Entries in Leadership (21)
Big Ego Leadership
An occasional series of articles from IMD professors from their series "Tomorrow's Challenges". For more info on IMD visit their website.
Leadership is a tricky concept. We each understand the word differently and have different views on what a "true leader" is. Academic research on and around leadership has been equally heterogeneous. Leaders have been studied along multiple dimensions (traits, behaviors, personal backgrounds, etc.), but this effort has yielded relatively few findings that stand the test of time and prove robust in different situations and across national and organizational cultures.
In this context, an intelligent assessment of the advantages, disadvantages and future prospects of "big ego" leadership would first require a clear definition of the term. What do we mean by big ego leadership? And what is its opposite? We read about the contrast between “big ego” leaders and humble, soft leaders referred to as “nice guys”. But does the world really need more nice leaders?
I am tempted to answer "yes" and "no". All things equal, most of us would like to work for leaders who empower their staff, welcome and even solicit their staff’s opinions, care about them as employees and as individuals and help them to develop. A touch of humility, a positive attitude towards life and people, and a good sense of humour would also be welcome.
Empirically, however, I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that such nice leaders are systematically more effective, or even more appreciated by their staff. Indeed, imagine this wonderful "nice person" also has a pathological problem with keeping track of priorities, or of listening to so many people that he or she ends up being indecisive. Or imagine this nice leader lacks business judgement, industry expertise, or any credit with his/her own bosses and hence is incapable of providing you with the support and resources you need. Do you still want this nice leader for a boss?
Leaders, especially senior leaders, have multiple roles and responsibilities. First, they have responsibilities in the realm of strategy definition: they need to understand the evolving competitive landscape (including potential new entrants), keep track of changes in technology and in customer expectations, understand the business and the dynamics of the industry and maintain a strategic perspective on things, including what kinds of alliances, expansions or divestitures might be relevant.
Second is the leader as organizational architect, designing and using the organization’s structure, systems, processes and technology to translate strategy into action and to shape the organization’s culture over time.
Last and obviously not least, leaders must mobilize the energy of several constituencies often presenting different expectations and mindsets: downward (direct reports and the larger unit), upward (one’s immediate boss, all the way to the board for CEOs) and outward (e.g., shareholders, analysts, journalists, customers, suppliers and competitors, regulatory authorities and the general public).
In real life, successful fulfilment of these roles often requires making difficult decisions that involve uncertainty and/or are bound to create winners and losers. Whether it’s shifting the organization’s strategy to de-emphasize some products/regions at the profit of others, changing the structure of the organization or the criteria that govern executive compensation, or postponing a salary rise to local employees in order to invest resources abroad, the leader faces uncertainty and potential resistance. Making these tough calls requires leaders to have the ability to filter out the noise around them in order not to be paralyzed. It requires self-confidence, sometimes boldness.
Leadership also sometimes involves believing something is possible when all around you believe it is not. Take the example of Lakshmi Mittal, who now controls the largest steel producing company in the world. In 1994, his company was number 32 in the world. Imagine how his managers felt when he encouraged them to set a stretch goal for themselves and shoot for the number one position in their industry!
Of course, only the most senior leaders get to make the more radical strategic calls. (And by the way, these leaders are rarely humble, contented, happy-go-lucky individuals. As Général de Gaulle once put it, “glory only offers itself to those who have always yearned for it”.) But all bosses face decisions that are difficult because they involve some degree of uncertainty (and hence one cannot be sure one is making the right decision) and/or entail negative consequences for some individuals, hence requiring some degree of self-confidence, independence and personal drive.
The danger, of course, is the fine line that separates hard-of-hearing from deaf, self-confident from arrogant, and performance driven from insensitive and heartless. As time passes, as leaders accumulate successes (some of which necessarily involved them being right against the advice of others), leaders tend to become increasingly insensitive to disconfirming evidence and push back from others, thus crossing the fine line.
Some individuals are, of course, more prone to crossing this line than others. I remember a senior executive who explained: “My mother repeated to me many times over the years to be nice to people on the way up because, she said, you’ll meet them again on the way down.” Also, he added: “I’ve had enough 'close shaves’ in my life, occasions where I almost made a mistake, or made a mistake but was rescued by others from its consequences, so I remember I’m not infallible.”
