Leadership | INSYNC Management Solutions

Codifying Leadership – Part II

Following on from our previous article in our Codifying Leadership series, we now take a look at the humanistic side of leadership through what Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence is unquestionably the most significant differentiator for leaders and is arguably more important than both IQ and technical skills.

Goleman identified five key ‘skills’ that constitute Emotional Intelligence which we broadly explained below.

Self Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to know how you feel and how your emotions and actions affect others. As a leader, self-awareness means having a clear understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.

Self Regulation
Leaders who regulate themselves effectively rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. Self-regulation is all about staying in control.

Motivation
Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals and have extremely high standards for the quality of their work. External motives such as money and status are not what drives them and tend to be seen as added benefits of their work.

Empathy
Having empathy is critical to leading successful teams and organisations. Leaders who possess a high degree of empathy are able to put themselves in someone else’s situation and understand how they feel. They use their empathy to help develop their followers by challenging them when they act unfairly, giving them constructive feedback when they need it, and listen to them with the intent of understanding rather than responding.

Social Skills
Leaders who possess good social skills tend to be great communicators and are just as open to hearing bad news as good news. They’re adept at getting their team to support them and they create excitement about a new mission or project. They are also very capable at managing conflict and set the standard through the example of their own behaviour.

Codifying Leadership

It’s far too easy, and commonplace, to confuse leadership with management or general business activities. These activities are important and often need oversight or direct involvement from the more senior members of the organization and include things such as managing budgets, buying inventory, selling products, and dealing with disgruntled customers. These are all activities that leaders commonly take charge of, but they’re not what leaders should focus most of their attention to, or time on.

The image in this post is part of a slide deck from our training session titled “what exceptional leaders do”. A key characteristic all great leaders share is their ability to focus on what’s important and drive those results. Leaders are constantly busy dealing with the daily “squeaky wheels” and delivering against revenue targets, that they struggle to find the time to plan for the future of the business.

When it comes to the fundamentals of leadership, the things that leaders are actually responsible for doing, it seems many leaders suffer from inertia and procrastination. They use the excuse that other more urgent priorities demand their attention and they ring-fence their core leadership responsibilities with annual business planning and budget setting.

It’s hard for many leaders to let go of the day to day and focus on the future? There are two general reasons for this behaviour. The first is that a significant number of leaders achieve their position by excelling at other roles within their organization or their specific field of expertise and they are promoted away from their experience. For these leaders its not only easy to be drawn into operational matters, but it’s also familiar and comfortable. The second reason is a lack of understanding that the vision, mission, strategy and plans are never fixed and need to be constantly evaluated and adjusted.

Leaders need to trust their managers to take care of operations and remain focused on the future.

The 7 Ps

You may have heard the old saying, proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance or some similar variant of the “7 Ps”. Well, here’s my take on how to make sure you are prepared to handle anything using 7 “P” words.

Planning

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”. All planning falls into two basic categories, simple and complex. But, regardless of how simple or complex the plan needs to be, all good plans consist of the same core components. These components, in their simplest form, are the “who, what, where, when, how, and how much”, needed to satisfy all requirements and achieve the outcome, commonly referred to as the objective. If you want to dive deeper into the planning process, check out our posts on Immediate Action Plans and the Planning Process.

Perspective

During the development of the plan, it’s crucial to understand why the objective is important and who it’s important to? Often the plan will form part of a larger strategy. In the military, we give consideration to what’s known as the “Commanders Intent 1Up and 2Up”. This allows you to develop your plan with the wider organisational context in mind rather than in a vacuum as is so often the case.

When drafting the plan, you must possess the requisite foresight to ensure the plan starts with the end in mind and the objective is central and remains the primary focus. There is an old saying, “the surgery was a great success, but the patient died”. Not understanding the wider context that connects the plan to the bigger picture may mean the objective of the plan is achieved, but the execution and delivery don’t align with the organisation’s values or ethical standards, or it may negatively impact broader organisational objectives. Understanding the Commander’s Intent means you can remain flexible and manoeuvre and change the plan to meet strategic objectives.

