Leadership for the "We" Generation

An article this week in Business Week proposes that recent events will usher in a "new era of leadership that will affect every aspect of American institutions and that sounds a death knell for the top-down, power-oriented leadership prevalent in the 20th century."

The author is Bill George Harvard Business School professor, author of two best-selling books, True North and Authentic Leadership and the former chairman of Medtronic. I appreciate Bill George's leadership perspective and have cited his work previously on Lead Quietly (see Be Yourself)

For this article, George was describing the impact of the election of Barrack Obama. He suggests that a "new style of "bottom-up, empowering" leadership focusing on collaboration will sweep the country."

We have seen to many failures associated with top-down leadership in the financial world, government and education. Given where we are today, a new collaborative style of leadership sounds pretty refreshing. It kind of sounds like quiet leadership.

Please read the Business Week article.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

It's a Shared Leadership World

Recently,  I wrote an leadership article for the BA Collective, a forum with a mission "to unite the Business Analysts in our community and provide a place where we all can share experiences and continually evolve our knowledge as our role as Business Analysts evolves."

Business Analysts provide a vital leadership role in our project teams.  A role that fits nicely in a shared leadership model.  In the article, I describe characteristics of shared leadership, a leadership model based on the premise that leadership is not a title but a decision that anyone can make.  

Here is the start of the article and a link to read the entire content.

With Opportunity and Leadership for All

Are you a leader? Certainly BAs have a leadership role on teams. But leadership can be intimidating. Consequently, your answer to the leader question might depend on your definition of leadership. It is reasonable to ask, "What you mean by leadership?" 

For many, the first vision that comes to our mind is the picture of a charismatic and heroic leader, a person in command who possesses great skill and authority. This vision of the heroic leader is classic. However, with this vision it is frankly hard for many of us to aspire to a leadership role. Speaking for myself, I am not heroic. Charismatic? Not my style. Can I be a leader and just be me?

There are other leadership approaches. This article will focus on the other end of the leadership spectrum where one finds a shared or distributed model where leadership is no longer the exclusive responsibility of a single person. It’s a model where anyone can be a leader. Under a shared model, leadership is cultivated at all levels of an organization. Leadership doesn’t require a title or authority. Leadership is a choice and as a BA, it is a choice that you can make. 

This article will explore the concept of shared leadership and provide insight and awareness. Second, this article will touch on some simple ideas that BAs or anyone can use to expand their leadership influence. Leadership is a choice. Anyone can lead.

Read the full article at BA Collective.

Thanks for reading.  Please lead quietly and share the lead.

Don

 

We need to be Leaderful not Leaderless.

I have describe in earlier posts that a larger community of leaders on a team brings balance, more collaboration and greater success to the work of teams. With shared leadership, everyone has an opportunity to lead. Leadership is a decision that you make, not a title bestowed.

My recent study of shared leadership led me to the insight of Professor Joe Raelin of Northeastern University that I encountered in his book Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone.

Raelin's concept of leaderful practice resonated with me immediately in his preface where he declares that leaderful practice "directly challenges the conventional view of leadership as 'being out in front.'....everyone shares the experience of serving as leader, not sequentially, but concurrently and collectively."

I appreciate the leaderful paradigm that comes from Raelin's work. I have always been challenged with the leaderless concept that appears in some shared leadership models. Even though an organization or team might not have a titled leader, the need for leadership does not disappear. The term leaderless doesn't feel right. A team still needs vision, relating and inventing, all activities associated with leadership. The leaderful paradigm is a perfect counterpoint that suggests that more leadership, not less leadership, is the appropriate organizational goal. Leaderful suggests that there is a leadership opportunity for everyone.

I intend to continue my review of the Raelin book. If you are interested in the core leaderful tenets, you can get an introduction from the Leaderful Institute web site.

My immediate Quiet Leader call to action however, is to ask the question, Am I supporting and cultivating the leadership efforts of my teamates in order to form a more leaderful team? Are you?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and leaderfully.

Don

The Leadership Dance Requires Balance

Do you do the leadership dance? Do you keep your balance?

Leaders who share leadership with other leaders under a shared leadership model end of doing a bit of a leadership dance. Leaders who do it best try to keep the dance balanced and try to stay nimble.



The picture of a dance came to me after reviewing the work of Deborah Ancona and and William Issacs on the The 4-Player Model: A Framework for Healthy Teams. In this research and study, they provide a mechanistic view of the work of teams. They suggest that team effort is compromised of four core acts:

Move — This act establishes a direction and sets the team in motion.
Example: “Let's build Product X. Product X is the best idea out there.”

Follow — The follow act provides support for the move and serves the function of completion.
Example: “I agree with the arguments you've made. Product X is the way to go.”

Oppose — The oppose act questions the move that has been initiated.
Example: “The data don't support your claims. We'll be in real trouble if we go with Product X.”

Bystand — Bystanding provides perspective and invites the team to be more reflective. A bystander might bring in data from another team, an historic perspective, or some insight about the operations of the team itself.
Example: “We tried some of these same ideas two years ago and they didn't work. What do we think has changed?”

As a leader who is sharing leadership with multiple team members, you will find that there are times when you will lead, but then other times when someone else is leading and you will follow. You might have to oppose if you don't agree with another leader's actions. There are other times when you need to take a break and study and gain other insight. The shift in activities as this occurs in team efforts makes up the leadership dance.


The work of Ancona and Issaacs goes on to suggest that balance and flexibility in the dance activities are keys to healthy, creative and productive teams. If any one activity dominates, dysfunction can occur.

