Best Case Scenarios

Best Case Scenarios

The Truth About Leadership - part 1

“The Truth About Leadership”, (2010) by James M Kouzes and Barry Z Posner, ISBN 978-0-470-63354-0.

“The Truth About Leadership” talks about 10 truths.  They are:

You Make a Difference

Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership

Values Drive Commitment

Focusing on the Future sets Leaders apart

You Can’t Do it Alone

Trust Rules

Challenge is the Crucible of Greatness

You Either Lad by Example or you Don’t Lead at All

The best Leaders are the Best Learners

Leadership is an Affair of the Heart

The book claims to be about “Fundamentals” and how they are the “building blocks to greatness”.

So let’s put these truths to the test against the definition of Leadership, which is, “Guiding Intent with Integrity”.

The book starts by making a fundamental mistake.  It does not define a definition of leadership from which these truths are based in.  This mistake allows for many other misunderstandings to follow. An explanation follows as each truth is examined.

Law of the Lid

John Maxwell, in "Leadership 101", ISBN 0-7852-6419-1, describes a principle called "The Law of the Lid".  This principle describes how effective people can be in organizing others to build something bigger.  For example taking a small business, duplicating it, and franchising it. John's equation is simple, the stronger the leader and the more successful they are, the higher their lid will be.

I have a few problems with is principle.  First of all, John's definition of leadership doesn't exist. 2nd, this principle doesn't take into account the connections that successful people and leaders have made over time.  Nor does it take into account their financial resources to make things happen.  The other thing that it doesn't account for is why does something become successful?  

So before I get to far off track, let's take a look at some of these factors.

While John's definition of leadership doesn't exist, he does describe how one can improve their leadership skills.  The first step is to recognize that they don't know what they don't know and to search every corner nook and cranny for anything on leadership. The second point is learn from mistakes.  Every leader makes them, record them and use the lessons they have to further your growth.  3rd, practice brings experience, experience brings wisdom.  4th, leadership becomes an innate behavior.

John continues in further chapters to describe the traits of a leader:

Discliplined, 

Challenges excuses, 

Establishes rewards for finished jobs, 

Prioritizes life activities,

Chooses the people to connect with,

Prioritize assignments,

Initiate activities,

Connect with people,

Take time to plan actions,

Invest time with people,

Develop trust*,

Demonstrate their capabilities and confidence,

Consistent,

Respectful,

Cast Visions,

Listen,

Influence

* Trust for me is a FOUR LETTER WORD.  It should never be used, because if you have to ask someone to TRUST you, then you're begging someone to set aside their fears and doubts that you are incapable of doing the job.  Instead of asking someone to TRUST, demonstrate that they can TRUST you, then you'll never have to ask them.  They will already know they can.

While the traits describe a leader, they are not a definition of leadership, which is, "To guide intent with integrity".  John touches on this point in Chapter 7, "Influence", when he describes his first assignment as a pastor.  Here he learns how to build and lead a group of followers who have no financial vest interest seeing the church succeed.  It was just a desire.  Or as the Man Kind Project calls it, "He was learning to herd cats."

John discusses another principle about leadership. It is the ability to get people to participate without leverage, power, position or threats.  However, in looking at the definition of leadership, "Guiding Intent with Integrity", these behaviors fit very well into the definition.  What these behaviors do describe is one style of leadership.  While pastors should not use these traits, they may be necessary under the right circumstances, such as disciplining a disobedient nation.

Moving on to my second point, John doesn't take into account the connections that successful people have built.  This suggests that people who are building a successful business and wish to grow that business have not established a report with their banker and investors to demonstrate that they can successful manage from 1 copy of their business to 20 copies of their business.

If I'm going to loan you some money, and I'm using my money as a way to grow my financial nest egg, then I have to know that I'm going to get my money back with 5 to 10% interest.  This is the way simple investing works.  So, now the question is, how do I invest to insure that say 80% of all my investments return 10 to 15% interest, so that overall I have accrued 5 to 10% interest?  By using factors that allow me to look at your business model, determine it's success ratio and find a number between 0 and 100% that says, "Yes, your bet is x% safe here."  And if X is greater than say 80%, I should probably feel confident that it's safe to invest in you.

In another book review, forth coming, on "The Ultimate Question", I'll discuss a few factors that can help investors determine safe bets.

