Mastering Leadership

It’s one of the most talked-up, sought-out qualities in American business today: leadership. Yet surprisingly few really understand the L-word.

Many people wrongly assume it’s something you are born with. Some confuse it with administrative excellence. Still others sense the importance of leadership, but dismiss it as a fuzzy, academic notion in today’s to-the-point, bottom-line world. After all, why are there are so many ineffective leaders in all those leadership positions?

Let me put it boldly. In any organization–from global blue-chips to home-based start-ups–nothing is more important than leadership. It is a quality that all high-growth, high-profit businesses share.

So what is leadership, anyway? Among the quick definitions: motivating others to accomplish goals, taking charge, directing activities, and creating compelling visions but having a willingness to compromise.

More specifically, it’s about creating energy in others by instilling purpose to what they do. It is also the ability to regard the inevitable–change–as an opportunity for progress and growth, not as something to fear. Leadership is about taking any situation and making it better.

"Leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction–developing a vision of the future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision," writes Professor John P. Kotter in his landmark 1990 Harvard Business Review article, "What Leaders Really Do."

The next step, says Kotter, is for leaders is to "align people" through coalition-building, and, finally "motivate and inspire" people to overcome obstacles that crop up by appealing to basic, but often untapped human needs, values and emotions. These include a sense of achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one’s life, and the ability to live up to one’s ideals.

Other quick definitions of leadership: having a set of core beliefs, a moral compass, a firmness that is not authoritarian, and strong powers of persuasion. President Dwight Eisenhower, the wartime general who knew a few things about the subject, defined leadership as "the ability to get people to do things that you want done because they want to do them."

Leadership is not something in the genes. While some people may be more predisposed to it than others, leadership is largely developed behavior that gets better with opportunity, discipline and practice. Those who are in leadership positions, but fail to properly lead, usually suffer from cowardice, apathy or ignorance.

To the surprise of many, leadership means developing others–fully empowering those who follow you. You must show them they are included, promote their participation, and provide them virtually unrestricted access to important information and other members of your organization. Those you lead–teammates really–are key players in the success of your leadership. They have a self-interested stake in helping you reach your goals.

Absolute and continually-reaffirmed trust must exist between leaders and those they lead. Lead by example, or the "do-as-I-do-not-as-I-say" approach.

People like to be lead and will often decide who leads them. Their effort is a direct result of how they are treated. Leaders do not treat everyone equally–but must treat everyone absolutely fairly. Your responsibility as a leader is to get people to respond to you by helping them achieve their goals.

"Tell people what to do but not how to do it," advises Major General John J. Maher, Commanding General of U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division. "Tell people what you expect of them–and they will rise to the occasion."

Leaders not only think outside the box, they have exceptionally high standards. What I call a "MAPP"–or Minimum Acceptable Performance Point–should be set to nothing short of absolute victory, whether it relates to tomorrow’s business deal or your personal five-year plan.

This standard that obviously won’t be reached every time (we’re not robots), but with victory as the threshold, results will most often be in the winning column.

Accept the mistakes not as defeats, but as valuable education. Robert L. Pearson, president and CEO of Houston-based executive search firm Lamalie Amrop International, says that leadership means being able to take risks that others would avoid. "Leaders must have the courage to make mistakes, learn from them and continue to pursue their vision until it becomes a reality."

Early in my career, I held the view that leadership meant showing and promoting an image of strength and infallibility. I went out of my way to be visible, aggressive, outspoken, and tough in everything I did. It didn’t take long to become clear that wasn’t leadership.

Neither is leadership achieved nor validated through another common approach–instilling fear in those who follow you. It is a depleter of precious, productive energy. Fear is one of the most poisonous, destructive forces in any organization.

The key to leadership is each one of the people who are being led. And it’s directly related to their view of the leader’s integrity. Integrity breeds loyalty, the superglue of any relationship, business and personal. Loyalty creates positive energy and grows out of openness, fairness and fostering the development of those you lead.

Leadership means creating energy in others. Your actions as their leader will either start their engine–or turn it off. What destroys it? What I call "incapacitators"–things like abuse, betrayal, deceit, control, humiliation and oppression. Among the qualities that create positive energy are what I call "energizers": freedom, authority, confidence, trust, courage, generosity, passion, praise and decisiveness.

These qualities have a tremendous impact on motivation–and the bottom line. Dana Mead can tell you. He’s a decorated Army colonel, former White House Fellow, and now chairman and CEO of Tenneco, a global corporate leader with more than $13 billion in annual sales.

"At Tenneco, the prime criterion for assessing our leaders is how successfully they lead change," says Mead. Leaders, he says, should have a "bias to action and focus on results."

Mead says he continually asks his leaders the following: Is the cultural innovation they lead happening fast enough and deep enough? Are they hitting their ‘stretch’ targets? Are their management processes changing fast enough to support the cultural changes and results they seek? Are they recruiting, developing and surrounding themselves with other leaders of change?

Good leaders hold themselves to these and similar high standards of accountability. Such expectations should apply to those being led. When you give your all to your leadership position and those who report to you, you have the right to expect much in return.

When it isn’t provided, you’ve been shortchanged. Failure to set and live up to high standards is far too prevalent in today’s business world where excuses are more common than results. The less-than actions or efforts on the part of one or two take a big bite out of results of the entire team.

If those being led will not radically boost their MAPP–the Minimum Acceptable Performance Point–then the leader must act decisively. A mediocre or poor performer who receives immunity from his or her leader generates a betrayal of trust for others on the team. A leader never allows the majority to be held captive by the few.

©Steve Sullivan.1998-2005

Demystifying Performance

For leaders, performance is everything. So why do too many people in leadership positions fail to get the job done?