Performance

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. What’s meant by this is that the process of researching, developing, testing, and executing the plan is where the value lays. The plan itself is like a map and is something to follow and keeps you on track for the objective, but the dogmatic execution of the plan itself is not the objective of the plan. The desired outcome is the objective. The measure of the success of the plan is never how Ridgely you were able to stick to the plan, but rather how successfully you were able to achieve the desired outcome. If the planning process was done properly, the two should align, but to quote the famous philosopher Iron Mike Tyson “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. The execution of the plan, sustainment of momentum, and focus on the objective are the key aspects that need to be monitored and controlled.

Persuasion

Plans are written for people. Good plans contain all the information needed to achieve the objective and are written in a way that is easy to understand. These plans are simple in their format, logical in their structure, and consistent in their content. The aim of any plan is to enable those executing it to have no doubt about the activities needed to achieve the desired outcome. But this is only half of what makes a good plan!

All plans need to be approved by someone in your organisation who understands the outcome needed but has probably not been involved in the planning process. Your plan needs to clearly demonstrate and communicate its strengths to this person ultimately responsible for signing it off.

Patience

Most plans are too ambitious and those responsible for drafting them almost always underestimate how long they will take to write and how long they will take to execute. Executing the wrong plan, or a poorly developed plan will result in the corresponding outcome. Not all plans need the same depth of planning, nor will you always have the luxury of all the time you need to fully research and develop every aspect of the plan. Having a planning process for the development of simple and complex plans is the best way to mitigate the risk of being caught in the ‘planning fog of war’.

A robust planning process will allow you to focus your effort on developing the content of the plan rather than on how to draft it. Having a planning process is effectively having a plan for how to develop a plan and will save you an enormous amount of time when you are given the responsibility to develop a plan at short notice. Having the knowledge that planning and the execution of the plan will take a lot longer than thought, it’s important that you don’t rush into solution mode. You need to spend the time needed to understand the situation, develop courses of action, analyse courses of action, and make a decision on the best way forward before drafting the plan.

Persistence

The best plans are those that are simple to understand and easy to execute. But even a bad plan can be made to work if the objective is clear and is led by a leader who has the drive and determination to see it through to the end. No plan, no matter how well researched and drafted, will be effective without a dedicated and effective leader in charge. A key planning consideration is flexibility, and a good leader will be able to modify the plan on the fly whilst maintaining focus on the objective.

Poise

The execution of a plan needs to be such that everyone involved has confidence in the plan and the leader’s ability to make it work. The leader needs to be intimately familiar with the plan and must be able to anticipate issues and constantly adjust the plan to achieve the outcome. An often-made statement is to “make a plan and stick to it”. Whilst this is somewhat apt, a better statement is “make the right plan and stick to it”. The role of the leader is to execute the right plan and in doing so it’s the leader’s responsibility to confidently inform all those involved of any changes needed to keep the plan on track. The leader must use critical thinking and logic to drive his decisions and must not allow emotion to cloud his judgment. The leader must believe in the plan and demonstrate an unwavering resolve to achieve the desired outcome. This belief in the plan will be contagious and coupled with the leader’s energy will create a sense of team spirit and momentum.

Group Think

Have you ever experienced a situation where you have been part of a well-intentioned group of people who have made an irrational or sub-optimal decision because you felt the need to conform to what you thought the group wanted or because not conforming seemed wrong or impossible? You may have succumbed to what’s known as Group Think.

Group Think can cause individuals to go against their personal beliefs and form a consensus with the group. This can be caused by a compelling narrative or a specific agenda as is often seen in both left-wing socialist organisations such as universities and many businesses today, to alt-right-wing supremacist groups.

Group Think is not new and can be traced back to the earliest times in human evolution, but it wasn’t until 1971 when Irving Janis published an article on the subject in a prominent psychological journal, that the phenomenon was properly characterised and given the term “Group Think”. Janis’s research found that decisions made by groups, particularly under stressful conditions, tended to be based on a desire for harmony rather than on critical thinking.

