Quiet Leaders Needed to Keep Companies Balanced

If you are a Quiet Leader, your organization is counting on you to be "soft part" expert. And unfortunately the soft part is not only the hard part, it is very difficult to keep it in balance. You can't do it by yourself. You need a leader mob.

You are probably saying, huh?

The concept occurred to me after watching a presentation on Ed Oakley's Leadership Made Simple blog. Ed is another finalist in the 2008 Best Leadership Blog competition. He is also the author of the book Leadership Made Simple .

The post that that offered me new insight was Management Skills vs Leadership Skills, or is it AND…? where Ed's video presentation identifies two parts to any organizational process, the hard part and the soft part.

The Hard Part and the Soft Part

The hard part is comprised of the processes, procedures, measurement, metrics and structures. Think of your reporting, forms policies, budgets, and estimates as part of the "hard" part. The hard part is comprised of items that are design to control the efforts of the organization.

The soft part is comprised of the people related components. Think of the ideas, fears, excitement, resistance, attitudes of the people. You might add a dash of politics and fear of change to make it a little more interesting.

In the presentation Ed asks two questions that establishes the essential message of this post:

First Ed asks, "Which is more challenging in your experience?" The answer is immediate. The soft part is clearly more challenging. The hard part represents those somewhat mechanical elements that are generally easy to understand and learn. Most of us would associate the hard part with the tools and approaches used by management to steer the work of your organization.

Most will say that the soft part is clearly more difficult. There is more nuance and variation in dealing with "people" concerns. It's hard. It requires leadership.

Ed's second question is more challenging. "Which is more importance?" Both the hard and soft parts are important and balance is key. As Ed states, "It all about balance." There needs to be a balance between Management and Leadership.


Out of Balance
As I watch managers respond to the management "crisis of the day", I see the soft part, people centered issues suffer. Give a manager unending requests for reports, budget reviews, schedules, justifications, presentations, and project updates, that manager will not have time or energy to lead. The balance between management and leadership is lost.

An "out of balance" situation is serious and not uncommon. I've described this before in What leaders really do? where I quoted the work of Professor John Kotter where he said, "Most U.S. corporations today are overmanaged and underled."


Another leadership giant who has written extensively about "overmanaged and underled" (Google book search) is Warren Bennis. Miki Saxon at Leadership Turn wrote an insightful series of posts that revisits classic Bennis thinking about management versus leadership. The series reminds us that the mission of a leader is very different than the mission of a manager. As leaders we must:

• Do the right thing
• Challenge
• Originate
• Keep an eye on the horizon
• Inspire trust
• More of the Bennis Leader Mission .......Click here for the complete list at Leadership Turn.
  

How do we keep Soft and Hard in balance?
Quiet leaders need to focus on their leadership mission and leverage their leadership skills to keep our organizations in balance. Individually, we strive to grow and apply our leadership skills. But, a single leader can't do it alone.

Quiet Leader Mobs
A quiet leader mob, a community of leaders, can add mass to the soft/leadership end of our balance challenge. More leaders equals more mass equals balance. My colleague Tom recently stated the challenge eloquently when he described the need for a "groundswell" of leader activists in order to keep balance. Quiet leader mobs can balance overmanagement. We need more leaders, grassroots leaders, we need that groundswell.

Quiet Leader Call to Action
Keep the soft parts and the hard parts in balance by:

1. Building your personal leadership skills. Its about learning and growing. Be a soft part expert.
   
2. Use your leadership skills to build leadership and community around you. We need quiet leader mobs.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Lead Quietly, can you state that in 25 words or less?`

The last couple of weeks I have been fascinated with visualization. And in a typical fashion, I was inspired by the convergence of multiple events. Interesting things happen at intersections.

First, I attended a seminar put on by Edward Tufte, an expert in the presentation of informational graphics. I attended his seminar to stimulate my thinking as it applies to my day-job in business intelligence and analytics. His presentation was very thought provoking. You can visit his Ask E.T Forum for samples of his fascinating visualizations.

