The Grass is Greener

I was working with some colleagues the other idea designing a leadership development program. One of them used a variant of that common expression - the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

His variation was terrific.

If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence - water your side.

I just love it.

What are you doing to water your side of the fence? What about fertilising? And while we're on the subject, how about some weeding too?

Victim Mentality

Last night I attended a professional development session for executive coaches run by the Institute of Executive Coaching (Australia) , and one of the subjects that came up was working with counterparts or clients with a victim mentality.

I'm sure you've met someone like this. You might even do it yourself sometimes. When we see ourselves as the victims we are thinking and perhaps saying things like:

* It's not my fault.

* No one else gets it. They're all too stupid.

* Can you believe what she did to me?

* I'm sick and tired of...

* I'm always so busy I never have time for myself.

* Why does this always happen to me?

* That's the way it's always been around here.

* It's the system.

One of the interesting things that I see in my work, is that this sort of attitude also manifests itself in teams as well as individuals.

So, just what is a victim mentality?

It's often described as when someone is always blaming someone (or something else) for the bad things that happen to them. As it develops, it can become so extreme that the person begins to think that bad things always happen to them. They rarely, if ever, take responsibility for their own actions.

Seeing this sort of mentality in an individual or a team is a massive danger sign.

So, what can we do about it?

I always like to use an adaptation of Stephen Covey's Circles of Influence and Concern.

Sure, there are lots of things we are concerned about, but over which we have little control. But there are many things that we can influence, where we do have direct control.

Covey illustrated this by drawing two concentric circles - the larger circle he labelled the circle of concern, and the smaller circle inside this larger one, he labelled the circle of influence.

For example, I have a mortgage and I am always concerned about the speculation that the Reserve Bank will raise official interest rates, and that my bank will pass these on to me, increasing my monthly payments. I have no direct control over what the Reserve Bank or what my bank will do. So the official interest rates would be one issue that I could pencil into my large circle of concern.

But what do I control over my mortgage? Not the official interest rate certainly, but I can choose a fixed or variable rate. I can increase or decrease my monthly payments (within reason). I can increase the frequency of my payments. I have a number of choices about the actions I can take. So I could pencil these issues into my smaller circle of influence.

The point is, that I CHOOSE to do something. I can be proactive, or I can be reactive. It's my CHOICE. It's not the circumstances or the Reserve Bank that control that choice.

And this blog is not just about Ric's mortgage. We all have direct control over such critical things as our behaviour, our attitudes and our decisions. When we realise this, we can gradually begin to expand our circle of influence so that we begin to assert more control over those other things that concern us.

While we cannot always control the circumstance, we can control our response to it. We are responsible and accountable for that response. We have no one else to blame for it. It's not pop psychology. It works.

So, do you or your team choose to stay as victims, or do you choose a different response?

Directive Leadership

A couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a PhD researcher doing some work comparing the leadership styles of Australians and Americans. She asked me if I had ever given a direct order while I was in the military.

I had to think pretty hard about that question. I had certainly given a number of direct orders on the parade ground, and in contexts similar to that - ie when controlling large groups of people in synchronised activities. But otherwise I have never had to use that phrase so beloved in the movies " ... that's a direct order".

The researcher told me that my recollections were pretty similar to many other Australian military leaders, but very different to those from an American military leader background. Why was this the case?

At the risk of over-simplification, let me try and explain it through the use of situational leadership.

Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard popularised the model of situational leadership in the 1960s. Even if you don't like the One Minute Manager series of books, you have to admire the skill of Blanchard and others in distilling some pretty complex skills down into readily understood - and therefore used - models.

One of the four basic leadership styles defined in situational leadership is the "Directive" style. This type of leadership style sees the leader providing specific instructions and then closely supervising the accomplishment of any task. It is the classic case of providing a direct order.

Of course this kind of leadership style is entirely appropriate ... in some situations, and with some teams. Unfortunately, in my experience, it is also frequently over-used. If your team are highly competent professionals, then constantly directing them is likely to get right up their noses pretty quickly. Similarly if they are highly committed and enthusiastic about their tasks, then the directive style is likely to quickly diminish that commitment.

Situational Leadership suggests that the leadership style must be relevant to the specific circumstance in which the leader is working. In other words, your leadership style must relate directly to the level of competence and commitment your team members exhibit. Directive leadership is only appropriate when the team has both low competence and low commitment, otherwise the coaching, supporting or delegating leadership styles will be much more effective.

