calmness of spirit in a leader promotes trust and confidence in followers. They make leadership look so natural that they create leaders from their followers. Being calm is not always being quiet; good communication is always key but calm leaders are often inspirational in a way that followers think they thought of an idea themselves. The humility of the leader lets them carry on thinking they did!

5. Leadership needs to be simple and common

As one of the most sought after qualities in humanity, leadership is a big subject. The Google statistics for leadership, and aspect of it, are vast. It’s so big a subject that people are often baffled by it, and fearful of aspiring to leadership. The good news is that leadership can be very simple, and is for everyone. Many who aspire to leadership forget that they are already leading themselves, and those closest to them. And if they are not, they should be! Leading yourself is the only safe place to practice, and practice makes perfect! Let’s get out of denial, and out of limiting ourselves. Lead yourself as if you were leading someone else – with respect and tolerance. Everyone leading themselves and others (if only by example) makes leadership a very common activity – and so it should be!

6. What people carry with them from childhood and teens is always with them, and surfaces in crisis and pressure

Adults are just children who grew up – some more than others. And while we think we left our happy and sad memories and experiences behind, we carry them with us constantly and unconsciously, in who we are, what we do, and how we respond. The best thing we can do with all that stuff is to let go what needs letting go, and face up to what has to stay. And whether it’s happy or sad, or whatever emotion it raises, let’s use it positively in our leadership now. Let’s also recognise that everyone else is carrying stuff too, so give them some room. If you want to be an exceptional leader, and a great human being, take no interest in who people are, and especially if you’d like them to follow you.

7. The heart of one person determines a whole culture

This is the responsibility that comes with leadership. Whether a leader of a huge organisation, a few dozen people, your family, or even just yourself, recognise that the heart that drives the blood through your body is the heart that drives your spirit. How you lead your thinking, your responses and your outcomes has a ripple effect on everyone else. So do it all with care. Everyone in an organisation or family has an impact on culture, but the one person at the top – on whom everyone else is focused – will have the biggest stone and make the biggest ripple. The ripple response in responsibility!

These seven aspects of leadership are contagious. If you lead an organisation or team, or even yourself, with these characteristics being evident, congratulate yourself for being exceptional, and go all out for continuous improvement. If this doesn’t sound like your experience, start work on these aspects now, and look forward to reaping the benefits. Happy people make happy and productive teams.

©Kairos Development Ltd. 2009 - All rights reserved

This month, I’m looking at the common lies around leadership, and how they impact on people and business. Next month I’ll be publishing the related truths of good leadership.

The 7 Lies of Limiting Leadership by Ian A Williams

This article was published in NZ Business Magazine Jan/Feb 2010

Too many people fall short of their potential in the leadership game, and also fail to enable or enhance the leadership of others. Ian Williams provides an interesting insight into some of the barriers to great leadership. In this issue, Ian shares with us his belief about some of the common lies about leadership, and in the next issue we follow this up with his account of the seven truths.

My passion for good leadership often leads me to observe and reflect on what happens in the workplace for individuals and teams. I listen out for comments and frustrations, and have concluded that there are some common misunderstandings about leadership issues, which I have summarised as the seven lies of leadership.

1. I’m not a leader

Introduction by Ian Williams

This article is from Dr Mario Barrett. It’s a great article to encourage us to draw on our resources of perseverance and resilience. The temptation is always to give up when things don’t work out first time, or even second or third! Most successful and innovative people are those who don’t give up easily, but have their effort and energy engaged with purposeful determination. Learning and moving on isn’t giving up either, it’s continuing the journey but perhaps using a slightly different route.

Ian

Personal Leadership Requires a Never Give Up Attitude by Dr. Mario Barrett, Ph.D.

As human beings, we tend to give up when things don’t seem to go our way or when times get tough. The belief that life will simply roll over, give in to our demands, and allow us to achieve our goals is unrealistic. The truth is that life is neither for nor against us. No, life is simply just the natural process of existence. What we have to understand is that the power to determine the direction that our life takes is not decided by life itself, but rather by us. We hold the power, regardless of the challenges we may face. Therefore, our power rests in how we handle our daily interactions within the context of life. These interactions are what determine our ability to overcome what we may perceive as insurmountable odds. Therefore, we must learn not to blame life itself for our successes or failures, but when faced with challenges, to simply stand our ground and work smarter with a never give up attitude firmly in place.

The following comparison may add more clarity to what I am speaking of. Life is like a blank piece of paper. As that paper exists, so do we. However, just like that paper is blank, so too is our life until we create something out of it. Until that piece of paper is written on, there is no story, no direction, no purpose, but there is endless possibility (positive or negative-you will determine that by the story you write). However, interesting things begin to happen as soon as we begin to write on that once blank piece of paper. A story starts to emerge, a direction begins to tug at us, a purpose starts to form, and meaning which gives life to passion begins to set in. The same occurs when we choose to engage life. However, this engagement does not come without pitfalls. You will find in many of America’s children classics such as Snow White, Pinocchio, and Cinderella that the main characters often have to overcome seemingly insurmountable pitfalls and challenges in order to achieve their dreams. I say this to say that we need to reinforce from young that never giving up in order to achieve our dreams is essential to our being able to live out our dreams, much like our childhood literary heroes.

Therefore, regardless of the pitfalls, or the challenges you may encounter in life, know that you get the final say in writing and living out your life’s story. With all of this in mind, I ask the question, what are you writing on your blank piece of paper called life? Are you utilizing the words and thought process of a quitter (one who buckles to the challenges of life that we all face)? Or, are you utilizing the words and thought process of a winner (one who never gives up in pursuit of his/her vision)?

I implore you to take on the role of the winner, and not to quit in the face of adversity. Do not succumb to life’s challenges, and never stop creating and working on making your life’s vision a reality. Remember, everyone has challenges to overcome. Life is full of them, but be passionate about your dreams, and continue to push, even when it seems most difficult.

Again, never give up! Never give up!

Dr. Barrett has an earned PhD in applied management and decision sciences, with a specialization in leadership and organizational change. He also holds a MS in organizational leadership and a BS in organizational management. In addition to these degrees, Dr. Barrett has completed several executive certificates focusing on various areas of management and leadership development.

Dr. Barrett is proud of his academic accomplishments, as they are the product of his long and sometimes difficult journey out of poverty. Along his journey, Dr. Barrett served honorably in the U.S. Air Force, participating in several vital overseas operations in the Middle East and Europe. He has also taught organizational leadership courses at the graduate degree level at Mercy College. This desire to develop leadership whether it be in myself or others is what drives Dr. Barrett. Dr. Barrett currently lives in NYC, where he runs The Barrett Center for Leadership Development, LLC and produces The Barrett Leadership Blog