Courage and Hope
The ability to inspire hope is a fundamental difference between those who lead successfully and those who do not. Inspiring hope is what makes a crucial difference as we lead. "Hope is an inner mental force that triggers action.... Hope reassures us that things will work out, that we will win". Hope energizes as it triggers anticipation, expectation and action. It is a force that makes us feel we can make a difference.
Hope embraces possibilities, that some positive future is attainable. Hope evolves into a self-fulfilling prophecy boosting our ability to accomplish new and difficult things. Hope reduces uncertainty while allowing us to stay open and receptive.
Yet at the same time, unlike expectations, Hope does not demand immediate results. Rather, Hope enjoys a greater freedom to let events unfold in their own time. Hope heals and is a critical factor in our recovery from what ails us. It provides the impetus for us to begin again because it stirs our imagination with power.
Hope builds community - - it is contagious. Hope is found in relationships - - Hope is a cooperative act. Hope sustains us and keeps dreams alive even in the face of contrary evidence. Hope is what keeps us moving forward when our energy is low and our challenge is great. Hope stretches us. Leaders need to understand the power of Hope.
Hope nurtures the soul.
In times of great crisis, disaster or tragedy, we look to our leaders for direction and clarity as we search for meaning and sense. "Fear is damaging. It causes insecure behavior that can run from defensiveness and negativity to paranoia and operational paralysis"
Courage
Leadership requires courage - - to be the first, to be different, to speak out, to listen, to act and to fail.
As leaders, we need to speak up to confront the opinion or truth that others don't want to hear. We ought to encourage dialogue, debate and divergent opinions.
We must listen well because in true listening mutual respect, trust and learning builds - - transformation follows. If we are fearless we accept that failure is a possibility. We understand that only if we are prepared to take risks that may result in failure, can we discover what we are truly capable of.
The "legitimization of doubt" is what frees leaders to admit that they don't know everything. With that freedom we are able to pursue the serious learning our followers and our organizations need so badly. We are moving into an age when more and more younger people will know more than their seniors.
Fallible Leaders
As leaders we need to embrace our doubts as we go through the unnerving experience of being thrown into situations we cannot possibly anticipate. When our self-confidence is shaken the possibilities of dispersing leadership come alive.
Today above all, as leaders we cannot be an island. Organizations have had great difficulties because they have placed too much emphasis on the individual - - or a few "great" people - - and not enough emphasis on the power of teams.
What sets extraordinary leaders apart from the rest is their willingness to fail and to set the example for others to take risks. True leaders know how to turn the negatives of failure into positives for success. Leaders need to probe deeply into what they fear; our fears are a haven for learning. In exploring the fear of the unknown we find virgin territory for opportunity. We need to learn how to take risks without being reckless or ruthless.
Clarity & Reality
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality". Peter Drucker has stated the greatest temptation during times of turbulence is the temptation to deny reality. As our world becomes more turbulent, our ability to tell what is going on with certainty decreases. It also becomes increasingly apparent that no one can fix the unfixable.
Clarity diminishes as we go through four stages:
- Stage one - - Stable and flexible world: this is the realm of positional leaders, or more properly, expert managers who in linear fashion fix one problem after another after another - - this is not really leadership but rather an equation of expertise plus authority. Command-and-control works well in this stage.
- Stage two - - Complex with discernible patterns: the fix-it-mentality continues but adaptive managerial systems take over from individual expertise. The focus is more on mechanical problems than people issues because the mechanical are more readily fixable. If carefully watched, massively entangled systems will be seen with deep patterns - - solutions are found in the relational and the dynamic.
- Stage three - - Chaotic with no sure outcome: in this world standard operating procedures and routine problem-solving become deeply inappropriate - - they are in fact counterproductive. Surprise and constant change contributes to this unorganized dimension.
- Stage four - - Terrifying, challenging hope and courage: in this stage and the previous, leadership is critical as the need to (a) improvise, (b) confront paradox, and (c) wrestle with the deep questions of identity and meaning, come to the forefront. The goal is to move from wild chaos, evil, and fear towards courage, hope and trust, as well as alignment.
Leadership is "grounded in the wisdom of knowing what is really happening, which often means moving beyond fixing and managing. An authentic leader probes, questions, improvises, and learns from mistakes".
What Is Really Going On?
"Some of the worst difficulties in relationships between superiors and subordinates come from misperceiving reality". Our perceptions are colored by our paradigms, assumptions, prejudices and preconceptions.
Most often we just do not see what is there. The context or frame of reference of the superior through which he interprets is often most dissimilar for the subordinate. Many failures of leadership can be traced to oversimplification based on misperception.
Answering the toughest question of leadership - - what is really going on - - requires a lifelong commitment to learning. Creating meaning in chaos requires a deep awareness that surprises destabilize us all. When disaster or tragedy comes upon us, we as leaders need to create safe spaces and security within which we can all wrestle with the crisis.
Leadership improvises knowing that no one can be in charge - - that the resources of the collective must be drawn upon with each individual contributing. Leadership asks what is behind what is going on:
This world is not fixable. Leadership stands with people in empathy rather than trying to fix the unfixable. It also faces feelings inside oneself and outside in the world. It takes courage to live here.
Courage involves taking risks toward a virtuous goal with no guaranteed outcome.
Conceptualizing
Conceptualizing is the prime leadership talent.
Conceptualizing is the process of how we make sense of a complex situation. "Most of the time, people in positions of authority trivialize complex issues". The inability to think things through is the reason that pat solutions are offered to highly complex issues.
The reasons for this are twofold:
- leaders want to appear to have the answers
- they assume people don't have the capacity to think for themselves
But followers can think for themselves, can deal with dilemmas, and can consider the possibility that complex issues are actually complex. Not all can decipher the complexity but that is where leadership enters.
Conceptual leadership helps relieve fear, disappointment, and disillusionment. Conceptual leaders in making sense of complexity to their constituents bring hope, direction, involvement, and empowerment.
Changing
Paradoxically, vulnerability actually increases effective power. Resistance to change disappears as constituents see change in their leaders. Attitudes completely shift as people see - - not that someone up there is trying to change them - - but that someone they look up to is trying to change him/herself.
People learn by imitating those they admire. Without an example there is often doubt, and commitment based on "buy in" is seldom enduring. Ideas come and go and so does commitment with them.
"There is nothing so difficult as changing oneself". The commitment required to change oneself is the same commitment needed to build a great enterprise. In considering the weight of this understanding on leadership, the acid test of leadership is found in the question:
Do the people around the leader grow?
Inflection Points
Compared to 20 years ago, to some extent every leader feels "thrown". In other words, we are all operating in a state of vertigo - - thrown by the speed and complexity of our world. The role of leadership has become so complex, that we are seeing the end of the "great man" era.
For the best and brightest to just learn their own jobs takes an exceedingly long period of time. We cannot just lead from the balcony - - we have to be out there on stage anticipating and understanding the various forces in play. We have gone from analog to digital and from linear to nonlinear.
"The sheer complexity and paralyzing paradoxes of leading today are beyond most mortals"
It's not enough to have emotional intelligence - - we have to engage our people and flutter their hearts in the spiritual destiny of our organization. We must continually remind our people of what's important about our mission and engage them in dialogue.
We have to anticipate and proactively respond to change before it's too late; by time people are demanding we do something, it is too late. The name of the leadership game is anticipation - - we need to have wide peripheral vision and the ability to see weak signals. We will see many inflection points upon which the future of our organization may turn.
The art of leadership comes in knowing which points make a difference. The conceptualizing ability of leadership - - the ability to give direction - - is the difference between chasing fads and chasing dreams with real growth.
Environmental Turbulence
Strategic inflection points are events - - sometimes monumental - - that cause us to fundamentally change our business strategy, says CEO of Intel, Andrew Grove. A big change in environmental conditions, a strategic inflection point, signals the emergence of new rules and priorities for becoming and staying successful.
Adaptation is required not only in times of stable external conditions but also during periods of environmental turbulence.
High-performance and success can inoculate an organization from change required to both survive and later flourish. Under conditions of dramatic, unpredictable environmental change, double loop learning is required in order to understand the prospect of decline or collapse. Examples of strategic inflection points include the displacement of mainframe computers by PCs, the development of containerization in shipping and rail transportation, and, the arrival of the Internet and the Web as new channels of communication.