But even the most balanced individuals must remain mindful of the danger they face as success starts dulling their edge and lowers their sensitivity to weak, disconfirming signals. Some managers guard against this danger by surrounding themselves with a few strong individuals. For example, a senior executive explained to me that he always chooses one or two of his functional executives among managers who have had general management experience before, typically in a smaller structure. His experience was that such individuals would be more prone to identify, and then not be afraid to bring forward, potentially threatening but relevant information.
Leaders must also make sure they maintain and protect their ‘bandwidth’: i.e., their cognitive and emotional ability to process complex issues. Too many managers are so swamped and overwhelmed that, despite their good intentions to remain open, listen, learn and support, they end up becoming inflexible, emotionally detached and unreasonable in their expectations.
Loving one’s children helps one to be an effective parent, but effective parenting requires more than love. Similarly, being humble and nice helps one to relate to others and can be an asset for a leader, but being a manager/leader requires so much more than this. Leaders, especially senior leaders, must have solid egos. They must have the ability to face uncertainty and resistance, to choose courses of action that may be unpopular and sometimes to inflict pain on individuals and groups. They must also make sure they keep learning, adapting and developing, in order to remain on the right side of the fine line.
This continuous, never-ending process was exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi, who throughout his life systematically made time to review his day’s actions. His secretary, Pyarelal, reported that well into his seventies, Gandhi daily “held a silent court with himself and called himself to account for the littlest of his little acts. Nothing escaped his scrutiny. He gave himself no quarter”. This relentless drive for betterment is what learning is all about.
Rod Millar
in Leadership, Eccentric Leadership, IMD: Tomorrow's Challenges
|
Post a Comment
Being There Even When You Are Not
Report from a Leadership Dinner of the European Leadership Platform held in Amsterdam in the first week of May 2008, and addressed by IMD Professor of Organisational Behaviour Robert Hooijberg, leader of the Orchestrating Winning Performance and Low Cost Competition executive education programs at IMD.
How does a CEO based at a company headquarters influence an organization in which its offices are spread across the world? A CEO can put in countless 120-hour weeks, but it is simply impossible that he/she will be able to have direct contact with thousands of employees located in numerous different time zones.
This question and dilemma was posed by Professor of Organizational Behavior Robert Hooijberg during a Leadership Dinner of the European Leadership Platform held last week in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and attended by some 20 business leaders from companies like Shell, Bain & Co and Unibail-Rodamco. Hooijberg emphasized the importance of structural procedures in creating this influence.
“In order to engage people to deliver results beyond expectations, leaders at the top of organizations need to seriously consider how they exercise both their leadership IN organizations as well as their leadership OF organizations,” said Hooijberg. “While most understand the importance of the interpersonal side of leadership, we encourage them to pay equal if not more attention to their leadership OF organizations. The focus on the leadership OF organizations forces executives to ask themselves how they can ensure that their leadership philosophy about engagement of employees, clients, suppliers, distributors and other stakeholders truly takes hold in all parts of their organization. This means that executives need to start asking themselves two basic questions: 1) What do our strategies, systems and structures motivate people to do? and 2) What should our strategies, systems and structures motivate people to do?”
Hooijberg talked about areas such as gender diversity in the company, a culturally diverse vs. a homogenous organization and promotion procedures as a way of impacting the organizational culture, among other topics. For example, Hooijberg described how when an organization includes significant female representation on the management team, it will influence the motivation and interest level of all females throughout the entire organization. Meanwhile, culturally diverse teams are more prone to conflict yet have the potential for greater opportunities than a homogenous organization which is more stable and comfortable. Communication patterns, such as a CEO’s weekly state of the organization e-mail to the entire company, also play a role in the mix.
Participant views varied, but it is safe to say that there is no clear recipe on how leading is accomplished when the leader can’t be physically present.
Herman H.J. Bol, Executive Board, University Medical Center Utrecht, probably best summarized the overall view by stating: “I don’t think there is a 100 percent answer to the question of how to lead when you are not there. If there was, there would be many more successful companies. I understand the importance and need for Professor Hooijberg’s book Being There Even When You Are Not.”
Talent Management Reaches the Boardroom
McKinsey's annual survey of what goes on in the Boardroom of organisations this year has picked up a large increase in interest in managing and developing the organisation's human capital.
