Secrets of the best leaders

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare

Introduction

We’ve talked a lot about what you need to do to improve your business. But as a CEO, you are, like it or not, the key individual within your business, and we've not talked much about how to improve you. Let's put that right.

Humans have evolved over millions of years to live in groups, and much of our group behaviour is hard-wired. We automatically form pecking orders or hierarchies, and we give the person at the top a disproportionate amount of respect and influence. 

This means that you, the CEO, are scrutinised like no one else within the business. For new CEOs, this can take some getting used to, but unfortunately you are no longer one of the guys, however much you may wish to be. The standards you demonstrate set the tone for the business, and what you say creates echoes that ripple through the organisation. 

In this article, we take a look at how the best leaders live a life of purpose. We find ourselves instinctively attracted to people who know where they are going and what they want to achieve.

The challenge of the 21st Century

The world has never changed so fast. It will never change this slowly again.

We hear messages like this all the time. The pace of change is exponentially increasing. Change feeds on itself, as new technologies combine in unexpected ways. 

For the business leader, this presents a challenge. Historically, we have looked to our leaders for answers, especially when times are difficult. But we can know ever less about the world we live in, and what used to work in the past is no longer a reliable guide to future success. There are no easy answers anymore, and we shouldn’t trust anyone that claims to have them. Now, the leader needs the best questions, not the best answers.

There are many definitions of leadership, but for us, two things are necessary. Firstly, to be a leader, you need followers. It’s not about position or role: anyone can follow the approach we are about to set out. Secondly, and it’s implicit in the word itself, you need a direction. The best leaders know where they are going, and they are able to take people with them. 

This article will help you find your own direction, and make it more likely that people will want to follow you there.

Qualities of the best leaders

Our research (and that of other people) has found three key qualities of the best leaders:

1. Hone-able. The best leaders are always learning. They are also unlearning; what took them and their organisations to Good won’t get them to Great. Which of your ideas, assumptions and mental models are holding you back?
2. Honour. We need to be able to trust out leaders. Honour is the force that holds Hunger in check; without it, Hunger runs rampant and chases self-interest. Many of our political leaders are hungry, but we have chosen too few that have any honour.
3. Hunger. Hunger provides the energy to begin, the stamina to persist, and the will to finish the endeavour. Motivation can be:

• Financial;
• About respect and recognition;
• About fulfilling a purpose bigger than the individual. 

The level of motivation driven by these factors increases from top to bottom: we will die for a cause but generally not for a pay cheque.

Knowing their importance, we can develop these qualities in ourselves. We’ll use a model that may seem familiar if you have read our earlier posts…

The Wheel of Life

The best leaders start from a knowledge of themselves. The Wheel of Life is the tool we use to examine and build our own lives. We can only be an effective leader when we are in control of ourselves. The method we’ll outline below has had a huge impact on the lives of many people we have taken through it – but, as with so much in life, you only get out of it what you are willing to put in. 

The thinking we will ask you to do is hard, and you may never have done anything like it before. Give yourself time, and as importantly, space. Find somewhere you can be relaxed – a favourite place, a wood or a beach maybe. When you feel that you have made progress, talk to a close friend or a loved one about it for a different perspective.

The first step is to consider your life as it is today. Use the 8 areas of the Wheel of Life. How satisfied are you with each area? How would you score them out of 10? Think back to your childhood dreams. How would you score against those? What have you dropped from your life that used to matter?

A round wheel shows some balance in your life, but we find the Wheels of many executives would not roll at all smoothly. How would you like to change your Wheel? What areas of your life are important to you, but you have neglected? 

Purpose and Values

Just as we did with the business, we need to consider our own Purpose and Values.

Identifying your Purpose is a great step towards personal understanding and acceptance. By understanding your Purpose and accepting it, you can devise a plan of how to live it out. This in turn will create inner happiness and satisfaction, which you and others can benefit from.

You can start to identify your Purpose by thinking about what really matters to you. What impact would you like to have? What would you want people to say about you when you are no longer here? 

Some great questions to ponder are:

1. What have you got in life that you want?
2. What have you got in life that you don’t want?
3. What haven’t you got in life that you want?
4. What haven’t you got in life that you don’t want?

