The Swoosh

Legendary New York Yankees manager, Casey Stengel (Stengel was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame largely due to his managerial stint with the Yankees during the 1950's when the team the American League pennant ten times and the World Series seven times), once said, "Gettin' good players is easy.  Gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part."  Similarly, NBA Hall of Famer (and one of the greatest basketball players of all-time) Michael Jordan once said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."  As I've previously discussed (see "There's no 'I' in Team"), there have been a number of sports teams throughout history who have performed far below expectations despite having a number of so-called "All Stars" on the team.  But what then are the key ingredients in the "secret sauce" for building a high-performing team?  Certainly having a so-called "glue guy" (or "glue gal") is important, as I've also previously discussed (see "He's the glue..." and "In search of David Ross"), the one individual who is perfectly comfortable and capable of playing a supporting cast kind of role (hence the term, "role player").  Team "chemistry" is important too.  As I've stated in the past ("Chemistry is culture"), team chemistry is just another word for culture.  Having the right organizational culture, where individual members of the team hold each other accountable (as just one example) can make a difference between winning and losing.  Collaboration with each other and a commitment to a standard of excellence with a clearly defined goal is also important (see "Team Chicken McNugget").  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the individual members of the team have to trust each other.  As Simon Sinek said, "A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other."

Charles Duhigg (author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators) would add one more essential ingredient for high performing teams.  He said, "Teams need to believe that their work is important. Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful. Teams need clear goals and defined roles. Team members need to know they can depend on one another. But, most important, teams need psychological safety."  The Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has written extensively about psychological safety, including The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth and most recently, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well (both are superb and highly recommended, by the way).  "Psychological safety" means that individuals can openly admit their mistakes and learn from them.  Leaders have to create the kind of environment where members of the team, regardless of their role or place in the hierarchy, are free to speak up about their concerns without fear of retribution or ridicule.

Some of Dr. Edmondson's latest research findings on psychological safety are of interest here, particularly since it involves health care teams and it examines the change in psychological safety that occur over time from the time with tenure.   Dr. Edmondson and her colleagues, Derrick Bransby and Michaela Kerrissey found in a study of more than 10,000 employees at a large health care system that (1) new members of the team have higher psychological safety compared to their longer tenured colleagues and (2) psychological safety decreases fairly rapidly and takes years to recover.  They called this drop in psychological safety a "swoosh" (see their Figure below) and noted that it could take up to 20 years for team members to get back to the levels of psychological safety they had when they first started.

Why does the "swoosh" occur?  Think about it.  When individuals first join a new team or organization, they are usually filled with excitement and enthusiasm.  These individuals are eager to get started and feel confident that they have been hired for a reason.  Things may even go well initially, but soon the new members of the team may find (hopefully not, but it can happen) that the proverbial grass is not always greener on the other side.  They may encounter friction or in some cases experience a problematic interaction with another member of the team (MIT investigators John Van Maanen and Ed Schein call these experiences "reality shocks").  Unfortunately, it only takes one bad interaction to kill psychological safety.  Just one instance of public humiliation or dismissal of a concern will make it less likely that an individual will raise a concern in the future.  Even more concerning, it often takes years to recover from that one experience!  

The good news is that leaders can create an environment of psychological safety.  Edmondson and her colleagues noted that the "swoosh" was less severe in departments with high psychological safety at baseline.  They emphasize that "Psychological safety is note the default in any workplace, and those who need it most - newcomers - are also most vulnerable to losing it.  Cultivating and reinforcing a climate favorable to learning requires deliberate leadership."

Interesting Times

Last week was the 23rd Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which forever changed our world.  I know it changed me forever.  To this day, I vividly remember the events of that fateful morning and how I first learned of the planes crashing into the two towers of the World Trade Center.  For several years, I've written a blog post to commemorate the tragic events of that horrible day and to honor those that died.  This year, I'm writing that post one week late.