From my experience, most of the teams in Australia that I have worked with are both competent and committed. Some of the military teams I have worked with have been exceptional in both areas. In these instances it's been much more important to engage the team members to take advantage of their experience, their professional skills, their initiative and their drive so that we could develop a collaborative plan. This quickly became "our" plan, not "my" plan, one where success and responsibility were shared.

That's part of the reason I have never had to emphasise a task by stating ... that's a direct order.

Made from Beer?

Catchy title huh? It's actually one of the advertising slogans for an Australian beer - Carlton Draught. (More about Carlton Draught?) And if you haven't seen the commercial based around Flashdance's signature tune, then check that out too.

But what has made from beer got to do with leadership or teambuilding?

As my bus trundled past a billboard with this slogan on it the other day, it got me to thinking about how many organisations could really describe themselves as being made from people. Yeah, I know; not as catchy as made from beer, but the same message is implied.

There's lots of fancy marketing and other gimmicks to promote the fermented amber liquid yeast product that is so popular here in Australia. And of course, the angle that the cunning Carlton marketers are taking is: fundamentally all we want is a beer that's ... made from beer. Everything else is secondary.

The same can be said for many organisations. Lots of fancy marketing to suggest that they're innovative, have super cool IT systems, bleeding edge architect-designed corporate headquarters, high-end manufacturing technologies and whatever. But fundamentally, they're made from people.

A few years ago I was giving a talk to a bunch of junior naval officers on what my expectations were of them out in the Fleet. Our Navy takes a great deal of pride in its ships, aircraft and other technology, and a lot of the questions I had got leading up to this talk were what were we doing about some new project, some new process or whatever? I used the title of the American cyclist Lance Armstrong's biography to emphasise my message. (More about Lance?)

Lance's biography is, of course, entitled It's not about the bike. This to me encapsulates a lot of what I was trying to say. Without doubt, Lance was the preeminent road racing cyclist of the last decade - perhaps ever. Yep, he had some amazing technology to ride, a terrific team around him. But those things were available to other riders, but they didn't have the same success. So there must have been something else.

To my audience of junior naval officers the point was, don't just concern yourselves with the technology, the tactics, the qualifications, etc. It's not just about that. It's about the poeople. It's about leading them. It's about working with them in teams - and everything that leading them and working with these teams entails. Everything starts with the people - for all organisations. It's not about bikes. Organisations are made from people.

Leadership and the X Factor

For as long as people have been studying and writing about leadership, the debate about whether leaders are born or made has existed. The adherents of the born leaders school often like to talk about some magical ingredient - some X Factor - that leaders have, and that the rest of us mere mortals simply don’t possess.

My view is that both sides of the debate are true. And I don’t find sitting on this fence too uncomfortable!

If you subscribe to the school of innate leadership, then it becomes just too easy to accept that you and others can do nothing about becoming a better leader. Sure, not all of us can become a truly great leader in the mold of [insert your favourite great leader here]. But I don’t look like Daniel Craig, play golf like Tiger Woods or sing like Luciano Pavarotti either! That element of greatness - the X Factor - if you like, does separate the great from the excellent and the good.

But the school of learned leadership also has its advocates, for the obvious reason that leadership can be taught. But here’s the critical thing - it must be learned, practiced and constantly developed too. I can’t imagine that Tiger Woods simply relies on his innate golfing abilities to be one of the world’s most successful golfers. Obviously he practices, and I bet that he also regularly works on something new in his game as well.

How are you going at working on your leadership skills?

I often begin a leadership workshop or training session by asking the attendees to give me a list of the top leadership traits. Every single time in these sessions, the people there get 95% or more of the most common leadership traits in about ten seconds flat.

So what? Does that make all them good leaders?

That’s the point isn’t it. It’s not the knowing, it’s the doing that’s important.

It’s not just having the theoretical knowledge of what leadership is all about, it’s doing something with that knowledge by practicing it.

Truman Capote, the great American author and creator of the so-called “non-fiction novel” made a very interesting comment to his biographer, Gerald Clarke, (Capote: A Biography http://www.geraldclarke.com/capote.htm) about what it takes to become a good writer.

You might want to think about Capote’s comment as it relates to being a good leader. Capote said:

To be a good writer and to stay on top is one of the most difficult balancing acts ever. Talent isn’t enough ... There has to be some extra X factor, some extra dimension, that has kept us [writers] going. Really successful people are like vampires: you can’t kill them unless you drive a stake through their hearts.

Talent isn’t enough!

