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Focus Group Results
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Ever wonder how your views on leadership stack up against those of your peers?
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Having a Great Company
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Want to have a great company? Across all industries and in a surprisingly broad range of economic conditions, only 6% - that’s about one in 17 - consistently out-perform their peers.
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“Had he never been called upon to exercise authority, no one would ever have doubted his capacity to do so.”
Tacitus on the emperor Galba
In the early 1990’ s, researchers at MIT conducted a remarkable study on the interior life of leaders from a wide range of both corporate and public operating environments. Perhaps the most common feeling reported was periodic surprise at how “far” they had gotten with its attendant fear that they’ d be “found out” for the profoundly ordinary souls they really were. Few in leadership think of themselves as born to it. More often than we’ d like to admit, leadership occurs quite by accident. Circumstance, self-promotion and impulse far outweigh divine calling or scientific selection. Over the last eight years, through hours of conversation with senior executives about their companies and their lives, one of the most persistent themes has been this notion of “the accidental leader”, usually bracketed by four questions: “How did I get here...no kidding?” “Can I keep this together?” “What’ s next for me?” “Is this what I should be doing with my life?
It’ s often been said that the first principle of leadership is authenticity. OK…if that’ s true, you have to believe that there are ways of uncovering who your authentic self really is. Leaders absorb and defend against so many projections that they sometimes have difficulty remembering who they truly are. (“you can do anything you darnn well please” or “you couldn’ t lead a group in silent prayer”) Although there is no simple path to the authentic self, we’ ve found that one of the most powerful methods can be careful reflection on one’ s own defining moments.
Defining Moments
With apologies to Andy Whorhol, “everybody gets 15 minutes of definition”…that is, each of us is tested, shaped and revealed through turning points that together may add up to less than an hour over, say, half a century. Many such turning points occur long before one ever assumes the mantle of leadership. This by no means discounts the power of the personal goals we all set. The fantasy, though, is that “the best of us” are the sum of our aspirations; the reality is, that’ s only half the story. Goals call on the will and the intellect; defining moments uncover the character...the person who resides behind the intentions. They call out like the bully on the playground saying “who are you?...oh yeah?...well what are you going to do about it”? Exercising leadership on any scale is one of the defining moments in a person’ s life. Prominent roles inevitably confront the incumbent with the need to make choices between “right and right”, to struggle over such matters as the responsible use of personal power and to make sacrifices in the interest of “the greater good”. Our resolutions in these matters have their roots in our moments of definition, presenting themselves earlier in life as “dilemmas, soundings or happenings”.
Dilemmas...
Have you ever been confronted with the need to choose between two equally undesirable alternatives? Terminating an underperformer you’ ve known for years, or carrying him at great expense to both the company and yourself, for example. The most challenging and influential dilemmas seem to have a universal, almost archetypal structure to them…”Save the company/Save the Man; Tell the truth/Keep the faith; Safe Harbor/Rough sea”, and so on. Who are you at such moments? What do you call upon when confronted with such dilemmas?
Soundings…
Remember Reginald Denny, the guy who was pulled from his truck and beaten in the riots following the Rodney King verdict? Shortly thereafter, I heard Henry Kissinger speak at a conference in Dallas. Someone asked him if he thought the events in Los Angeles had any implications for business leaders. He said that what had happened captured the struggle for a new world order as the sons of Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America collided on that street corner exercising their “rights”. Working out this emerging world order was critical to both shared prosperity and the avoidance of a Third World War. I cannot recall another thing he said that day, but the impact of those few words was profound. What are those things you have heard that permanently changed your view of the world? What words within your own experience altered the lens you use?
Happenings...
Although managers like to think of themselves as the agents of change, many of the most significant events in our lives, as well as the life of the organizations we lead, are totally outside our control. My father died quite unexpectedly during my junior year of college. He had been “severed” not long before as his company shifted it’ s manufacturing footprint to lower cost states. We were still recovering from the assassination of John Kennedy, and were just beginning to appreciate the scope of our involvement in Vietnam…an involvement that would consume and redefine so much of my generation and my own life as well. Downsizing will forever have more than a managerial ring for me, and the Camelot years will always conjure up two indelible dates: one that changed our country; a second that altered the structure of our family. What happened for you that continues to cast its shadow today…and in what way? The discovery (or recovery) of your authentic self is imbedded in your own defining moments. A bit of reflection, conversation with a peer or candid exchange with an Executive Coach has the power to make your leadership more intentional, underscoring the importance of partners in the defining moment called “leading”.
Executive Coaching Program
It is, indeed, lonely at the top. Contact us if you are interested in our Executive Coaching program, or in the Executive Couples workshop we would like to conduct this winter…someplace warm, of course. |
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