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The Leadership Strategy: An Unmined Comstock Lode of Results
During the Second World War, Winston Churchill had a framed inscription on his desk that said, "It's not enough to say we are doing our best. We must succeed in doing what is necessary." The world demands results. Good intentions and promises are no use to it. And one of the best ways for any leader to get results is to employ a strategy, which is a plan, method or series of actions for obtaining a goal or specific outcome. It doesn't matter what job you have or how many people you are leading, if you don't come to grips with the challenges of developing and executing strategies, you are limiting your abilities to get results. In a sense, strategies are promissory notes, payment due upon demand. One reason for their becoming less than worthy tender is they are not backed by a Leadership Strategy. Leadership Strategy -- have you heard of it? I bet you haven't. For one thing, it isn't taught at business schools. And for another, even in the unlikely case that you have heard of it and know what it is, you probably don't know how to make it happen. In this article, I'll show you what a Leadership Strategy is and ways to institute it. It can be far more important than your standard business strategy. Whereas a business strategy seeks to marshal an organization's functions around central, organizing concepts, a leadership strategy, on the other hand, seeks to obtain, organize, and direct the heartfelt commitment of the people who must carry out the business strategy. The business strategy is the sail, the Leadership Strategy the ballast. Without a Leadership Strategy, most business strategies capsize. To understand what a Leadership Strategy is, let's look at your past leadership activities. Divide a single sheet of paper into two columns labeled A & B. At the top of column A write "business (or organizational) strategies". On top of column B write, "Leadership Strategies" -- in other words, what strategies were used to obtain people's heartfelt commitments to carry out the business strategies? Think of the strategies your organization has developed during the past few years. They might be product strategies, service strategies, growth strategies, sales strategies, marketing strategies. You do not have to explain it in detail, just give each strategy a tag and write down the tag. Did the listings in column A match the listings in column B? Were there any listings at all in column B? That gap between what was in column A and what was in column B is a killer gap. It means that the business strategies haven't been augmented by Leadership Strategies. And when that happens, results suffer. I don't care if you lead three people, three hundred or three thousand and more. I don't care if you are in sales, you are a plant supervisor, a marketing manager or a COO, CFO or CEO. You're going to need a Leadership Strategy. And if you don't think you need any kind of strategy, think again. Whatever job you are doing takes strategic thinking. In fact, getting in the habit of looking at whatever you do in strategic terms gives you a great advantage in your career advancement. The roots of the word "strategy" come from two German words, the first meaning an encamped or spread out army and then second word meaning "to drive." In other words, a strategy gives direction, organization and force to an otherwise scattered organization. Most business leaders are good a developing business strategies. They're taught how at business schools. But I'll bet that 9,999 out of 10,000 leaders don't know what a Leadership Strategy is, let alone how it fits in with a business strategy. Leadership Strategies are not taught at business schools because such Strategies find their meaning not in abstract formulations or case studies but in what can't be taught but must be experienced, process and relationship. And if you haven't thought of a Leadership Strategy before, start thinking about it now, because it can boost your career in many ways. Most leaders develop their strategies in bunkers, without taking into consideration those outside the bunker who have to implement it. Unwittingly, they buy into the "fallacy of automatic reciprocity" - the conviction that their devotion to the cause is automatically reciprocated by the people they lead. It's a fallacy because reciprocity is not automatic. It can't be ordered. It must be cultivated and earned. Here, then, are five steps to developing a Leadership Strategy. (1) Understand your business strategy. There are many books and courses on developing business strategies. I don't want to re-invent this wheel. Suffice to say you should clearly develop that strategy. (2) Identify the dream(s) of your cause leaders. Why do I say "dreams"? Far from being fluff, dreams are the stuff that hard, measured results are made of. Look at it this way: Leadership is motivational or it's stumbling in the dark. The best leaders don't order people to do a job, the best leaders motivate people to want to do the job. The trouble is the vast majority of leaders don't delve into the deep aspects of human motivation and so are unable to motivate people