The biggest difficulty is distinguishing critical inflection points from the many routine changes that impinge upon our world.
For businesses, the answer may lie in one of four questions:
- Has something happened to the entity about which we most worry?
- Has it significantly changed direction?
- Has a partner or market ally, a key complementor, been making fundamental changes?
- Has a new technology or innovation become a dominant part of followers' conversations?
Most often, evidence right under our noses signals the arrival of a critical inflection point.
Sigmoid Curves or S-Curves
However it is most easy for us to miss the signs of key change.
We will miss such evidence less often if we listen to the people - - often from the lower ranks of the organization - - who bring bad news. We need to learn to live with contrarian viewpoints that can come from any part of the organization. We need to welcome the doomsayers and the worrywarts whose pessimism and cynicism often points the way to organizational salvation. We need to embrace the fear that such views can bring. Somehow, we must be able to discern and make sense of the new world landscape.
Address the concept in terms of sigmoid curves. Just as products have life cycles, so too, do organizations have periods of learning and investment, followed by steady growth which then one day peaks and turns into decline. This evolution can be conceived as various points on a curve. The only way to prolong the life of the organization is to start a second curve. Leaders of high-performance organizations have to find ways to start second curves before the first curve peaks:
It means recognizing, in the midst of a run of success, that it can't last forever and that paradoxically now is the time to start investigating alternatives. It is easier to do that when the need for change is obvious, than when the curve is heading downhill. But that is just when morale is low, resources are depleted, and leaders are discredited -- the worst conditions for any radical thinking.
There are earlier, often unnoticed, signs that perceptive leaders can use as triggers for starting a second curve. Customer or client complaints, if viewed objectively and not defensively, can point to areas where change is needed. Young people or new recruits can often see possibilities to which familiarity has blinded those in positions of power.
This prescription, however, requires leaders to blend continuity, the first curve, with invention, the second curve. That, in turn, means finding ways for two very different cultures to live together and to value each other, because each needs the other if either is to survive. The second curve needs the resources of the first to support its experiments, and the first curve needs the second if it is to have any future at all.
The challenge focuses on the critical strategic inflection point. The objective of survival in the presence of a threatening challenge takes precedence over the improvement of performance based on best practices or other methods. This inflection point signals a major change in environmental conditions and signals the emergence of new rules and priorities for becoming and staying successful. The inflection point marks the end of a previously successful mindset and proclaims previous strategies will longer be effective.
Transformation Capacity
There are five key variables or levers determine an organization's capacity for transformation:
- the quality of conversations for action and change - - quality hinges on the rate of information flow within the organization
- the degree of diversity in its change agents - - the collective intelligence of the organization and its capacity for creativity and innovation
- the richness of connectivity affecting the organization's sense of identity - - the ability to transcend perceptions of the corporate boundary as the organization interfaces with the environment
- the degree of felt stress amongst the organization's functional leaders - - the existing level of contained anxiety generated from control mechanisms and disincentives
- the degree of empowerment of change agents - - existing authority and control within the organizational design
The quality of information that flows throughout the organization, because of trust and respect, brings the knowledge power to the individuals who possess organizational power to develop critical strategic initiatives. The quality of information is also impacted by the degree of connectivity between the people at the boundary or frontline of the organization and what is occurring in the external environment.
The degree of diversity, or organizational richness, is the result of key people being neither too different to be rejected nor too similar to have no impact. The degree of felt stress is also a matter of balance, avoiding both too much complacency as well as too much defensiveness, so that there is predisposed power within the organization to continually address environmental challenge.
The degree of empowerment especially of the frontline agents who interact at the boundaries of the corporate environment with customers, suppliers, and competitors is also matter of balance. The sense of what is happening "out there" requires sufficient empowerment to take corrective innovative and strategic action to adapt to environmental change. Insufficient empowerment results in cynicism and apathy depriving leadership of critical information. Excessive empowerment results in a personal turf protection of special interests rather than service of central strategic objectives.