I've frequently talked about crisis leadership - it's one of my favorite topics to read and write about.  Regardless of what you think about them now, there is no question that then President George W. Bush and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were the right leaders at the right time on September 11, 2001 and in the days after.  I would highly recommend watching the 2021 television documentary (available on Apple TV) on the 9/11 attacks, 9/11: Inside the President's War Room for a minute-by-minute perspective of that day through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors.  I learned some things that I didn't know, and the documentary itself is a Master Class in crisis leadership.

Given everything that is going on in our world today, the ability to lead with calm resolve during a crisis is almost a prerequisite for leaders.  Ian Mitroff, author of Crisis Leadership: Planning for the Unthinkable, wrote, "Crises, catastrophes, and calamities are an unfortunate but inevitable fact of life. They have been with us since the beginning of time. It can be argued that they will be with us until the end of human history itself. In short, they are an integral part of the human condition. They are the human condition."  Like it or not, as leaders, whether we will experience a crisis is not a question of "if" but "when."

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that says, "May you live in interesting times."  Legend has it that this was actually an ancient Chinese curse, which is probably not entirely true.  Robert F. Kennedy used the phrase in his "Day of Affirmation Address" in Cape Town, South Africa on June 6, 1966:

There is a Chinese curse which says, “May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.

Perhaps there is no better way to cherish the memory of those who died on 9/11 and to honor the leaders who helped us make it through those dark days by becoming better leaders ourselves.  As I've said before, leaders were made for times like the present.  Where others see danger and uncertainty, the extraordinary leaders see opportunity.  May we all live and lead in interesting times...

"Football is Life!"

I am somewhat conflicted about the result of at least one college football game this past weekend.  Our family can legitimately claim ties to at least six Division I FBS college football teams - Purdue, Indiana, Notre Dame, Alabama, Boston College, and the University of Cincinnati.  I root for them all, except when two of these teams happen to play each other, which happens at least once every season.  This past weekend, Notre Dame absolutely trounced Purdue by a score of 66-7.  The game (and score) was so lopsided, that Notre Dame actually played four quarterbacks - three of whom scored touchdowns!  I was happy for the Fighting Irish, particularly after their embarrassing loss to Northern Illinois the prior week.  But I was just as disappointed for Purdue.

If you are Coach Marcus Freeman (Notre Dame's head football coach) one week ago, what do you say after your team, which was ranked #5 in the country, lost to an unranked Northern Illinois team?  How do you move on from a loss which likely has greatly decreased your chances of playing in the college football play-offs at the end of the year?  On the other hand, if you are Coach Ryan Walters (Purdue's head football coach), what can you say to your team after they just lost by almost sixty points?  The game was so lopsided, many of the fans (and almost the entire student section) left at half time.  How do you go on from that?

Borrowing a phrase ("Football is life!") from one of the characters (Dani Rojas) in one of my favorite television shows (Ted Lasso), what is true in sports is often true in life in general.  If you are Coach Freeman last week or Coach Walters this week, you tell your team that the only thing that they can do is learn from their experience and move on.  As the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."  We are, after all, human, and as humans, we make mistakes.  And we aren't going to win every single time.  There will be times when we lose, and sometimes we will lose very badly.  What separates the champs from the chumps is that the champions pick themselves up after a loss, learn from their experience, continue to work hard, and move forward so that they can do better next time.

"The Real Thing"

If you ever get the chance to visit "The World of Coca Cola" museum in Atlanta, Georgia, do so!  It's a great place to learn about the history of Coca Cola, watch some classic Coca Cola television commercials, and taste a variety of Coca Cola's soft drink products from around the world.  Since my last visit there, I think that they now even store the "secret formula" to Coca Cola there in a special vault.  The formula is so secret, that it's rumored that only three people at any one time know it!