effectively. Drill down through goals and aims and aspirations and ambitions and you hit the bedrock of motivation, the dream. Many leaders fail to take it into account. Dreams are not goals and aims. Goals are the results toward which efforts are directed. The realization of a dream might contain goals, which can be stepping stones on the way to the attaining dreams. But the attainment of a goal does not necessarily result in the attainment of a dream. For instance, Martin Luther King did not say, "I have a goal." Or "I have an aim." The power of that speech was in the "I have a dream". Dreams are not aspirations and ambitions. Aspirations and ambitions are strong desires to achieve something. King did not say he had an aspiration or ambition that " ....one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" He said he had a dream. If you are a leader speaking to people's aspirations and ambitions, you are speaking to something that motivates them, yes; but you are not necessarily tapping into the heartwood of their motivation. After all, one might aspire or be ambitious to achieve a dream. But one's aspiration and ambition may also be connected to things of lesser importance than a dream. A dream embraces our most cherished longings. It embodies our very identity. We often won't feel fulfilled as human beings until we realize our dreams. If leaders are avoiding people's dreams, if leaders are simply setting goals (as important as goals are), they miss the best of opportunities to help those people take ardent action to achieve great results. I teach leaders to have their organizations get into the realm of achieving "more results faster, continually." To do so, you must first take the trouble to understand the dreams of the people you lead. (3) Create a Shared Dream. If your vision of where you want the organization to go and their dream of where they want to go are shared, you call it a Shared Dream. Furthermore, you can't go to the next step unless you have developed a Shared Dream. Look at it this way: The critical issue of the Leadership Strategy isn't the motivation of the leaders. As a leader, you must be motivated. If you are not motivated, you shouldn't be leading. The critical issue is: Can you transfer your motivation to the people so they are as motivated as you are? (By the way, the Shared Dream is not "win/win". As you'll see, it's much deeper and richer relationship than the self-limiting "win/win"; for unlike "win/win", the Shared Dream is an on-going relationship process from which flow mutually beneficial expectations and solutions.) (4) Turn the Shared Dream into a Leadership Strategy. The Leadership Strategy is the Shared Dream manifested by an action plan. In the action plan, delineate milestones that take you to the Shared Dream. The first milestone may be a comprehensive, rigorous identification of the needs of the cause leaders and how those needs dovetail into the business strategy. (Remember, you can use this process with any number of cause leaders. Just scale it up to the number you require.) Churchill had it right, " ... we must succeed in doing what is necessary." And one of the best ways for any leader to get people to succeed in doing what is necessary is to combine a business strategy with a Leadership Strategy. 2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com
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Coaching 7 Core Elements Of Your Vivid Vision! What you are about to read may be found in the Bible but it also applies to your professional life. Asking for Help For many of us, asking for help is a difficult concept. It can require a certain amount of vulnerability. We may feel as if we are admitting a weakness that the world would not have known about, had we not asked for help. Leadership Prep So you want to be a leader? Or you want to be a better leader? It can be done, you know. No matter where you are in your leadership journey, you CAN move forward. You CAN lead better. You CAN lead more people. You CAN lead your organization to higher ground. Leadership Like Water-Water Canoeing Although world business is undergoing historic changes, the prevailing view of what constitutes business leadership is stuck in the past. Generally, business leaders view leadership as an order-giving process. The word "leadership" itself comes from old Norse root meaning "to make go." Many leaders believe that they must "make" people go by ordering them to do things. Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part One) I've challenged all leaders I have worked with during the past two decades to achieve "more results faster continually." Being an Extraordinary Leader Through Tough and Challenging Times Tough and challenging times will surely come. That is a given. The question is what kind of leadership we will demonstrate during those time. Those who are weak leaders will see lasting damage done, if not see the organization fall apart completely. With Extraordinary Leaders at the helm, however, an organization can actually become stronger and thrive in spite of the tough and challenging times. That should be our goal so here are some idea on how to be an Extraordinary Leader in tough and challenging times! Is Your Life Ready For Groundhog Day? In the hit comedic movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character, Phil Conners, is caught up in a time warp, doomed to live the same day over and over until he gets it right. Hilarious as the ensuing mayhem may be on the big screen, it is a poignant and not too thinly veiled metaphor for how most of us live our own lives - mindlessly occupied with our own issues and concerns, stumbling through life (often over the toes of others) with little if any conscious direction or critical thought. In the end, we keep on running into the same scenarios and problems over and over - not because we're caught in a time loop, but because we're caught in a life-loop. We haven't made the grade, so we can't graduate beyond our current situation. Leadership Lessons from Pope John Paul II "Heroes are rebels with a cause. Rebels because they challenge the traditional ways of thinking and refuse to follow the herd. They have a cause, a vision, that's larger than life." - Sharif Khan, author of Psychology of the Hero Soul Benefits of Leadership Skill Training DESCRIPTION CMOE's Leadership Skill Training addresses a wide range of leadership development topics, based on the needs of the audience and scope of delivery. Leadership Skill Training for new leaders might be targeted to help them make the transition from individual contributor to effective leader. For more experienced or advanced audiences, Leadership Skills can address the situational decisions leaders face to either involve their team members in decisions, or to rely more on their own experience, expertise, and responsibility. Beyond Authority: Debunking the Top 3 Leadership Myths Have you noticed that across the business world people are recognizing that we are fast outgrowing the thinking and language of hierarchy, but we're also struggling to create a new, more collaborative future? The challenge for all is to figure out how to operate in this emerging paradigm-the one that our own efforts are helping to shape. Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 1, General Strategies for Unproductive Behavior It happens easily. You're conducting a meeting and suddenly a small side meeting starts. Then someone introduces an unrelated issue. Someone else ridicules the new issue. Everyone laughs, except the person who mentioned the idea. Then someone insults the person who told the joke. Two people stand up and walk out. Others complain that the meeting is a waste of time. Leadership - Connect to Engage! It's been said many times that true leadership is measured by ones ability to motivate and influence others. The Three Faces of Leadership This article was published in the Nov. 2003 edition of Hamilton, Ontario's BIZ Magazine under the title "Leadership's Triple Crown" LM Are You a Leader or a Manager? President Ike Eisenhower once demonstrated the difference between leadership and management to his cabinet by putting a piece of string in a straight line on the conference table. He then asked one of the attendees to put his finger on one end of the string and push it. The string, of course, bunched up in an ugly bundle. He then asked the man to pull the string with his finger on one end. The string straightened up in a nice neat line and followed the finger across the table. "This", said Ike "is the difference between managing and leading." The Goals of Leadership Coaching and Partnerships Webster's Dictionary describes a "partner" as an ally or an association built around common interests and goals. Women in Leadership - How to Get Promoted It is often much harder for women to get promoted than men. The most common characteristic of successful women is that they know how to express their excellence in a male dominated environment. How do they do it? Career Advice for Business Leaders: Empowering Others Many potential leaders in business sabotage themselves and their organizations out of fear of empowering others. In 21st Century Leadership: Dialogues with 100 Top Leaders, Lynne McFarland, Larry Senn and John Childress assert, "the empowerment leadership model shifts away from 'position power' where all people are given leadership roles so thy can contribute to their fullest capacity." John Maxwell confirms this in his work on leadership, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. He states, "only empowered people can reach their potential," and that barriers within the organization are created when empowerment is not present. Maxwell observed that the most common barriers to a leader's empowerment of others are: Leader is Not a Title There is a steady flow of information in the form of books, articles, white papers and training all in the context of [ "what is leadership" or "how to develop a leader"]. In this issue, I will avoid those two questions and write about two others that I believe might be on the minds of a lot you readers and they are: Always Be Open To Learning "We should not only use all the brains we have, but all we can borrow." -Woodrow Wilson The Compassion Paradox Effective leaders are comfortable with paradox. They can call on skills and work in ways that seem to be contradictory.
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