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Leadership is not about great strategy, great oratory, great heroism or great charisma. It's about managing relationships in a manner that motivates and empowers people. But how is it done in practice?
Here Michael Feiner sets out some rules that can help managers get the best out of their staff. In the end, he finds, you get out what you put in.
The best leaders see employees in terms of their capabilities. To them, managing relationships is as important as devising business strategy. Their aim: to give staff the tools to exceed their potential.
Conventional wisdom tells us that leaders are heroic individuals with stellar technical skills who single-handedly craft world-beating strategies, deliver moving speeches and outline grand visions for their organizations. But leadership is not about great strategy, great oratory, great heroism or great charisma. Although leaders devote enormous amounts of time to creating the right strategy for the enterprise - a process that is critical to organizational success - formulating strategies is far easier than implementing them.
Leadership is more about managing relationships. Success takes intuitive or learned knowledge of how exactly to lead people - how to execute through them, motivate and empower them.
This does not mean there is just one way to lead successfully. Indeed, effective leaders come in all shapes and sizes - some dress for success while some do not; some are short while others are tall; some are charismatic and some are not. But effective leaders must be able to manage the variety of relationships that exist in every organization. To do this, they must be able to adopt more than one leadership style. Throughout my career, I have seen far too many managers think of leadership in terms of controlling and directing people. They were concerned with power and authority and saw seniority as the key to their objective, which was to command and control. And in a sense this is quite correct. A leader is supposed to set direction and chart a course for the organization to follow. People need to know where they are heading and what they are supposed to be achieving.
In a deeper sense, however, day-to-day leadership is much less about the use of power than about the empowerment of others. It is about pulling people rather than pushing them. This is not done primarily with speeches, strategic vision or, for that matter, efficient management. It is achieved by teaching, coaching and helping your employees to excel at their tasks.
In this article I offer a number of laws of leadership that cover strategies managers can consider to motivate, energize and inspire their subordinates.
The law of expectations
In 1968, Robert Rosenthal, a US psychologist, conducted an experiment in a California school district. Certain third-grade students (aged about eight or nine) were told they had scored high on a test measuring their innate academic ability. In this "late bloomer" test, those who scored well were told they had considerable potential and were likely to have a learning spurt in the near future, irrespective of their classroom performance to date. At the end of the school year, the school district found that nearly all the students in question had improved their academic performance, and many of their IQ scores had risen.
But there was no test; the students were simply selected at random. So how can we explain their improved performance? First, teachers' expectations were raised when they were told to expect a learning spurt. They gave the students in question more attention, and the students in turn sensed this enhanced confidence in them and their chances of success.
The Pygmalion experiment, as this study was called, holds some important lessons for leaders. It suggests that people live up to others' expectations of their performance. In other words, people respond to the level of confidence shown in them.
In practice, therefore, it behoves a leader to be certain that the subordinate is aware of his or her confidence. Conveying the belief that team members can and will exceed expectations helps them do so.
The law of intimacy
For ten years I had it all wrong. I thought that being a good leader meant treating everyone the same way. It seemed a sensible way to avoid playing favorites and to create a level playing field. But there is a difference between equitable treatment and similar treatment - treating people equitably does not mean treating everyone the same. Some subordinates need a short leash, others a long leash. Some need lots of freedom to perform, others prefer structure. Equitable treatment comes from giving each subordinate what he or she needs to perform, even though those needs may differ. Which means a leader must really know his or her people and what makes them tick.
Pepsi held (and still holds) succession planning sessions each year in an effort to build a management cadre through early identification of talented managers. As executives reviewed the strengths of their people and their readiness for promotion, it became clear how well they knew them. Executives were too often unsure of critical issues surrounding a manager's family circumstances, such as ages of children, a spouse's career or their willingness to relocate. Sometimes executives had practically no personal knowledge of their high-potential managers; they only knew specifics about their performances on the job.
This is sad. The best way - indeed the only way - to get to know staff is to watch them, listen to them and, most importantly, experiment with different ways and approaches to leading them. Leaders are not shrinks, but they must learn as much as possible to bring out the best in their staff.
Your intention as a leader will influence the response you get. Your staff will open up to you if you are interested in them. But if you only ask because you think you should, then do not expect to find out much.
The law of intimacy does not mean a leader needs to become friends with subordinates or socialize with them outside work. It is about knowing team members, not befriending them. Treating people differently makes sense because people are different a leader's job is to know what it takes for subordinates to deliver.
The law of commitment
Every successful executive I have worked with became successful because of his or her commitment. Corporate life is demanding, and only those who strive to achieve will make it. To be successful, executives must be passionate about being outstanding performers and meeting or beating their targets. Perhaps commitment to success is just another way of describing ambition. Within my first year as vice president and chief people officer for Pepsi's $3bn US business, I faced a critical presentation with our chief operations officer in an employee dispute over company pensions. Faliure to address the issue would have led to work stoppage in what was one of our most profitable markets at the time.
Being no expert on pension plan funding, I asked my benefits guru to join me and my boss in our presentation. But he told me the day before the meeting that he could not attend because of a personal commitment. This commitment turned out to be spending Halloween with his children - a seemingly trivial excuse but nonetheless an important holiday for him and his family.
So I had a decision to make. Should I insist that he attend the meeting and risk alienating him and his family? Or be without my expert for the big meeting - big in terms of the sums involved and in terms of my future with the company?
This type of issue arises thousands of times a day in all kinds of organizations. Leaders must decide when to cut employees slack and when the organization must come first. Every day they face special requests from employees involving sick children or spouses or parents, or school recitals or doctor's appointments.