Brian Dyson was the Chief Executive Officer of Coca Cola Enterprises, Inc from 1986 to 1991.  He delivered the Commencement Speech at Georgia Tech's 172nd Commencement on September 6, 1991, that has come to be known as the "Five Balls of Life" speech.  The full speech is well worth a read and can be found on the Internet here.  Building on the "secret formula" theme, Dyson told the graduating seniors that the ingredients for future success ("the secret formula" if you will) involved three things: "vision, knowing what you want to be when you grow up; confidence, knowing who you are; and luck, or what I would call being in the right place at the right time."  He goes on to talk about the history of The Coca Cola Company to provide examples of each of these three ingredients.

Dyson says, "The first ingredient in the secret formula for success is vision - what you would like to be.  Because remember that we all live under the same sky, but we do not have the same horizon."  He goes on to say that "life belongs to the discontented - that restlessness of spirit that impels some of us to go that extra step that brings about a breakthrough."  

The next ingredient in the secret formula for success is confidence, which Dyson defines as "a basic acceptance of what I am and a realistic understanding of what I am not. It is an understanding of your potential."  He goes on to recommend focusing on our strengths and "developing them to the max." He also talks about "being at the right place at the right time" but is quick to point out that "Sometimes you have to make your own luck" (I couldn't agree more - see my posts, "Good luck is the twin of hard work", "Lucky Breaks", and most recently, "Study the Wind").

Dyson ends with his metaphor on the "Five Balls of Life".  He cautions the graduating seniors to make sure that they bring balance into their lives.  He says, "Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air.  You name them - work, family, health, friends, and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air.  You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball.  If you drop it, it will bounce back.  But the other four balls - family, health, friends, and spirit - are made of glass.  If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered.  They will never be the same.  You must understand that and strive for balance in your life."

Pretty good advice.

"Improvise, Overcome, Adapt"

Tempestuous.  Turbulent.  Uncertain.  Chaos.  These are just some of the adjectives that leadership and management experts have used to describe the last several years.  The U.S. Army War College introduced an acronym that I think perfectly describes the leadership climate in today's world - VUCA, to which some have added a fifth letter to create the acronym VUCAT, where V=Volatility, U=Uncertainty, C=Complexity, A=Ambiguity, and T=Turbulent.  As I have shared in the past, I strongly believe that organizations that embrace the High Reliability Organization principle of "Deference to Expertise" will be the ones best positioned to stay ahead and thrive in today's climate.  I've also mentioned the concept of "Commander's Intent", a leadership element that has been adopted by the U.S. military, based in turn upon a concept known as "Mission Command" originally developed by the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars and later modified and adopted by the German Wehrmacht in the First and Second World Wars.  The German Wehrmacht called it Auftragstaktik (literally, "mission tactics") and distinguished it from Befehlstaktik (literally, "command tactics").

Dr. Martin Samuels wrote an excellent article ("Understanding Command Approaches") in the online Journal of Military Operations  that further builds on this topic.  Dr. Samuels describes Auftragstaktik as a leadership style where leaders and managers give someone a goal and the freedom to achieve it, whereas Befehlstaktik is a leadership style in which leaders and managers give someone specific and detailed instructions on how to achieve a goal.  

There's a scene from the 1986 movie "Heartbreak Ridge" starring Clint Eastwood, in which Eastwood plays the character Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, a famous war veteran and Medal of Honor winner.  Earlier in the movie, Highway meets a troubled Marine Corps unit for the first time and tells them that they will wear the same T-shirt or none at all during the morning run ("As soon as you all look like Marines, you will start acting like Marines").  The next day, the Marines all show up wearing the same T-shirt, but Gunny Highway is wearing a different one.    Gunny Highway orders them to again take off their T-shirts, because their T-shirts don't match the one that he is wearing.  They complain that it's impossible to pre-determine what T-shirt Gunny Highway is wearing when they are getting ready for their morning run, to which Gunny Highway responds that they have to "Improvise, Overcome, and Adapt."  It's a great scene, and describes in three short, easy words what is meant by  "Mission Command".  

