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Executive Excellence: Leaders Leading Leaders are Visible

By on February 3, 2012 in Business, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Leadership, Perspectives, Trust, Values

Do you remember when you first accepted a senior executive role? Or if you’re looking into your crystal ball and see senior executive leadership in your future, are you ready for the visibility and the responsibility of it?

I have a dream that leadership opportunities come only to those who demonstrate that their decisions are informed by deeply held core values. Lee Thayer, author of Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing and I are on the same page about that.

Lee says, “The right values and beliefs are the “right stuff.” If you don’t have “the right stuff,” then you are not going to accomplish anything extraordinary, either individually or as a leader of others. And if those key others are not right-minded, right-hearted, and right-spirited (if they don’t have “the right stuff”), then your mission will likely fail. The right values and beliefs are critical because values and beliefs do not take us where we want to go. They take us in the direction they go. Their direction and their ends are inherent in them. They are blind to everything but their own ends. Get them right, and they will carry you along to where you want to go. Get them wrong, and they will carry you along to wherever they are headed.”

In your organization haven’t you observed someone with a title who has position power, but someone else has credibility and whose decisions people would choose to follow? I certainly have. If hiring choices have been good optimally the person with position power also is someone people would choose to follow. That scenario is least stressful on all systems and the people in them. It is also the path to extraordinary success.

Yet when was the last time you had a conversation with someone in leadership about their character as evidenced by the values that underlie their decisions?

Maybe it’s time to bring that background issue to the foreground at an executive session. Your employees know who you are, really.

I invite your comments, questions, and thoughts.

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Transparency takes Courage. Build your Muscle.

By on January 27, 2012 in Business, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust, Values

I have read and re-read the bible on Transparency.  On page 42 of Transparency, authors Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman and James O’Toole state, “Transparency is one evidence of an organization’s moral health.”  Are these familiar names?  If you lead an organization, they should be.

So what is transparency?  Transparency is a choice, a value in an organization that optimizes candor (telling the truth regardless of the impact of that truth, fast and forward).  These authors assert that candor maximizes the probability of success.

Transparency has to be lived as a value from the top of the organization down through its toes, where it does the walking.  And it either walks its talk or it doesn’t.  Like pregnancy, there is no such thing as being partly transparent.  What would that be?  We’ll tell you the truth part of the time but not all of the time?  It’s up to you to guess which part is true, though.

Like humanity, this is a complex subject in application.  We have seen the absence of transparency in highly visible cases where leaders did not intend to dupe their stakeholders, reality just got away from them at Enron, British Petroleum (BP) and most of the global organizational financial failures that created our drop in economic safety in the world.   Reality was known in these cases, it was not transparent to those who could make a difference before the crisis.

Does transparency occur differently inside an organization with the lightening speed of the digital era, where things said cannot be retracted?  The magnitude of emails and sometimes-careless comments and thought, can complicate discerning transparency for actionable matters.

These authors assert that transparency begins at home, in your own organization, where you will build a muscle around being transparent so that when called for in the world at large, you won’t be left without capacity for it like BP’s ex-CEO Tony Hayward, who eventually got around to admitting BP was not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.”    They also call for leaders to empower transparency in both directions — enabling others to “speak truth to power.”

You do know what I mean.  And if you have built a muscle around screwing your courage to the sticking point to look into the mirror, and if you enable your people to show you a mirror, good for you!  If you have not, there is no time like the present.

Tell me your stories, your questions, your thoughts.

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Listening is a Power Source for Leaders

By on January 12, 2012 in Business, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust

As the facilitator of CEO business support groups I held conversations with candidates for my groups to discern the likelihood that they would be good listeners.  I distinctly remember one CEO who told me, “I take only my own counsel.  No thank you.”  I had had candidates suggest it, carry that attitude, but never had it been so directly spoken.

So you are a leader.  If you are successful by financial standards you could fall into that trap.  As leaders, it can be tempting to read our own press and believe it.

Power is a reflection of effectiveness.   You could be the best at your profession — you might be the expert in your field. I have met leaders who, when they walk into a room all eyes turn.  If you have that power, you have a responsibility.  The more reference power, the more personal power, or the more expert power you have, the more responsibility is called for.

Consider that some people may have stopped telling you the truth, truth that could be useful.  They may have trouble being themselves around you.  If your presence is so overwhelming that others have to shade their eyes not to get sunburn, then you have missed an opportunity to be contributed to and frankly, to contribute.  The separation of inequality is a barrier to communication.

Bottom line is, being bigger than your britches creates a barrier to hearing the thoughts, observations, or desires of others.   Communication is lessened, altered, missed.

I was once advised, “Take advice from a rock.” Everyone has a contribution to make if you will allow it, even listen for it.  A little humility goes a long way to making others comfortable in your presence, giving you access to them and them access to you.

Do you have the experience of being powerful?  When do you tend to listen, and to whom?  When do you not?   Dialog is healthy.  I welcome yours here.

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