The Art and Heart of Leadership - Part Two

To read Part One of this post: please CLICK HERE - 

This is an unusually long post - probably longer than most people find appealing. But this  post wasn't written for "most people." It was written for people who understand that the journey to become a fully competent leader is hard work - and that the rewards of what it takes - is self-evident to those who have dared to achieve what few would even bother to commit to. The post is long because the subject, "The Art and Heart of Leadership" is not a small matter. To trivialize the topic would be the exact opposite of the point of the article. If you find it too tedious to bear, my apologies for taking you this far. But if you are inspired to lead your own journey and perhaps discover how you might change the world for the better, then no apology is needed. With sincere gratitude and appreciation. - prl

Have you ever wondered, what is it that makes a great leader great?

If you examine anyone considered historically to have been a great leader you will likely conclude that the judgment was determined by what they have accomplished. The value of what they did is measured by their accomplishments – not by the energy they expended. The motivationalista (the industry that concerns itself with selling success formulas and tools) will back out the successful accomplishments – and attempt to correlate factors assumed to be contributing to that success – and suggest that a recipe exists based on the identified process and ingredients. The trouble is, there are no recipes and any tool is only as good as the person whose hands it is in. You can walk around with pearl-handled pistols – and never be another General Patton anymore than spending 27 years in prison will make you into a Nelson Mandela.

The reason recipes and pre-packaged toolkits don’t work is that leadership is not about what we do, it’s about who we are and how that informs what we choose to do and make ourselves capable of doing. The most competent leaders modify the tools and methods others use – or invent new ones themselves. The same is true with their thinking.

Why we do something seems to have as much or maybe more impact on our results than what we do. Simon Sinek, in his first book “Start with Why,” brilliantly explores this phenomenon. The explanation comes down to understanding that leadership always involves people. And while people may respond to their surroundings is somewhat predicable ways, we are as much emotional beings as rational ones. We are guided by both facts and feelings. How we feel about things actually determines how we think about things. Leadership tends to suffer at the hands of fickle human emotions.

This is why leadership is not a science. Dr. Lee Thayer, in his opus work, “Leadership: Thinking Being Doing” argues that leadership is a performing art. We act a role and it is our performance that gets others to follow, or not. Our performance engages our audience and the overall experience is synthesized by the dynamic created between the performer and audience. That dynamic is driven by how people feel.

Part of the role we play may be data generator, information distributor or fact checker, but to our audience of followers – or would-be followers – we had better be a “meaning maker and manager.” Facts, data and information do nothing in and of themselves, they need to be interpreted and applied to something before they have any value. And that value is entirely a matter of how people interpret the meaning of what they are presented with.

An effective leader manages the meaning for people in how it is selected and presented by providing context and purpose. This is how great leaders perform. They take raw information, and like a lump of clay, mold it into something that others can see and hold. And they demonstrate how people should feel about it. It is those who can grasp the meaning of what the leader presents that might choose to become effective followers. That is if they feel like following – because the leader has either made that possible or necessary to.

We cannot think without relying on our feelings. No matter how rigorously trained we are, even if we are habitualized to divorce our feelings from our actions (like Navy SEALS and other elite military soldiers are taught in order to perform their duties under the most adverse conditions) – it is still a feeling that causes us to adhere to those principles. Habits of thinking are formed by how we feel about them. A sense of duty is a feeling. When we examine facts – how we relate to them is informed by how we feel. We might feel 100% confident, or we might feel a tug of doubt. We learn to trust what we see – and then watch a skilled illusionist seem to make a car vanish – and wonder what we actually saw. The old saw, “seeing is believing” is more accurately, as the late Wayne Dyer suggested, “when you believe it, you will see it.”   We don’t interpret anything, or make a single decision without our feelings impacting what we do.

This is why leadership is necessarily more an art than science. IBM’s supercomputer Watson may be able to play chess or beat human contestants on Jeopardy, but it will never learn to be an effective leader – at least not until we can program computers with human emotions.

This is why when we look to what makes a person a highly competent or a great leader, we are looking beyond a specific set of skills and personality traits. Experience counts for something – but perhaps not what you think. Leadership may require certain specific skills attributes and specific experience that must meet the needs of what you are leading. Leading a military operation is clearly different than leading a community bake sale. However, there are some skills and attributes that logically apply to all forms of leadership – such as the ability to communicate effectively and understand the objectives of whatever we are leading – and the consequences for not attaining them.