Second, I discovered Wordle. I'll leave Wordle undefined. Just check out my Wordle product below.

Just yesterday, I was graphically inspired while browsing the Management Craft blog of Lisa Haneberg. Lisa is a fellow nominee for the Best of Leadership Blogs 2008. Her current post contains a visual representation of leadership. Nice. I was inspired.

The convergence of these three events inspired me to ask, Could I express the core message of the Lead Quietly blog in "25 words or less?" I chose Wordle as the medium. I selected 25 words that provide the basis for themes that I have explored in my 75 posts. Here are my Wordle results.


Click the graphic for a larger image. What do you think? Did I capture the essence of Lead Quietly in 25 words or less?

I invite you to explore Wordle. It is a fascinating tool. For example, I "Wordled" my del.icio.us bookmarks to get a picture of who DonFred is? All I can say is that there seems to be something kind of odd going on there!

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Mindset, it will profoundly affect everything.

How do you learn? You are voracious? Are you constantly learning, and seeking new opportunities to tackle new stuff? Do you find yourself saying, "I wish I had time to learn more?"

If you answer yes, your thinking about learning is aligned with a key quiet leader principle and you likely have a "growth mindset," a personal characteristic that Professor Carol Dweck says will "profoundly affect all aspect of a person's life, from parent and romantic relationship to success at school and on the job"

A Sunday NY Times article this past week (7/6/2008) summarized the work of Carol Dweck and her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The Time articles was a good reminder of the Dweck concepts we first identified in Fixed or Growth, What's in your Mindset. In her work, Dweck identifies two basic mindset, fixed or growth. You want to have a growth mindset.

Are you curious about your mindset. Dweck provides this diagnostic test.

Read each statement and decide whether you agree or disagree.

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things but you really can’t change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, your can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
5. You are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that.
6. No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.
7. You can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are can’t really be changed.
8. You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are. Which statements do you agree with?

A person with a fixed mindset will agree with statements 1, 2, 5, and 7, while a person with a growth mindset will agree with statements 3, 4, 6, and 8.

If you find yourself in a fixed mindset, you can learn Dweck's four step recommendation for changing your mindset on the MindsetOnline.com web site.

Finally, I believe that the simplest, quiet leader interpretation of Dweck's work for leaders is to coach, mentor, encourage, and create opportunities for learning for yourself and the people around you. As Kevin Eikenberry notes in his book, Remarkable Leadership, "we must focus on continual lifelong learning as the cornerstone skill on the path to remarkable leadership." It's really all about learning.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and learn, learn, learn. Never stop learning.
Don

Humbly standing among the leadership giants

I'm excited to announce Lead Quietly has been named a finalist for the 2008 Best of Leadership Blog competition hosted by Kevin Eikenberry at the Remarkable Learning blog.


The contest runs through the month of July, and I hope you’ll take a look at the nominees and cast your vote.

I am humbled by the attention for Lead Quietly. When I started blogging just over one year ago, I set out to explore two new areas for me. First, I was new to blogging and I wanted to get a feel for the tools, approaches, the social learning and explore the revenue stream of blogging. Secondly, I wanted to study leadership and learn about this "new" style of leadership that seemed to be getting more attention and was certainly more compatible with my own personality and style. From these two notions, Lead Quietly was launched.

It has been a fun journey and today, 74 posts later, I stand in front of you (OK, I'm actually sitting at my keyboard) and proudly and humbly accept the nomination. I'm actually asking for your vote.

So, you're asking, we would I vote for Lead Quietly? I submit this top-ten list.

