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4 Ways to Mentor Your Team to Success

The Challenge – Control, Trust, Delegation and Accountability
How do leaders expand their organizations without loosing control of vital functions? A small business owner in a rapidly growing business said it this way, “I am one of those small but fast growing companies but like you said some of the issues here at my office might certainly start with me. My biggest issue, I can’t let go. I have to do it all myself. It’s like the saying ‘If you want things done you have to do them yourself’ which takes so much time from my schedule. My problem is trusting my team or teaching them.” (Owner of a Tri-state Business)

Is the choice founders make really a choice between quality or quantity; control or delegation; trust or effectiveness? The owner quoted above like many leaders in both business and the non-profit sector suffers from a false dichotomy. Organizations need both quality and quantity; control and delegation; and trust and effectiveness. Notice that the assumption is clear – no one has the same degree of ambition as I when it comes to my organization’s success. While this is true it is true in degrees and not absolutes.

In an earlier article (http://raywheeler.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/7-tools-mentors-use-to-affirm-effective-leadership/) I discussed the impact Moses’ father-in-law (Jethro) had on changing Moses’ perspective about his role as a leader. It is important to return to the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and Moses’ role in this exodus for a moment to set the stage for what might be called the Moses conundrum i.e., no one has the same ambition I do for this organization.

Nature of the Moses Conundrum

Owners and founders have a unique perspective of their organizations. Consider for a moment that Moses, like almost every founder, faced impossible odds and steep opposition to his vision. Empowered by a catalytic encounter with God in the desert Moses not only faced the opposition of a well established nation as he pursued the dream of a unique identity for his people. He was initially rejected by the very people he worked to liberate because his first efforts at liberation made their lives more miserable. He faced the backlash of Egypt’s pharaoh who sought to squelch the upstart Moses and the idea of an emergent new nation. Owners put everything on the line for their vision – one false step and they lose everything.

I once worked for a privately held company that hired me to help them expand to new markets. I turned down a more lucrative offer to work in a publicly traded company because (1) the privately held company demanded that change happen with greater speed – I could have a direct and immediate impact on outcomes verses the indirect and much slower impact on outcomes in a publicly traded company and (2) I had a greater potential for short-term gains in my own financial position in the privately held company. So, I traded a long-term career opportunity for a very risky but potentially lucrative gig in a privately held company.

I will never forget my shock a few weeks after turning down the third recruiting offer from the public firm (each one more lucrative) when the owner walked into my office and declared, “I don’t trust you.” I felt like decking him on the spot. Several thoughts ran through my mind including the frustration of facing mistrust when I had just sacked a fantastic career offer to engage the adventure of building something from scratch. What was the catalyst to this frustrating encounter? The owner had just put up a million dollars of equity (everything he owned) to fund the expansion. Whose sacrifice for the vision was greater?

Answering the question of sacrifice and investment offers an important insight into what I call the Moses conundrum – no one initially pays the same price as the founder in the first stages of the organization’s lifecycle – everyone takes a risk of significant harm to their future to join the vision of the founder. The conundrum is that even though the founder pays a high initial price – he/she must learn to recruit people to assume an uncomfortable level of risk for the organization to continue to thrive. For example: someone had the guts to be your first hire (unless you hired the first warm body that walked in from the street). If you recruited your first hire because you knew what they could do to be a force multiplier to your time and effort as the owner then recognize and appreciate their risk and recognize/reward them appropriately. Note: recognition has a much greater leverage potential at every stage of the organization’s lifecycle. This doesn’t exclude the need for reward – it is to say reward without recognition and relationship often leads to disappointment and betrayal.

This introduces two big mistakes I see founders make (1) they don’t hire force multipliers they hire stabilizers and (2) they don’t recruit the best they hire to survive another month. If employees or partners are not going to serve as force multipliers they will do more harm than good. A vicious cycle emerges. Founders need force multipliers. They know that no one they hire has made the same initial investment. They don’t know how to find force multipliers so they hire stabilizers (employees who can do exactly what they are told) because they don’t trust anyone with the essence of the business. Stabilizers end up failing to exercise critical thinking skills reaffirming that employees can’t be trusted so the founder takes up more the tasks he/she tried to escape. Employees act slighted and show an entitlement attitude infuriating the owner causing a greater gap in trust and so on.

Owners who fall into the Moses conundrum show one or more of the following dysfunctional behaviors:

  • Impulse versus Innovation. Focus: new ideas. Result: demoralized staff who cannot find consistency in action. Manages by flirting with new ideas, is unpredictable and fails to follow through. Prime focus is on why.
  • Working harder versus working smarter. Focus: task at hand. Result: hard work with the FISH time-table (first in, still here). Manages by crisis without delegation, training, long-range or short-range planning. Prime focus is on what. (See Adolescence and the role of delegation.)
  • Control versus accountability. Focus: doing things right. Result: orderly processes while what needs to be done is eclipsed by how it should be done. Manages a well controlled disaster; the company may go broke but it will do so on time. Prime focus is on how.

Get Out of the Vicious Cycle of Mistrust

How did Jethro’s mentoring help Moses cross the trust threshold to find force multipliers? I have highlighted several points in the text that name the principles founders need to multiply their force multipliers in leadership. Read the text then think through what I have to say about below.

17 Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. 18 You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. 19 Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. 20 Teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. 21 But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain —and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 22 Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. 23 If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied. Exodus 18:17-23 (NIV)

Jethro illustrates four critical force multipliers leaders need to stay vital and sane as their organizations grow and become more complex:

  1. Outline and explain your core values
  2. Look for People who exhibit characteristics of trust
  3. Delegate based on each person’s capacity and capability
  4. Collaborate on complex issues leave routine issues

Outline and explain your core values

Jethro told Moses to spend time educating the leaders around him on how to live. In other words Jethro wanted Moses to make explicit things that he held implicitly. Your team cannot read your mind. I once gave what I thought was a simple assignment to my administrative coordinator, “Jim,” I said, “we need some signs around this property to direct people – our facility is too confusing.” We had purchased existing structures next to our original site to expand our operations. I was concerned that the hodgepodge of buildings and new parking left visitors confused about how to find their way around the chaos.

On the day the signs were installed I parked in the sanctuary parking lot and climbed out of my car anticipating a professional looking, easy to read “road map” to the facility. What I saw instead were signs nearly too small to read, remnants of a hardware store closeout that neither matched the ambiance of the congregational facility nor the vision we had to present our message and mission with excellence in a community used to spiritual charlatans. I was both frustrated and angry at myself for not communicating with greater clarity what I wanted to see in the signage. I proceeded to rip each sign from the building and walked into Jim’s office with a mangled menagerie of metal scrap. I dropped the now unusable mass on his desk watching in his face that he was horrified at the expectation of what I was about to say. “Jim, this isn’t right. I don’t know what I did wrong in communicating my expectations but when I figure it out I will be back and we can talk about it. Until then don’t worry about the signs.”

That last word of encouragement did not lighten his countenance. I went into my office seething with anger. I recognized that my frustration was not at Jim but at a dissonance I was feeling with the entire staff. They were not doing things the way I wanted them done. We had begun to have exchanges in the office that had an edge to them. I sat and prayed that God would help me, I felt like we were missing an important ingredient to our team.[1]

I asked myself why Jim would buy such junk. It occurred to me that Jim loved to save money, in fact having him serve in the role of administrative coordinator had gotten us some great deals. I continued my rumination, Jim likes a good deal. In fact, he values good deals. I value cost savings too but I also value excellence. Cost savings and excellence balanced each other out in my mind. In Jim’s mind a good deal trumped most other concerns. Jim had not bought junk, he had saved money.