Your knowledge, your boss’s knowledge, your teammate’s knowledge of leadership will never be enough. It probably never has been, and it certainly won’t be in the future. True success will come only to those who don’t just know it, they don’t just think it, they definitely don’t just talk about it ... they just do it.

Capote actually finished his comment about success as a writer by saying:

... the only one who can destroy a really strong and talented writer is himself.

If you aren’t refreshing, practicing or learning new leadership skills, are you destroying your own potential to be a strong and talented leader?

Change Symbols

A few weeks ago I was speaking with a potential client company about running some seminars for them on culture change. One of the things they asked me to think about was - what would be an appropriate symbol for their change program?

And this did get me to thinking ...

Why? Simply because dry logic only gets you so far with your prime change audience - the people. Logic and reason and facts and data are all important, of course, but not so inspiring or exciting.

So what would be an appropriate change symbol?

Lots of recent research internationally, and also in Australia, points to the importance of having a dedicated, and even a named change program. The Woolworth's Supermarket chain in Australia have 'Project Refresh' for example. (http://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/aboutus/ourhistory/index.asp)

We also often see new logos appear as part of a rebranding strategy - a frequent component of a change program. Think of any of the major Australian banks ... National Australia Bank is now "NAB", etc.

So, we might have a named change program. We might even have spent lots of dollars on a new logo. But how effective will they be in grabbing the attention of the various stakeholders during the change?

So what would work better? What would really grab someone's attention, inspire them, excite them?

My view is that this where the arts really come to the fore. Without doubt the detailed analysis, planning, decision-making, etc all needs to be done, but to capture our attention and excite us, there's nothing like a striking image, or a funky or uplifting tune. I'm not a big Rolling Stones fan, but how good was the Microsoft launch of Windows 95 with 'Start me Up'? And they made US$8million as well! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VPFKnBYOSI)

But you don't have millions of dollars sitting around to spend on a change symbol right? What might work for you?

You've done a lot of the analysis and planning right? Somewhere, somebody has been able to outline the vision - what it's going to look like, feel like, be like if the change program is successful. If someone in your team can put that into words, can the team also think of a picture, an image, a scene from a movie or a song that sums up the journey or the destination? If they can, your team has uncovered a powerful tool that has the potential to excite and inspire your stakeholders. That image or that song will grab the stakeholders in the gut, as surely as the analysis will grab their heads.

So that gets us back to the photos at the start of the blog and below. They are images that I love. It's the Duomo (cathedral) of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. (Thanks to http://www.freefoto.com)

Sure, there are lots of old churches that are beautiful across the world. But what is special to me about this Duomo is that it symbolises change so well.

While I was in Italy in September last year, I learnt a little about the restoration of their numerous monuments. Interestingly to me, there is constant debate about the validity of restoration work. Are the changes that are necessitated by the passing of time what the artists originally intended, etc?

This is why Florence's Duomo is so interesting. Because it was constructed over a long period of time, various artists, builders, supporters and labourers were involved with a constantly morphing vision of what the completed Duomo should be. Does that sound familiar to your organisation?

Construction was begun by the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296. Numerous local artists continued to work on it during the following century and a half. But, the massive octagonal cupola that truly dominates both the church and the city was the proud achievement of Filippo Brunelleschi, master architect and sculptor and it wasn't started until 1420.

The cathedral of Florence itself had been begun in the Gothic style. But in 1366 the City of Florence, following the advice of certain painters and sculptors, decided that the Gothic should no longer be used and that all new work should follow Roman forms, including the now famous dome built at the east end of the nave.

A modern façade of the cathedral, executed by Emilio de Fabris in 1867-87 in the style of the Gothic Revival, has taken the place of one which was destroyed at the end of the 16th century.

When you see the Duomo today, you can see its Gothic nature, the towering Roman style dome, and the most recent neo Gothic facade.

What a wonderful symbol of change. Evolution not revolution. The engagement of many many workers in its construction and upkeep over centuries. And most importantly, the inspiration of countless visitors over time.

Your organisation could do worse than picking the Duomo as its change symbol.

"Leaderful" Teams

This weekend is the start of the Australian Football League (AFL) competition. In a couple of hours I am heading off to see my team the Richmond Tigers play (http://www.richmondfc.com.au/).

The start of the season is always a wonderful time. At that stage it seems that your team is potentially capable of anything. Every supporter of every team is convinced that this is “their year”. No one has won, and no one has lost. Ah ... the possibilities.