Dwight Eisenhower famously said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."  I think this quote perfectly describes Auftragstaktik, "Mission Command", and ultimately, "Deference to Expertise".  Particularly in the VUCAT world that we live in today, it's impossible to plan and prepare for every single contingency that can occur.  Instead, leaders should embrace the concept of "Mission Command" by training their teams to be able to "improvise, overcome, and adapt" to the specifics of a particular situation, while simultaneously keeping the end-goal in mind.

As Chad Storlie writes for Harvard Business Review (see "Manage Uncertainty with Commander's Intent"), "The key to successful Commander's/CEO Intent is trained, confident, and engaged military personnel/employees.  Employees must understand the plan and when they have to deviate to ensure the Commander's Intent is accomplished."  Storlie emphasizes (just as the military and other High Reliability Organizations emphasize) that teams need to be highly trained to be able to work in this kind of environment and under the concept of "Mission Command".  He concludes by stating, "Good Commander's Intent allows employees and teams to adapt the plan using improvisation, initiative, and adaptation to reach the original plan objectives.  In other words, teams need to "Improvise, Overcome, and Adapt."

"Well begun is half done"

There's a scene in the 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins when the main character, Mary Poppins, played superbly by Julie Andrews, tells the two Banks children that they are going to play a game called "Well begun is half-done" (otherwise known as "Clean up the nursery").  The dialogue leads into the song, "A Spoonful of Sugar".  As it turns out, the phrase "Well begun is half-done" is an ancient Greek proverb which is traditionally thought to have come from Aristotle's work, Politics and suggests that a good beginning makes a good ending.  In other words, the stronger the start to a job or task, the better the finish.  I don't think I can argue with that logic, and I certainly won't try to outdo Aristotle!  Instead, I wanted to focus on the second half of the proverb, specifically the last two words - "half done".

Have you ever found yourself overly preoccupied or obsessed with a job that is left unfinished (i.e., "half done") on your "To Do" list?  It's a well-described phenomenon that was originally described by the psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, and it's called, appropriately enough, the Zeigarnik effect.  Zeigarnik first became interested in this phenomenon after her colleague (and a famous psychologist in his own right), Kurt Lewin noticed that his waiter remembered still unpaid orders better than those for customers who had already paid their bill.  In fact, once customers paid their bill, the waiter had completely forgotten what they had ordered.  Zeigarnik designed a series of experiments to study this further, publishing her research in the journal Psychologische Forschung in 1927 (the original article was published in German, though a translated version can be found without too much difficulty on the Internet).

The Zeigarnik effect is frequently leveraged in gamification (for example, progress trackers that show a how close users are to completely a task) and with the use of checklists.  Television shows also take advantage of the Zeigarnik effect when they have "cliffhangers" at the end of an episode or season.  Students often find that they forget a lot of the material that they studied (maybe even pulling an all-nighter) before an exam, once the exam is finished - again, that's the Zeigarnik effect at work!  

While leveraging the Zeigarnik effect can increase productivity, there is also a downside.  Unfinished tasks or activities can have a powerful effect, but if we are not careful, the Zeigarnik effect may force our minds to focus only on the unfinished task (which may not be the most important task to finish).  Useful strategies to avoid this counterproductive effect include time blocking, to-do lists, and prioritization.  

Like many cognitive biases, simply being aware of the pros and cons of the Zeigarnik effect is crucial.  "Well begun is half done," but remember too that "a job half done is as good as none."

Big Brother is Watching

There's no question that the COVID-19 pandemic changed how we view remote work.  Remote work is becoming commonplace (see my recent post on some of the remote work trends in "The evolution of working from home"), with recent studies suggesting that one in five Americans will work from home by 2025.  The majority of workers prefer to work remotely - another recent survey found that 54% of people want to work fully remotely, 41% want to work a hybrid schedule, and only 5% of employees want to work in the office full-time.  In this same survey, nearly two-thirds of workers say that the ability to work remote is the most important aspect of a job, ranking above even salary, benefits, and a flexible schedule.  And, as some technology companies have started to require workers to come back to the office, 14% of workers stated that they would refuse to come back on-site, even if their employers required it!