“Ok,” I thought, “I am onto something here.” I continued my list of “most important” things to me. “Let’s see, I value cost savings, relationships, excellence, commitment, truth-telling…” My list of values grew.

I returned to Jim’s office the same afternoon. “Ok Jim,” I began “here is what I did wrong. I gave you a job to do and you did it on time and under budget. But I failed to instill in you the values that have been at the core of my work here the last 7 years.” Thus began a conversation that became a turning point in how I lead.

I illustrated nine core values in an interactive matrix and told Jim that I wanted him to do the assignment again only this time to make certain that he incorporated all nine values in his actions. He tried to hand the assignment back to me – I didn’t blame him for being gun-shy but I insisted on trying this new experiment in leadership action. I had to get past the frustration I was feeling. “Jim, even if I don’t like the final outcome, if you can prove to me that all the values meet in your decision, your decision will stand.” Why? Because I felt these core values were the foundation of our success. The tension I felt with the staff I had recruited rested in the fact I felt dissonance with what had made us successful in the first place.

On the appointed day I parked out back to check the work again. I bounded out of my car with a sense of expectation and laughed the moment I saw the signs. They were excellent, Jim later told me that he negotiated with a sign painter (the best in the county) for custom signs by bartering for our signs by offering the use of our building by sign painter’s family reunion. The source of my laughter was not that the signs were well done. I was delighted with the quality. I laughed because the base color of the signs was maroon, I hate maroon. I walked into Jim’s office still laughing. He looked at me with growing expression of uncertainty. “Jim the signs are great. You met every core value, well done.”

“Then why are you laughing?” he asked.

“That is not important; you did an excellent job meeting our working values. I think I am on to something with this Jim. I think it will make our communication fun again.” I said.

“I agree, but why are you laughing?” Jim pressed for an answer.

I finally relented, “Jim the signs are great, you met the values but I hate maroon. So, just as a matter of my personal taste – I acknowledge that this has nothing to do with our core values – could you avoid doing anything else in that color?”

Jim’s face grew white with anxiety. “Jim, are you ok?” I queried.

“Yea, I am alright but you know those usher shirts you asked me to order? I ordered them in maroon.” Jim said.

I broke into such loud belly laughs that the entire staff gathered around Jim’s office to share the joke. It turned into a great day for me, great because I learned, tested and successfully implemented one of the most important leadership principles I have ever caught.

Reflection spent identifying and applying core values determines to a large extent the success or failure of any team. If the core values of an organization are understood they serve as the coxswain who keeps the tempo and direction clear helping the team work together.

Your own values will decide which alternatives you seriously consider.[2]

Look for people who exhibit characteristics of trust

Next Jethro told Moses to look for capable, God-fearing and honest men. Allow me to translate these characteristics to read: capability, caring and integrity. Jethro helped Moses define trust explicitly thus making it easier to decide what needed to be delegated and who was capable of doing the job.

The research of Burke, Sims, Lazzara and Salas (2007) confirm that a leader’s ability to be successful in encouraging or managing organizational effectiveness is enhanced or reduced by the degree to which their subordinates and co-workers trust him/her and vise versa. Burke, Sims, Lazzara and Salas’ review of research literature concluded that trust within organizations (i.e., person to person, person to leader, team to team and person-organization) possess three broad qualifications: ability (capability), benevolence (caring) and integrity. These are qualifications are elaborated in the table below.

Capability, caring and integrity as factors of trust[3]

Capability

Caring

Integrity
  • Setting compelling direction
  • Creation of enabling structure
    • Task knowledge
    • Situation knowledge
    • Setting functional norms
  • Create/sustain supportive context
    • Transformational leadership behaviors
    • Consultative leadership behaviors
    • Transactional leadership behaviors
  • Coaching
  • Accountability
  • Perceptions of justice
  • Value congruence

Delegate based on each person’s capacity and capability

What is important to see in Jethro’s advice is that he not only identified specific qualities of trust but that he also made clear that trust is dynamic and not an either/or proposition. In other words trust people to the degree they are capable of fulfilling that trust. It is as big a mistake to trust people with tasks they are incapable of completing as it is to fail to trust others at all.

Building capacity in your team requires that you provide them with the opportunity to grow their knowledge, skills and abilities in an environment that offers the proper level of risk, feedback and safe guards to compartmentalize the consequences of bad decisions. The aim is not to avoid all bad decisions – after all you have made your fair share – it is to make sure that the scope of decision-making power matches the capacity and capability of the decision maker to deal with a decision’s complexity. This is why Jethro encouraged Moses to build into the judicial system of Israel scope limiters of decision-making power that triggered needed collaboration when the complexity of decisions over reached the experience and ability of the team.

Collaborate on complex issues leave routine issues

Jethro’s identification of the dynamism of trust introduces another important variable in the founder’s success – relationship/collaboration. Jethro’s suggestion to create decision-making scope limiters put Moses in a place of continuous mentoring and collaboration.

The founders I meet often suffer from two leadership deficits related to mistrust: isolation/insulation and task saturation. In following Jethro’s advice Moses avoided the trap of isolation by collaborating with his leaders on more complex decisions. When founders isolate themselves from their teams they cut off the feedback (i.e., become insulated from reality) and suppress the organization’s level of trust. When founders don’t trust their teams they work themselves until they burnout or blowup. By collaborating Moses avoided the burnout inevitable in “doing it all myself” and maintained the proper involvement of strategic activity and decision-making.

Because trust is a two-way street it is important to realize that how people first approach trust is different. While the qualifications of trust seem universal the way people approach trust with another person appears to exist on a continuum. On the one end of the continuum are those people who extend trust once they see evidence for extending such trust. On the other hand are those people who extend trust de facto until one violates their trust. Put these two people in the same company and mistrust occurs almost immediately and often irrevocably because they violate each other’s sense of integrity (i.e., doing what is right by either extending trust in the first place waiting until enough evidence of care, capability and integrity exist to extend trust).

The problem for many leaders is that once trust is lost they cannot explain the dynamics of that loss. Hence the model of Jethro as verified in the research of Burke, Sims, Lazzara and Salas (2007) offers a vocabulary and conceptual model for training and correcting trust. Any leader may become jaded over time when they experience a violation of trust, possessing a model by which to identify the reason for the loss of trust encourages the right kind of conversation to occur between and founder and his/her team so that trust can be restored.

If an organization sustains growth beyond the capability and capacity of the founder it is because the founder has learned to delegate key functions on the basis of her/his explicitly stated core values and explicitly defined trust.

Conclusion

Jethro’s advice to Moses is timely for leaders and founders who find themselves caught in a cycle of burnout because they don’t fully trust their employees. We noted three common traps that develop out of mistrust:

  • Impulse versus Innovation
  • Working harder versus working smarter
  • Control versus accountability

The solution according to Jethro was to find and empower team members who demonstrated the qualities of trust i.e., capability, care and integrity. In finding the right stuff founders, business owners and leaders must consistently execute the following aspects of effectiveness:

  • Outline and explain your core values
  • Look for people who exhibit characteristics of trust
  • Delegate based on each person’s capacity and capability
  • Collaborate on complex issues leave routine issues to others

Do you trust your team? Or are you headed to burnout? Are you fighting to control minutia or do you control the right things to set up force multipliers in the way your team works? The case study of Moses is insightful, Israel was ready to dump him as a leader more than once before Jethro’s influence helped Moses turn back seat drivers into a team of leaders growing in effectiveness. If you don’t have a mentor like Jethro in your life it is time to start looking.

