Leadership Nuggets

Over the summer, I read quite a few books on Leadership and Management. While there were several best sellers and classics to choose from, I decided to explore some hidden treasures. I have listed the five books I enjoyed the most and some nuggets of leadership wisdom I could capture. I hope you enjoy reading them.

?1. Why should anyone be led by you? What it takes to be an authentic leader

In our continuing quest for being an effective leader and being more self-aware, we often have to look into the mirror and ask ourselves the simplest yet most difficult question: Why should anyone be led by you? The book, based on years of research, makes you pause and reflect on your leadership style. The authors drill into you the concept that leadership is situational, non-hierarchical, and relational. Leadership development is a continuous process and what typically works for one leader will not work for another.

The book provides an interesting take on what followers expect in a leader. Followers want a feeling of excitement and personal significance, a desire to feel part of something bigger (a community) and most importantly they want to be led by someone authentic. Authenticity is integral to the leader-follower relationship. Without it, there can be no significant investment or trust on either side. A few tips on growing yourself as an authentic leader:

• Seek new experiences and new contexts
• Explore your biography and be aware of the events that make us who we are
• Get honest feedback from folks who know you best
• Return to the roots: spend time with people who know you without the trappings of the organization

?Also, here is an interesting HBR article from the book about the four unexpected qualities in a leader:

1. By exposing some vulnerability, leaders reveal their approachability and humanity
2. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them know just when and how to act
3. Inspirational leaders empathize passionately—and realistically—with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do
4. Leadership capitalizes on what’s unique about themselves.

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2. The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism

?The book is written by Hubert Joly, the former chairman and CEO of Best Buy. Hubert makes a point that companies should not just cater to shareholder’s interests but also to employees, customers, and broader society. He narrates his experiences of how when he took over as the CEO of Best Buy, the analysts had predicted the end of the organization, but he turned it around. Developing a clear purpose and ensuring that everyone in the organization connects with it was his golden mantra.

?Joly’s thought on being a purposeful leader:

1. Be clear about your purpose, the purpose of people around you, and how it connects with the purpose of the company
2. Be clear about your role as a leader - Remind yourself to be a thermostat, rather than a thermometer, and set the temperature to be upbeat
3. Be clear about whom you serve - The best leaders do not climb to the top. Instead, they are carried to the top, and serving others is how it happens.
4. Be driven by values - HBS Professor Clayton Christensen points out that it is easier to stick to your principles 100% of the time than it is to stick to them 98% of the time: the marginal cost of doing something that goes against your values “just this once” might appear tentatively low, but it lands you in jail, as the waters get muddier and muddier once the first exceptions get made!
5. Be authentic - Employees are expecting us to be human, and they expect us to grasp who they are and to make them feel respected, heard, understood, and included. This means we must open up and make ourselves vulnerable, including acknowledge there is stuff we do not know

I also loved Joly’s perspective on decision making: What separates great leaders from good leaders is not the quality but the quantity of decisions. More decisions create more momentum and energy. Decisions should be made at the lowest possible echelon within the organization which is the place where people have either enough or the best information to make the decision. The lowest possible place is really at the top. Besides creating momentum through decisions, clarifying what is most important and keeping it simple unleashes energy.

Another good nugget from Joly is that for an organization going through a tough time, bad news must travel at least as far as good news. It also requires trusting that whatever problem arises, everyone will focus on fixing it. As a leader, when building trust, remember these 4 golden rules

1. Building trust takes time.
2. It requires that you do what you say you’re going to do.
3. You must be approachable: you cannot trust whom you cannot see.
4. You must be transparent. ?

3. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

Behind every great leader is a great coach.! This book was written by the team that wrote How Google Works and shares the coaching wisdom of legendary coach Bill Campbell, who has guided some of the top entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. About eighty individuals who loved Bill’s coaching have shared their stories and experiences and the coaching wisdom has been captured.

The book makes one point very clear - being a good coach is essential to being a good manager and leader. Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach. Whereas mentors dole out words of wisdom, coaches roll up the sleeves and get their hands dirty. Every chapter makes you reflect - here are my top ten nuggets from Bill Campbell’s handbook

1. As you hire your teams and leaders, determine how coachable they are. The traits that make a person coachable include honesty and humility, the willingness to persevere and work hard, and a constant openness to learning
2. The team is of paramount importance - the most important thing is having a team-first attitude. When Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Google, Bill advised him that at that level, more than ever before, he needs to bet on people. Choosing the team was an important decision.
3. Leading teams becomes a lot more joyful, and the teams more effective, when you know and care about the people. To care about people, you have to care about people: ask about their lives outside of work, understand their families, and when things get rough, show up.
4. When faced with a problem or opportunity, the first step is to ensure the right team is in place and working on it
5. If you have to let people go, be generous, treat them well, and celebrate their accomplishments.
6. Purpose, pride, ambition, ego: these are vital motivators as well and must be considered by any manager or coach
7. Have a structure for 1:1s, and take the time to prepare for them, as they are the best way to help people be more effective and grow
8. Rule of Two for conflict resolution:?Get the two people most closely involved in the decision to gather more information and work together on the best solution, and usually they would come back a week or two later having decided together on the best course of action. The team would always agree with their recommendation because it was usually obvious that it was the best idea.
9. Build communities inside and outside of work. A place is much stronger when people are connected.
10. When things are going bad, teams are looking for even more loyalty, commitment, and decisiveness from their leaders.

4. The 3D Leader: Take your leadership to the next dimension

If you want something that is a light read, this might be the one for you. The book stresses the concept that a 3-D leader must think boldly, choose the brave, and go beyond the obvious. The author interestingly comments that organizations don’t systematically design their culture. About two-thirds of the culture is accidental. The author provides some good take on the different cultures in the organization. Perform your sniff test and figure out what kind of culture you are building with your leadership style.

1. HiPPO Culture where hierarchical decision-making leadership is the norm
2. A bureaucratic culture that priorities excessive rules, processes, and protocols
3. Hero culture that focuses on a small pool of star performers at the expense of everybody else
4. Lazy culture is one where inertia, excuses, and mediocrity is the norm
5. Owner culture is where everyone thinks like an owner and pursues a relentless focus on excellence

An organization can have all five cultures provided they have a diverse enough team. This is a light read you can easily wrap up over a weekend!

5. Build an A-Team: Play to their strengths and lead them up the learning curve

You can hire many players in your team, but the challenges will always be to build the A-team. For building an A team, your team needs to have an S curve of Learning. The long end of the curve is the discomfort and excitement of the unknown. And the high end of the curve is confidence and a list of mastery. In the middle, on the steep part of the curve is where the magic happens when employees are the happiest, learning quickly, and highly engaged. Create your team that is a high-functioning collection of S curves, with a small percentage of people at the low and high ends of the curve and the majority in the sweet spot at the given time.

?The book also gives good tips on handling your new hire and getting the best out of them. Make genuine efforts for the new hire to understand the vision, or why for the organization. Conduct a joint planning session on what they are looking to accomplish personally in the role.

That's all for now. I intend to read a few more books in the next few months and will have a follow-up post. Meanwhile, if there are other books you suggest I read to become an effective leader, please do let me know. Cheers.?