Now back to my point. Successful people know how to determine safe bets.  These bets in turn are executed by individuals who they "TRUST" or have demonstrated that they are capable of taking the investment and returning a profit for the investor.  If you haven't established that type of reputation, then I suggest you get a credit card and start taking out small loans and paying them back over time and building this trust.  Very slowly, very small and very safe.

The third point that I brought up was that John didn't take into account the financial resources that successful people have to make things happen.  So let's go take a look at our investor.  He wants to build out a new chain of restaurants. However, to insure that these restaurants are successful, he may also need to build a series of shopping malls to attract people, and in building such malls, may also need to build house around them.  Population density insures that stores are frequented regularly, goods are bought locally, and that his investment has a great chance of return.

To be able to do this, an investor might need to pool his money with many other investors.  So, while one has the idea for a food chain, another has ideas for a clothier, and others for small and medium size businesses, and the last could have the idea for the housing projects.  All these people need to come together through an investment firm to build out the final project.  Unless you're a billionaire, and then you can do it all on your own, by using the people who work for you.

But mind you, building things, throwing money at something, doesn't mean it's a safe bet.  "Build it and they will come" some times doesn't work. Ask the Chinese who've build huge empty cities. No one lives in them. And they have 4 billion people living in their country alone.

Which brings me to my last point concerning the "Law of the Lid", why is something successful.  It's not because someone threw their money at it.  It's because a group of people like the idea or product.  John might have learned this while in his first pastoralship (sp).  When John came into the church to guide them, all his patrons had a series of common desires that brought them to this church: Friendship, worship, devotion to the grounds, ... so on.  (My point is that there may not have been 1 thing that united all of them together.)  But, the church for what ever reason provided something that these people needed, and they in turn gave back.  

They believed in the idea and the product that the church provided.  They wanted others to share in that idea and product. They promoted the church.  And when things needed to get done, they gave as much of themselves as they could to help get it done.  I'm sure that there were things like missionary causes, sports leagues, after school programs, and such.

The Law of the Lid doesn't discuss these issues in relationship to leadership.  Since leadership is about guiding intent with integrity, guiding peoples beliefs about the idea or product that they are receiving from a church is very important.  It helps them formulate intentions that will want them to invest their time and hard earned money into the church.  To make it better. To help it sustain itself over time. So that it will be there for others to enjoy.  But to do this, there has to be an accountability, integrity, an understood agreement with the congregation that the people representing them at the church board are doing what is right for the whole.  If that TRUST is broken. If it is demonstrated that the board doesn't have the congregations interest at heart, then those who see this will leave the church.  It will be seen as the intent of the church board and the intent of the church congregation are not in alignment, and the groups will fracture.

So is there a true Law of the Lid on leadership?  The answer is no. Everyone has the ability to be a leader.  There are a lot of facets to leadership and studying them will help you understand how to better guide people's intentions and stay in integrity with yourself and your followers, and the observers. This fictitious lid doesn't exist because anyone at any time can demonstrate to others that they have a successful idea, product, and are capable of achieving the results that will attract people to their cause, idea, service and/or product.

In the political arena, how does Obama show positive leadership in handling the fiscal cliff for the benefit of the greater good of all, when the Republican leadership (as well as the Democratic leadership with its principles) refuses to consider any plan that involves raising taxes, or essentially breaking the Norquist Mandate. Does good leadership in this case mean compromising to meet the mandated deadline? Or does it mean sticking to one's principle? Or a combination of both? 3rdmurnau

There are a couple of different things I could talk about concerning this question.  I could talk about the different types of leadership:

Great Leadership, 

Positive Leadership,

Good Leadership,

OK Leadership,

Bad Leadership,

Negative Leadership, and

Dark Leadership

But these styles of leadership are only a method to reaching the goal, they are not the goal in itself.  

The goal as many would have you believe is to fix the fiscal cliff.  But is that really the goal, or is someone just trying to control the conversation?  What is the real problem and is that the goal?

Could the real goal be to move social security and medicare insurance into the private sector?  And what would happen if these organizations were privatized? Why do Republicans want military spending to go up? Why do Republicans believe that too many people are abusing the system - choose your system, including voter fraud. Maybe the real goal is to develop a stable economy, where everyone can prosper? But this goal would require the government to return to it's former practices of redistributing wealth, in order to benefit all, not just a few.

