Do You Suffer from a "Leadership Credibility Gap?"
By Bill Kica on March 7, 2022
“Well done is better than well said”? – Benjamin Franklin
Talk is cheap. Put up or shut up. Just do it . . .
We have all heard these and similar imperatives urging us to focus on the real?outcomes of our intentions rather than rhetoric.
Regardless of how eloquently we as leaders believe we frame the mission, vision, or tasks at hand to our troops, it has long been known that our leadership behaviors speak the loudest. Without prioritizing actions over words, perhaps our people may not actually be hearing our spoken words or worse yet, discounting them.
Since our earliest school days, we all have heard the axiom?“actions speak louder than words.”?This presents a potential leadership dichotomy if our actions fall short of our words. And this is what I refer to as the “Leadership Credibility Gap.”
One of the best ways I have heard a senior financial advisor phrase this dilemma is when he borrowed a well-known sentiment from his favorite sport, golf.?“You drive for show and putt for dough,”?he said. Or in other words, keep your focus on the things that truly correlate to achieving desired outcomes.
Bridging The Leadership?“Credibility Gap”
Addressing this gap may be more critical now than ever for Senior Financial Advisors. Senior Leaders of advisory practices are in need of developing their next generation of leaders to be ready to step up and take the reigns.
This is true whether it's part of a formal succession plan or merely to be better positioned to allow others to absorb some of the burdens of running a complex practice.
So why do so many leaders of advisory practices feel they are falling short when it comes to preparing their NextGen to step into leadership roles? The answer may lie in part in our inability to consistently bridge the gap between our words and our behaviors.
And how do we transfer 20 or 30 years of management knowledge to bright and eager but yet untested talent?
It starts by designing a progressive, systematic leadership development curriculum built upon 360 - degree collaboration and actually “running the business.” In doing so, we can dramatically shorten the learning curve for the new leaders.
This curriculum works best when it includes all operating and strategic elements of the business – From the more?technical skills?such as an in-depth understanding of the practice’s P&L or the mechanics of budgeting/forecasting to the nuances of managing the?business’s softer side,?such as collaborating with the staff.
And don’t forget to include the more qualitative components of leadership. These include self-awareness training using tools such as the Emotional Intelligence (EQ) dimensions of leading people.
Spoiler alert: this process can be uncomfortable for senior leaders. It means that we will have to be fully transparent and vulnerable. Such as when we expose the rationale for certain decisions (some perhaps right, some perhaps wrong) over the business’s history that have resulted in the practice’s position today.
3 Keys for Preparing Our Next Generation of Leaders
Here are 3 Keys to ensuring we bridge credibility gaps enroute to nurturing the necessary leadership skills, know-how, belief systems, and value systems in the NextGen leaders on our teams:
Simply stated,?“Leaders must know the way, show the way and go the way.”
1. Know The Way
“Knowing the way”?means that both Senior Leadership and NextGen Leadership need to participate in all key decision making within the business. It requires getting under the hood and understanding the trade-offs, risk/return calculations and methodologies for key decision making within the practice.
This knowledge transfer is best when the exchange is “codified” and backed up in our operating manuals or a Playbook for the practice. While we may operate just fine with the knowledge in our heads, seldom does it transfer well that way.
Be prepared to expose the new leaders to things like:
By including the new leaders in all aspects of decision-making, we ensure that they truly “know the way” and gain advanced hands-on experience critical to ensure the business will not miss a beat.
2.?Show The Way
“Showing the way”?may best be described as vision-casting and “seeing around corners” for the business path ahead. The key element for effective knowledge transfer here is to be humble enough to let others into the process, try the vision on for size for themselves and provide space for genuine debate.
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We must be prepared to provide the space for the new leaders to see their own fingerprints on the vision of the business for them to truly own it executes it and reflect that ethos to the team at large. By co-creating a vision for the business, we can go a long way in engendering a stakeholder culture of leadership on the team.
And visions usually benefit greatly when Senior Team Leadership embody their core values. This often includes exhibiting the behaviors we expect to see within our new leaders. As Senior Leaders we should be vigilant to seek out opportunities for the new leaders to imprint new habits and standards on our own good actions.
Letting Go of “Me” and Adopting “We“
There is another essential area where Senior Leaders must?“show the way”?when preparing future leadership on advisory teams. As employees, it is not uncommon to focus on how decisions will impact us individually. But as future leaders of the practice, we will be tested in new and different ways. One of these is to put the welfare of the team and its members ahead of our individual needs or desires.
In his best-selling book,?“Leaders Eat Last,”?Simon Sinek makes a compelling case for potential leaders to accept the burdens, privileges, and genuine price of stepping into a leadership role.
By demonstrating this ability to play for something greater than our own self-interest, we go a long way in knocking down the traditional?“position power syndrome”?and create the conditions for building genuine trust, advocacy and fidelity to the mission/vision of the business.
3.?Go The Way
“Inspiration without perspiration is hallucination” –?Thomas Edison
“Going the way”?is where the rubber hits the road. It requires hard work, consistency and discipline. This is the moment of truth when our behaviors and actions must validate our words and intentions. By consistently “going the way,” we close the gap between talk and action, and in doing so, shrink the risk of any credibility gap.
Going the way may include:
In closing, perhaps an epic leader, Gandhi, said it best by eloquently pointing the way as to how our beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, habits, values and destiny are all intertwined:
"Our beliefs become our thoughts,
Our thoughts become our words,
Our words become our actions,
Our actions become our habits,
Our habits become our values,
Our values become our destiny."
For more information on how to prepare your next generation of leaders, contact Bill Kica at?[email protected]
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