John Baldoni's Leadership Library
Internationally known executive coach, keynote speaker and leadership educator
Crises often occur unexpectedly. What can never be unexpected is a leader’s response.
The leader must assume control of the response with alacrity as well as authority. Integral to the response must be the leader’s command presence and the ability to communicate coherently and correctly.
Do these things and the crisis will remain, but people involved in the crisis will be assured that someone is in charge and is mobilizing the right resources and right people to solve the problem.
Confidence is an attribute that every leader needs to embrace and to foster in others. But when confidence goes too far, it can become hubris.
Overdosing on confidence is easy to do. Jim Collins writes about the organizational side of hubris in his latest book, How the Mighty Fall. Stage 1 of organizational failure is “hubris born of success.” It “sets in when people become arrogant, regarding success virtually as an entitlement, and they lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place.”
Many leaders veer into hubristic behavior without realizing their shortcomings. We may be well intentioned, but we all suffer from a blind spots.So how can leaders know when their own confidence is verging on hubris? Here are some warning signs:
How do organizations appear when they lack a sense of purpose?
Listless!
Employees feel as if they are drifting on a raft without a rudder. They lack direction as well as motivation. They also feel underappreciated and disengaged. By contrast, when people feel purposeful they are engaged and they put forth the effort to succeed for themselves and by extension the entire organization.
Purposeful organizations apply intention to what they do. Organizations that lack purpose drift and drag and by doing so waste the skills and talents of their employees.
First posted on Smart Brief on 1/16/2015
Everything in moderation. My late father, a physician, always emphasized that to his patients. While Dad was focusing more on what people ate or drank, he could easily have been talking about how people behave.
I was reminded of Dad’s advice when I read Jonah Lehrer’s fine essay in the Wall Street Journal discussing the “paradox of power,” a syndrome that turns people in authority into dictators. Lehrer quotes Dr. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, who says, “When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools.”
Executives who engage in abusive or coercive behavior of their subordinates may be showing that Lord Acton‘s statement — “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — is not just a maxim, but reality. Leaders can get into trouble by subconsciously thinking it they have no limits on their power, even though they’d never say such a thing out loud. Such thinking is all too often reinforced by direct reports who subordinate themselves in order to curry favor with their bosses.
So what is a well-intentioned leader to do? My advice is to regularly reflect on these three questions.
None of us succeed without some kind of setback.
Too often, we don’t acknowledge our ability to deal with the negatives. As a result, we may stay negative, or too self-critical, and, as a result, not recognize the inner resolve that fuels us.
Defeat may always lurk around the corner, but it’s how we deal with it that defines us as the individuals we are, and can become.
Not being able to enjoy what you have accomplished is a symptom of burnout and it can be fatal to your career. But you are good at what you do, it can be hard to delegate.
For truly success-driven executives, there may never be a cure for the relentless pursuit of perfection. But for those who are willing to take a moment to reflect on what they might do differently, there is a cure: Shift your focus from your own success to your team’s success. Here’s how.
Lead, don’t manage. Management is a discipline that must buttress every successful organization; things must be accomplished with people, resources, schedules and budgets. At the same time, the top person must not be involved in all these details. He or she must lead, but empower others to manage.
Enable others. Successful people are good at what they do; that is why they have a tough time handing off to others. Type A managers never let up; they revel in micro-management. Sadly, they drive good people away — and as a result, they must do more and more. But savvy leaders learn break this cycle. Step back and let others manage not just the details, but also the decisions.
Take joy in others’ success. Achieving personal success lies at the heart of ambition. But for a leader, personal success isn’t really possible unless the whole team wins. When your team achieves an important goal, celebrate! Take personal satisfaction from seeing the people you have recruited and groomed succeed. Such personal satisfaction is important to keep your team feeling appreciated, but also to enrich your own life.
It takes a strong person to speak truth to power. And so leaders need to surround themselves with strong people, unafraid to tell the boss – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Leaders need to make it safe for those who give feedback. They should invite push-back, to welcome people who disagree, and, in fact, to reward them for doing so.
A leader who invites dissent is one who is secure within his or her own self to be the person others embrace as their leader.
What do you do if you’re a middle manager who sees the big picture but you work for a boss who only focuses on the here and now?
That was the heart of question I received at recent workshop I conducted on leading from the middle for a national conference of training and development professionals. It was clear that the questioner had had first-hand experience with a boss who wanted his direct reports to know their place and not be thinking or acting big. And therein lies the challenge for eager, upwardly mobile self-starting managers: you want to put your ideas into play and see their results, but your boss only wants you to do what you’re told.
Once upon a time, organizations functioned just fine when orders flowed down from on high. But as the global business environment has evolved, the need for decentralized rapid decision-making has become critical. We need creative men and women to step up and lead from the middle. So what do you do if your boss wants you to keep your place?
First and foremost, do your job: make certain that you do everything you are asked to do. (It is your job, after all.) Once you have established yourself as a credible performer, there are three things you can to do give your big idea a better chance of success: