John Baldoni's Leadership Library
Internationally known executive coach, keynote speaker and leadership educator
I have always advised leaders to be the last to speak up about important issues to allow others to state their points of view.
But sometimes a leader must be the first to speak up, as Abraham Lincoln did when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and linked the cause of preserving the Union with the abolition of slavery.
Such a measure had three key elements: importance, impact and integrity.
A majority of managers just don’t understand what it means to be a leader.
That’s a conclusion that I draw from a recent global survey by McKinsey and Company about what it takes to manage corporate performance. Only 48% of managers surveyed believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their responsibility to provide direction during this crisis. The numbers for inspiration and direction actually drop to 45% and 39% respectively when considered as behaviors for how to manage post-crisis.
More troubling, only 30% of managers felt that they needed to motivate their employees during the crisis and just 23% did post-crisis. The need for accountability ranked low too, just 23% for crisis and only 18% post-crisis. Innovation also ranked low, just 33% believed it was necessary now, but some 46% did believe it was necessary post-crisis.
If a majority of managers do not feel that inspiration and direction are necessary for managing corporate performance, and that motivation and accountability are not essential, then our companies are in far worse shape than imagined.
The study does not measure what I believe most managers think their jobs are: getting things done. But execution without adequate leadership is short-sighted. It will carry a company through a quarter or a year, but it will not provide a foundation for what organizations really need to do, and that is to grow. Leadership requires foresight as well as the ability to execute. Foresight points you in the right direction so that your execution can serve customer needs now and lay the foundation for continued service.
Therefore, it is necessary to reframe what inspiration and direction means.
So what do you do when you hit the wall?
Sometimes it is not simply fatigue but symptom of something deeper. You feel that you are lacking in creativity and, as a result, you are not challenging yourself or your team to achieve their best. You need help!
So find a partner — someone you can trust to give you good advice. Here’s how you can make it work. Every leader owes it to him or herself to keep challenged, focused, and energized. A good partner can help.
First posted on SmartBrief on 1/24/2014
“Courage, innovation and discipline help drive company performance especially in tough economic times. Effective internal communications can keep employees engaged in the business and help companies retain key talent, provide consistent value to customers, and deliver superior financial performance to shareholders.”
Watson Wyatt 2009
According to Watson Wyatt’s newest communication survey for 2009/2010, companies that are effective communicators “have the courage to talk about what employees want to hear,” “redefine the employment deal based on changing business conditions,” and have “the discipline to plan effectively and measure their progress effectively.”
Does this really matter? Yes. The study shows that companies that communicate effectively had a 47% higher return to shareholders over a five-year period (mid-2004 to mid-2009).
The link between communication and these three levers of performance — courage, innovation, and discipline — is a welcome one. These are themes that I have written about, taught and coached for years. Here is how you can utilize them in the workplace.
Courage. Watson Wyatt defines it as “telling it like it is.” This is especially true when it comes to delivering straight talk. Shielding employees from bad news is akin to treating them like children; it says they are not “grown up” enough to handle tough stuff. So why do companies do it? One reason is because they feel employees will lose heart and then underperform. The Watson Wyatt study shows just the opposite. Tell people what they need to know and they will reward you with solid performance.
First posted on HBR.org on 11/19/2009
Management — a client once told me — is your day job; leadership is your career.
Managers by nature are pragmatists; leaders are dreamers. Organizations need both types to survive. Managers are required to lead and leaders are expected to manage. It is a challenge to do both well. The higher one rises in an organization, the greater are the responsibilities.
Therefore, managers learn to delegate and in doing so free themselves to be more strategic and in the process develop the talents of others and grow the capacity of the organization to meet rising challenges.
That’s what we call leadership.
First posted on SmartBrief 2/07/2014
All leaders have a brand. Whether that term is used or not, leaders have an identifiable persona that is a reflection of what they do and how others perceive them. I call this the leadership brand.
When it comes to cultivating a leadership brand, look no further than Oprah Winfrey, who recently announced that she would be ending her popular talk show in 2011. In a perceptive analysis, New York Times media columnist David Carr suggests that Winfrey’s brand and the key to her longevity is a combination of things she didn’t do as well as things that she did do.
On the “don’t do side,” she did not over-merchandize nor take her company public; she kept control of her products and thereby her image, unlike Martha Stewart. On the “do side,” she always stayed true to herself. As she told her business partner Gayle King years ago, “I don’t know what the future holds but I know who holds it.”
The lessons of Oprah’s brand are relevant to any leader. First and foremost, understand that brand is what you develop as well as what others perceive. The balance between reality and perception can be shaky if you are not careful, but as we have seen from Oprah, not impossible.
Think of a speech as a piece of music.
Like a piece of music, it has melody, harmony and rhythm. Melody rises and lowers according to the notes, i.e. the words. Harmonies are a blend of facts and stories blended for meaning.
And tempo, fast or slow, matches mood and meaning. Put more simply, every good speech must have its own signature, a rising and falling according to meaning and a tempo owing to emphasis.
Speech delivery, like playing an instrument, is an art that can be mastered; it simply takes a willingness to try and a commitment to speaking in public whenever you have the opportunity to do it.
I’ve heard executives say that they have never seen things as bad as they are now. Even as the economy shows signs of recovery, it is by no means certain that recovery will be a linear process.
In these troubled times, it is useful to recall examples of leaders who have survived adversity. One of my favorites, and one whom I have written about extensively, is Winston Churchill. For our times the Churchill most apt is not the Prime Minister of 1940 who rallied Britain as the sole force against the Nazis. Rather it is the Churchill of 1915, tossed from the cabinet after the debacle of Dardanelles, an ill-fated plan to knock Turkey out of the Great War.
As we learn in Paul Johnson’s splendid new biography, Churchill at age 40 found himself very much alone and reviled. So what did he do? He “brooded” for a bit; his wife Clementine said “I thought he would die of grief.” But then to his great delight, Churchill found a new hobby — painting. And through his art, for which he exhibited great talent, he reconnected himself. Rejuvenated, he enlisted in the Army and served on the Front in France for six months of 1915-16. Later Churchill re-entered politics, and from there continued his public life.
Have you ever seen an executive scurry across the stage, head down, clutching a copy of his presentation, and on reaching the podium, immediately begin speaking?
In doing this, the exec resembles a mouse seeking shelter more than a leader about to deliver an important message! Very unleader-like!
When you take the stage, you want to own it. Presenting effectively will put the audience in a mood to listen to you. Find out how in this new video.
“It’s okay if other people think you’re God, but you’re in trouble if you start believing it.”
David Cornwell, a sports attorney, recalled that quote as one uttered by his father, a surgeon. While Cornwell was speaking on Larry King Liveabout Tiger Woods’ foibles, the quote has relevance to anyone in a leadership position, not just doctors and big name athletes.
Sure, leaders have to believe in themselves — otherwise no one else will. Their conviction in their own abilities has to be strong as well as resilient, but such self-assurance cannot be allowed to become arrogance. So often when we see business leaders making poor decisions it seems as if their ego is speaking louder than their voice of reason.
And yet we need to remember that, while it’s easy to throw stones at people and power, and lampoon their outsized egos when they stumble, so often that outsize ego is the result of the relentless fawning of others. You do not rise to power without followers, but if that followership is more sycophantic than supportive, the leader can lose his bearings.
Keeping your ego in check is an exercise in humility, with the emphasis on the word exercise, so here are a few tips: