Leading on Purpose

Many people get put in a leadership position and just lead by accident. They do whatever seems good at the time without viewing each action as part of an overall plan. Sometimes they do great things and sometimes they do things that really hurt them from a leadership standpoint. Leading on purpose means making decisions as part of an overall strategy to make it easier for people to follow you.

Examine Each Action From a Leadership Perspective

Whenever you get ready to do something, ask yourself if it will help or hurt your leadership influence. For example, the evening you are asking everyone else to stay and work late, probably isn’t a good time to announce that you are head off to see a movie.

As a leader people are going to watch you very closely. If you have a good relationship with the people you lead, they will bend over backwards to come through for you, but only if they don’t think you are being hypocritical.

I have seen leaders announce they were laying off workers for budgetary reasons and then spend $50,000 on remodeling their corporate apartment. Other leaders asked people to try to conserve and save money and then spent $15,000 on a custom book shelf for their office.

Both of these expenses weren’t necessarily unreasonable, but it was clear that they hadn’t thought through the consequences of their actions from a leadership perspective. It didn’t ruin their ability to lead, but it set them back. Too many mistakes like this can erode your leadership capability and move you to a place where you are leading only by authority not by earned respect.

Leaders Shouldn’t Make Promises they Can’t Keep

This is a frequent problem for leaders. They are optimistic about the future and start making promises to people based on what they want to see happen. People will understand that plans change, but if you promise you are going to do something for someone, they will expect you to follow through. When you promise something to someone, they may make very important decisions based on your promise. If you don’t come through, it can have a much bigger impact than what you see.

Here is an example that I’ve seen happen in various shapes and forms. Your organization is going through a tough year, so you can’t give out raises as promised. You talk to a few of your direct reports and apologize and promise that next year you plan to give out bigger raises than normal to make up for this year. Some people will take you at your word and buy a new house, car, or boat based on your promise of a bigger raise. This is not prudent financial management on their part, but if you are unable to keep your word you will lose some of your ability to be an effective leader with that person.

Even when they don’t go out and make financial decisions based on your promise, they will tend to mistrust you in the future. For example, I was at one organization that promised to tie year end raises to each manager’s continued education. When the new year came around, everyone was given a standard raise and the educational goals were never mentioned. The people who had been at the organization for a long period of time had just ignored the continuing education goal because they new nothing would come of it. The individuals who were new and worked to achieve the goal lost some faith in the leadership. By itself it wasn’t a that big of deal, but the leadership consistently made similar mistakes and over time, people trusted the leadership less and less.

Long Term Leadership

Leading on purpose means taking the long term approach to leadership. It means thinking about how current actions will impact your leadership ability 4 or 5 years down the road. In many situations leaders don’t think like this. They expect to move on in 2 or 3 years, so they only think about short term impact.

The problem with this approach is that the leadership legacy that you have built will follow you beyond your current job. The world is getting smaller and it is very likely that you will be working with someone in the future that you’ve worked with before, or who is best friends with someone you’ve worked with before. If you haven’t done a good job of making long term decisions, it will come back to haunt you.

Leaders Should Know What to Do

Leaders need to be prepared. Often times this is just a simple matter of thinking ahead. There are certain circumstances that you can see coming. For example, if you take a new position and soon realize that you will probably need to let a particular person go, you should be prepared for that possibility. You should have thought through the best way to handle it and most importantly you should have thought through the ways you are not going to handle it–ways that could create an even bigger problem.

Making decisions is a big part of leadership and the more intelligent your decisions, the better of a leader you can become. A decision made on whim is much less likely to be the best choice as compared with a carefully planned out decision made in advance.

Leading in a Specific Direction

Leaders have to know where they are going and constantly communicate this direction. This is usually referred to as vision casting. Some leaders run into problems because they aren’t very good at articulating their vision. Most leaders have problems because they haven’t really figured out what their vision is. They may have a few ideas of where they want to go, but they haven’t really sat down and worked out exactly where they want to end up and their rules for getting there.

It is much easier to follow someone who is unambiguous about where they are going. When someone hasn’t really put in the effort of developing a plan for where they want to go, they are difficult to follow. A lot of inexperienced followers will think there is a problem with themselves and they will try to compensate. To do this they will create their own version of the vision. Usually that version will be very biased toward their own goals and aspirations. This isn’t their fault–they are doing the best with the information they have been given. In the end, the highly motivated people all create their own vision each heading in a slightly different direction.

Imagine 25 people all holding the edges of a large parachute. The parachute is held tight so it doesn’t touch the ground. Each one has a general idea of where they are heading, but no real plan for getting there. One person is going to head straight toward the goal. Another is going to try to head toward the goal, but stay on the sidewalk, another wants to head to a couple secondary goals before reaching the final destination, etc. When these people try to walk they will have a very difficult time working together. Since everyone is headed in a slightly different direction, they will probably end up tripping over each other, letting the parachute drag on the ground and get dirty, and in the end everyone will be frustrated with each other. There will be a lot of time spent trying to figure out whose vision is the right one.