Please review this work at the MIT Leadership center for more insight. But more importantly, leaders should watch their dance steps. It needs to be balanced and nimble.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and keep dancing.

Don

Curiosity as a measure of passion

Learning and curiosity is one of the key elements of quiet leadership as defined on this blog. My personal carnival of learning at Lead Quietly would include these posts:

• It's All About Learning
• It's All About Learning - Part Deux
• Fixed or Growth, What's in your mindset?
• Mindset, it will profoundly affect everything.

I was intrigued when Steve Roesler, a fellow Best of 2008 Leadership Blog nominee at his All Things Workplace blog took a different twist, a better perspective on the work of Dr. Carol Dweck that differentiates between a Growth versus Fixed Mindset. I have discussed this concept previously.

In Curiosity, Passion and Leadership, Steve elevates the value of curiosity, by proposing that a curious mind-set that can be used as a yard stick to measure passion. As he writes,

Leaders value people who display a never-ending curiosity for the many facets of the business. Similarly, successful employees of every ilk display a never-ending curiosity that emerges as "passion" in a meeting room filled with people.

What better measure of passion than curiosity?
You can see it's presence or absence in interviews, meetings, telephone conversations, or luncheon chatter. You can display it and you can discern it.

Steve encourages leaders to hire and promote people with passion where you measure passion by sensing their curiosity.

As leaders, we should show our curiosity, it comes across as passion. And when asked, "What's in your mindset?" Show your curiosity and passion.

Thanks Steve for the new insight.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and show your passion, ahhhh, I mean curiosity.
Don

Thanks, there is lots of agreement on Gratitude

I am a fan of thanks and gratitude in the work place. To me the concept is pretty simple. When someone helps you, look them in the eye and say thanks. Then make it a habit. Do it all the time.

The effort can become contagious. A favorite Tom Peters quotation of mine is:

"It" begets "it."

Fact: "Not it" begets "It-less-ness."

Smiling begets a warmer (work, home) environment.

Thanking begets an environment of mutual appreciation.

Two other Best of 2008 Leadership Blogs have also written about gratitude that both inspire and elevate the importance of gratitude.

I previously quoted fellow nominee Carmine Coyote at the Slow Leadership blog, in Build Community - Start simply with smiles and thanks. Carmine proposes that gratitude is a "major constituent in the glue that holds together groups of all sizes."

As she says,

Thanking others and recognizing how much we all depend on support and co-operation makes it far more likely that help will be there when you need it.

Another nominee Steve Farber at Extreme Leadership linked Fascination and Gratitude.

If you're fascinated with [the people around you], you'll discover how to add value to their lives; and if you're genuinely grateful for their patronage, partnership or friendship you'll show them in ways that are sincere and meaningful. Those are the essential elements of a fabulously productive business relationship--or any relationship, for that matter.

Another influence on my thinking about leadership and gratitude has been Rosa Say at Managing with Aloha. She expresses her thoughts on gratitude with Aloha style:

• Mahalo means thankful living.
  

• Say “thank you” often; speak of your appreciation and it will soften the tone of your voice, giving it richness, humility and fullness.

It's a pretty simple concept with lot's of support.

Finally, in a virtual sort of way that can only be done on the blogosphere, I'm looking YOU in the eye and saying, thank you for visiting, reading, and subscribing. I appreciate and am humbled by your participation in my public study of quiet leadership at Lead Quietly.

Thanks again. Please lead quietly.
Don

Troubled by charisma, angst about heroics.

I am troubled by charisma. I have angst about leadership heroics.

I am talking about the expectation that there is a link between leadership and charisma and that heroics are a leadership requirement.

The trouble for me reemerged a few weeks ago when Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership described a television interview where a mandatory link between charisma and leadership was proposed by a university professor of psychology. Jim questioned the link in his post as did I in my comment to the post.

I do not believe that charisma is inextricably linked to leadership. To establish my position, I will cite the research and work of author Jim Collins in his bestseller,Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. I'd like to believe the the type of Level 5 leadership Collins proposes in Good to Great can and should be the leadership style to which we aspire. He describes the humility of Level 5 leaders who,

Acts with quiet, calm determination;
relies principally on inspired standards,
not inspiring charisma, to motivate.

Certainly, there is another camp to this debate. There are some who believe that charisma and even narcissism are important elements of the leadership mix. Tom Peters has publicly refuted the Jim Collins position (Here is the PowerPoint titled, Tom Peters Squares Off with Jim Collins. Or: The Case for ... Technicolor!). I respect of the work of Tom Peters tremendously and as another Best of 2008 Leadership Blog nominee, you will find nuggets of Tom Peters insight scattered throughout this blog. You can see why I am challenged by charisma.

In the midst of my recent debate, I was reminded of another post in the Lead Quietly archive which is inspired by another Best of 2008 Leadership Blog nominee, Rhett Laubach. In What do you mean by charisma? I also challenged the relationship of leadership and charisma. I wrote,

I find Laubach's insight on care-isma just perfect. He writes,

People naturally like to be around people who are pleasant, joyful and smiling. It is a natural response to a natural trait of influential people who are great at attracting others. Call it charisma if you want. I prefer to call it care-isma. It demonstrates you care about your attitude, you care about the influence you have on others, and you care about others.

This type of charisma, i.e. care-isma resolves the complexity for me. My less than super powers are quite adequate and I am happy to leave charisma to the actors, athletes, evangelists, and politicians. And the best news to me is that I can be myself. No other personas are required.

I recently revisited the Laubach's Personal Leadership Insight blog and picked up another simple nugget that resonates with me, "If you want more influence, have care-isma." Rhett, it's brilliant.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don