There are clear benefits to remote work.  For example, a survey conducted by Forbes magazine, 71% of workers said that working remotely helped them to better balance their work and personal lives.  However, there are also drawbacks to remote work.  In the same survey, 53% of remote workers reported that it was harder to feel connected to their organization and fellow co-workers.  Nearly 70% of remote workers stated that digital communication tools increased burnout.

As I've discussed in previous posts (see "Everyone's working for the weekend?", "The WFH Question" and "Remote work, again..."), there have been a number of studies that have tried to determine whether remote working improves or worsens productivity.  With this concern in mind, several organizations have implemented electronic monitoring tools in order to keep closer tabs on what their employees are doing when they are working from home (the Forbes survey found that almost 40% of remote workers reported being monitored by their organizations).  

As employers embrace electronic monitoring of their remote employees, it's logical to ask how workers perceive and respond to being monitored in this manner.  For example, one concern is that workers may perceive that "Big Brother is watching" and respond negatively, actually worsening productivity in the long run.  It is with this important question in mind that led to the study by a team of investigators who published their findings in the Journal of Organizational Behavior ("Trouble with big brother" Counterproductive consequences of electronic monitoring through the erosion of leader-member social exchange").  They conducted both a laboratory study and a field study, basing their investigation on a framework known as social exchange theory.  Here, employees will expect that the relationship with their supervisor is mutually beneficial.  Supervisors help their employees grow and develop as individuals, they trust them to do the right thing, and they provide them some flexibility and choice in how their work is completed.  In turn, the employees "reward" their supervisors' behavior with increased engagement and productivity.  Conversely, if supervisors do not help their employees grow and develop or don't provide them with some degree of flexibility, choice, and trust, then the employees will respond negatively and won't work as hard (i.e. productivity suffers).  They therefore hypothesized that electronic monitoring would actually worsen employee engagement and motivation, undermine the relationship between the employee and their direct supervisor, and lead to deviant behavior, such as loafing.  Together, all of these factors would decrease productivity and performance.

While the results between the laboratory-based study and the field study were slightly different, the overall results suggested that (1) electronic monitoring of employees working remotely actually leads to worse productivity and (2) these effects can be mitigated if supervisors use the electronic monitoring as a tool to help grow and develop their employees.  The first result shouldn't be too surprising - I have posted about Ethan Bernstein's studies in the past (see my post "The Search for Meaning") on the so-called "transparency paradox" (see also Bernstein's Harvard Business Review article "The Transparency Trap").  Consistent with the findings in the present study, Bernstein found that that the greater transparency in open work environments actually decreases worker productivity.  

What the current study adds to the literature is the second finding.  If the supervisors used the electronic monitoring as a discussion point and tool for professional growth and development with the individual employee, productivity did not suffer at all.  In other words, if the employee interpreted the electronic monitoring as "Big Brother is watching", they were more likely to slack off or intentionally work slowly and waste time.  If the employees felt that the supervisor was using the electronic monitoring tool to help them become more efficient, they continued to work productively.

There will inevitably be additional studies on remote work and electronic monitoring in the years to come.  I suspect that remote work/hybrid work arrangements are here to stay.  As leaders and managers, we need to figure out how best to incorporate these alternative working arrangements to help our teams reach their full potential and help our organizations to succeed.

"Empowering employees doesn't mean leaving them alone..."