Finally, don’t read this article without comment. Find out how other leaders respond and elaborate on these concepts by offering your own. I know I appreciate comments – so do others. Thanks.

[1] Indeed, I was caught in one of the 10 most common mistakes leaders make. Hans Finzel calls it leadership chaos, we simply were not singing off the same page. Finzel reminds us of four important communication realities, (1) never assume that anyone knows anything, (2) the bigger the group, the more attention must be given to communication, (3) when left in the dark, people tend to dream up wild rumors and (4) communication must be the passionate obsession of effective leaders. I was obsessed alright, but not with communication. I was obsessed with why my staff couldn’t get things done right. The problem, I discovered, was me. (Finzel 1994:113)

[2] Bennis & Nanus 1985:104

[3] Shawn C. Burke, Dana E. Sims, Elizabeth H. Lazzara, and Eduardo Salas, “Trust in Leadership: A Multilevel Review and Integration.” Leadership Quarterly 18, no. 6 (2007): 606-32.

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What is mentoring? Define the power of helping others develop.

Mentoring Defined
In this series on mentors it is proper to offer a brief description about what I mean when I use the word “mentor.”  What do I mean by the word mentor?

Mentoring is a multidimensional relationship where a mentor and a mentee work together to make specific, mutually defined goals that focus on developing the mentee’s skills, abilities, knowledge and thinking. (Zachary)

Mentoring is a relationship between two people, usually a senior and a junior employee, whereby the senior employee teaches the junior employee about his/her job, introduces the junior to contacts, orients the junior employee to the industry and organization and addresses social or personal issues that arise on the job. (Allen, Finkelstein, Poteet)

Mentoring is to serve as a catalyst in drawing out the potential that God has given to His people and to give people what they need for the work of ministry that God has given them. (Fukuda)

Mentoring is a relational process, in which someone who knows something (the mentor), transfers that something (empowerment and resources such as wisdom, advice, information, emotional support, protection, linking to resources, career guidance, status) to someone else (the mentee) at a sensitive time so that it impacts development.  (Clinton)

Mentoring is a relationship between two individuals that allows individuals to address concerns about self, career, and family by providing opportunities to gain knowledge, skills, and competence and to address personal and professional dilemmas. (Kram)

Mentoring is a kind of sacred archetype, a capacity to illuminate a role of often-hidden yet rare power in the drama of human development. (Daloz)

Definitions offer a helpful howbeit incomplete definition. What is the activity of mentoring?  In some cases mentoring takes place even when there is no direct relationship between a mentor and a mentee.  This is important to understand particularly as a busy executive or leader experienced in the tension between developing leaders around you and meeting the demands of the organization.  From the definitions above several observations are important to identify. Mentoring is:

  1. Relational/personal/intimate – assumes that one of the two has the degree of emotional intelligence needed to endure immaturity because of the potential seen in another person.
  2. Intentional – because of his or her experience the mentor sees what is needed to succeed in the larger context, the mentee sees what is needed in the immediate context.  This reciprocal agenda is characteristic of adult learning styles.
  3. Empowering – the result of this relationship is that the mentee is empowered in their capacity of accomplishment and being.
  4. Opportune – these points of empowerment are fitting to specific periods of development. Mentoring needs change with time and the developmental stages of the mentee.  This relates back to the dynamic character of the mentoring relationship.

Functional Categories To expand the definition of mentoring toward actionable strategies researchers identify a variety of distinct mentoring functions that also occur in a continuum of involvement indicating more deliberate to less deliberate or more intensive to less intensive personal involvement. All researchers essentially start with the mentoring types identified by either Kathy E. Kram or J. Robert Clinton to define the activity of mentoring and its empowering function toward the mentee.  The Table 1 below identifies their respective lists of mentoring types.

Table 1: Mentoring Functions Identified

Kram[1]

Clinton and Clinton[2]

Exposure & visibility

Sponsorship

Coaching

Protection

Challenging assignments

Role modeling

Acceptance – confirmation

Counseling

Friendship

Sponsor

Coach

Teacher

Contemporary model

Counselor

Historical model

Divine contact

Spiritual guide

Disciple

Notice the similarities and the differences in the two lists. Clinton and Clinton write from a faith-based perspective used in many Christian organizations and congregations.  Kram writes from a business perspective familiar with the demands of a global enterprise. Kram further differentiates her list by identifying career and psychosocial functions thus paying attention to a holistic development in leadership i.e., the reality that without solid social skills great technicians make lousy leaders.[3]

  • Career: those aspects of relationship that enhance career advancement.
  • Psychosocial: shoes aspects of the relationship that enhance sense of competence, identity, and effectiveness in a professional role.

Clinton and Clinton further differentiate their list by identifying a continuum of involvement in terms of the kind of empowerment, deliberateness, depth and awareness of effort.  Clinton differentiates these three aspects of the continuum based on the dynamics involved that determine the depth and awareness of the effort involved.[4]

  • Active mentoring: implies that both the mentor and the mentee must be active in their respective responsibilities inherent in the dynamics i.e., attraction, relationship, responsiveness, accountability, empowerment.
  • Occasional mentoring: implies that the degree of involvement needed is less intensive than active mentoring and that the dynamics involved include attraction, responsiveness and empowerment but not necessarily relationship and accountability.
  • Passive mentoring: implies the least intensive involvement of the mentoring types where the dynamics include attraction, responsiveness and empowerment but are devoid of relationship.  Accountability may or may not be a part of these functions.

I synthesize the models of Kram and Clinton in my work in developing leaders cf. Table 2.

Table 2: Wheeler’s Synthesis of Mentoring Functions

 

Active mentoring

Occasional mentoring

Passive mentoring

Career Functions

Coaching – skills, insight to informal and political processes

Trainer – knowledge and its application

Exposure & visibility – preparation for greater responsibility

Protection – reduction of unnecessary risks or criticism

Sponsorship – opportunity for advancement

Challenging assignments – development of technical or managerial skills

Psychosocial Functions

Discipler – habits, spiritual formation

Counseling – advice on personal concerns

Role model – values identification & clarification

Friendship – a sounding board, perspective

Acceptance & confirmation – self-differentiation in a relationship in which conflict is safe

Divine contact – guidance in decisions

It is important as a mentor to differentiate between the functions and types of mentoring for several reasons:

  1. Identify your own strengths as a mentor and focus on those mentee relationships or encounters that you can leverage best for the mentee’s development.  Passive mentoring functions show that direct long-term personal involvement is not a prerequisite to every mentoring action.   This is important particularly for those leaders whose scope of responsibility is large thus cutting down on the amount of time available for hands-on mentoring assignments.
  2. Identify the time constraints required in the functions and types of mentoring activity.  Leadership development is the first order of task for a leader – however highly effective leaders already have full schedules.  Awareness of one’s mentoring style and the amount of time demand inherent in the functions and types of mentoring activity allow the leader to sequence their involvement in the lives of emerging and established leaders.
  3. Conduct a mentoring function analysis of available mentoring functions within your organization.  Determine whether the organization possessed the mentoring bandwidth to effectively develop leaders at all levels of the organization or if it needs outside assistance.
  4. Conduct a mentee need analysis to decide what types of mentoring activity an emergent or an incumbent leader needs to help them through a boundary period in their development.