Move to the Edge of Chaos
The adaptive leadership mode required during periods of large changes in the environment has the capacity to move an organization to the edge of chaos. The chaos facilitates the organization's transformation to adapt to the new more complex environment. The increased adaptation complexity, as shown in a larger repertoire of responses to change and a greater degree of internal coordination, allows the organization to "jump the curve" from a context of decline to new growth opportunity.
When the competitive environment changes, it is vital for an organization to identify promptly the strategic inflection point beyond which things are no longer what they used to be. At that point the organization must find the capability to transform itself by jumping the curve to conduct business in a new way that meets the need of the new competitive landscape. Sustained high-performance comes from the ability to empower people to meet the challenge of change.
As has been shown, organizations change primarily as a result of external change in the competitive environment. Environmental change is the evolutional granddaddy of all other change. To a lesser extent, change may also be the result of leader intervention or employee motivation to improve the service provided to internal and external customers of the organization.
Culture of Empowerment
Employee creativity and innovation is found in a culture of empowerment. Command-and-control constraints do not foster creativity but rather compliance and conformity. Although collectively organizations do change the competitive environment, except under rare circumstances, an organization is not powerful enough to solely change the external environment.
What organizations can do is change and reinvent themselves. Such change is initiated by empowered individuals within the organization.
Empowerment comes from organizational design and culture. Resistance to change has much to do with empowerment, or more precisely, the lack of voice and empowerment. Such resistance and constraint can occur at any strata within the organization. Likewise, empowered creativity can occur at any level.
Organizational self-reinvention is always possible but seldom known. Organizations can always change and respond to their environment - - for the lack of this knowledge, too little change comes too late.
Leaders in high performing organizations create continuous change at every level - - the dignity and mutual respect within such institutions seldom notices the delineation of position.
Leverage is found in mutuality. Resistance is found in the debasement of the ego and the trappings of status. High-performance is found in an organizational community that celebrates individual contributions to teamwork.
As leaders, upon discovery of a critical inflection point we must develop new strategies that bridges between the attributes of the successful past and the new customer demands of the currently emerging turbulent environment. A new vision, a new mission, and possibly a dramatic change in culture may be required to accommodate the new strategies.
A strategy that takes the offensive will deal with the forces that drive industry competition by devising whole new ways of seeing and serving the customer.
Leadership must help the organization move quickly from denial to acceptance of change and then to action. When it is clear - - if that is possible - - that a strategic inflection point has arrived, it is not time for panic. Rather, we must move calmly forward through two phases.
It would be premature to immediately restructure at the first sign of trouble. Instead, as leaders we must grant in the first phase, the freedom for experimentation and chaos to reign. We must empower our followers to deal with and adapt to change - - while we watch and learn from them.
As experimentation sheds further light on what is happening, we need to build a new picture of the shape of things to come. We must be careful to not disrupt people's lives with change before we have put together a plan we can fully commit to - - hesitancy can prevent much pain and protect credibility.
In the second phase, comes the "not fun" part. We have to start by doing away with established practices and established people - - we have to tear apart before we can put together something new. At the same time, it would be foolhardy to do away with everything old. Rather, we need to balance every new effort against the current commitments of our organization.
In the second phase, we must speak clearly about what changes have come about and what the organization is going to do about them. At that point we describe what the future may hold for us and how we will walk to the other side of the "Valley of Death".
Start with Real Honesty
In the midst of an extreme financial crisis in the company Phil Carroll, retired CEO of Shell Oil, told his constituents that he didn't have the answer. By being honest he signaled that many others would have to step up to help shape the future of the company. This led to an outpouring of creative initiatives. A strong internal network of leaders developed.
Carroll stated "if you're not aware of your own flaws and shortcomings and lack of judgment, you will lead people in wrong ways".
Accompanying vulnerability is the need for honesty: "if you don't have a fundamental commitment to the truth and telling the truth, you can't lead. And telling the truth is so much more difficult than just not lying".
Carroll continued "every process of transformation begins with yourself. It has to start with personal change. The abstraction of corporate transformation - - that's a result, that's not a method". Humility and vulnerability are most important elements of leadership.
Go to: Next article in the series Go to: Articles Go to: Specialty Practices Go to: Home