One of the bedrock, foundational principles and defining characteristics (there are five most frequently mentioned in the literature, but I've also added a sixth) of High Reliability Organizations (HROs) is the principle of Deference to Expertise.  Again, HROs are defined as organizations that somehow avoid catastrophic accidents, even though they exist in an environment where normal accidents are expected to occur (indeed, they are almost inevitable) by virtue of the complexity of the organization and by the nature of the industry.  Examples of HROs include flight deck operations on US Navy aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, commercial aviation, NASA, and forest fire fighting operations.  The five defining characteristics most frequently mentioned in the literature include:

1. Preoccupation with Failure

2. Reluctance to Simplify

3. Sensitivity to Operations

4. Commitment to Resilience

5. Deference to Expertise

Some experts, based upon their study of other HROs, in particular the U.S. Navy SEALs, would add a sixth defining characteristic - Comfort with uncertainty and chaos.  

I've probably posted more about Deference to Expertise than any of the other four defining characteristics of HROs.  It's definitely one of my favorites.  The simple fact of the matter is that there's no playbook that leaders can use in today's VUCAT world.  What has traditionally worked in the past may no longer apply in today's environment.  Wouldn't it be great if we could simulate and practice for every possible scenario beforehand?  Wouldn't it be great if we could script out our responses to every possible contingency that we may face in our organizations?  While we can certainly try to do that, it's just not possible to cover every scenario or every contingency that we may encounter.  HROs have solved this problem through Deference to Expertise.  In short, Deference to Expertise means front-line leaders and managers closest to the action are given the authority to make decisions based upon their real-time assessment of what is going on in front of them.  The leadership expert David Marquet (who I've posted about a number of times in the past - see "Classic Rookie Manager Mistakes", "The definition of power is the transfer of energy...", "The power of empowerment", and "Turning around the ship...")  calls this "pushing authority to information" (as opposed to the more traditional mode of "pushing information to authority").

The military has developed a variation of Deference to Expertise known as "commander's intent" (based upon an earlier concept developed by the German military during the early days of World War II, called "auftragstaktik").  Frontline leaders (who are usually far removed from their commanding officers) are provided with a set of orders and instructions that describe the overall goals and objectives of a particular mission, the tactics and strategy that will be used, and the resources that will be immediately available.  In other words, the frontline leaders are given a rough blueprint of the battle plan and are then told to go and complete the mission.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked when it comes to Deference to Expertise is "How much deference?"  How much authority should leaders push to information?  When should we, as leaders, take back authority and over-ride the decisions that have been made on the front-lines?  It's a tricky question, but an important one.  The answer is found with the military concept of "commander's intent".  Frontline leaders are empowered to make decisions, but those decisions are made within a larger framework of the goals and objectives of the mission.  Aaron De Smet, Caitlin Hewes, and Leigh Weiss from McKinsey & Company wrote a great blog post "Busting a management myth: Empowering employees doesn't mean leaving them alone".  They state, "Many managers think delegating to others and empowering them means leaving them alone to make decisions; but successful empowerment requires involvement, it means being hands on, just not directive – playing the role of inspiring coach and servant leader and providing guidance and guardrails, but not making the decision. This looks very different from laissez faire hands-off leadership styles."  Their research suggests that organizations  whose front-line leaders are empowered to make decisions through coaching are nearly four times more likely to make fast, good decisions and outperform their industry peers.  

Deference to Expertise is all about empowering front-line leaders to make decisions based upon their assessment and judgement of what is happening in front of them.  But there is an important caveat - empowerment comes with a trade-off.  Decisions are made within a certain framework based on the overall goals and objectives of the organization's mission.  In other words, decisions are made within a set of guardrails.  It's a key point that differentiates HROs from other organizations.

Leader, Manager, or Both?

The magazine Harvard Business Review first published an article by Abraham Zelznik in 1977 that highlighted the differences between leadership and management.  Since that time, the question on whether leaders and managers are different has been posed in an a number of articles published both in HBR and elsewhere (see "What Leaders Really Do", "Do Managers and Leaders Really Do Different Things?", "Leadership vs. Management: What's the Difference?" for a few of my favorites).  It's an age-old question, and some experts trace it back to Niccolò Machiavelli (others as far back as Plato).  