Conclusion Mentoring often takes place without the official titles of mentor and mentee.  Any time informal training takes place (that is training outside the classroom or outside the training room) a mentoring function transpires. The definitions above outline the advantages of formalizing definitions of mentoring.  It is obvious in the research literature that those organizations that commit to developing a highly functional mentoring culture show a higher degree of success in reproducing leaders.  Where organizations fail to give a high degree of facilitation and oversight mentoring occurs far less often and with much fewer results. Mentoring contributes to employee retention and a higher quality of leadership interaction in organizations that develop mentoring programs.  As will be clear in the next article, effective mentoring – such as that modeled by Jethro and Moses in the earlier article, http://raywheeler.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/7-tools-mentors-use-to-affirm-effective-leadership/, is particularly important during times of organizational transition. Dollar for dollar the use of mentoring in any organization shows a much higher return than any other form of employee development because mentoring is (1) just in time input based on the learning needs and style of the employee; (2) mentoring requires far fewer resources than any other form of training and (3) mentoring adapts to market conditions faster than any other form of training.

[1] Kathy E. Kram. Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 23.
[2] J. Robert Clinton and Richard W. Clinton. The Mentoring Handbook: Detailed Guidelines and Helps for Christian Mentors and Mentorees (Altadena, CA: Barnabas Publishers, 1991), 2-24.
[3] Kram, 23.
[4] Clinton & Clinton, 2-24.
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7 TOOLS MENTORS USE TO AFFIRM EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

The Leadership Challenge – Why Mentors are Needed
Is it better to improve what exists or create what isn’t yet?[1]  Today’s context requires that a leader do both.  Leaders face the tension of living in the present and the future simultaneously.  In today’s world the rate of change often exceeds a leader’s ability to define change.  As one author points out change has changed.

Leaders today must own two important factors of success.  First is faith.  Faith summons us to live in the present as though the future were here now.  Without faith leaders tend to show the mediocrity that leads their organizations to live as though they were bound to the past than the future.  Even once great organizations find themselves irrelevant, powerless and more connected to the past than the future.  Their best people seem muddled and their leaders hamstrung.

Second, effective leaders all have mentors. If any leader in history seems to be exempt from the need of having a mentor it was Moses.  Moses had a face to face and daily relationship with God according to the scriptures. Who needs a mentor when one can check in with the Almighty?  The lesson seems to be that connection with God does not make independent super hero as much as it shapes authentic humanity that recognizes the interdependence of relationship that plays such a significant role in human development.

Moses and the children of Israel had experienced one of the greatest miracles of history in the Exodus from Egypt but when they landed in the wilderness they faced a problem, the success of the past would not carry them into the future unless they connected to the future than the past as their point of reference.  Moses ran smack into the limitations of leadership capacity on the one hand and the necessity for expanding his capacity as a leader on the other.

Mentors Play a Critical Role in Leadership Development

When entering a harbor ship Captains often use experienced “pilots” to guide their vessels safely to dock.  A pilot is familiar with the channel, hazards, currents and traffic the ship will face.  As great a leader Moses was he needed a pilot at one point – a mentor to help him understand his own blind spots and develop an appropriate strategy for moving forward.  Jethro served as Moses’ pilot or mentor.  Jethro “piloted” Moses through new leadership terrain (cf. Exodus 18).  Jethro modeled the tone as well as the content of an effective mentor.  The encounter between Jethro and Moses offer seven insights into an effective mentoring relationship.  Consider the following insights. How do these observations reflect the approach you take with mentees?  What insights can you glean to improve the effectiveness of your own mentoring?  I extracted the observations below from Exodus 18:1-27.  What tools did Jethro use to enhance Moses’ leadership capacity?

Context

Jethro journeyed to the wilderness to meet Moses and Israel.  Principle: Effective mentoring occurs out of relationship.  Mentoring or consultations of any type do not take place or give help if engaged in as a backseat driver or detached prognosticator.  Mentors are often incarnations of divine assistance. The bottom line is a mentor knows you, initiates contact and identifies with your unique situational challenges and strengths.

Relationship

Jethro heard of all that God had done.  Principle: Effective mentors are attentive to the needs of their mentees.  They act on what they hear or see.  Mentors have the ability to see the wider perspective of purpose and meaning.  Mentoring is not a one-size-fits-all approach but an approach that seeks exposure to the leader’s context, a larger frame of reference and sensitivity to the direction of the Holy Spirit. It is a personal and at times nearly an intimate interaction that identifies with the leader and empathize with their situation and personal victories and challenges.

Benevolence

“I your father-in-law Jethro; am coming to you.” Principle: Effective mentoring possesses and expresses a passion for leaders.  Jethro’s relationship to Moses resulted from the marriage of Moses to Jethro’s daughter.  If a mentor does his or her job well they will foremost act out of care and respect for leaders. Benevolence as a motivation helps reduce barriers to advice and understands that a foundation of honest communication and respect is an essential ingredient to building trust.

Celebration

“Jethro said, ‘blessed be the Lord, who delivered you…’”  Principle: A mentor must not only see things to improve they must start with things to celebrate.  Note that up to this point Jethro had done nothing but see and understand the context, goals, past and present work Moses was involved in.  A significant part of any mentoring engagement or consultation takes place in celebrating the accomplishments and the passion from which the leader draws both courage and vision.  It reinforces the leader, demonstrates respect for what the leader has accomplished and sets the stage for the leader to express or recognize any boundaries to the development of their capacity as a leader as demanded by their situation.

Honesty

“You will surely wear out; both yourself and these people…Now listen to me.  I will give you counsel.” Principle: The benefit of mentoring is introduced – Jethro’s observations based on his wider perspective and appreciation for the great work God was doing in Israel had two primary goals; that Moses successfully engage his task with energy and endurance and that the people embrace their changing destiny and situation with peace.  Jethro diagnosed and prescribed with sensitivity to the context and the insight of experience and intuition.  Warning: a double jeopardy exists in an overburdened leader – the leader and the people wear out.  This one-two punch guarantees that an organization will eventually suffer a collapse and if left untreated die.

Application

Moses listened.  Principle: The best mentors in the world are worthless if a leader or leadership team is unwilling to listen to questions, direction and carry out a plan that applies the advice.  Mentoring and consultation is a partnership that culminates in new implementation and immediate follow-through.

Punctuated Time Frame

“Then Moses bade farewell to his father-in-law, and did all he said.”   Principle: Effective mentors know when to disengage from directive communication. When the mentee owns the implementation of a new concept mentoring is a success.  This is sometimes called “freezing change” – mentors know when change must be frozen and consolidated in action.  When Moses and Israel accepted the need for altering their leadership and followership behaviors they experienced a revitalized perspective.  This observation reinforces the reality that effective mentors own a clear sense of their own identity and do not engage leaders as trying to shore up their own sense of importance, value or influence.  This is not to say that mentoring is not rewarding but that mentors who work out of their own need for recognition ultimately attempt to suppress the important step toward differentiation and interdependence the mentee most make to be a healthy leader.

Conclusion

Jethro’s approach to Moses illustrates a mentoring framework that mentors today would do well to use. Notice that Jethro’s approach builds a foundation and then leverages Moses’ capabilities forward.  See Figure 1.

Figure 1: A Model Mentoring Approach

Figure 1 represents a model approach to mentoring that provides guidance to emerging and experienced mentors alike.  Try working through these steps in your next mentoring conversation and see how it impacts the readiness of the mentee to listen to advice.

Who are your mentors? Are you listening?  In what ways have you altered your behaviors as a leader?  Who do you mentor?  Do you know when to engage and when to disengage?  Do you exercise the discipline and skill of honest feedback? Do you celebrate your mentee’s successes with them in front of their followers?

In the next article I will offer a synthesis of this approach to mentoring and organizational development cycles.  I invite your comments – share your experience.

[1] Ken Blanchard and Terry Waghorn.  Mission Possible (San Francisco, CA: McGraw Hill, 1997),  xxi.