Compromise will come once we understand what the goals are. This is the unfortunate part, since the intent of the Democratic party and the Republican party may not be the same.  And to-date, the Republican party has been unwilling to budge on even those points which they have in common with the Democratic party. It's become an all or nothing atmosphere.

So, how should President Obama lead in this instance. The President has the ability to influence not only the Republicans and the Democrats in the House and Senate, but also those at all levels of government. While the President is charged with upholding the laws passed by Congress, he usually isn't fully funded to administrate all of them.  We saw this when is informed his personnel and the public that certain individuals would no longer be sought after for deportation. 

Another way that the President could lead in this instance is to take his case to the general public.  While most people believe that the President only influences the House and Senate, he has clearly demonstrated that he can influence the general public to "Get Out To Vote!" Through an information campaign, or as  mentioned before, take control of the conversation and reshape how the public perceives the problem, the goal, and the steps towards achieving that goal.

Since, information is power, the President can do what he has been doing all long very well: outline the facts, provide the options, and discuss his plan on how we can pressure the House and the Senate to move.  Letter writing campaigns can be very effective when it comes to getting representatives to move at all levels of government, especially when their whole party is at stake of being overturned.

Now should President Obama allow Norquist Mandate to go into effect?  While at first this might seem like a bad thing, it could also be like a parent telling their children that if they don't straighten up, then the punishment will be a night in their room without dinner.  As harsh as it may seem, children usually get the message the first time around when you stick to your strategy. So, the worst that could happen is that the American public becomes upset with their representatives and decides to vote them out of office.  

And if these groups of people don't want to wait till the next election for that representative's due date, then they can gather the necessary signatures for a petition and vote them out early using a recall election.  I, though, doubt that President Obama would publicly call for this type of grass roots action be taken, but it may be necessary in the next year to adjust the House and Senate to remove the blocks, and get the Republicans to come to the table.

I think right now the Republicans have a very hard decision to make. Stick to their principles and wants, or watch their constituents turn on them and remove them one by one or on mass.  Personally, I'm for the on mass option, as they would get the message that much faster.

Who's Involved in Leadership?

The obvious answer to this question is, "The Leader".  But, Leadership, doesn't happen in a vacuum  So, what may not be obvious is the other people that are involved in leadership.

The next obvious person or group that is involved in leadership is those being lead.  Those individuals that want to be guided to the goal.  This group is called the followers.  And those that don't follow are called non-followers.

Now there are levels of followers, from the fanatical to those who could care less.  If the leader said, "Jump off the cliff", there would be some who would jump and some who'd jump with a parachute, and other's who ask, "Why?"

Now if we look at the press around all the national elections that recently occurred  we can see that there are groups of people both inside and outside those that want to be guided.  This group is called the observers.

The last group are people who don't wish to be part of the group, and don't care about the goal or the leadership towards the goal.  They are outsiders.  

It may be hard to differentiate outsiders from non-followers. The key is whether or not the outsider is championing causes that are against the leader's efforts. This then would make the outsider a non-follower.

To summarize, the individuals involved in leadership are:

The Leader

The Followers

The Non-Followers

The Observers

The Outsiders

The "Belief about how things should be" - How should Leaders address this?

I'd like to expound on another area of communication I thought about while at the gym today. It's with the "Belief about how things should be".  Most project managers build project plans that account for tasks, risks, dependencies, issues, unknowns and assumptions. The plan builds mitigations for each of these that are identified. Basically, in short, the plan covers the best case through the worst case scenarios.  When changes occur, members of each of the groups .. enthusiasts, visionaries, pragmatists, conservatives and laggards have these same scenarios running in their Synthetic Experience Generator (aka head) (this term comes from a TedTalk). A good sales person will identify all these worst case scenarios and address them up front.  As Scott pointed out, a Good Leader, will develop a communications plan tailored specifically to each group that addresses the scenarios. The idea is that a leader cannot run from controversy, he must face it head on.  In change management, this is a given. Users are usually grouped into 4 categories: eager to adopt, willing to adopt, need assistance to adopt and those that refuse to adopt. As you can see, these categories are the same as "Crossing the Chasms" categories.