Individuals often reframe from expressing their true thoughts and tend to be more ‘agreeable’ and less likely to express doubts or exercise their better judgment. The desire for harmony, fear of criticism, and avoidance of conflict lead to conformance with the popular narrative and can result in decisions being made that seem reasonable but are ethically and morally questionable.

Group Think plays out across the full spectrum of society from dogmatic political and religious ideology, school bullies, fanatical sports fans, and organisations that implement policies to conform with current business and social trends.

Group Think also extends to those who accept group decisions by not objecting to them. This can be as subtle as walking past someone being bullied and doing nothing, or agreeing with a poor decision in order to be seen as loyal to a friend, spouse, boss, or organisation. To paraphrase Jack Welch, today’s lack of candor is the dirty little secret of business.

When Group Think is prevalent, the group tends to act in solidarity and can ostracise those who are not part of the group or who think differently. At an organisational level, Group Think can lead to poor decision making and is synonymous with operating in an “Echo Chamber”. The impacts of decisions made as a result of Group Think can be significant and range from common business decisions like ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘minority balancing’ to social policy or even riots and war.

It’s up to leaders to develop, support, and even demand open, honest, and frank discourse as a means to prevent Group Think from tainting their decision-making process. The next time you are in a meeting really think about the topic being discussed and have the courage and conviction to state your views without fear and with the knowledge that others are probably thinking the same thing but aren’t prepared to speak up. If you don’t feel you can do this, you should reconsider if you are part of an organisation that values you, your experience, and your input.

Discipline will set you free

Motivation is fantastic. Motivation is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. It gets you to the front door and inspires you to open the door to look outside. But then you discover it’s raining and your motivation wavers. You think, I’m not giving up, but I’m not going out! I’ll just start tomorrow. The next day your alarm goes off, you get out of bed, get dressed, and go to the front door. You open the door and it’s raining again, and you think to yourself wow, two days in a row, I need a better plan. You go back inside and convince yourself that tomorrow will be the day. Then the next day you get up and go to the door and this time it’s freezing cold, so, you think I don’t have the right gear to go outside and do this. I’d love to do it and I really want to, but it’s just so cold.

This is the problem with relying solely on motivation. Motivation will get you out of bed and to the door but it falters easily, leaving you standing looking into the cold, wet abyss. What motivation won’t do is force you to take your first step outside and every other step after that. It won’t make you commit to taking real action and achieving real results. That takes commitment and it takes discipline.

Motivation is great at inspiring you and getting you to the door, but it’s like eating sugar for energy. Its effect dissipates quickly and leaves you feeling empty and needing more. Discipline, on the other hand, gives you the sustained energy and power to continue through the pain, doubt, and difficulty. Despite the hardship, discipline is the driving force, when your motivation fades. Discipline will see you through the pain and allow you to ‘just do it’, to quote the Nike ad.

Discipline is the driving force that underpins the success of whatever you want to achieve, and the good news is discipline is something you can develop. Discipline comes from being able to create a vision of where you want to go, a plan for how you want to get there, and having the will to execute the plan. Most people fail because they don’t have a plan or the will to execute it and try to use motivation to inspire action. This is unsustainable and will lead to failure unless it transmutes into discipline. Motivation is just your vision! Everything else is self-discipline.

Discipline has an amazing, almost illogical way of setting you free. Developing discipline normally results in establishing systems, processes, and routines. Your discipline drives you to stick to your routine and refine your systems and processes until they become habitual. Forming good habits will help you to focus and get stuff done. Being disciplined and forming good habits doesn’t mean being dogmatic or refusing to evolve or change your habits over time. On the contrary, being disciplined means always searching for ways to be more effective and efficient to make sure the discipline you apply is appropriate to achieve the outcome you desire. Process is important but purpose is king.