While experience may be invaluable and even necessary in order to accomplish many worthwhile things, the value of experience is not a constant. We don’t necessarily learn what we need to know from what we have done. Having leadership experience doesn’t guarantee that we have or will be an effective leader. We may have been successful in the past – but fortunate that our incompetence didn’t matter all that much. Or we may have been fully competent leading an incompetent or poorly constructed organization and not given another opportunity to apply our abilities. It is always the organization that makes the leader successful. It is impossible to evaluate leadership in the absence of the circumstances of their accomplishments.

Where our experience always counts is to the extent that it speaks to the collective choices we have made. These choices amount to who we are. How we feel about things are informed by all of our choices of the past – and hence how we feel about decisions we need to make today. Our experience tends to dictate how we feel about things and how competently we make the decisions that create our destinies.

There are some aspects of leadership that are purely matters of experience. Anthony Jay in Machiavelli and Management wrote “the only preparation for leadership is leadership.” In part one of this series I mentioned how Allen Mulally was able to be a successful serial leader and transfer his competence in leading Boeing to turning around Ford Motor Company. I had pointed out that if leadership was purely a science – this would not be the notably rare experience it is. It seems that Mulally was able to accomplish what he did at Ford based on how his experiences made him who he needed to be. It was not a script or formula he followed, it was a matter of pushes and pulls he employed based on what he “felt” was necessary. Experience taught him what might work – but his feelings helped him select from the myriad of good and bad experiences and the many tools at his disposal and direct his course of action.

Three Principle Aspects of Leadership That are Best ( and probably only) Learned By Being a Leader

It’s ridiculous to suggest that the art (or heart) of leadership can be distilled into a few neat directives. Leadership is far too complex. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to becoming a fully competent leader. While there are no secrets or shortcuts, the following observations of three facets of leadership are examples of what leaders only learn by leading. To anyone who has not been in the position to lead, they may make intellectual sense, but, like learning to ride a bicycle, understanding the mechanics does not translate into the actual experience: you cannot learn to ride a bike without riding one.

1) It’s the organization that ultimately makes the leader successful or not.

Leadership can never be forced on anyone or anything. The first person on a chain gang doesn’t become the leader based on position on the line. Circumstances often dictate our position in life. Understanding that creating followers is the only way we become a leader is a concept most (but apparently not all) would-be leaders can grasp. But being someone who can achieve that isn’t something you learn in any classroom or from reading any book. Even watching someone who has done this – doesn’t provide you with instruction that will necessarily work for you.

When Allen Mulally came to Ford – he spent well over a year – being deliberately and excruciatingly patient as he participated in weekly meetings of the global leadership as they perpetuated the thinking, behavior and habits that had plunged Ford into a downward spiral that could have certainly placed it square in the financial mess that GM and Chrysler found themselves in. But he knew that grandstanding, wildly gesticulating or even trying to logically redirect his people would not change the direction of the ship. And he needed these people – the ones who knew how the ship ran – and how to guide it - onboard if he was going to be successful.

Few people would have the patience, tenacity or courage to sit back and wait. Most people, if told that this was the best and perhaps only way to save the company, still could not. But Mulally was catapulted into legendary leadership status, not by his design, but by the organization he was able to re-design. And by the fact that he is someone who could accomplish what he did. But if despite all of this, Ford had tanked with the rest of the auto industry, we would not be lavishing praise on Mulally. It is always the organization that makes the leader successful, not the other way around.

2) It’s not what you choose to do that matters. It’s whether you are someone who can.

I’ve worked with dozens of successful CEOs. They are mostly successful to the degree that they are because they are consummate doers. They pride themselves on being able to get things done and enjoy a reputation for that among those they lead. But there is more to getting things done than meets the eye. As a coach and mentor – I get a front-row seat and can see how much they fail to get done – or accomplish. That’s generally why they agree to work with me. And when they are faced with a complex problem they must solve and have no easy solution for, the reflex question they utter to themselves, sometimes in frustration even out loud, is “What do I do?” The question certainly seems reasonable on paper. So why is this an issue?