The problem is, this really isn’t their job. It is the leaders job to set the goal and the rules for achieving that goal. This doesn’t mean the leader doesn’t take input from others and it doesn’t mean that you can’t correct your course midway as new information becomes available, but you can’t leave leadership to chance. Individuals will create their own vision when one doesn’t exist. It is unlikely that your team will all create the exact same vision.

In most organizations there is always some degree of push and pull as people head in slightly different directions. The better you define and communicate your vision the more you can minimize the unnecessary friction and keep people focused on the goal.

Leaders Create Leaders

A good leader leaves a legacy of leadership skills in others. Well led organizations become even more well led because of this. It all starts at the top with the organizational leader. If you invest in the people under you, they will learn how to invest in the people under them. If you avoid making promises you can’t keep to people under you, they will be less likely to break promises to people under them.

Many times you will find an organization that is extremely dysfunctional in a particular area. When you trace the problem, it becomes evident that the problem started with leadership at the very top. Everyone else followed the example that they were shown and turned a small flaw in one or two people into an organization wide dysfunctional problem.

Leading on Purpose Summary

Leading on purpose is not easy. It takes effort and focus. You have to be willing to practice what you preach–and that does not come naturally to many people. However, by being aware of how you lead and the impact that your decisions have on others, you can increase your leadership skill and earn respect and leadership influence with others. The more you do this, the easier it is to function as a true leader and not just someone with a title.

Leadership Coach Interviews

This is an interview with three coaches that specialize in leadership. They generously offered to answer some questions about leadership and leadership coaching for Leadership501. The coaches are:

• Wilson Ramirez - www.leadershipwisdom.com
• Carl Robinson - www.leadershipconsulting.com
• Barry Zweibel - www.ggci.com

Read on for their insights into leadership.

What is the most common mistake you see made by leaders?

Wilson Ramirez:

The most common mistake is the assumption that people ‘have to’ follow the leader. This becomes the key differentiator between management and leadership: a leader is followed because people ‘want to’. Most leaders, unfortunately, forget this and act more often than not as managers.

Carl Robinson:

Not sufficiently attending to building relationships at work. Technical competence is overrated.

Barry Zweibel:

Just one?! How about three?!

1. With respect to ‘delegation and maximizing their leadership impact’ – Doing work that they’re capable of doing, rather than working on what only they are capable of doing. Too many leaders do their staff’s work instead of their own and then are left wondering why there are so many unanticipated problems and last-minute deadlines that keep cropping up. Job One of a leader is to keep a constant watch on the horizon, not to keep busy.
2. With respect to ‘consensus-building and collaboration’ – Thinking that the real work happens during meetings, rather than before, and to a much lesser degree, after, them. To paraphrase Walt Disney, if you can get them to agree before they disagree, they’ll never disagree.
3. With respect to ‘doing a good job’ – Trying to avoid risk-taking, rather than learning to how anticipate and mitigate the risks inherent in forwarding any new idea. As a leader, it’s not about playing it safe, it’s about making a difference.

What is the most important tip you can give for developing leadership skills?

Wilson Ramirez:

The first and arguably the most important step in the leadership development journey is self-awareness. Without a proper knowledge of ourselves, it is difficult to properly lead other people. Leadership requires a fine awareness of what other people are feeling, and the use of our own personality and abilities to lead them with/through/in-spite-of their feelings. Without knowing ourselves first, it is hard to know other people.

Carl Robinson:

You must develop your interpersonal intelligence skills. You have to learn how to influence people to make change. Simply giving people orders does not work. You might get compliance at the expense of buy-in and commitment.

Barry Zweibel:

Time is the ultimate scarce resource for an executive, so the ability to eliminate procrastination is an essential competency. Yet, many executives are still uncomfortable with talking to direct reports about performance issues. So they procrastinate (under the guise of being too busy to deal with that right now, of course) and as a direct result, time passes, problems fester, and things slide downhill. The most important tip I can give for developing leadership skills, then, is to learn how to be ready, willing, and able, to have those difficult conversations, when needed. That’s one of the reasons why I created an e-book called, “Employee Performance Discussions” which provides respectful, but powerful and compelling language and phrasings to help make those difficult conversations imminently less so.

What book would you recommend to someone taking on new leadership responsibilities?

Wilson Ramirez:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by John C. Maxwell, is just a jewel. It is so packed with wisdom, that I go back to it quite often.