Developing discipline requires mental toughness. It means being serious about what you want, really serious. It also means being committed. You must be serious and committed if you really want to achieve your desired goals. Your desire to succeed must outweigh all your other desires such as pleasure and comfort, like going back to bed on a cold, wet morning. According to Tony Robbins, there are only two motivating factors in life. Pleasure and pain. The pleasure derived from achieving your goals must outweigh the pain endured in attaining them, otherwise, you will quit and won’t succeed.

There are also different types of discipline. The best discipline is self-discipline. Self-discipline is the discipline you place upon yourself that makes you do the things you need to do with no external pressure. It’s your drive, your ambition, your focus, and your commitment to succeed.

Then there’s group discipline. Group discipline is a form of discipline where someone, normally a leader, commander, or manager, enforces discipline through the threat of some sort of reprisal. It also manifests in the form of individuals not wanting to let down the leader or the group they are a part of. Group discipline results from individuals demonstrating their self-discipline in a group setting to achieve a common outcome, goal, or mission. Group discipline is used to great effect by organisations like the military and sporting teams where the mission must come first and failure is not an option.

Then there’s a third type of discipline which is generally negative and is dealt out to people as a form of punishment. This can take the form of correcting poor form, preventing someone from doing something they shouldn’t, or being punished for doing something unlawful or foolish.

Performance management can be considered a type of discipline especially when there are consequences for underperformance. This discipline takes the form of correcting a problem to bring the person back in line with expectations. Discipline also extends to the legal system in the form of laws that if broken will result in punishment. The mere threat of punishment for breaking laws is enough to ensure most people maintain the expected level of discipline or acceptable standard.

As a leader, it’s important to understand all three types of discipline so you can develop self-discipline in yourself and your staff, apply group discipline to your team and enforce rules and the law when necessary.

So, while motivation may get you out of bed in the morning, it’s discipline that will help you drive results and achieve your goals. Discipline will save you time, reduce uncertainty and risk, and improve your overall performance. Discipline will help you focus and take control, allowing you to achieve your goals every time, unlike motivation which will fade in and out and only return limited success.

Ultimately, discipline will set you free.

7 Essential Attributes Found in all Great Leaders

Great leaders are characterised by a great number of traits, qualities, and attributes. Here is my pick of the 7 essential attributes found in all great leaders. Developing and applying these 7 attributes will help take you from being a good leader to being a great leader. Reflect on these attributes regularly. Work them into your day-to-day leadership and notice the difference they make straight away.

Wisdom

Wisdom is born of experience, develops as common sense, grows into knowledge, and matures as foresight. Great leaders are lifelong learners who cherish the wisdom of others and constantly look for opportunities to grow their knowledge and share what they’ve learned. If knowledge is power, wisdom is the way leaders share their power.

Optimism

Like master archers of old and the keenest marksmen of today, more often than not we hit the targets we aim for. Hence, it’s best to aim for the results we want rather than to focus on those we don’t. Insidious self-talk and self-doubt are not only destructive to their host but are also damaging in the way they affect others when verbalized. Great leaders know this and look for the good in any situation. Positive, upbeat leaders inspire others with their ability to remain focused on goals and they stay the course in a way that is infectious.

Acceptance of Responsibility

Great leaders accept responsibility. They know the buck stops with them and no one else. They don’t blame market conditions, or the dominance of their competitors and they know there are no bad teams just bad leaders. If their team fails to achieve the results necessary it’s because the leader failed to provide the right direction, guidance, support, tools, funding or opportunities, and may not have provided the correct training or the right resources.

Courage

Leaders are at the helm of all organisations and industries and operate across a large variety of different environments, each with its own unique challenges, threats, and risks. Some environments are physically demanding, remote, or isolated and pose physical dangers such as Defence and law enforcement. Other environments may be less dramatic but can still result in the loss of life or serious injuries such as operating theatres, mining, and firefighting. Regardless of the industry, all leaders need to demonstrate courage and not allow the gravity of the situation to paralyse them and prevent them from taking the necessary action to achieve crucial outcomes. Courage takes many forms, from the Corporal leading his men into battle to the corporate executive briefing shareholders on poor financial results. Courage is an essential quality for any great leader.