 

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When Leaders Hide – Bureaucracy or Structure what is the Difference?

Bureaucracy by definition is a system of administration based upon organization into bureaus, division of labor, a hierarchy of authority, etc.: designed to dispose of a large body of work in a routine way.  Bureaucracies work well if the work is routine. However a limited number of tasks in today’s environment of rapid discontinuous change that are best done by systems.  Bureaucracies work well in interfacing with government regulations or analyzing past performance.  What makes bureaucracy go wrong?  Bureaucracies go awry when leaders lose courage, lose energy or fear they not be able to arise to the challenges at hand it is easier to create barriers to protect the status quo.  Hiding behind the status quo is never a means of identifying and releasing new leaders or of refining the effectiveness of an organization’s operations.
Bureaucracy becomes a means by which management insulates themselves from the fierce conversations they must have with their employees and direct reports when it takes on any of the following characteristics. Here are a few of the poor practices I have seen and suggestions for reversing these poor practices.

  • Erect buffers and baffles. One VP created a web-based form to manage requests for interaction from his direct reports to avoid face to face interaction. After creating the form he hired a secretary to serve as an extra buffer.  Suggestion: take time to interact with your direct reports especially in times of conflict.  Insulating yourself not only frustrates direct reports it undermines trust, sets up power plays that cut efficiency and contributes to an exodus of your best talent.
  • Design policies to avoid dealing with a problem employee.  The director announced a new organization wide policy designed to address the misdeeds of one person the result was not enhanced efficiency – it dispirited and penalized the most productive by imposing ridiculous restrictions. Suggestion: personally debrief the problem employee offering feedback on what behavior is unacceptable and set proper limits for future behavior.  Define the consequences of future violations and then stick to guidelines outlined in the feedback.
  • Absorb, avoid and redirect.   The president simply ignored his emails and refused to acknowledge those who attempted to talk with him about anything he deemed controversial. This behavior ignores critical communication.  Suggestion: listen to the feedback of your direct reports – it provides insight into the impact of your behavior on others and insight into the situation that demands your attention.
  • Launch into threatening tirades. When leaders feel threatened or challenged by creativity or differences of opinion some launch intimidation tactics meant to subdue the perceived threat.  Suggestion: stop and think.  What has triggered your anger?  A threat? Before launching on the employee explore the theat.  Use the opportunity to mentor your employees and test your own responses. After your interaction debrief with your coach to check your own leadership capacity.
  • Responsibility hopscotch (also called delegation on a bungee cord).  Leaders who don’t know how to mentor and name their direct reports’ capabilities may panic when they see assignments go sideways. Rather than intervene with questions and directives that name capability gaps they pull back key assignments and do it themselves. While this may serve the short-term to “save” a project or assignment it does nothing to develop the employee’s capabilities. Often it does little more than train employees that they can by-pass accountability knowing that the boss will step in and do it himself. Suggestion: ask yourself how well the pattern of “rescuing” your employees is working.  Who is doing your job if you are doing their job?  Is this pattern of behavior sustainable?  Does it generate value? Seek out feedback from a trusted mentor or coach to expand your leadership capabilities.
  • Demand performance based on assumed communication and standards.  Unspoken expectations are unknown. While this makes sense when I write it I am still surprised when I watch leaders express react in anger and frustration because their employees could not intuit their preferences. There is a difference between employees practicing critical thinking and demands that they intuit personal preferences. Suggestion: explain your expectations as well as the task and ask employees to clarify what you have said to make sure that you have communicated effectively.  Do not rely on written instructions alone when a significant assignment is on the line. Written instructions often contain implicit background or expectations that the reader does not have.

Conclusion

How do you handle a boss who exhibits this kind of behavior?  If you are the boss how did you change?  What was the catalyst to change?

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You Can Make a Difference – Why Don't You?

We Saw it in the Arab Spring – How about a Corporate Spring?

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world[1]

The events of the Arab Spring affirm the observation that revolutions do not start at the top where the past and tradition is especially venerated – revolutions start at the bottom where the most diversity and possibility of broad-based adoption. But the Arab Spring could dwindle into narcissistic self-absorption like many of the “revolutionaries” of the 1970s in the United States who are now near retirement some of them wondering what happened to the idealism of their youth.
I was talking to a more experienced friend of mine about the challenges I faced in one organizational context in which I work.  “You need,” he said after listening for while, “to read Gary Hamel’s book.”
He loaned Leading the Revolution and I have thought about a couple of the insights that live between the covers of this fascinating thesis.
Hamel insists that in business (or any organization) the responsibility for innovation must be broadly distributed.  I know from experience that the caveat is that those at the top typically derail attempts at broadly distributing responsibility for innovation as a means of protecting precedent (the prerogative of a few). In fact when operating models, business models, mental models and political models are in perfect alignment then the chance of innovation breaks down under the pressure to silence dissenters who threaten the status quo and the rewards inherent in being at the top.
Nurturing innovation requires that the organization’s mental model (deeply cherished beliefs) be challenged (pushed out of alignment with the business model) so that assumptions can be rethought.  This however is not possible without first throwing the political model (distribution of power) out of alignment long enough to redistribute power so innovation can take hold. If power remains narrowly distributed at the top then the chance of successfully innovating from the bottom is next to impossible.  This gives me pause to think about (1) how I have acted when I have been at the top and face dissenters who want to review how we do things and (2) how I manage the political power of organizations in which I do not exist at the top.
Figure 1: Creating Space for Business Concept Innovation[2]

So what is it that moves the mental and political models of an organization to make room for innovation as illustrated in Figure 1?
It takes two things to push mental and political models off-balance enough to introduce innovation according to Hamel: imagination and passion.  The risk is the potential for political backlash (e.g., Bashar al-Hassad in Syria during the Syrian uprising of 2012).  However, without becoming an imaginative and passionate activist unleashing innovation has little or no chance of occurring. Hamel makes an important point about becoming an activist in an organizational sense:

Activists are not anarchists.  They are, the “loyal opposition.” Their goal is to create a movement within their company and a revolution outside in.[3]

In discussing activism in a purely organization sense, activists are committed to their company and to a cause that is at odds with pervading values or practices within the organization. Activists can behave responsibly and be a source of alternative ideas according to Hamel. Activists refuse to fit in on the one hand and live out street-smart pragmatism on the other hand.  It is this second point – street smart pragmatism – that is often missing in inexperienced activists.  They fail to see the potential backlash or pitfalls inherent in activism and so become the walking wounded who give up because they miscalculated the severity of the backlash.
So why care enough to engage in the behaviors of an activist?  Hamel offers three compelling reasons:

  1. A person needs to live and work with purpose over and above their paycheck.  Research demonstrates that those people who experience flow are also people who work out of a sense of purpose.[4]
  2. The organization is not “them” – it’s you. Whining about “them” is simply an excuse to justify inaction.
  3. You owe activism to your friends and colleagues – they deserve to make a very cool difference in the world.

Conclusion
Many of the leaders I work with both in the class room and in the board room can profit from this insight by Hamel. They don’t want to be  an empty suit or disillusioned has-been. On the other hand some people simply don’t want to risk the potential backlash nor the work needed to engage in true innovation. How about you?  Are you an imaginative and passionate contributor to purpose and meaning in work?
Here is another question, what if you are at the top?  Are you ready to be an activist?  What does it mean for those who follow you?  What does street smart pragmatism look like for you around your board or other stake holders?  Remember, your employees and colleagues deserve to make a very cool difference in the world.