The "experts" connect performance and commitment. And, yes, commitment is a vital component of leadership. But being committed in the wrong areas doesn’t accomplish much. Today, leaders who can’t distinguish the significant from the mundane will be out of a job fast.

Generating superior performance begins with the right instruments. An operational compass, called the Results Performance Model (RPM), will help you chart your course.

Because responsive people excel, the RPM makes responsiveness the objective. Bottom line: Responsiveness requires focus and speed. Focus is a product of knowledge and assessment. Speed follows from agility and action.

One more iteration and we will have reduce our operational objective to level where we can initiate programming. Focus requires Information and Experience. Assessment needs proper Solicitation and Feedback. Agility results with sufficient Resources and Authority. Action occurs with appropriate levels of Confidence and Motivation. Bottom line: Responsiveness has eight operational components. These are designated Trigger Impact Areas (TIAs) and it is here that action affects outcome. Each is mutually exclusive but wholly compatible. Fuse the TIAs together–and you’ll see major strides in performance.

There is a direct link between Trigger engagement and results. When your programs communicate information, build experience, encourage solicitation, respond to feedback, use resources, delegate authority, build confidence and generate emotion, the performance cycle is compressed. Your return is maximized.

Recognize: you don’t need to be a master of all things. I know many excellent leaders who are Trigger specialists. They focus their energy in areas where they know they can operate effectively. If they are weak on delegating authority and responding to feedback, their other strengths can compensate. Identify some trigger comfort zones and begin your work there. When you start seeing results, venture out.

The RPM is a crucial daily-use tool. It can help evaluate a marketing or training program, reduce organizational hostility, reward effort, measure progress, analyze threats, increase loyalty and improve productivity.

©Steve Sullivan.1998-2005

Back-to-Basics Approach Earns Business

Salespeople today are under intense pressure to produce big results faster than ever before. Yet in these tech-driven times–when your performance can be sliced up dozens of ways with a few taps on a computer–the single most important issue in growing sales quickly is very low-tech.

It's the amount of influence you have with the people buying your product or service.

Of course, motivation, closing skills, discipline and incentives help, but they're only part of the equation. When it comes time for a buyer to decide who gets his business, the salesperson with the greatest influence usually winds up with the order. Simply put, influence is power.

The faster you build that influence, the quicker sales grow. But how do you gain influence? Here are some key points:

• Know your customer's business.
• Have a desire to do what your customer wants.
• View no request as too small or big to be acted upon.
• Always differentiate yourself from your competition.
• Be honest, consistent and credible.
• Regularly remind customers of their importance.

Successful salespeople make themselves indispensable to their customers. They become trusted and loyal business advisors. They know that a customer relationship is not the means to an end, it is the end.

Other ways to accelerate your influence with your customer may sound simple. I believe many are overlooked–things like thoughtfulness, commitment, kindness, courage, creativity, generosity, education and energy. When you introduce these qualities into your customer relationships, they usually trigger positive reactions.

While your business savvy is most important, little things–having one of your customer's favorite dishes delivered to their office or sending a news clip on a favorite non-business topic–count for more than you might think.

Making your customer your friend is smart business. They become more open, loyal, consistent, and credible than when they were business 'targets'. You send a different message–you're interested in the relationship, not just the order. If they're incapable of giving you an order, they will give you straight talk. And that saves you time.

Conversely, it’s possible to damage a customer relationship forever by doing the following:

• Asking for an order before you've performed.
• Making disparaging comments about your competition.
• Not responding immediately to a customer request or returning a phone call quickly.
• Giving a customer inaccurate information.
• Not communicating regularly about everything–good and bad–that impacts the relationship.
• Not understanding the subtleties of your customer's business.

Acceptance, inclusion, reward, recognition, promotion rests in the minds of others. How you influence their willingness to support your efforts is up to you. You are in control, but until you understand what a critical impact your actions have on another individual's view of you, you will never achieve as much as you could.

Homework about your customer is Job 1. I mean real work, not just a quick glance at the company brochure. Problem is, most salespeople don't go deep enough. Of 10 others you may be in competition with for a company's order, two are as knowledgeable in key areas as you are.

Your challenge is to break away from the pack by learning as much as you can about what's important to your customer. Databases of newspapers and magazines at your local library are one great source of information. Study recent back issues of industry trade publications. Talk with other people in your client's company.

Successful salespeople have a clear understanding of their customer's strategic vision and an unwavering commitment to helping them down that path. You can do that by doing your homework.

Some final quick points:

Communicate clearly. Everything a salesman does is for nothing if it can't be communicated to the buyer. I'm amazed at how poorly many salespeople express themselves, verbally or in writing.

Get creative. Creativity doesn't mean playing an accordion while describing your product in Swahili. It does mean coming up with stimulating alternatives to how you're currently making a sale. Look around you–people and businesses that succeed break the mold. Do the untraditional. Cappuccino does sell in bookstores! You can order a leather jacket with that hamburger! Bring a little ingenuity into your customer's world. Even if you don't solve their problem, you'll score big by setting yourself apart.

Courage counts. In world markets and your customer's office, backbone is traded as a precious commodity. It provides a foundation on which to build relationships. Accelerating your sales requires a lot of courage. The more times you take action, the greater the chance for success–and failure.

In selling, batting average means nothing! Good salespeople operate outside the Comfort Zone. They recognize that rejection is not an indictment of them but merely a puddle on their journey to success.

©Steve Sullivan.1998-2005

Because I believe that to be true I will attempt through, Made Easy, to search out the best and brightest and with their help, deliver to you, a smorgasbord of insight that is easily digestible and totally applicable.