Learning How to Be a More Effective Leader...

Welcome to this week's edition of "Elevations."?

All people are, or at least were, "learners." This is one of the benefits of human beings' shortened gestation. We are born unable to care for ourselves or survive without the assistance of others. From the moment you are born, you begin learning. First, you learn how to identify those who care for and feed you, and shortly thereafter, you learn how to ensure their love and affection, followed by basic mobility, feeding yourself, developing rudimentary language knowledge and skills, and the social norms that guide and control the world around you. Most children develop a love for learning that you might carry with you your entire life. Not everyone does.

You can approach things or your entire life from one of two perspectives. You can either be open or closed to learning. Many successful adults pay little or no attention to active, deliberate learning and believe they know what they need to survive. In the leaders I meet, it can rise to the level of hubris that enables them to hide from the self-perceived idea that not knowing makes you weak. So they practice being uncurious and choose to operate in "knowing mode."

Effective leaders operate in learning mode. They tend to value and thrive on curiosity, recognizing that unless we grow and adapt, we are left behind in a rapidly changing world that depends on agility to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

This brings us to the theme of today's essay. It is essentially about learning, but more importantly, about joy and Cultivating MoJo.

Finding joy in learning is both the reward for what you learn and the incentive that makes you a lifelong learner. As you will note below, the same principle applies to learning to become an effective leader. -PRL

Learning to Be a More Effective Leader:

Why Cultivating MoJo is Serious Business

There are more than 13,000 business schools worldwide. Of these, AACSB (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), a global business program accrediting agency, lists more than 1,000 accredited schools that enroll more than 5 million students annually, with about 250,000 in MBA programs. About 600 colleges and universities offering accredited MBA programs in the United States account for half of all students worldwide. The tuition costs for an MBA at the most prestigious business schools exceed $200,000. Business education is big business. However, it is not serving the most critical aspect of what makes growing businesses successful.

Roughly 70% of Fortune 100 CEOs have business degrees, leaving a large group that does not. Other than companies that require hires to possess a business degree, they are not required to be in or work in business. Many successful entrepreneurs and business owners do not have one, nor will it guarantee that you can start, grow, or operate a successful business. In the companies I work with, I see compelling evidence that having basic management skills is essential; however, hiring people with advanced business degrees is unnecessary and sometimes worse.

Large corporations attract and consume MBA graduates to staff their management ranks. However,?in my experience, smaller companies realize only marginal benefits from hiring MBAs, whose core skillsets generally skew towards the needs of larger organizations, where analyzing and managing complex matters is far more important.

In my experience, the mainstay for most businesses is effective leadership. Leading people is far more complicated than managing things. Freshly minted MBAs are well-trained to manage most of the needs of any business, but they are woefully unequipped to lead people. That is not a knock on business schools. Many offer what they catalog as leadership classes. The problem is you cannot academically learn to be a leader. You must learn leadership experientially; not everyone has what it takes to be a competent leader. It may be that the better you manage things, the more likely you will be inclined to manage people – which is impossible to do.

There are no formulas for leadership, but there are plenty of good recipes for managing things. Leading people requires a different mental model. The essential qualities of effective leadership, which include emotional intelligence, communication skills, and system awareness, must support your ability to spark inspiration in others to help them perform to their potential.

Your greatest source of inspiration is the joy you experience when accomplishing meaningful and significant things. Leaders' job is to create opportunities for and develop people so they can accomplish things that truly matter. I call this cultivating MoJo, or moments of overwhelming joy. Joy rewards and incentivizes performance. It is how leadership bonds the things that you must manage to how you operate by cultivating a workforce that is conscientious and diligent about their work. It is what builds high-performance organizations and why cultivating MoJo is serious business.

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You can access over 150 other pieces on business leadership and related topics at the ALPS BLOG at ALPSLeadership.com.

If you would care to share your thoughts or engage in thoughtful dialogue on any of the topics covered or anything about your experience or questions you may have. In that case, I welcome the opportunity to speak with you via phone or Zoom. You can also always write me, and I will always respond.

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Have an outstanding week!

Philip R. Liebman, CEO ALPS Leadership