[1] John Lennon (credited as Lennon-McCartney) Recorded: July 10-12, 1968 (Studio 2, Abbey Road Studios, London, England)
[2] Gary Hamel. Leading the Revolution  (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 150.
[3] Hamel 153
[4] Csikszentmihalyi, M & Rathunde, K (1993). “The measurement of flow in everyday life: Towards a theory of emergent motivation”. In Jacobs, JE. Developmental perspectives on motivation. Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 60.ISBN 0803292104.  Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1975), Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,ISBN 0875892612. The concept of happiness and “flow” both observe that happy people or people who experience flow possess a sense of purpose in their work.
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You Can Make a Difference – Why Don’t You?

We Saw it in the Arab Spring – How about a Corporate Spring?

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world[1]

The events of the Arab Spring affirm the observation that revolutions do not start at the top where the past and tradition is especially venerated – revolutions start at the bottom where the most diversity and possibility of broad-based adoption. But the Arab Spring could dwindle into narcissistic self-absorption like many of the “revolutionaries” of the 1970s in the United States who are now near retirement some of them wondering what happened to the idealism of their youth.

I was talking to a more experienced friend of mine about the challenges I faced in one organizational context in which I work.  “You need,” he said after listening for while, “to read Gary Hamel’s book.”

He loaned Leading the Revolution and I have thought about a couple of the insights that live between the covers of this fascinating thesis.

Hamel insists that in business (or any organization) the responsibility for innovation must be broadly distributed.  I know from experience that the caveat is that those at the top typically derail attempts at broadly distributing responsibility for innovation as a means of protecting precedent (the prerogative of a few). In fact when operating models, business models, mental models and political models are in perfect alignment then the chance of innovation breaks down under the pressure to silence dissenters who threaten the status quo and the rewards inherent in being at the top.

Nurturing innovation requires that the organization’s mental model (deeply cherished beliefs) be challenged (pushed out of alignment with the business model) so that assumptions can be rethought.  This however is not possible without first throwing the political model (distribution of power) out of alignment long enough to redistribute power so innovation can take hold. If power remains narrowly distributed at the top then the chance of successfully innovating from the bottom is next to impossible.  This gives me pause to think about (1) how I have acted when I have been at the top and face dissenters who want to review how we do things and (2) how I manage the political power of organizations in which I do not exist at the top.

Figure 1: Creating Space for Business Concept Innovation[2]

So what is it that moves the mental and political models of an organization to make room for innovation as illustrated in Figure 1?

It takes two things to push mental and political models off-balance enough to introduce innovation according to Hamel: imagination and passion.  The risk is the potential for political backlash (e.g., Bashar al-Hassad in Syria during the Syrian uprising of 2012).  However, without becoming an imaginative and passionate activist unleashing innovation has little or no chance of occurring. Hamel makes an important point about becoming an activist in an organizational sense:

Activists are not anarchists.  They are, the “loyal opposition.” Their goal is to create a movement within their company and a revolution outside in.[3]

In discussing activism in a purely organization sense, activists are committed to their company and to a cause that is at odds with pervading values or practices within the organization. Activists can behave responsibly and be a source of alternative ideas according to Hamel. Activists refuse to fit in on the one hand and live out street-smart pragmatism on the other hand.  It is this second point – street smart pragmatism – that is often missing in inexperienced activists.  They fail to see the potential backlash or pitfalls inherent in activism and so become the walking wounded who give up because they miscalculated the severity of the backlash.

So why care enough to engage in the behaviors of an activist?  Hamel offers three compelling reasons:

  1. A person needs to live and work with purpose over and above their paycheck.  Research demonstrates that those people who experience flow are also people who work out of a sense of purpose.[4]
  2. The organization is not “them” – it’s you. Whining about “them” is simply an excuse to justify inaction.
  3. You owe activism to your friends and colleagues – they deserve to make a very cool difference in the world.

Conclusion

Many of the leaders I work with both in the class room and in the board room can profit from this insight by Hamel. They don’t want to be  an empty suit or disillusioned has-been. On the other hand some people simply don’t want to risk the potential backlash nor the work needed to engage in true innovation. How about you?  Are you an imaginative and passionate contributor to purpose and meaning in work?

Here is another question, what if you are at the top?  Are you ready to be an activist?  What does it mean for those who follow you?  What does street smart pragmatism look like for you around your board or other stake holders?  Remember, your employees and colleagues deserve to make a very cool difference in the world.

[1] John Lennon (credited as Lennon-McCartney) Recorded: July 10-12, 1968 (Studio 2, Abbey Road Studios, London, England)

[2] Gary Hamel. Leading the Revolution  (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 150.

[3] Hamel 153

[4] Csikszentmihalyi, M & Rathunde, K (1993). “The measurement of flow in everyday life: Towards a theory of emergent motivation”. In Jacobs, JE. Developmental perspectives on motivation. Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 60.ISBN 0803292104.  Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1975), Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,ISBN 0875892612. The concept of happiness and “flow” both observe that happy people or people who experience flow possess a sense of purpose in their work.

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Business Acumen – the Tale of Two Companies

Developing Leaders Must Include Business Acumen
A friend of mine described his firm’s leadership development process.  They defined what their leaders needed to know at every level of their organization.  This publicly traded company maintains consistently high profits and draws top talent.  Their talent assessments and succession planning was impressive.  They created development plans for every leader.  In contrast I know another manufacturing firm that dreams of being successful.  Their idea of leadership development is showing a video recording on the 21 unsupported anecdotes of motivational gibberish.

I interviewed both teams.  One significant difference emerged like a slap in the face.  The leaders of the publicly traded firm were clear about their purpose. They were clear about their metrics and driven to achieve results. They exercised business in daily decision-making.

The leaders of the privately held firm were ambitious but could not define business acumen.  As I interviewed more of the management I found that managers had no P&L responsibility.  They were unable to offer concrete descriptions of their market and what their customers wanted.  They had a ball-park mentality best described as “if we build it they will buy it.”  The difference between the two teams was stunning.

Business acumen integrates financial literacy (the ability to interpret numbers on financial statements) with business literacy (recognizing how daily decisions and strategies affect the financial numbers).

Great organizations require that every leader have and refine business acumen.  The bottom line is that when managers, sales professionals and employees increase their business acumen they are capable of thinking and acting with the bigger picture of organizational success in mind.

Business Acumen Defined

Business acumen is a perspective of the total business and a resultant ability to make decisions that enhance its overall performance.  It is a characteristic that enhances personal capacity and increases effectiveness in personal decision-making. The basics of business included in business acumen include: sales forecasting, inventory, merchandising, advertising, (increase the value to the customer through lower prices or other value proposition) product mix, cash, profit margin, return on assets, consumer focus, best practices, and shareholders.[1]

Explanation the Basics

Charan contends that every business is the same inside. The challenge is cutting through to cash, margin, velocity (movement of inventory), growth and customers.  The goal of any business is to turn their product into cash to continue operations.[2]  To carry out this they work with pricing, advertising and product mix to design the greatest yield.  Problems occur when companies sink cash into inventories or debt and therefore cannot generate enough cash to stay in business.  As a child Charan learned best practices (what the competition was doing well) by listening to his father and uncle debrief their days.

Business acumen requires that one learn the building blocks of money i.e., cutting through to cash, margin, velocity (the speed at which inventory is turned over to generate cash), growth and customers.  Note that return = margin x velocity (R= M x V).

The rule is that the cost of capital has to be less than the return on assets or the business is loosing money. Everything in a business emanates from this focus.  Besides understanding what products generate cash every firm needs to have cash management (including AR and Debt collection) practices that enhance their cash flow.  If cash is not being generated a company must look at why.  In a small business this may mean seeing the need to generate cash for the business as well as personal living needs – to set the sights higher.  Everyone impacts cash generation.  Everyone impacts how cash is used.