Humility

Great leaders are not meek or timid, but they are humble. They don’t speak in terms of “I” or me, they speak in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’. They know that their role is to set the direction for their team or organisation and then to serve those charged with delivering the outcomes. Humble leaders do not seek the accolades for their success, rather they push them through to their team. When great leaders speak about their success, they praise the hard work and dedication of their team. These leaders are secure in themselves and realise that others know the role they play in setting the direction and supporting their team.

Selflessness

Great leaders are selfless. They put the needs of their team before their own because they understand that the team delivers the outcomes and they merely steer the team in the right direction. Great leaders serve their teams by removing bottlenecks and roadblocks and creating relationships and opportunities. They create a safe environment and encourage their team to stretch themselves knowing they have ‘top cover’ should something go wrong. Great leaders are the first in and last out and always put the welfare of their team ahead of their own. In the military, leaders stay at the back of the line until their troops are fed. If someone is going to miss out, it’s the leader!

Drive

Great leaders set the pace for their organisations. They drive results through their determination, tireless effort, and absolute belief that their plans will yield their desired outcomes. Great leaders monitor the tempo to ensure that they don’t burnout resources or wear out equipment. They are cautious to ensure they maintain ‘one foot on the ground’ as they push forward so they don’t outpace the organisation’s capability or capacity.

Fit not Fix

Good leaders leverage the strengths of those in their charge and render their weaknesses irrelevant. They ‘fit’ them to roles that suit their strengths rather than try to fix their weaknesses.

Too often leaders feel that any employee should be able to do any job that they are tasked with. This is just not right. This is the same as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Is it any wonder why there are so many performance issues in organisations today.

Leaders need to understand that people possess specific and unique skills that differ from person to person. Some people possess skills more appropriate to working in collaboration in large groups whilst other people possess skills more suited to working individually and on analytic tasks. Effective leaders identify individual’s skills and strengths and match those individuals with the right tasks. Ineffective leaders waste valuable time and effort trying to shape people in ways they aren’t suited.

A great sports metaphor speaks of playing to your strengths and this is the same in business. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore weakness; however, believing that you will turn and individual’s weakness into their strength is false hope. It is far better to identify individual areas of strength and to further develop those than it is to expect transformational change based on an amount of ‘gap training’. As it’s rare in organisations for any effort to be based on an individual rather than a team, identifying each person’s strengths and directing them accordingly will return the best results.

Teams are only as strong as their weakest member. Having each member of the team work at their highest and best potential means engaging them in their specific areas of strength. Any perceived weakness of any of the individuals in the team should be addressed by allocating a team member who has the requisite strength in that area. While this may sound like identifying a problem and ignoring it, this is more akin to ensuring that each individual team member is employed to utilise their specific experience, knowledge, and skills to their best effect.

Modern Leadership

Mainstream academic environments define leadership as “a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task“.

Prior to the 19th century, the concept of leadership had far less relevance than it does today. Society expected and obtained traditional deference and obedience to kings, lords, nobles, master-craftsmen, and slave-masters.

In stark contrast, modern leaders face a multitude of challenges their distant predecessors could never have prophesized. Leading in the 21st century is complex and requires the leader to possess a technical mastery of their relevant profession, strategic foresight, socio-political astuteness, emotional intelligence, charisma, and resilience amongst a plethora of other desirable character traits and skills.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of expectation and burden of responsibility attached to being at the helm of an organisation, be it very large or very small. It’s also far too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day management of the business and lose sight of the bigger picture and what’s truly important to you as the leader.

Taking time out to reflect and reset needs to be a part of every leader’s regular mantra. An effective way to do this is to block out 30 minutes per week in your diary [my preference is Friday afternoons] to stop, review the week, and assess your performance as a leader.

Consider how much time you spend managing vs leading and if the ratio is right? Ask yourself if your leadership provided direction and truly added value or if it caused confusion and increased unnecessary burden? I think you probably get the picture!