The amount of time devoted to Talent Management issues by Boards is currently around 11%, however over half the respondents indicated that they wanted to see this increase. This indicates a significant change in priorities for Boards, in recent years it has been corporate governance
issues that have been the major concern of companies' senior management. As can be seen in the chart above, taken from the report, there was a much smaller number who thought that compliance and regulatory issues should receive any increased attention (although half did feel that it should not be diminshed either).
This significant change is, to my mind, a long overdue improvement. The board's primary role (at least in public companies) is to maintain and increase shareholder value and the best way to do this is to set the long-term agenda and ensure strategies are in place that ensure stability and growth. For sure, good corporate governance is critical to avoid catastrophic Enron-style meltdown - and the fact that boards have had to focus so heavily on this area in the last decade is more remedial than anything else. Building an entirely new corporate governance structure is merely proof that one had not been created and maintained before.
But while Corporate Governance is about avoiding losing value, Talent Management is actively about creating and building value - the former should be a "back burner" function, quietly going-on at a low level all the time, the latter is one that requires open discussion and broad input from all the governing brains. It will make being a director more interesting again to be involved in this area - rather than forever fretting about potential downside losses.
All that is just context - the good news is really in the detail. The report goes on to indicate that it is the strategic areas of talent management (primarily the leadership succession pipeline and ensuring strong top leadership) rather than remuneration issues that will be their focus, see table below:
If this really is a true reflection of how organisation's leaders are seeing the future then there is a real chance that critical learning and development programs for senior management and high potentials will not suffer the same cutbacks they did in the last economic downturn. As Alan Middleton, Director of Schulich Executive Education Centre in Toronto, highlights in his recent article on IEDP, the large western economies (particularly the UK) are losing the race for educating their workforce; with China, India and other leading developing economies investing more and more heavily in doing just that.
It has long been a bit of well-rehearsed wisdom repeated by providers of custom programs whether at business schools or consultancies that in order to make a real difference development programs must be endorsed right from the very top of the organisation. If that is not done they can quickly lose their impetus and direction. This survey suggests that that could be getting a little easier to achieve now.
A note of caution is also sounded - Talent Management expertise is the area most lacking in the boards surveyed. While strategic, especially financial and now corporate governance skills as well as sector knowledge was well covered OD and L&D expertise was clearly lacking. (Interestingly no mention was made of marketing expertise of the board either - another functional area that often fails to make it to the C-suite.) This lack of knowledge is exacerbated by the fact that while directors felt they had good and regular access to the CEO, CFO and COO few had access to those responsible for the talent management areas. There remains a lot of work to be done to change this situation across the business world - those on the L&D side have been trying to alter perceptions for a long while perhaps the message is beginning to filter through.
Rod Millar
in talent, Leadership, organisational development
|
Post a Comment
Leadership with Technical Knowledge - The Talent That's Required
The PwC 11th Annual CEO Survey has once again highlighted the concerns senior business leaders have about trying to recruit and retain talented employees. Top of their list of concerns in this area are people who have specialist knowledge plus leadership abilities.
When examining the issue of People & Change a number of statements were put to the CEO's asking for their responses. The most positive reaction was attached to the statement "The People Agenda is one of my top priorities" and the greatest disagreement was with "My HR organisation is equipped to handle any change required to compete for talent".
There was less clear space in identifying the single hardest skill to find. The results were pretty close, the top three being:
- combined technical and business experience (67%)
- global experience (65%)
- ability to develop and lead others (63%)
- creativity and innovativeness (63%)
This should be music to the ears of the L&D sector as leadership programs have been the main stay of their offerings for many years (although this could indicate that they are not developing the leaders that CEO's are demanding) and innovation has been one of the buzz programs for the last couple of years.
Global experience is harder to teach - in general it must be lived, worked, earned - but the number of India and China based programs that are now appearing does indicate that they are latching on to this too.
That leaves the greatest concern of CEO's regarding the combination of leadership and technical expertise. And it is an area that the executive development providers are having to catch-up on very quickly.