While I do personally believe that leadership and management are different, I would say that they are the proverbial two sides of the same coin.  They can't exist in isolation, because in reality, we need both.  As yet another HBR article claims, "The Best Managers are Leaders - and Vice Versa".  As Jeroen Kraaijenbrink suggests in an article for Forbes magazine ("There is No Difference Between Managers and Leaders"), the distinction between leadership and management is a myth.  Vineet Nayar (writing for HBR) suggests that we should lead people and manage work.  I like that a lot.  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (I've posted about her in the past - see "The tale of the five monkeys", "A few of history's greatest leaders", and "Organizational enemas") said, "You don't manage people, you manage things.  You lead people."

I think part of the issue is that when we think of leadership, our minds naturally go to those charismatic, visionary leaders who have accomplished great things throughout history.  Conversely, we tend to associate management with boring, bureaucratic, and mundane (see "The Best Managers are Boring Managers").  The problem is that you don't necessarily need to be charismatic to be a great leader though (see "The Myth of the Brilliant, Charismatic Leader") and managing key operational processes doesn't have to be boring!

I am probably guilty of trying to separate and differentiate leadership and management in the past, and for that I apologize!  The truth is that in order to be effective, an executive needs to be a good leader AND a good manager.  It's not an "or" question, it's an "and" one.  

What does it take to be a great leader?

Everything that I've read (and experienced) about leadership has led me to believe that leaders are made, not born.  But here is an important caveat that I've not heard before.  Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill says, "Leadership is a process of self-development.  No one can teach you how to lead; you need to be willing and able to learn how to lead.  Mostly we learn from our experiences and facing adversity. Stepping outside of the spaces where we feel safe - is a powerful teacher."  Leadership is therefore, at least in part, a voyage of self-discovery and continuous learning and self-improvement.  I find that very reassuring! 

In a recent article in Harvard Business Review by Rebecca Knight, Hill listed the top eight most important qualities for successful leadership and what we as leaders can do to get better at them.

1.  Authenticity: "Your competence is not enough; people need to trust your character and connect with you, otherwise they will not be willing to take risks with you."

2.  Curiosity: "It's about looking around the corner, exploring uncharted territories, and trying to understand the art of the possible."

3.  Analytical prowess: "It's not about being data-driven, it's about being data-informed."  As leaders, we have to be able to use data to break down complex problems and solve them.

4.  Adaptability: "Stakeholder expectations are evolving faster and you, as a leader, need to be able to adjust to these ever-shifting demands."

5.  Creativity:  "Some of those ideas are incremental and others are breakthroughs."  Knight adds, "The most innovative ideas often emerge from the adjacent possible, or the range of possibilities immediately within reach."

6.  Comfort with ambiguity: Knight writes, "Many people will fall into the trap of linear thinking, believing that X causes Y, and as a result, they may overlook the interplay of different dynamics."  As leaders, we need to embrace systems thinking!

7.  Resilience: "You need to know how to regroup and get input from others by asking, Is there another path?"

8.  Empathy: "You need to be able to step into the shoes of your team members, understand what matters to them, what their priorities are, and identify common ground."

When I read this article, I thought to myself, "This is a pretty good list!"  What is missing in your opinion?

"The Unseen Leader"

I read an interesting article ("The 'action fallacy' tells us that the most effective leaders are unseen") that was based on excerpts from a book by Martin Gutmann, The Unseen Leader.  Gutmann also summarized some of his major points from the book in a TEDx talk entitled "Are we celebrating the wrong leaders?"  The article starts out with two commonly held beliefs about leadership.  Gutman actually suggests that they are so commonly held that they have become clichés: "Leadership is about overcoming crises" and "Leadership is about acting when others hesitate."  His statement, "Management blogs, consulting pitches, and social media posts are rife with similarly catchy leadership clichés" definitely hit home.