Reasons to Vote for Lead Quietly in the Best of 2008 Leadership Blogs

1. In the spirit of the blogosphere, a vote for Lead Quietly is like a vote for all of the other blogs that I have cited in the past year. This is probably about fifty in total including over half of this year's "best" nominees. I could not have succeeded with the knowledge and insight of the army of leadership experts who blog and write.
2. Lead Quietly is a basement blog. I literally write my posts from the basement of my home. There's no corporate suite, no ivory tower here. It's me, my laptop, and my little basement window. And, of course, quite a bit of help from the blogosphere. From this basement position, a vote for Lead Quietly can take you nowhere but up.
3. Lead Quietly should be competing in the amateur division. It is purely an amateur effort. I may be the only nominated blogger who is not a published author, consultant, speaker, or trainer. I am a practicing leader with strong emphasis on the word practicing. I humbly stand alongside the pros. I'm asking for a few votes to avoid embarrassment.
4. Voting for Lead Quietly is like cheering for your favorite small market baseball team without money to pay for free agents. You gotta love a low budget effort and Lead Quietly is truly low-budget using a free host (Blogger), free Blogger template, and open source editor. (ScribeFire). I have to confess to the authors among us that most of the books I cite were checked out from our local public library. My only expense is my domain registration.
5. Regardless of how you vote, it's a Cinderella Story for me. To be placed in the company of Tom Peters, Jim Kouzes, Barry Posner and the entire nominated list is like qualifying for the US Open as a amateur, playing one good round of golf and finding yourself in a twosome with Tiger Woods. It doesn't get any better then this.
6. Vote for Change. A vote for any of the nominated blogs is a clear vote with a mandate for leadership change or leadership period. My name is Don Frederiksen and I approve this ad.
7. No commercial interruptions. Lead Quietly is presented in full without commercial interruption. You will not find advertising or other promotion on the sight. I have to make one disclaimer. My book references are done with text hyperlinks to my Amazon Associate account. Total earnings to date: $1.44. Thank you to the two people who clicked through my book links and bought a book. Five more books and I've paid this year's domain registration.
8. Support education. I'm a student of leadership. It only took me a few weeks to realize that I was not going to replace my day job with blogging. Since that time, my only real motivation for the blog is learning and growing. I love to learn and a vote for Lead Quietly is a vote for education. OK, I still read and dream by reading Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.
9. Voting for Lead Quietly is a quiet vote in support of the kind of leader and manager that we all want to work with. This leader is humble, a "we", other-oriented person who loves to learn, has great vision, builds community, and keeps it all in balance. Don't we all desire to work with great leaders?
10. A vote for Lead Quietly or any of the nominated blogs is a vote for the community of bloggers, whether nominated or not, who keep the space moving and churning (Nobody churns better than Tom Peters). Any vote advances leadership as a course of study within the blogosphere. Thanks Kevin Eichenberry for your sponsorship of this campaign and your Remarkable Leadership.

Please visit all of the blogs to learn and advance leadership.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and vote for your favorite leadership blog.
Humbly,
Don

Quiet Leader Presidents Rank Highly

My leadership study this past week found me pausing on a recent post on Michael McKinney's Leadership Now blog. What Makes a President Great was an terrific post where I encountered new leadership insight through Michael's review of the book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game.

In the book, author Alvin S. Felzenberg devises new criteria and standards for ranking our former presidents. As Felzenberg described in an interview on National Review Online,

What I attempt to do in my book is to provide six criteria and assign each president a grade in each — just as educators do students on report cards. My categories are: character; vision; competence; management of the economy; handling of national security, defense, and foreign policy; and whether they extended or restricted liberty, especially at home.

As I read the Leadership Now post and reviewed the ranking of Felzenberg's top presidents, I was ecstatic to find three Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" selections in the top 12 list. The Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" represents my personal choices of quiet leaders who achieve greatness while exhibiting quiet leader attributes including humility, vision, balance, learning, and quiet purpose. The Quiet Leader "Hall of Fame" includes these top 12 presidents:

Rank	President/ Hall of Fame Selection
1	Abraham Lincoln
5	Dwight D Eisenhower
8	Ulysses S. Grant

A fourth president, Harry S. Truman, is ranked number 10 on the list and his nomination to the Quiet Leader Hall of Fame is currently under consideration.

Bottom line: Our quiet leader presidents rank highly and this causes me to reconsider,
In this age, could a Quiet Leader be elected president?