If proof were needed of the problems associated with this mismatch - we only have to look at the banking sector since last summer. The credit crisis is a direct result of a lack of leadership and technical knowledge. See Prof Jacques Pezier's article he wrote for us at IEDP.info before Christmas, where he said the fault lay not with the financial modelling wizards at the banks who simply created money-making systems out of junk - as they had been asked to do; but with their bosses who failed to see the bigger picture and the risks attached. They were so delighted that their brainy technicians had evolved some alchemy-like models to create money out of junk that they failed to examine where the costs lay. Rudi Plettinx, a regular contributor to this blog and MD off CCL Europe tackles the same problem more generically in an article last week.
Yesterday BusinessWeek published a piece on what courses 12 US business school deans were recommending to their MBA and undergrad students so that they would be able to avoid similiar errors.
In a similar vein we shall shortly be publishing a report from around the world's leading business schools to find out if they have seen any increase in the number of programs being taken in complex financial instruments, leadership and corporate governance. I hope to see that they have - which would indicate that the CEO's are acting on their fears, but I am not convinced it will be so.
Rod Millar
in human capital, talent, financial capital, talent retention, Leadership, management professionalism, CEO's
|
Post a Comment
Tough Advice for New Leaders
Rudi Plettinx, Managing Director of the European operations of the Center for Creative Leadership, offers his personal view on a current aspect of business leadership.
A good friend of mine has just been catapulted into a huge promotion. More responsibility than he's ever had before. He's smart and knows that, career-wise, he has to get this right. He's also figured out he doesn't have weeks and months to make his mark with his new team. All the same, even he was a bit surprised when I told him. “Not long at all Bill. In fact you have about 48 hours!”
“What, just two days?” said Bill somewhat incredulously.
“I'm afraid so,” I said. “It might sound brutal, but in my view it's the first 48 hours that affect how well you manage your team.”
You see, I'm a firm believer that first impressions count. And this is never truer than when a new manager meets the new team for the first time. If you can't convince them that you are their natural leader, then you will never get them to meet the goals you set.
Bill then, not surprisingly, challenged me. “OK then,” he said, “so what am I supposed to do when I meet all of them face-to-face next week?”
First thing to do is meet them all. Don't leave anyone out from that first critical encounter. If someone is travelling, make them get to the meeting, no matter what. Everyone needs to meet you on day one and all hear the same story at the same time.
Start with a group meeting and then move on to one-on-one sessions. Don't make them too long, just enough to establish some basics on both sides. You need to know about them, they need to know about you. It's all about building a comfort zone where you can stamp your authority and build relationships.
Immediately the meetings are over work through these questions. Putting answers to these will help you forge your leadership role with the group.
What are the four or five strong points that you can build on? What comes through the group and individual sessions that are truly positive? : e.g. enthusiasm, energy etc
What are the four or five weak points you need to work at? Where are the negatives : e.g. lack of experience, lack of team feeling etc
Do you have any potential stars in the team? If you do, what are you going to do with them?
Have you inherited any problem employees? What are you going to do with them ? : confront issues, remove them etc?
Then look at how the team functions. For example, is this a new team? If so, you're in luck - you have a blank canvas to create your own vision of a successful group.
But if the team has been established for a long time ask yourself these questions :
Has the team been stable or have there been departures or forced redundancies?
Is there anyone in the team who feels they should have had your job and are they resentful about it?
In one-on-one meetings how do individuals describe the team dynamics? For example are they quick to criticise others, push themselves forward rather than the team?
Does the team socialise outside of work (e.g. lunch together, drink together) and do they do this as a cohesive group or (possibly competing) small groups ? Either way how do you approach this, by getting involved, by staying aloof ? Much of how you involve yourself (or not) depends on your personality and your chosen leadership style. Remember, it’s about making YOU comfortable in the leader's role.
Finally, something that many managers overlook in those first few days. Does the team understand what you are there to achieve and how that fits into the overall plan of the business ? Most employees only glimpse a small part of a business. I find it helps to give them insights into the big picture show. Smart companies parachute managers into new situations for a purpose, make sure that your new team know that you are there to do a specific job and achieve a planned result. By making them part of the solution, you overcome a great number of problems : yes, even in that first 48 hours.
What's your recipe for getting your new team on your side? Any experiences and anecdotes most welcome!
Rod Millar
in Leadership, organisational behaviour, CCL, Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)
|
Post a Comment