Carl Robinson:

The Extraordinary Leader by John Zenger and Joseph Folkman

Barry Zweibel:

• Six Thinking Hats, Edward De Bono – better meetings
• Moments of Truth, Jan Carlzon – better choices
• Managers as Mentors, Chip Bell – better philosophy
• Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes – better results
• The Art of Framing, Fairhurst & Saar – better communicating
• Leadership and Self-Deception, Arbinger Institute – better be careful

Which leader has had the biggest personal influence on your life?

Wilson Ramirez:

Although countless authors, speakers and leaders have had an impact in my life, the biggest influence would have to be Jesus. As a student and teacher of leadership, I find that the lessons he taught, his love, compassion and the consistent behavior displayed throughout his life are perfect material for a case-study on the topic, but also applicable at a personal level as a role model to follow.

Carl Robinson:

My high school Human Anatomy and Physiology teacher. He taught me to break rules and to be creative.

Barry Zweibel:

For me, I think it was John Madden back when he was head coach of the Oakland Raiders, from 1968 to 1978. I really respect how he took all the misfits from the league – galoots who had just couldn’t play nice with anyone – gave them a home, insisted they be themselves, and with owner Al Davis, challenged them to Just Win, Baby! Together, they won 17 straight games (across two seasons), won themselves a Super Bowl, never had a losing season, got Madden voted AFL Coach of the Year, gave him the best winning percentage of any coach in NFL history with over 100 wins, and a permanent seat in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My Lessons Learned from it all?

1. Be curious about people rather than being in judgment of them
2. Don’t be afraid of creativity and counter-intuitive thinking
3. People love, but also need, to do Important Work – so let them
4. Respecting someone for who they already are, builds regard, rapport, and the ability to create some incredible magic

Who can benefit from leadership coaching?

Wilson Ramirez:

Anyone, really. Just like any athlete would benefit from a coach, any individual that desires to perform, obtain guidance or move to the next level (whatever that is) can benefit from a coach. I would particularly recommend coaching to people that feel stuck in their lives or careers, or those taking on an overwhelming challenge.

Going back to the most important tip for leadership development described earlier, the most important value a coach brings is the ability to ask good, hard, deep and thought-provoking questions that facilitate self-awareness — and to serve as an implementation monitor to ensure those lessons we discover are properly acted upon.

Carl Robinson:

Any executive who wants to stretch and grow and is willing to be open, honest and work hard.

Barry Zweibel:

The type of people who can benefit the most from leadership coaching are the ones who, notwithstanding the fruits of their labors, know they can still do better, want to do better still, and are willing to do the necessary legwork to make it so. They tend to be smart, capable, informed, creative, and caring. But whether they’re an up-and-coming star, a proverbial executive’s executive, or someone in between, they know that what brought them success in the past will likely be insufficient in sustaining their success in the future. So they’ve made it a personal and professional priority to continue to learn and grow and develop and stretch and question and consider and understand as much as they can. Regardless of circumstances or contexts, they want to be at their Absolute Best as often, and as consistently, as possible. Why? Because it’s at that level that the magic happens most regularly.

Describe how your coaching sessions works.

Wilson Ramirez:

Our focus is in understanding the innate and natural abilities of our clients. We spend a huge amount of time understanding their personality, their wants, needs and desires. We use thorough assessments to obtain metrics on different areas of their personality, and follow a clear methodology of discovery. We found that this discovery alone brings unprecedented value to our clients. Knowing their individual strengths and areas for improvement, we focus on the future and what they want to accomplish. We challenge them on specifics and help them think how their strengths could help in a given situation. We help our clients strategize about how to do the best they can with their natural abilities, and whether and how to acquire new skills to balance out and achieve greater levels of performance. We do not motivate our clients: the motivation comes from within.

Carl Robinson:

Refer to my website for greater details but … In a nut shell:

1. Assess
2. Action Plan
3. Practice
4. Refine
5. Practice more.

You have to do a proper assessment. Find out what your strengths and developmental needs are which usually entails conducting some type of multi-rater (360) feedback survey plus a personality assessment by a consulting psychologist (the only folks really trained to do assessment well). Then we develop a plan of action and concentrate on the 2 – 3 key things the candidate needs to learn. Then we find real-time - in the their business opportunities to practice the new skills. As we do this we ask for feedback so that we can determine if we are making progress and make any necessary adjustments/refinements. Change does not happen over night and takes ongoing practice. We keep at it until the candidate has incorporated the new skills.

They can expect to have me be very direct, pragmatic and supportive. I act as their advocate and cheerleader while keeping them focused on their goals.

Barry Zweibel:

Here’s a simple diagram of the process, courtesy of an article published by the American Society of Training and Development.

