New Years Resolutions for Transformational Leaders

As we get settled into 2019, business planning is getting underway in earnest at most companies and promises that read like New Year’s resolutions are being made by organizational leaders. “Lose Weight” is akin to cutting the fat out of the organization. “Stop Smoking” translates to stop wasting money on activities that will slowly kill the organization. However, research shows that less than 10% of people are likely to keep their resolutions. If you are a leader, you are likely formulating resolutions for your team and organization as well. As you consider potential resolutions, how do you ensure that that they deliver meaningful, lasting change? By striving to be transformational and not transactional.

What transformational leaders strive for is not only a cosmetic change in making their teams appear to have better outcomes but instead to meaningfully change the character, composition, culture and trajectory to achieve greater results.

We believe that there are five keys to success:

1. Lead with humanity and empathy.  Even those of us who like change know that overcoming inertia is difficult especially when it means giving up projects or ideas that the team has spent months perhaps years to shape and build. In order to help the team pivot to a new opportunities, leaders need to acknowledge that people are not machines. We can’t just flip a switch or write a few lines of code and everyone becomes enlightened and becomes aligned with the new vision. As William Bridges noted in Managing Transitions, “It’s not the changes that kill us, it’s the transitions”. 

Leaders need to spend time listening to understand where their employees are struggling with the change, solicit feedback and new ideas to remove any perceived or real roadblocks, and coach their team to think about the possibilities that come with new approaches. Mo learned early on in her career when she was a high school teacher that that students will not care what you think, unless they know that you care. In the same vein, employees will only become open to your vision if they know that you have their best interest at heart. In some cases, leaders will have to admit that the they don’t have all the answers and have fears of their own. As Brene Brown, who has studied vulnerability and empathy for the past twenty years shares in Dare to Lead, “We have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.

Questions to consider:

• When leading teams through change, are you listening more or talking more?
• How have you created a culture where there is psychological safety for teams to ask questions, to challenge decisions, and to offer their own ideas?

2. Inspire with a compelling vision.  Driving transformational change means giving ourselves and those that we lead something that lifts us up and gives us a purpose beyond our daily tactical activities. The following quote powerfully communicates this concept:

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

We like the quote and we strongly believe in the core message - but we also think ship captains also had it a bit easy in the messaging department. In the modern world, most of our daily work doesn't compare to the beauty and mystery of the sea. Rather, somehow we need to teach people to yearn to sail through a vast and endless number of customer service inquiries or accounting entries. Or to revel in the storm of the vast and endless complaints or nagging details that come with managing a large project. Developing a team's passion to reach for greater heights in that environment is where true leadership is required.

Questions to consider:

• How might you help your team to experience the satisfaction that comes with accomplishing something as a group that is greater than any one individual?
• How can you establish a culture where each member of your team feels encouraged and empowered to step out as a leader on any given day?

3. Establish a powerful set of common values. Difficult choices can be made easier if everyone on the team has a shared set of values and operate with the same guiding principles. If the vision is the North Star, then the values are what keeps everyone rowing in the same direction. Transformational leaders realize that it is too late to establish team values at the moment when change needs to happen - rather, it needs to be done in the forming stages of the team and often during the hiring process. Leaders need to understand their own value systems and what is non-negotiable and where they need more input to reveal any blind spots. Leaders need to consistently model their values, reinforce them and at times pressure test them. For both of us, having shared team values have helped us make decisions from deprecation of products (even those used by thousands of customers) to whether to allow employees to work from home.

Questions to consider: 

• Do you know what the common values are among your team?
• If you need to make a difficult decision, what are the guiding principles that you follow?

4. Break bad habits and develop healthy new ones - If we want our teams to embrace healthy new behaviors, we can encourage it by committing to healthy new behaviors in our own lives as well. As Hal Erod states in The Miracle Morning "Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become."

The reality, of course, is that change is hard! It's always easier to simply follow the well-worn path of least resistance than it is to break the pattern. Sometimes we're even lured into repeating a cycle by outside forces. (Think of that dopamine rush when you hear the ping of a new email or text message on your phone.)

Regrettably, following our habits and instincts can often be damaging. For example, consistently responding to texts while at the dinner table doesn't do much for family unity. And in the workplace, following our kneejerk instincts can lead to unconscious bias in our decisions.

So how do we overcome our natural tendencies to fall back into old ways? As transformational leaders, one of the most important things we can do is to slow down.  As we become more mindful of how we approach problem solving, we can spot bad habits more quickly and start to incorporate new data for better decision-making. Some companies have even adopted the concept of mindful meetings to ensure full engagement of everyone in the room. Amazon is also notorious for starting their meetings with a quiet reading period before jumping into the discussion. 

Questions to consider:

• How are you slowing down to be more mindful and less impulsive?
• What are the habits that you’d like your organization to start, keep, stop?

5. Hold each other accountable. It’s easy to fall into complacency, especially when a paycheck continues to come. Transformational leaders can hold their teams accountable with a top-down approach, but it’s more welcomed when the messages are coming from peers. Leaders can set up an accountability system where decisions undergo peer reviews and stakeholders are consulted and informed before it gets to their desks for final approval.

Question to consider

• What is the one aspect of transformational leadership that you would like to hone this year and who will hold you accountable?

So as you ponder your role as a transformational leader in 2019, consider how you will lift up and motivate your team not only to deliver on the business results but to ensure the health and vibrancy of the organization continues for many years to come.

About the co-authors: Mo Fong is the Director of Google Technical Services for Google Assistant and Search. At Google, she is a volunteer “Career Guru” and has helped over 100 Google leaders to achieve their full potential. Mo is an advocate for making schools better places to work for teachers. Tracy Wilk is a former colleague of Mo’s at Google and is now an Executive Coach serving technology and fintech leaders. He is passionate about helping people to gain greater self-awareness, to pursue careers that are consistent with their interests and values, and to develop healthy, productive work habits.