But from a leadership perspective, what I have found increasingly interesting over the past couple of years, is that clubs and coaches are no longer appointing just one captain and a vice-captain. Instead, they talk about the “leadership group” or “co-captains”.

Of course, leadership groups have always existed in all sporting teams, in businesses and in organisations. What’s interesting to me now is that this being formally acknowledged. I wonder why?

A well-known Australian - Ric Charlesworth (http://www.riccharlesworth.com/) (Australian representative hockey player, former Federal politician and coach of the Australian women’s hockey team that won the Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympics) wrote about creating “leaderful teams” in his book The Coach: Managing for Success. What did he mean by this?

Charlesworth’s theory, that he implemented in the undeniably successful women’s hockey team, is that there are a number of downsides of appointing a single team captain - just one leader. Not only does it put a lot of pressure on that one individual, but perhaps more importantly, it often means that the rest of the team tend to sit back and wait for the leader to tell them/show them what to do.

His alternative is to create a team atmosphere where everyone is a team leader - the so-called “leaderful team”. But Charlesworth doesn’t mean some anarcho-syndicalist commune! Instead, he argues that at different points in a game or in the life of a team, different team members with different strengths will assume the role of leader.

And that’s the evolution that we are seeing in AFL teams at the moment. There’s no longer one leader, there are many.

How does your work or sporting team do it? Does this approach make sense to you?

Optimism, laughter and leadership

I’m always intrigued by the answers I get when I ask people how many terrific leaders or managers they have had in their working lives. Invariably the answer is very low. Often none, and never more than two or three. But why is that?

Simply put, it’s bloody hard to be a terrific leader. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give up the challenge of becoming one.

In fact, one of the very real ways that terrific leaders distinguish themselves from the masses is their sense of optimism, and their ability to infect others with those same feelings.
John Seely Brown, the Chief Scientist at Xerox, describes this ability eloquently:

The art of making an impact through people is the ability to pull people together, to attract colleagues to the work, to create the critical mass ...To communicate is not just a matter of pushing information at another person, it’s creating an experience, to engage their gut - and that’s an emotional skill. (www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/JSB.html)

An emotional skill? I have just been rereading Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee’s 2002 work Primal Leadership: Learning to lead with Emotional Intelligence (www.amazon.com/Primal-Leadership-Realizing-Emotional-Intelligence/dp/157851486X - 144k - 23 Mar 2007 -) and I was struck by their opening chapter as they argue that one of the most important roles of any leader is a “primal” role. That is, driving a team’s collective emotions in a positive direction and avoiding any “toxic” emotions.

Sounds a bit wishy washy doesn’t it? Certainly leaders have more sway over a team’s emotions than others. They tend to talk more, they have greater formal authority, and they are also often the team member who gets to frame the discussion.

I was really struck by a study that Goleman et al quoted that was run by Yale University School of Management in 1998. Not only did this study find that cheerfulness spreads more easily than depression (that’s got to be good news!), but upbeat moods increase cooperation, fairness and therefore business performance.

However, to me the most interesting thing of all was that these scientists also found that laughter was a terrific team performance barometer. Laughing together signals trust, comfort, empathy and a common view of the world.

About six weeks ago I caught up with about ten of my ex military mates for a very informal dinner and a few cold beers on a hot Melbourne evening. At work the next day I was struck by how sore my jaw muscles were. With my tetanus shots up to date I realised it was simply from spending so much of the previous evening laughing with my friends - a group that enjoys a strong sense of trust and a common view of the world.

So what? We probably all enjoy the company of our friends and a few laughs. How does optimism and laughter impact on the performance of a team, organisation or firm?

Psychologists regularly talk about “mirroring”. That is, how moods or emotions spread in a group of people through verbal and non-verbal signals in a relatively short period of time (less than 15 minutes). Ask yourself, who would you rather be working with, that touchy, cranky and domineering boss, or that optimistic and enthusiastic one? And that’s the first example of how optimism can positively impact your team performance. Optimistic people attract followers. Negative leaders repel them.

A second way in which optimism and laughter help is simply that by generating upbeat moods in teams, people view themselves, others and events more optimistically. This has been shown to enhance creativity and decision making skills.

Don’t believe me? Then take a look at a 2000 study in Administrative Science Quarterly (www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) that looked at 62 Chief Executives and their leadership groups, comparing their energy, enthusiasm, determination, and emotional conflicts with their business results over time. The conclusion? The more positive the senior leadership team was, the more cooperatively they worked together and the better the business results.

So, think positively, enjoy a laugh and give off that vibe. Your team will thank you.