The idea is that the executive shows up for the coaching call (I work mostly 1-on-1, via telephone) with whatever issues s/he is grappling with and we dig in. My job is to listen – to what’s said, to how it’s said…and to what’s not being said – and then help create a clarity and confidence around moving forward. These conversations are completely confidential and solely for the executive’s benefit. As a result, the things that need to be talked about can be talked about – without fear, judgment, or restriction of content. Tempo-wise, these 50-to-55 minute, weekly/biweekly, coaching conversations tend to be crisp, focused, engaging, and highly-interactive, each one fully-customized to issues at hand.

What is the first step someone should take if they are interested in your coaching services?

Wilson Ramirez:

Get in touch with us. Visit our website for more information on our programs. Send us an email to info@leadershipwisdom.com or give us a call at (416) 284-1799. We would be pleased to discuss whether and how we can be of help for your specific situation.

Carl Robinson:

Go to my website and read in more detail what the typical coaching process looks like. And… Look at my testimonials. Call me with your questions.

Barry Zweibel:

For more information, visit my website; read some articles; read my blog; call (847-291-9735) or email (info@ggci.com) to set up a time to talk. Thank you.

Leadership and Writing

Writing is an important leadership skill that is often overlooked. It is unlikely that you will ever see writing at the top of any list of important leadership skills. For a leader to be effective they must communicate their outlook, vision and worldview to the people they are leading. A leader who cannot communicate well using written words is going to be severely handicapped.

Another reason leaders need to write is to help them develop and clarify their ideas. Much of what makes someone a good leader is his or her viewpoint and perspective. Someone who makes good decisions usually does so because of how they look at problems. Someone who instinctively does the right thing will often have a difficult time explaining their decision-making process to others.

A leader who doesn’t take the time to develop and refine ideas and viewpoint can still be successful. But they will have a difficult time replicating their skills in others. You can’t teach someone to have the same “gut feeling” as you.

Leading Through Communication

It is possible for a leader to lead without using written communication. We have examples of many leaders who were unable to read or write. However, leadership greatly depends on communication and in modern times much of our communication is written. Written communication gives people a source to refer back to. If you only communicate verbally, there is no real standard to refer to if someone has a question.

It is also much easier to hold people accountable for something that you’ve communicated in writing. By putting your thoughts into words you give people a concrete standard that they can reference. Making your thoughts concrete can help align everyone’s efforts toward the same goal.

Clarifying Your Thoughts

Writing also gives you the opportunity to clarify your thoughts and better understand what you really think in your subconscious. Writing gives a leader the chance to privately develop their way of looking at problems in a way that can be communicated to others. In this sense, writing gives leaders a method for organizing and clarifying their thoughts. It allows them to take what they know instinctively and make it something concrete that can be conveyed to others.

This clarifying process can be immensely helpful in explaining strategy. Often a good leader will know what to do instinctively. However, the instincts of a single person are difficult scale for a large organization. Writing down the thoughts behind your instincts can allow you to replicate your skills in others.

The writing process can help you understand your decision-making methods in a deeper way. This makes it easier to teach your way of doing things to others. Often it will provide you with deeper insights into how you can make better decisions as well.

Writing isn’t the most important skill for a leader to possess. However, it is a very valuable skill to develop and practice because it lets you replicate and improve your other skills.

Leadership Trait Theory

Leadership trait theory is the idea that people are born with certain character traits. Since certain traits are associated with proficient leadership, it assumes that if you could identify people with the correct traits, you will be able to identify leaders.

Most of the time the traits are considered to be naturally part of a person’s personality from birth. From this standpoint, leadership trait theory tends to assume that people are born as leaders or not as leaders.

There is a lot of value in identifying the character traits associated with leadership. It is even more valuable to identify the character traits that followers look for in a leader. These traits would be the characteristics of an individual who is most likely to attract followers.

However, the idea that leadership traits are inborn and unchangeable appears to be incorrect. It is true that many of our dispositions and tendencies are influenced by our personalities and the way we are born. However, most people recognize that it is possible for someone to change their character traits for the worse. Someone who is known for being honest can learn to be deceitful. The whole idea of saying that someone was “corrupted” is based on the fact that people can learn bad character traits.

If people can learn bad character traits and become different than the way they are naturally through conditioning, it logically follows that they can learn good character traits as well. A person who is prone to being dishonest can learn to be honest. A person who avoids risks can learn to take risks. It may not be easy, but it can be done.

The book The Leadership Challenge identifies 20 character traits that are generally associated with good leaders. The top five traits are:

• Honest
• Inspiring
• Forward-Looking
• Competent
• Intelligent

These are all traits that someone can learn to implement. It may not be easy, but with practice you can become more inspiring, with practice you can become more honest, with practice you can become more competent.

What makes this less difficult than it first seems, is that these are character traits that followers are looking for in a leader. By simply displaying these character traits more consistently an individual is able to change how they are perceived. Sometimes it isn’t a problem with changing your internal characteristics—it is just an issue of displaying those characteristics more openly.