After much thought I decided he should have the day with his family because, after years of getting those situations wrong, I had come to understand the law of personal commitment. If a leader wants a subordinate to be committed to the success of the leader and the leader's organization, then the leader must be committed to the subordinate - to his or her growth and development and to what is important to him or her both inside and outside the office.
In the end, my boss and I went to the meeting. I made the presentation and the chief operations officer asked three straightforward questions. We finished in 15 minutes. My pension expert, meanwhile, saw first-hand that I cared about what was important to him. He saw that he was not just another factor of production in my career dreams, and that I was prepared to make a sacrifice for him. He worked in my organization for another 11 years and was incredibly loyal and committed to me, to my success and to our organization's performance.
You must be committed to your subordinates' careers as well as to your own. To get loyalty, you must give loyalty. This personal commitment occurs in small ways - like getting back to a subordinate when you promised, or making sure performance appraisals are done on time, or processing a salary increase when it is due. It also manifests itself in more important areas such as being involved in teaching and coaching.
The law of feedback
When former students contact me, it is often to ask for advice on how to handle an uncommunicative boss. People want feedback. They need feedback. Unfortunately, there are leaders who feel they are too busy to give feedback or, more often, simply lack the courage to give negative comment. But withholding feedback out of a fear of damaging motivation actually impairs subordinates' performance because they will not have the necessary data to improve and may not even recognize that there is a problem.
Feedback means telling a subordinate what he or she needs to do differently to improve performance. And leaders should offer this kind of feedback throughout the year. Feedback must also be "camera lens" , in that leaders should indicate precisely what they observed that led to their particular interpretation of the subordinate's performance.
For example, the first presentation I made at Pepsi was to the company chairman, the president, the finance officer, my own boss and our finance director. Needless to say, I had prepared in detail for it. After the 25 minute session my boss took me into his office and told me it was a poor presentation. I was stunned. But when I asked what was wrong, he merely reiterated his disappointment. It was clear he had finished giving me his feedback.
I went back to my boss several days later and asked for more specific information. No longer embarrassed by his new subordinate, he told me my opening was weak, my slides were too busy, one of the numbers did not track with an earlier slide and that my summary was not up to scratch. Now that is camera-lens feedback. It told me what he and others observed. It gave me specifics I could use to make improvements before my next presentation.
The law of tough love
You will not have to apply it often, but from time to time the law of tough love will lead you into very difficult issues that would otherwise be easy to duck. It addresses situations where the leader needs the courage to deliver a difficult message or make a tough decision about a subordinate; a situation where it is as difficult for the leader to talk as it is for the subordinate to listen.
Leaders must have the courage to tackle these uncomfortable issues. Examples on a small scale include telling subordinates that their style of dress is inconsistent with the corporate culture, or that their personal hygiene is a problem.
An example on a much larger scale was the time I came to notice that a subordinate - one of my best performers - had a drinking problem. He denied it, yet eventually acknowledged that he had always struggled with alcohol but believe he had it under control. He balked when I told him he ought to go into a 30-day treatment program. What would his people say? What would his family say? I told him he needed to get to the bottom of the problem before it ruined his career and damaged the company.
We agreed to tell people that he would be attending an executive education program - a very prestigious activity at Pepsi. The good news was that he gained control of his drinking problem after the treatment program and went on to become a highly successful senior executive at the company.
Yet this was one of the most difficult conversations I ever had to have with a subordinate. Worse, he was not happy about my ultimatum, and it affected our professional relationship for two years afterwards. Ultimately he realized that I did the right thing, but it took a long time.
A leader must be willing to experience embarrassment and pain, and to cause embarrassment and pain, when he or she knows that this will have a positive result for a subordinate.
The law of coaching
The lower a subordinate's skill and experience level, the more coaching and teaching a leader must provide to them. This seems straightforward. Yet many leaders repeat the same thing: "I don't have time to coach my people."
Of course, a leader's job is very demanding. The array of things to do is virtually endless - keeping bosses informed, customers happy, suppliers involved and investors advised, not to mention the strategic reviews, operating plans, sales reports and budget analyses. For many leaders, coaching subordinates is an aim but not a top priority.
But leaders have a great responsibility to prepare their subordinates for the challenges they will face. If they feel they do not have the time to coach their subordinates, then the solution is brutally simple: they must make the time. Leaders must recognize that they have to constantly juggle priorities so that subordinates receive the coaching they need.
At least 90 percent of learning takes place while in the workplace. The daily interactions a subordinate has with his or her boss present the best opportunity for developing skills. Some of these teaching moments do not even take extra time. But however they do it; leaders must understand that they have the primary responsibility for teaching and coaching their subordinates. In the final analysis, leaders are teachers - they know this and assume the role willingly, no matter how busy they are.
Conclusion
The laws of leadership are not only directed at top executives. They focus on interactions between two people - a leader and a subordinate - and are thus as useful for a manager and his or assistant as they are for the leader of a 1,000-strong division.
A leader who invests time and attention in subordinates will achieve great results. Subordinates will feel liberated and ennobled by working for this leader, as opposed to feeling forgotten, overlooked, unappreciated or taken for granted - feelings that are all too common in organizations today.
When it comes to subordinates, high-performance leaders see people in terms of their potential and in terms of enabling, teaching and coaching them to meet or exceed that potential. It is not enough for a leader to assess an underling's performance. While this assessment process is part of every leader's job, leaders must think as much about judging future potential as about evaluating present performance.
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