Margin is the net profit after taxes or the money the company earns after paying all its expenses.  The gross margin is the total sales of a product line less its cost.  Gross profit is also critical to business management because it provides clues about changes affecting the nature of the business – if the gross margin falls then ask why.

Growth is sustainable profit. Sustainable profit energizes a company and draws top talent to it.  It is important to note that size is not the ultimate measure of growth – profitability and return are the benchmarks. “If the money-making is improving and the cash is growing too, you have some interesting choices.  You can use the funds to develop a new product, buy another company, or expand into a new country.”[3]

Regardless of how a company measures the responses of customers to their products the importance of being close to the customer is essential for survival.  When thinking about customers, keep it simple – what are they buying or not buying and why?  Stay close to customers and talk with them about what they are looking for.  Observe them directly – not through middle men.  Put the entire set of concepts to work by using the return formula to test company performance one period to the next and to ask why this may be the case.  This is how all the pieces come together.

Business Acumen in the Real World.  Exercising business acumen is a leader’s responsibility, “The world has complexity, leaders provide clarity.”[4] Using business acumen the leader has to gauge the environment and make decisions on prices, margins and purchases.  Leaders with business acumen scan the environment and look for trends that offer opportunities.  Business acumen helps the leader find the three or four business priorities that will leverage the business toward growth by retaining customers and achieve all the important money-making goals at the same time.  Setting the right priorities and communicating them consistently is essential to success of the business.

Doing the right things day in and day out builds value.  In publicly traded companies this is measured in their P/E ratio i.e., price of the stock as compared to the earnings per share. The higher the better such as if the P/E is 7 then for every dollar of earnings per share the stock is worth seven times that much thus creating wealth.  The significance of this ratio is especially clear if a company misses its forecasted earnings – investors begin to question whether the company has the discipline to meet its future obligations.  How can mid-level managers affect P/E?  How about overcoming the “not designed here” syndrome and modifying an important part from an existing supplier thus increasing their volume and lowering your cost.

Getting Things Done.  “Leaders have to deliver results day in, day out, relentlessly over a long period.  Delivering results is what gives an organization energy, builds confidence, and generates the resources to go forward.”[5] The drive to achieve results is characteristic of every effective leader.  Without a results orientation an organization suffers from a lack of clarity that makes it little more than a mechanism for evasion of responsibility and leadership.[6]

Conclusion

I would work for the publicly traded company.  People there want to achieve results together.  They possessed a sense of purpose and mission.  In the private firm on the other hand one manager described the environment as a “need to know” Theory X monarchy – this is not exactly the recruiting slogan one wants to promote. So what does business acumen look like at your company?  Use the prompts below to define what your leadership/management team members need to know.  When you complete your definitions train your team and hold them accountable for their results.

Cash

Margin

Velocity

Growth

Customers

[1] Ram Charan. What the CEO Wants You to Know: Using Business Acumen to Understand How Your Company Really Works.  (New York,NY: Crown Business, Crow Publishing Group, 2001), 20.

[2] Charan 24

[3] Charan 49-50

[4] Ibid 67

[5] Ibid 93

[6] Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith. Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader 4th ed.  (New York,NY: Basic Books, 2010).

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Cross-cultural Lessons – Learning to See Through Other Frames

Elephants and Power
The lecture was on ethics in decision-making and the discussion moved, as it always does when I teach outside the USA toward American foreign policy.  In the midst of the discussion these Kenyan graduate students gave me a proverb that fits political realities all leaders have to work with in corporate as well as in public service contexts.

“When elephants fight the grass gets crushed, when elephants make love the grass gets crushed.”

Effective leadership (leadership that does not destroy or damage people) recognizes how organizations allot and display power. It is not uncommon for good leaders to get crushed not-with-standing their skill, insight and alliances when they are at the wrong place and time e.g., a regime change or economic downturn. Such experiences push leaders through crucible experiences and boundaries to growth. I did not catch a sense of fatalism from these students as much as a clear view of reality and a warning to know where the elephants were at all times. I found this helpful in corporate life. One of my graduate professors was a specialist on organizational change.  “Ray” he said on several occasions, “remember power wins.”  It was his way of reminding me to be aware of the elephants.

Eels and Change

A friend of mine had invited me to China to help train managers in a start-up hospitality consulting firm. The hospitality market in China was on fire, hotels and motels were springing up everywhere.  The challenge for my friend (we had met in graduate school) resulted from a rate of growth that threatened to outstrip the firm’s ability to develop the necessary leadership skills not to mention any kind of bench.  At the end of the session on recognizing the predictable barriers to personal development in career and personal growth my interpreter turned to me with the mixture of epiphany and interrogation.

“You are an eel.”

“Help me understand what you mean by that,” I said.

“Do you see the fish in the market when you come to the office?”  He aked. “They sit in the tanks all day and over time they become listless.  When this occurs no one will buy them because they don’t look fresh.  So, the fisherman places an eel in the tank.  This makes the fish come back to life,” he explained.

The insight about change has a bearing on trust.  The effect of the eel depends on the perspective of the viewer.  To the fish the eel is a threat.  The fish snap to in the presence of the eel yet the effect is short-lived. The observation of my interpreter made me stop and think about the pace at which I was moving and whether I was helping these managers think through the concepts I explained in the lens of their own worldview.  From the owner’s perspective I challenged lethargy and encouraged action. The larger challenge my interpreter helped me see was how to synthesize the needs of the owners for rapid change with the needs of the managers for deeper understanding and engagement i.e., a function of trust.

Can an eel be simultaneously a source of change and hope?  Not if you are a fish.  Leaders must exercise awareness of how followers perceive your actions. The ends you expect may not be the results others generate. Learn to use a variety of leadership roles and styles.

Storks, Frogs and Epiphanies

I was still chewing on the what to do with the eel story a couple of days later when my interpreter served also as my mentor with another bit of wisdom.

“You are a stork.”

“Is a stork better than an eel?” I queried.

“No, a stork is different.” He responded in what I understood as a correction of my western proclivity for either/or resolutions to ambiguity or dissonance. He reminded me to exercise an “opposable mind” as Martin calls it. Highly creative leaders avoid reducing decisions between alternative options but seek instead to hold the tension of apparently opposing decisions to create an entirely different kind of approach.  This ability to rest comfortably in the ambiguity of tension results in an integrative thinking that seeks out “…less obvious but potentially relevant factors…” then considers “…multidirectional and nonlinear relationships among variables….”[1]   With this done the effective leader pursues the problem as a whole and not the parts and “Creatively resolve tensions among opposing ideas; generate innovative outcomes.”[2]

“What does the stork do?” I asked with a greater awareness of my need to learn.

“The stork shows the frog that there is a greater reality than that which the frog sees from the bottom of the well.  You see, the stork appears to be supernatural (read exceptional or unreachable) to the frog.  It appears and disappears at will at the top of the well and the frog cannot understand how the stork accomplishes such a miraculous feat.  One day the frog asked the stork to help him understand the wonders of the stork’s miraculous existence.  The stork laughed and lifted the frog from the bottom of the well to see the world from on top of the well.  You are helping us see a different world.” (Remember Plato’s cave of allegory?)

I was moved and encouraged – apparently I inspired both fear and hope in my time with these leaders.  More importantly I was learning to hold apparently opposite or mutually exclusive views of reality in a dynamic tension.