By focusing on your own character and developing traits associated with leadership, you can increase your ability to lead.

Five Most Important Leadership Traits

Some people sit and pontificate about whether leaders are made or born. The true leader ignores such arguments and instead concentrates on how to become a better. In this article, we are going to discuss five leadership traits that people look for in a leader. If you are able to increase your skill in these five traits, you will make it easier for people to want to follow you. The less time you have to spend on getting people to follow you, the more time you have to spend refining exactly where you want to go and how to get there.

The five leadership traits are:

1. Honest
2. Forward-Looking
3. Competent
4. Inspiring
5. Intelligent

These five characteristics come from Kouzes and Posner’s research into leadership that was done for the book The Leadership Challenge.

Your skill at exhibiting these five traits is strongly correlated with people’s desire to follow your lead. Exhibiting these traits will inspire confidence in your leadership. Not exhibiting these traits or exhibiting the opposite of these traits will decrease your leadership influence with those around you.

It is important to exhibit these traits. Simply possessing each trait is not enough; you have to display it in a way that people notice. People want to see you demonstrating these traits–not just assuming that you have them. It isn’t enough to just be neutral. For example, just because you are not dishonest will not cause people to recognize that you are honest. Just avoiding displays of incompetence won’t inspire the same confidence as truly displaying competence.

The focus of each of these five traits needs to be on what people see you do–not just the things they don’t see you do. Being honest isn’t a matter of not lying–it is taking the extra effort to display honesty.

Honesty as a Leadership Trait

People want to follow an honest leader. Years ago, many employees started out by assuming that their leadership was honest simply because the authority of their position. With modern scandals, this is no longer true.

When you start a leadership position, you need to assume that people will think you are a little dishonest. In order to be seen as an honest individual, you will have to go out of your way to display honesty. People will not assume you are honest simply because you have never been caught lying.

One of the most frequent places where leaders miss an opportunity to display honesty is in handling mistakes. Much of a leader’s job is to try new things and refine the ideas that don’t work. However, many leaders want to avoid failure to the extent that they don’t admit when something did not work.

There was a medium size organization that was attempting to move to a less centralized structure. Instead of one location serving an entire city, they wanted to put smaller offices throughout the entire metro area. At the same time, they were planning an expansion for headquarters to accommodate more customers at the main site. The smaller remote offices was heralded as a way to reach more customers at a lower cost and cover more demographic areas.

 

After spending a considerable amount of money on a satellite location, it became clear that the cost structure would not support a separate smaller office. As the construction completed on the expanded headquarters building, the smaller office was closed. This was good decision making. The smaller offices seemed like a good idea, but when the advantages didn’t materialize (due to poor management or incorrect assumptions) it made sense to abandon the model. This was a chance for the leadership to display honesty with the employees, be candid about why things didn’t work out as expected, learn from the mistakes an move on.

 

Unfortunately in this situation the leadership told employees that they had planned on closing the satellite location all along and it was just a temporary measure until construction was completed on the larger headquarters building. While this wasn’t necessarily true, it didn’t quite cross over into the area of lying. Within a few months the situation was mostly forgotten and everyone moved on. Few of the employees felt that leadership was being dishonest. However, they had passed up a marvelous opportunity to display the trait of honesty in admitting a mistake.

Opportunities to display honesty on a large scale may not happen every day. As a leader, showing people that you are honest even when it means admitting to a mistake, displays a key trait that people are looking for in their leaders. By demonstrating honesty with yourself, with your organization and with outside organizations, you will increase your leadership influence. People will trust someone who actively displays honesty–not just as an honest individual, but as someone who is worth following.

Forward-Looking as a Leadership Trait

The whole point of leadership is figuring out where to go from where you are now. While you may know where you want to go, people won’t see that unless you actively communicate it with them. Remember, these traits aren’t just things you need to have, they are things you need to actively display to those around you.

When people do not consider their leader forward-looking, that leader is usually suffering from one of two possible problems:

1. The leader doesn’t have a forward-looking vision.
2. The leader is unwilling or scared to share the vision with others.

When a leader doesn’t have a vision for the future, it usually because they are spending so much time on today, that they haven’t really thought about tomorrow. On a very simplistic level this can be solved simply by setting aside some time for planning, strategizing and thinking about the future.

Many times when a leader has no time to think and plan for the future, it is because they are doing a poor job of leading in the present. They have created an organization and systems that rely too much on the leader for input at every stage.

