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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. But today's new business realities are requiring new kinds of leadership, leadership that has very little to do with order giving. Organizations are more competitive when leaders don't make others go but instead have those others make themselves go - when employees are not ordered to do tasks but instead are in the frame of mind and heart that they want to do those tasks. That "want to" is the cutting edge of competitiveness. Order-leadership in business has its roots in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. "Order" comes from a Latin root meaning to arrange threads in a weaving woof. The captains of the Revolution dealt with the relatively uneducated country people who flocked to their factories by ordering them where, how, and when to work. The most efficient and effective production methods resulted from workers being "ordered" or ranked like threads in the woof of production lines. Refined and empowered by the Victorian commercial culture, with its patriarchal power structure and strong links to Prussian military organization, the culture of the order-giver leader reached its zenith in the United States after World War II. During the post-war years, many U.S. businesses were like ocean liners plowing through relatively calm seas, their leaders, like liner captains and mates, running things by getting orders from superiors, giving orders to subordinates and making sure that those orders were carried out. But today, with competition increasing dramatically, with the volume and velocity of information multiplying, with the pyramidal structures of order-giving businesses flattening, leaders need skills not akin to ocean liner piloting but white-water canoeing. Order leadership founders where lines of authority are blurred, information proliferates, markets rapidly changing, and employees are highly skilled and educated. A new kind of leadership, a new vision of leadership is needed - leadership based on the principle that the leader doesn't make others go by ordering them about but instead has them go by creating an organizational environment in which they prompt themselves to go. This new leadership is: 1. Motivational. Motivational: Leaders do nothing more important than get results. But leaders can't get results themselves. They need the people they lead to get results. And the best way for them to get results is not to order them but to motivate them to take action that produces results. However, the English language misconstrues motivation. English describes the act of motivation as something one person does to another person. Leaders can't motivate anybody to do anything. We communicate - the people themselves motivate. They motivate themselves. Only they can motivate themselves. The motivators and the "motivatees" are the same people. We engage in the new leadership when we recognize that we are motivating people to get results only when we set up an environment in which they are actively motivating themselves. Action-based: A key aspect of the new leadership lies in the first two letters of the word motivation. Those letters - "mo" - are also found in the words "motion," "momentum," "motor," "mobile," etc. The words denote action - physical action. Motivation isn't what people think or feel but physically do. To engage in the new leadership, leaders must constantly be challenging others to take physical action that leads to results. Results-oriented: Motivated people are useless to a business. People taking action are useless to a business. Only those people who get results are useful. The thing is that people who are motivated and taking action are more likely to get results. Leaders must have a passion to achieve results. Not just results - but more results, faster results. They must permeate the culture of their organization with a more results faster esprit. Clearly, many order leaders have a passion for results. But as to the new leadership, how people get results is as important as their getting those results. To get more-results-faster, the order leader demands that people run faster in the organizational gerbil wheel. But there is a limit to how fast and hard people can work before they burn out. The new leader, however, recognizes that to achieve more results faster on a continuous basis that people can't simply speed up, work harder, and be straight-jacketed by tight controls. They must replenish their spirit and energies. They must slow down to develop and employ powerful processes, and they must challenge others to lead for results. The new leader's effectiveness is not measured so much by his/her actions but by the effectiveness of the leadership activities he/she challenges others to engage in. The recent emergence of interlocking global markets has stimulated a new vision of world commerce, a vision of a single global playing field. Leaders must match their business activities to the demands of that vision. But a corresponding new vision of leadership has not emerged. Stuck with an outmoded vision of order leadership, today's leaders are not seizing the full array of opportunities before them. When they begin to establish leadership that is not order-driven but is instead motivational, action-based and results-oriented, the world might not beat a path to their door but more importantly, they will beat paths to the doorsteps of the world. =========================================== 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 =========================================== 2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved. =========================================== 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 has worked with thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable increases in hard, measured results. Sign up for his free leadership ezine and get a free guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com
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Coaching A Whack Up Long Side The Head Of Human Resources: The Leadership Imperative When we perceive the simple center in the seemingly complex, we can change our world in powerful new ways. 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 Miraculous Leadership It was a time of turmoil. In November 1979, supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini took 71 Americans hostage in Iran. On Christmas Eve that year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Gasoline prices, inflation and interest rates were soaring as 1980 began. President Jimmy Carter said America was in a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will." Leadership Is Power: Test Your Ethics "The payoff for the ethical person is a reputation for honesty. It's a payoff that makes every undertaking easier and attracts unsolicited opportunities. It's also a payoff that results in strong friendships based on trust. And I don't think there's anything more rewarding. -Don Dwyer Leadership - Connect to Engage! It's been said many times that true leadership is measured by ones ability to motivate and influence others. Listening Like a Leader Our studies of the most effective people in corporate America show that the top 2 percent are effective not because they executed best practices well. They did not make the most phone calls or have the best processes. They simply understood the truth about trust: UNCLOS III Process model The United Nations Conference on Law of the Sea was ground breaking in the way negotiations were conducted. Several strategies were employed that allowed for efficient negotiation and a reasonable outcome as viewed by all participating parties. 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We must be certain that the thoughts and attitudes we hold are in alignment with the role we perform. Five Surprisingly Hip Politicial Ideas From Plato Don't you love politics? Common Mistakes Extraordinary Leaders Dont Make When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to follow your leadership, they do it primarily because of one of two things: Your Character or your Skills. They want to know if you are the kind of person they want to follow and if you have the skills to take them further. Yes, there are other variables but these are the bulk of the matter. This week we focus on the kind of skills that cause people to follow your leadership, specifically things that an Extraordinary Leader doesn't do! The Defining Moment: The Straw That Stirs The Drink Of Motivational Leadership (Part One) Decades ago, as a rifle platoon commander in the Marines, I saw leaders who could motivate troops to do extraordinary things -- and leaders who could not get the troops to do much at all. I wondered what was the difference between the successful and unsuccessful leaders; and if that difference be taught. Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 6, Deadlocked Discussions Although a meeting is a vehicle for resolving differences, it can break down when the participants become mired in a disagreement. Leadership Development for Success In today's highly competitive world, there is a lot of pressure on leaders to create highly productive organizations. To be successful with this task, leaders will need all of the talent, skills, techniques, and experience they can muster through leadership development. The pressure to succeed can create a real dilemma: whether to "manage" people or to "lead" people. At CMOE, we maintain that in order to achieve high levels of employee engagement and morale, people in authority must learn how to show others the way, be a "lighthouse," rather than to "railroad" people into compliance by telling, commanding, or controlling them. Respected leaders easily gain loyalty and mutual agreement with their followers (loyalty demanded is loyalty denied). 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 Leadership Training: The Bit They Didn't Tell You About Changing! A willingness to change first is one of the major pre requisites for leaders! Effective Leaders are (#2) Technical SET CLEAR AND REASONABLE OBJECTIVES FOR THEMSELVES AND OTHERS: Plan? Plan? Plan? Managers need to do their homework. Effective managers know that setting objectives, outlining the steps required to achieve them, and delegating tasks appropriately to each staff person are all necessary components of bringing a project to fruition. The development of a system that maintains these objectives (like a wall calendar) is a good sign of an effective leader and time manager. Any major projects should be time-lined backwards from completion date to incipience to verify how long they will take, and to create intermediate goals to keep the staff and management motivated. Are You A Leader in the Chrysalis? Let's get this straight at the outset?
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