Rarely do we accomplish complex or meaningful things simply by what we do. How well we can do anything is a product of who we are, particularly in the face of adversity. And who we are is not a matter of personality traits. Is a matter of how you think and the habits you have formed. And much of that is based on the choices you have made.

To illustrate, if given an operating room equipped with all the tools required to perform brain surgery – and a text book – or even a You Tube how-to video – I highly doubt I or anyone could “do” brain surgery. A competent neurosurgeon isn’t someone who simply can do these highly complex and dangerous operations. They have demonstrated comprehensive understanding of the science and mastery of the art before they become a surgeon. A surgeon is a state of being, not of doing. It is who they have learned to become that enables them to do what they do, and they spend years and years becoming someone who can perform brain surgery before they are ever allowed to do so. They are virtuosos that understand the need to be constantly learning and improving. As much as they may seem to be knowers – in fact they are growers who constantly challenge the status quo in pursuit of learning better ways to address the challenges that forever confront them.

Fully competent leaders learn that jumping into action or going into “doing mode” is a game of hit or miss. Without the requisite thinking – and preparing yourself to accomplish what must be accomplished in order to cause the results you are aiming for your chances for failure increase. You reduce your misses when you become someone who can hit.

3) Your ego will unwittingly get the best of you unless you make a habit of being aware of the many ways it tends to creep up on us and vigilant as to the signs that it is rearing up.

An important attribute of powerful, competent leadership is an unyielding dedication and duty to something outside of and beyond us – something bigger than we are. Without such a cause guiding us, leaders easily fall into a self-serving trap. Knowing the purpose for your organization and why it must exist is necessary but not sufficient. Fully competent leaders are deeply even profoundly connected to a cause that has them in its grasp –and this is what they serve. It’s easy to “adopt” a cause that seems fashionable or useful as a means to look good or fit in. And these adopted causes can be abandoned by whim. But a cause that has you in its unshakable grasp – won’t let go no matter what you do. It keeps us on course because our cause is our course. And this course provides the course for the entire organization to follow. Ego is a powerful force. But it can be reckoned with. Great leaders learn to lead their ego; they are not led by it.

Leading on Purpose

Organizations with a deeply routed understanding of their purpose – have people attracted to the cause who are willing to do what it takes to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. They are not playing a game of “follow the leader.” They are joining the leader on a shared quest – where performance matters – not because the leader says so – but because the sense of duty to the guiding cause demands such. Leaders become evangelists – rather than gods. George Patton wasn’t a great leader because everyone loved him. He made their cause bigger than him. So did Steve Jobs and so does Elon Musk. And when leaders cease to need to play god – they can allow themselves to be fallible, ceasing to be afraid to be wrong – and better able to be curious, courageously creative, innovative and ultimately effective.

These three observations of leadership are, of course, not the total sum of what it takes to become a fully competent leader. But they are among the many things about leadership that must be learned, and cannot be taught.

Reading great books on leadership may offer clues as to what you may need to learn or to become, but will not make you a competent or even a better leader. Leadership, just like many things including learning to ride a bicycle as already mentioned, “book knowledge” is not a substitute for experience. Worse still, when we believe we know, we compromise our ability to learn. When we are confident we know something – we are in “the knowing mode” and our appetite for learning is curbed. We may actually believe we know what we need to know – and fail to learn what we need to learn as a result. Leaders must live in “the learning mode” and be fully curious of their surroundings and forever asking questions of themselves and others. This yields the greatest return on their time and attention.

Finally, practice does not make perfect, it only makes permanent. Great leaders acquire the habits that serve them, including the habit of learning what you need to know in order to accomplish your mission in life. You learn by first preparing yourself to learn what you must know. Preparing yourself amounts to “being prepared” as opposed to “doing prepared.” It amounts to being someone who can be prepared by learning to become someone who can. We first make it necessary and then make it possible.

You must learn to be a leader – before you can effectively perform the art of leadership at a level of competence that makes a difference. It’s a matter of choice. Choosing to become someone who can and then must accomplish something significant is the hallmark of all great leaders. Life is always about the choices we make. Some lead to successful outcomes and others do not. This is why you must carefully choose what it is you want to accomplish and then who you need to be.

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You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at www.ALPSLeadership.com