Read the Leadership Now post. It's very insightful in this presidential election time.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and be presidentially humble.
Don

Team Manifest 2: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

In a recent post,I announced my plan to share my current study of team-building and collaboration that coincidentally happens to be list centric. Manifest Team 2 is the second in this series that explores the lists of collaboration and teams.

Manifest Team 1 identified the Characteristics of High-Performance Teams by DeJanasz, Dowd, and Schneider.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable is a national best seller having appeared on the best seller/best business book lists of the New York Times, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. In the book, author, speaker, and consultant Patrick Lencioni spins a fable about a new CEO who takes on the challenge of transforming a dysfunctional executive group into a cohesive, high-performance team. Along the way, the group explores and confronts the pitfalls and dysfunctions that can inhibit teamwork and performance. I found the book compelling and gripping as a good fable can be.

The core instructive content (the list) presented in the book centers around the five dysfunctions that Lencioni presents in the form of a pyramid model.

Absence of Trust

The first of the dysfunctions, absence of trust, stems from teams unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.

Fear of Conflict

This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets a tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

Lack of Commitment

A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings.

Avoidance of Accountability

Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

Inattention to Results

Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

A List with a Positive Twist

A list that positively states the desired characteristic or behavior would be more compatible with my growing insight into high performance teams and collaboration. Fortunately, Lencioni provides a positive list in his summary of the book.

The members of truly cohesive teams:

Trust one another.
They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.
They commit to decisions and plans of action.
They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.
They focus on the achievement of collective results.

The list seems pretty simple but we know in practice it is difficult to achieve. It requires new team insights and consideration from every team member. And, of course, it takes a leader to set the stage.

Next Manifest Team: 6 Habits of Highly Effective Teams

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Manifest Team 1: Characteristics of High Performance Teams

In my last post, I announced my plan to share my current study of team building and collaboration that coincidentally happens to be somewhat list centric. Manifest Team is my title of this series of posts that will summarize these lists. Manifest Team 1 is the first of several such posts.

A team and collaboration list that I encountered a few years ago, continues to influence my thoughts about team building and collaboration. The list comes from the book, Interpersonal Skills in Organizations. Authors De Janasz, Dowd, and Schneider provide research background and a very concise list of the "Characteristics of High-Performance Teams." Here is their list with my comments and summary:

Common purpose and goals: Leaders need to ensure that all team members clearly understand the mission of the team. It's an obvious characteristic and on the surface seems easy when there is a single mission. However, in my work environment, many team members are engaged in multiple projects and clarity and priority becomes challenging in the face of multiple projects.

Clear roles: Team members need to understand their roles and assignments. And it's better when the understanding includes the big picture, task interdependence, and how one members work affects other members.

Communication processes: High performance teams use extensive communication methods. A variety of approaches (in person, phone, email) are used and updates are frequent.

Accepting and supportive leadership: High performance teams have leaders that function more like coaches than managers. These are leaders who look to influence and not control. This is quiet leadership at work.

Small size: High performance teams range in size from 6 to 10 members.

High levels of technical and interpersonal skills: The members of the team have both people and technical skills. The team is able to apply these skills to areas like problem solving, feedback, and conflict management.

Open relationships and trust: High performance team develop cooperative behaviors, assist each other, are approachable and dependable.

Accountability: The members of the high performance team understand that performance matters and that members share a mutual responsibility for the success of the team. The perfect scenario is when all team members feel accountable to the team rather than accountable to a project or resource manager.

Reward structures: High-performing teams are rewarded for team accomplishments in addition to individual performance. Team success needs to be celebrated.

One characteristic of this list that seems very compatible with Lead Quietly principles is that none of the "Characteristics of High-Performance Teams" cited by HeJanasz, Dowd, and Schneider recognize a dependency on the work of a project or resource manager. A team comprised of quiet leaders, who have a clear mission and roles, communicate well, and are generally accountable to each other and the team can self direct and achieve great success.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don