Gutman blames what he calls the "action fallacy" (see the related concept from psychology, called the "action bias"), which he defines as "the mistaken belief that leadership is characterized by energy and movement in the face of harrowing odds."  He suggests that we often place too much emphasis on "heroism in the face of harrowing odds" which "can obscure the nature of truly effective leadership."  For example, Gutman compares and contrasts the leadership of two famous polar explorers - Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen, two leaders that I have studied extensively and posted about in the past (see "To the Edges of the Earth", "10Xers" and "Better a live donkey than a dead lion...", among others).  Gutman suggests that Amundsen is perhaps a better example of a great leader than Shackleton.    I happen to think that both of these men were great leaders, so I was intrigued by Gutman's analysis.

In his TEDx talk, Gutman asks the audience to participate in a thought experiment: Imagine that you are recruiting a leader for a new polar expedition and have two resumes to review.  The first individual has previously achieved all four major polar milestones (North Pole, South Pole, Northwest Passage, Northeast Passage) - in fact, he was the first person to accomplish three of these milestones.  The second individual started off on expeditions to Antarctica on four different occasions (three times as the leader) and failed all four times (catastrophically so in perhaps one incidence).  Who would you hire?

I actually thought that the logical answer would be to hire the first individual, which makes the most intuitive sense.  However, Gutman states that, at least retrospectively, we oftentimes "choose" the second one.  We hold the second individual up as an example of great leadership during a crisis, often ignoring the first, more successful leader, particularly when the first leader made things look so easy!  Of course, he's referring to Amundsen in the first instance, and Shackleton in the second.  Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer during the so-called Heroic Age of Polar Expedition who led the first successful expedition to traverse Canada's Northwest Passage (Atlantic to Pacific Ocean) in 1903, the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911, the first successful expedition through the Northeast Passage (Pacific to Atlantic Ocean) in 1924, and led a team that flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge in 1926.  And yet, he is a far less celebrated leader than Ernest Shackleton, who is famous for leading the failed Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition from 1914-1917, which several leadership experts have discussed extensively in previous posts, articles, and books.  Gutman asks whether why we are obsessed with "a mediocre, at best, leader" (Shackleton) and ignoring a "truly gifted leader" (Amundsen).

Gutman says that according to the "action fallacy" we often "confuse a good story for good leadership" and argues that "very often, good leadership will result in a bad story."  He uses the analogy of two swimmers who are trying to cross a fast-moving river.  Swimmer A enters the river haphazardly, unaware of his capabilities and the currents.  Swimmer A nearly drowns, but splashes around wildly, fighting with all of her strength to swim back to safety, never mind whether she ends up on the other side of the river.  Most of us will see that Swimmer A did a remarkable job of getting back to safety, and may say, "Wow that swimmer really fought hard to get out of that crisis!"  In contrast, Swimmer B has studied the river for years and knows just where to enter the water so that the current will carry her easily across.  She crosses the river without drawing attention to herself, and we may therefore say, "Meh - that looks pretty easy." 

While I can appreciate Gutman's point, I still think Shackleton was an amazing leader.  However, I also recognize that we tend to underappreciate the "unseen leaders" such as Roald Amundsen and that there is perhaps more to learn from these leaders than the credit and attention we usually devote to them.  Gutman offers three key takeaways:

1. Judge leadership, including your own, only by the actual positive impact it has.

2. What effective leaders do to drive teams and events toward a successful outcome might not be easily visible at first glance.  Look below the surface.

3. What to uncritical viewer looks like "luck" is, in fact, an alignment of planning, intentions, and action with external circumstances.

I enjoyed reading the article and watching the TEDx talk, and I think you will as well.  I am looking forward to reading his book (although I will have to purchase it, because it's not available at my local public library!).  Gutman ends the article with the following vignette: 

When the President of the British Royal Geographic Society, Lord Curzon, insisted that the (often spectacular) failures of the "great" British explorers - John Franklin, Robert Falcon Scott, Shackleton - were due to misfortune, while Amundsen's successes were due to luck, Amundsen wrote, "Victory awaits him who has everything in order - luck, people call it.  Defeat is certain for he who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called "bad luck."