Character Can Get Results

Since leaders do nothing more important than get results, your character and its development must lead to better results.??

By the way, they don’t necessarily have to be organizational results.?Many leaders have used my processes in their lives outside the organization, with teenagers, say, or their spouses -- and clearly, not simply as a “leadership” process.?Because who we are as a leaders should be intertwined with who we are in the best sense of being human beings.

If our leadership is not our life, we diminish both the quality of our leadership and our life. With this in mind, we should consciously make our best character traits be results-multipliers.

Select any one of the character traits you used last week as a trigger for action.?Focus on ways to use the trait to get increases in results, however you may define those results.??

For example, as to the trait “always ready to forgive”:?This can be a results-driver because it enables you to clear the air with the people whom you need to help get results.?After all, if you’re always ready to forgive slights and perceived slights done by you or to you, you avoid blame shifting and finger-pointing, both organizational results-killers.?

Epictetus, another stoic of that time, said, “Small-minded people habitually reproach each other for their own misfortunes. ...?Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame someone or something is foolishness. ... The more we examine our attitudes and work on ourselves, the less we are apt to be swept away by stormy emotional reactions in which we seek easy explanations for unbidden events.”

I suggested that you simply let happen what happens when you manifest being always ready to forgive.?Now I suggest you do the same thing when using the trait to get results.?But to use the trait to get results, you must take an extra step.?

This seems like a contradiction -- achieving results by not trying to do so; but what I am about to tell you is a vital leadership lesson.?

It’s this: Though one’s relationships in leadership are predicated on results, the most effective results-producing relationships often accrue when these relationships ultimately have nothing to do with results, when people respond to you not just as a leader but simply and profoundly as a human being.

Get your values and your character right and the rest of leadership is a matter of details.?After all, freedom isn’t just in what you make happen, it’s also in what you let happen.?

This doesn’t mean you can’t use character to get results.?But to do so, you must take this extra step, you must have the character trait you are acting on be a solution to their needs.?I delved into this way of getting results when I described the defining moment in a previous article.

I said the defining moment only works to get results when it provides a solution to the problem of the ?people’s needs.?The same results-imperative holds true with character.?After all, there is a close relationship between character and the defining moment, the latter often being character in action.?

Put the character/solution into the rich soup of a results-challenge and then simply observe what cooks up.?In other words, in a situation calling for results, act on the character trait you want to emphasize -- being always-ready-to-forgive, in this case -- and observe the results.???

Of course, with this particular trait, your effort won’t work if there are no hard feelings in the air.?In most cases, however, finding such a person exhibiting such feelings should not be too difficult, that is if you’re doing your job right; for unless some of the people feel overburdened by your challenges, you are not challenging the people enough.?So, take action with a group of people or an individual).

For instance, you might say, “I know we’ve had hard feelings, and if there is blame to be handed out over the causes of those feelings, you can look to me.?But as the first step in going after the new results, let’s let bygones be bygones.”

It’s important that you avoid setting up conditions.?Saying, for instance, “If I do this, I expect you to do that” is not a way to manifest this character trait.?Character should exist without conditions in you and for you regardless of outside influences such as the opinions of others.?Otherwise, they wouldn’t be character traits but weather readings of the heart instead.

When we are dealing with character and results, we can’t expect to force the results.?Let them come naturally out of the interaction.?It’s like putting a seed crystal into a supersaturated solution.?Given the proper solution and the right tension in the solution, you get an organic eruption of crystals.?That’s why I emphasize that you should be an observer.

Focus on putting the trait into action as a solution for the needs of your cause leaders to get results-producing action.

Remember, the trait of always being ready to forgive is just one of many you can work on. But no matter what trait you are developing, use the process I’ve just described to manifest it for results.

Copyright ? The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.

Brent Filson is the founder of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc., which for 37-years has helped thousands of leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies worldwide achieve sustained increases in hard, measured results. He has published 23 books and many scores of articles on leadership. His mission is to have leaders replace their traditional presentations with his specially developed, motivating process call the Leadership Talk. www.brentfilson.com and theleadershiptalk.com

Besides having lectured about the Leadership Talk at MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia University, Wake Forest, Villanova, Williams, Middlebury, I also brought the Leadership Talk to leaders in these organizations: Abbott, Ameritech, Anheuser-Busch, Armstrong World Industries, AT&T, BancOne, BASF, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Betz Laboratories, Bose, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Campbell Sales, Canadian Government, CNA, DuPont, Eaton Corporation, Exelon, First Energy, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, GTE, Hershey Foods, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, Meals-on-Wheels, Merck, Miller Brewing Company, NASA, PaineWebber, Polaroid, Price Waterhouse, Roadway Express, Sears Roebuck, Spalding International, Southern Company, The United Nations, Unilever, UPS, Union Carbide, United Dominion Industries, U.S. Steel, Vermont State Police, Warner Lambert — and more