Importantly, keep a leadership diary and record your thoughts for regular review, and to gauge if you are learning and evolving from your own experiences.

I recommend including the following acronym on the first page of your leadership diary. Regular review of this simple memory jogger will help keep you focused on what’s important.

Language
Enthusiasm
Attitude
Discipline
Ethics
Responsibility
Strategy
Honesty
Integrity
Professionalism

Modeling positive behavior based on this acronym will help build trust and respect amongst your team, colleagues, and other leaders in your organisation and more widely.

Diversity or Echo Chamber

Staff today, are rightly afraid of expressing their views if they challenge the premise of a leader’s ‘argument’. They are also being compelled to openly support and even promote trending social beliefs and political ideologies adopted by their organisation for fear of losing their jobs.

There’s nothing less diverse than an organisation that is so politically correct that it compels staff to proactively voice support for the ‘company line’ under threat or fear of being dismissed. An example is contained in this article about James Damore who was fired from Google for sending a memo challenging Google’s diversity policy by using evidence-based, deductive reasoning.

I agree with the article calling for organisations to use Chief Contrarian and I’m a huge supporter of free speech, but I caution that everything in life has consequences and it takes a very mature leader, and organisation, to put aside their unconscious (or conscious) bias when eliciting honest views from staff.

It’s ironic that the key benefit gained from the introduction and enforcement of diversity policies is a reduction in the expression of diverse thoughts and in increase in institutionalised ‘Group Think’. It’s all too apparent to anyone who thinks critically about mainstream diversity policies that organisations exploit them in order to promote themselves in a more favorable light to potential clients and the government, not because they are truely serious about diversity.

I’m hopeful that having open conversations with leaders about such things will allow them to recognize their unconscious bias and even dogma. Challenging the status quo as well as new concepts is important. I advocate for leaders to be critical thinkers who employ deductive reasoning when leading discussions and making decisions. Encouraging evidence-based deductive reasoning as part of the decision-making process, removes emotion, and prevents organisations from succumbing to Group Think and blindly piling onto the ‘bandwagon’.

It seems that most organisations that demand their workforce demonstrate their support for diversity are hypocritical in their approach to diversity. True diversity isn’t just about colour, gender, age, race, and religion, it also must include freedom of thought, opinion, and importantly, freedom of speech.

In my mind, the diversity challenge is drawing the line between the right to free speech and the prevention of hate speech.

Leaders should not oppress the views, opinions, or speech of their subordinates otherwise, they are in fact demonstrating the opposite of diversity.

Leading in, and out of a crisis

Despite the day to day challenges faced by business leaders, rarely, very rarely do business leaders have to lead their organisations in what the military refers to as a VUCA environment.

The acronym VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous and was first coined by PROF Warren Bennis in 1987, and quickly adopted by the US Army War College. Hence, the term VUCA is most commonly associate with the chaos of war. The COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world and more narrowly impacting business has produced a VUCA environment.

Most larger organisation have well-developed business continuity and disaster recovery plans able to deal with short term ICT issues, the need to vacate their buildings and work from home or implement some other short term plan. I wonder how many organisations can truly say their plans were developed to cope with prolonged periods operating in a VUCA environment, potentially for months, years, or longer? Plans are absolutely vital, especially in emergencies, but strong, decisive leadership is what will see organistaions through an extended VUCA period.

Leaders leading in a VUCA environment need to possess and demonstrate courage, stoicism, and the ability to apply critical thinking to solve what seems like insurmountable problems. The character traits of great leaders are forged over time based on their experiences, but the ability to stop, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions and use deductive reasoning to inform decisions, is a process that can be learned and applied to great effect.

This simple process can also be applied during Business as Usual (BAU) to rationally solve any problem by applying logic, void of emotion. This does not mean that the leader should be emotionless, but rather not let their emotions override the logic and their better judgment. The ability to stop, relax, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions, and used deductive reasoning is an easy process to learn but is even easier to forget when making decisions under pressure.

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