Some leaders have a clear vision, but don’t wish to share it with others. Most of the time they are concerned that they will lose credibility if they share a vision of the future that doesn’t come about. This is a legitimate concern. However, people need to know that a leader has a strong vision for the future and a strong plan for going forward. Leaders run into trouble sharing their vision of the future when they start making promises to individuals. This goes back to the trait of honesty. If a leader tells someone that “next year I’m going to make you manager of your own division”, that may be a promise they can’t keep. The leader is probably basing this promotion on the organization meeting financial goals, but the individual will only hear the personal promise.

An organization I was working with was floundering. It seemed like everyone had a different idea about what they were trying to achieve. Each department head was headed in a different direction and there was very little synergy as small fiefdoms and internal politics took their toll.

Eventually a consulting firm was called in to help fix the problem. They analyzed the situation, talked to customers, talked to employees and set up a meeting with the CEO. They were going to ask him about his vision for the future. The employees were excited that finally there would be a report stating the direction for the organization.

After the meeting, the consultants came out shaking their heads. The employees asked how the important question had gone to which the consultants replied, “we asked him, but you aren’t going to like the answer”. The CEO had told the consultant that, while he had a vision and plan for the future, he wasn’t going to share it with anyone because he didn’t want there to be any disappointment if the goals were not reached.

Leaders can communicate their goals and vision for the future without making promises that they may not be able to keep. If a leader needs to make a promise to an individual, it should be tied to certain measurable objectives being met. The CEO in the example didn’t realize how much damage he was doing by not demonstrating the trait of being forward-looking by communicating his vision with the organization.

The CEO was forward-looking. He had a plan and a vision and he spent a lot of time thinking about where the organization was headed. However, his fear of communicating these things to the rest of the organization hampered his leadership potential.

Competency as a Leadership Trait

People want to follow someone who is competent. This doesn’t mean a leader needs to be the foremost expert on every area of the entire organization, but they need to be able to demonstrate competency.

For a leader to demonstrate that they are competent, it isn’t enough to just avoid displaying incompetency. Some people will assume you are competent because of your leadership position, but most will have to see demonstrations before deciding that you are competent.

When people under your leadership look at some action you have taken and think, “that just goes to show why he is the one in charge”, you are demonstrating competency. If these moments are infrequent, it is likely that some demonstrations of competency will help boost your leadership influence.

Like the other traits, it isn’t enough for a leader to be competent. They must demonstrate competency in a way that people notice. This can be a delicate balance. There is a danger of drawing too much attention to yourself in a way that makes the leader seem arrogant. Another potential danger is that of minimizing others contributions and appearing to take credit for the work of others.

As a leader, one of the safest ways to “toot you own horn without blowing it”, is to celebrate and bring attention to team achievements. In this way you indirectly point out your competency as a leader. For example: “Last year I set a goal of reaching $12 million in sales and, thanks to everyone’s hard word, as of today, we have reached $13.5 million.”

Inspiration as a Leadership Trait

People want to be inspired. In fact, there is a whole class of people who will follow an inspiring leader–even when the leader has no other qualities. If you have developed the other traits in this article, being inspiring is usually just a matter of communicating clearly and with passion. Being inspiring means telling people how your organization is going to change the world.

A great example of inspiration is when Steve Jobs stole the CEO from Pepsi by asking him, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?” Being inspiring means showing people the big picture and helping them see beyond a narrow focus and understand how their part fits into the big picture.

One technique to develop your ability to inspire is telling stories. Stories can be examples from your customers, fictitious examples from your customers, or even historical fables and myths. Stories can help you vividly illustrate what you are trying to communicate. Stories that communicate on an emotional level help communicate deeper than words and leave an imprint much stronger than anything you can achieve through a simple stating of the facts.

Learning to be inspiring is not easy–particularly for individuals lacking in charisma. It can be learned. Take note of people who inspire you and analyze the way they communicate. Look for ways to passionately express your vision. While there will always be room for improvement, a small investment in effort and awareness will give you a significant improvement in this leadership trait.

Intelligence as a Leadership Trait

Intelligence is something that can be difficult to develop. The road toward becoming more intelligent is difficult, long and can’t be completed without investing considerable time. Developing intelligence is a lifestyle choice. Your college graduation was the beginning of your education, not the end. In fact, much of what is taught in college functions merely as a foundational language for lifelong educational experiences.

To develop intelligence you need to commit to continual learning–both formally and informally. With modern advances in distance, education it is easy to take a class or two each year from well respected professors in the evening at your computer.

Informally, you can develop a great deal of intelligence in any field simply by investing a reasonable amount of time to reading on a daily basis. The fact is that most people won’t make a regular investment in their education. Spending 30 minutes of focused reading every day will give you 182 hours of study time each year.

For the most part, people will notice if you are intelligent by observing your behavior and attitude. Trying to display your intelligence is likely to be counterproductive. One of the greatest signs of someone who is truly intelligent is humility. The greater your education, the greater your understanding of how little we really understand.