Conclusion

Parables or stories connect with the experience of the hearer and offer a lens for dynamic reflection.  So, my conclusion is simply a launching point for many more insights in fact if you have other cultural unique parables please share them with me in the comments.

  1. Highly effective leaders exercise awareness of how organizations assign and use power.  Leaders who lack this awareness end up trampled to death. The leader who is unaware of their power will trample to death those he/she leads.  All good leaders have a tool kit of influence, authority and power.  Power is the last of the tools a leader should use.  Those leaders who abuse the use of power are like a rogue elephant. The destruction caused by rogue elephants and toxic leaders motivates people to end the threat of damage by changing jobs or eliminating the threat.
  2. Highly effective leaders exercise self-awareness and situational awareness.  There are times all leaders must act like eels.  Recognize however that change management requires an awareness of the fear change engenders. In experienced leaders scare their employees to death resulting in disengagement and turn over. Neither alternative generates long-term success in meeting business goals. Great leaders understand that change is only as effective as a shift in how people see their situation.
  3. Highly effective leaders work to redefine reality.  They work with an opposable mind that discovers new alternatives and inspires people with the possibilities inherent in seeing a problem or challenge differently.

My students and the employees I work with often become my mentors and teachers. Part of the delight I have in leading rests in the influence I exert but the greater joy rests in the exposure I have to new insights and learning from the lives of those I have the privilege to serve.  Are you learning?

[1] Roger Martin, “How Successful Leaders Think,” Harvard Business Review, June 2007, 60-67.

[2] Ibid. 65.

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When Followers Attack: Facing the Inevitable Interpersonal Conflict of Leadership

Every leader endures the challenge of being under the microscope of critical dissatisfaction.  In my experience effective change agents and leaders face a myriad of disheartening personal attacks often from people they know and always with gut wrenching repercussions.  Slander, inference and complete misrepresentation are part and parcel of the leadership experience.  I was reminded of this again from a friend of mine grieving the betrayal they felt by members of their own leadership team. Members of my friend’s team masterfully undermined my friend’s leadership without ever specifically talking with them about the dissatisfaction they felt.
The conundrum faced by many leaders I work with is rooted in a misconception about conflict i.e., that interpersonal conflict is to be endured not addressed in hopes that at some future point the integrity of their motives and their service would be recognized by all and their leadership decisions vindicated. Often this misconception is rooted in faith convictions around the actions of Jesus Christ during his trial.  A quotation anticipating the betrayal and kangaroo court Jesus faced from the prophet Isaiah is regularly repeated to me as I ask them about their response, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7, NIV)  This strategy of silence is great if one anticipates dying I suppose.  However, while it reflects the outward confidence and inner character Jesus exhibited in the face of false accusation during his trial it is not literal – Jesus did speak during his arrest and trial and questioned the inconsistencies of his accusers and answered their direct inquiries.

When Making a Defense is Important

Silent leaders in times of conflict abdicate the narrative of the situation to their critics. The result is that followers feel rudderless in the organization and ultimately feel betrayed by the leader’s unwillingness to step up to the demands of the pressure. (See my Article, “Servant Leadership and the Exercise of Discipline” at http://raywheeler.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/servant-leadership-and-the-exercise-of-discipline/)

It occurred to me once in reading Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that I was reading a blatant defense of his role (authority and influence) as a leader. Clearly the legitimacy of Paul’s leadership was at stake in the minds of the Corinthians who had already received a rather pointed missive correcting their misapplication of the Christian message.  The resulting dissonance in the relationship between the Corinthian church and Paul forced him to defend his integrity, position and role toward the Corinthians.  Apparently his first letter generated controversy and even rejection.  As is often the case in conflict, his authority was challenged (7:8-16).

Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians anticipating seeing them after his exposure to their slanderous incrimination of his character and motives (13:1).  Paul states he prefers a warm and collegial reception, but is prepared to be a disciplinarian if need be for the sake of the health of the Corinthian church (12:20-13:1).

The entire letter of 2 Corinthians models transparent and authentic leadership conversation.  Read Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Pay specific attention to the fact that Paul defends himself and does not allow misconceptions or accusations about his motives and intention to assert themselves without a challenge.

Recriminations Are Unoriginal – Don’t Give Them Too Much Power

The recriminations aimed at Paul were personal and direct.  They came from people for whom he cared deeply and for whom he had suffered greatly.  I found it to be extremely encouraging to simply list the recriminations Paul faced.  Why?  Because they once they are down on paper two things emerge. First, they are unoriginal.  Recriminations are common place and rooted in a variety of motives. Second, when I observed how common the recriminations leveled at Paul were (the same recriminations have been leveled at me as a leader) innuendo and incrimination lost the power to command my attention to the point of immobilizing my ability to make decisions and lead.  If you are a leader you will face incrimination unjustly delivered.  You will also make your share of mistakes.

Put Recriminations into Proper Perspective  

Review the list of recriminations made against the Apostle Paul.  As you read these think about the recriminations you face or have faced as a leader.  I am certain your experience will parallel Paul’s – you are not a distinctively bad leader if you face these recriminations.

  • 1:17; that he was two-faced, saying one thing and doing another (6:8).
  • 2:4; that he was insensitive and uncaring (6:12).
  • 2:10; that he was unforgiving.
  • 2:17; that he was into the gospel for the money or personal advancement (7:2).
  • 3:5; that he was ineffective (specifically inadequate to the task).
  • 4:2; that he was self-seeking and manipulative (7:2).
  • 4:5; that he was self promoting.
  • 5:9; that he was ambitious.
  • 5:12; that he was arrogant (boastful, 10:8).
  • 7:2; that he took advantage of others (11:9; 12:14; 12:11-17)
  • 8:13; that he was inconsistent in his policies.
  • 8:20; that he absconded with church funds.
  • 10:1; that he was a coward, afraid to personally face the issues.
  • 10:10; that he was not much of a teacher.
  • 10:14; that he claimed credit for things he had not done.
  • 11:5; that he was inferior in his gifts and abilities (it was this summary accusation that he pointedly addresses in ch.s 11-13).
  • 12:13; that he had treated the Corinthians as inferior.
  • 13:6; that he had failed the test.
  • 13:10; that he was overly severe in his treatment of failure.

Admit Mistakes Quickly and Learn from Them

Paul’s tone in response to these recriminations is authentic (personal) and direct.  He addresses both the overt and the implied attacks on his character and motives by holding out his life as an illustration and explaining details surrounding his decisions that the Corinthians could not have known.  Similarly Paul exhibits and openness to learning and feedback from the Corinthians.  The letter does not smack of arrogance of excuses.

Paul’s response indicates clear boundaries – he served, he willingly accepted suffering but also expected reciprocity.  He was neither a patsy nor a pushover.

Conclusion

If you lead well expect conflict from those closest to you. Engage the conflict humbly and honestly.  Keep the mission of your organization clearly in front of you.  Hold people accountable to that mission – hold yourself accountable to the mission. Do not shirk from defending decisions made with information not commonly available. On the other hand do not hesitate to admit bad decisions based on poor or incomplete information – they happen. Those who follow want to know two important things.

First, followers want the assurance that leaders stay engaged in the realities the organization faces and are willing to both listen and make difficult decisions.

Second, followers want leaders to help them define reality.  What external pressures challenge the organization?  What internal resources are needed to meet the challenge?  What strategy is in place to secure more resources if the internal resources are insufficient? What support exists for followers who are called upon to sacrifice for some future benefit?

If your communication as a leader is anything but authentic and personal the confidence of your followers (employees, stake holders, peers) will wane accordingly. Take a lesson from Paul and embrace conflict, address innuendo and communicate transparently.