You can demonstrate your intelligence by gently leading people toward understanding–even when you know the answer. Your focus needs to be on helping others learn–not demonstrating how smart you are. Arrogance will put you in a position where people are secretly hopeful that you’ll make a mistake and appear foolish.

As unintuitive as it may seem, one of the best ways to exhibit intelligence is by asking questions. Learning from the people you lead by asking intelligent thoughtful questions will do more to enhance your intelligence credibility than just about anything. Of course this means you need to be capable of asking intelligent questions.

Everyone considers themselves intelligent. If you ask them to explain parts of their area of expertise and spend the time to really understand (as demonstrated by asking questions), their opinion of your intelligence will go up. After all, you now know more about what makes them so intelligent, so you must be smart as well. Your ability to demonstrate respect for the intellect of others will probably do more to influence the perception of your intellect than your actual intelligence.

Summary of the Five Leadership Traits

By consciously making an effort to exhibit these traits, people will be more likely to follow you. These are the most important traits that people look for in their leaders. By exhibiting them on a regular basis, you will be able to grow your influence to its potential as a leader.

Functional Leadership Model

Functional leadership is an approach that concentrates on how leadership occurs, rather than focusing on who does the leading. It defines the types of leadership behaviors that guide an organization and then looks at how those behaviors occur. Under this type of model, leadership is a distributed function. People at all levels can participate in guiding the organization. One of the cornerstones of this leadership model is its focus on HOW instead of WHO.

This approach has some tremendous advantages when studying leadership. The models that focus on WHO leads tend to look at the person with formal authority in an organization. In many situations, the person with formal authority is not the real leader. Sometimes there is no single “real” leader. Even an organization that appears to be floundering with no leadership is being led. People are still making decisions and forming opinions.

The functional leadership model looks at how these types of decisions are being made—even when there is no single person who is acting as a leader. By focusing on the function of leadership, it is easier to see the stimuli that are actually influencing the behavior of the organization—even if the input is coming from informal and unlikely sources.

Functional leadership is often used to describe job positions where an individual is expected to take leadership responsibility without any delegated authority. In this sense they are asked to take on functions of leadership by helping to guide a team or process without being put into a formal leadership position. The upside of this type of arrangement is that it can keep the individual’s focus on how to influence their team’s behavior instead of how to exert their authority. The downside is that it can result in inefficiency because they may not have the authority to make needed changes.

John Adair’s “three circles” have heavily influenced the functional model of leadership. These three circles represent the areas where leadership functions occur. Those areas are:

1. Task
2. Team
3. Individual

In general, leadership functions meet needs in these three areas. In most organizations the formal leader meets some of the needs in these three areas. Some needs are met by individuals who are taking on the leadership function even if they have no formal leadership role.

By identifying the need areas, a list can be formed showing the things that must happen for leadership to occur. By looking at where these things are occurring in a functioning system, you can gain insight into the actual leadership process that is taking place without being misled by the titles and formally assigned leadership roles.

Leadership of the Future

The last 20 years has seen an incredible increase in technology. Most of the principles of good leadership remain the same, regardless of how technology changes. However, technology presents new challenges for leaders.

Virtual Contact Leadership

One of the benefits of modern technology is the ability to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. While this is a benefit for businesses looking to expand, it presents unique challenges for leaders. Many leaders have a leadership skill set that relies heavily on their personality and “presence”. Many of these skills don’t translate well into electronic communication.

Leaders need to be aware of this and work to improve their skills in communicating and leading using modern tools. They can no longer rely on the power of their personality to give them an edge. One of the biggest areas leaders must develop is the ability to communicate well through the written word.

In the past, leaders were often able to rely on assistants for written communication. However, with the ubiquitous use of email, this is no longer an option. Leaders who cannot communicate well in writing will find themself at a disadvantage.

Leaders preparing for the future should make a conscious effort in the following areas:

• Developing strong writing skills.
• Understanding different forms of electronic communication.
• Understanding the culture of different forms of electronic communication.

Leading Outside the Organization

In the past, leaders generally led people who reported to them through the chain of command. As businesses become more focused on their core competencies, leaders are finding that many of the people they are leading are in other organizations. Leaders of the past who lead through position and title will find it difficult to lead in the future. Many of their old techniques will not work across organizations’ boundaries.

This shift will require that successful leaders of the future develop a greater degree of true leadership skill. The shortcuts used by many in authority will not work when trying to lead across organizational boundaries.

Leaders in future organizations will also require a better holistic understanding of the entire business ecosystem, not just their organization. Leaders who can successfully make this transition will be in high demand, not just by companies looking to hire their skills, but by organizations looking to partner with them for mutual benefit.

The Difficulty of Earning Leadership Trust

Some of the recent high profile scandals in business will require some changes for leaders of the future as well. Subordinates are less likely to trust a leader because of position and title than they were 10 years ago. In the future, obtaining trust will require even more effort.

In the future, leaders must seek to actively measure the level of trust in their organization and take deliberate steps to improve the level of trust. Before making big changes leaders must gauge the level of trust in their organization to make sure they have built enough of a solid trust foundation to obtain successful buy-in.

While the core skills of leadership will remain the same over time, the future will require a different emphasis on particular skills. By preparing for these changes ahead of time, leaders can ready themselves today for what organizations will need tomorrow.

Vision and Efficiency

In any organization, effort can be divided into two categories. Effort that helps achieve the vision and effort that does not. There is some work that is difficult to correctly categorize–especially in complex organizations with a great deal of complexity. However, most of the time there is a great deal of effort expended on items that are clearly not in support of the vision.

It is probably impossible for an organization to operate at 100% efficiency. In many cases, inefficiency results, not from natural organizational entropy, but because every person has a different view of the vision.

When information is lacking, the human mind becomes creative. There have been studies to determine the reliability of testimony by court witnesses. In the study, people were exposed to a situation in ways that certain details were intentionally unknowable. However, after repeatedly being asked about the unknowable details they began to “remember”. These memories didn’t come from their actual experience. The subject’s brains were filling in details purely from imagination.

Now think about an organization full of people with an incomplete understanding of the vision. Every day they are faced with situations where understanding the vision is required in order to make the correct choice. Over time, they will fill in the details themselves and create their own personal version of the vision.
Since a good deal of this personal vision comes directly from their imagination, it is not surprising that the vision they create often is more aligned with their personal vision than the actual vision of the organization. This isn’t their fault. It is the natural way the human mind works.

There was a large church that was trying to identify better with its congregation. During a meeting of some of the staff, one of the newer staff members asked, “Who is our target market?” to better understand exactly who the organization was trying to reach.

A pastor at the meeting responded to the question by saying that the target market was people who hadn’t ever been to a church. The other staff members pointed out that 99% of the sermons preached by the senior pastor were targeted toward people who were already churchgoers and often wouldn’t even make much sense to people who had never attended a church.

The fact that the staff had to ask who they were trying to reach was a clear indication that the vision was not being communicated clearly from the top leadership. This pastor had created his version of the vision based on his personal preferences. This wasn’t something that he was doing intentionally; it is just the way the human mind works.

If each individual in an organization is creating a separate version of the vision that is heavily influenced by their own personal preference, it is amazing that organizations can function at all. But remember people are only going to use their imagination in the areas where information is lacking. If the vision is well defined and effectively communicated, the areas left to people’s imagination is minimized.

If half of an individual’s personal view of the vision is coming purely from their own imagination, it is likely that half of the effort they are expending is not in alignment with the true vision of the organization. If everyone in the organization is filling in holes in the vision, then it is likely that half of the organization’s effort is being expended toward the focused vision and the other half is pulling the organization in different, random directions.

Much of the benefit of a large organization in the first place, is the efficiency that comes from having many people all expending effort toward the same goal. When a significant portion of the effort is being expended in random directions, much of the value of having an organization is lost.

When a leader regularly communicates a clear vision, the amount of wasted effort is minimized. In addition, the more effort across the entire organization is focused in the same direction, the more synergy will exist between individuals and departments.

Leading through Example

As obvious as it seems, many leaders forget that their actions speak louder than their words. I was managing a department at a medium sized organization that had a casual dress code on Friday. One of the vice presidents decided that casual Fridays were a bad idea and mandated that everyone wear corporate casual every day. For my department, that was inconvenient because we saved most of our dirty work for Friday when we were wearing jeans.

However, even if it was inconvenient for our department, I explained to everyone that the organization was trying to maintain a professional image. No one in my department liked the change, but they were fine with adhering to it.

The second Friday after the change, all of my staff was in the office and wearing the corporate dress code. In walked the vice president who had made the change. He was wearing the same casual clothes that he had prohibited two weeks earlier.

When he left our department, all of my staff turned to ask if they could dress like that as well. We stuck with the mandated dress code for several months before it was finally repealed.

While the vice president had enough authority to get away with not following his own rules, he should have known better. Even if he had a very good reason for it, he should have been more aware that saying one thing and doing another is very poor leadership practice.

If you are going to ask others to adhere to a certain level of conduct, you should expect to adhere to it yourself. If you want your staff to be in the office by 8 am, you should be there before they arrive. If you tell your staff not to park in the customer area, your leadership will suffer if you decide that your importance makes you exempt from the rule.

People can follow what you say without actually following the intent. When this happens, the effectiveness of your organization is decreased. If they don’t see you following your own set of rules, they may follow them to the letter, but don’t expect them to go the extra mile to try to understand the intent.