Write down what you think your Purpose is. We often ask people to draw a picture of it, too. Do the two match? If not, why not?

Values are the principles and ideas that are of importance to you and by which you lead your life. Identifying your values will help you to understand who you really are and what is important to you. They will guide you towards the Purpose you have created for yourself.

Personal Values can change throughout a life, but many remain constant. But there can be a gap between what we would like our Values to be and wat we actually do. 

The link between behaviour and Values is not one way. It used to be thought that our Values guide our behaviour: I am a charitable person so I give to charity. Now, we realise it is more complex: I give to charity, therefore I am charitable. In other words, the things we do change how we feel about ourselves. This is useful: by choosing to behave differently, we can feel different.

Think about what Values are important to you. Here are some for you to think about, but add your own, too.

Find at least eight that resonate with you. Put them in an order of priority. Write down exactly what they mean to you.

Now go back to your Purpose. Do your Values complement it? Do any not complement it? Which will you change?

Now think broader. How do your Purpose and Values complement the rest of your life? Your family, friends, work?

When we talked about the three qualities of a leader, you can see how Purpose aligns with Hunger, Values with Honour.

The 80th Birthday exercise

Let’s bring together all the thinking that we have done so far, using the 80th birthday exercise. 

How are we going to change? What are we going to do differently? 

Imagine that you are 80. No, really imagine that you are 80. Can you see your hands wrinkly and liver-spotted in front of you? Can you see your grey hair? 

Now imagine your life when you are 80. How would you like it to be? What kind of retirement will you have? Who are your family and friends? What can you do physically? Where are you living? What have you achieved in life? What is your legacy? What traces will your life have left on the world? How would it feel?

This is another Visioning exercise, but most people find it harder to look at themselves than to look at their business. 

When you have imagined it, use the Wheel of Life to capture it. What would you put in each section? Be as specific as you can. 

To make this vision real, you need to roll it back to today. Starting at 80 and create milestones back, at every ten years and with a milestone for the end of next year. The milestones should deliver your desired future. Try to find things that help in multiple areas of your Wheel of Life. So don’t just decide to climb a mountain; climb a mountain with friends or family whilst raising money for charity.

The challenge for most of us is not that we set the bar to high and fail, but that we set the bar too low and succeed. Here are some tips for getting this right:

1. Take the power of vision seriously
2. Make the vision meaningful to you
3. Make the vision big enough
4. Connect your vision to your weekly plan
5. Share the process with others
6. Stay in touch with your vision by reviewing it regularly
7. Live with intention.

Setting goals

Back in 1953, a study was done in Yale University’s graduating class. It asked seniors a long list of questions about themselves, and three questions had to do with goals. They were, “Do you set goals?”, “Do you write them down?” and “Do you have a plan to accomplish them?” Only 2.8 percent of the class answered a yes to those questions.

Twenty years later, a follow up study was done. It turned out that the 2.8% who said yes to goals reported that they were happily married, were more successful in the careers they had chosen, had a more satisfactory family life, and had better health, and amazingly, 97% of the net worth of the class of ’53 was in the hands of that 2.8%! 

Once you have clear goals, you open yourself up to a pattern of opportunities that remains closed to you otherwise, and you begin a process that will serve you well all of your life.

How can you set daily and weekly goals to allow you to achieve your vision?

We encourage people to use the action plan template that we discussed earlier:

Create an action plan for your Wheel of Life, breaking down big goals into smaller do-able actions. This will link your dream to what you do on a daily basis. Review your action plan regularly (ideally at the start of each week). Track your progress!

Conclusion

You will find that having a vision for yourself opens your eyes to opportunities that you would never have seen otherwise. And as a leader, it will make you stand out from the rest. People will see you as someone with a sense of purpose and you will find that they will follow you.

Everybody comes onto the leadership playing field with a different set of innate abilities, but everyone can improve those abilities. The vital component of leadership effectiveness is continual personal growth. Peak performing leaders are the ones who devote themselves to personal discipline and make the most of their gifts. 

This blog is very much focused on the internal part of leadership – managing ourselves. Next time, we will think about how that integrates into the wider business. 

In the meantime, we’d love to hear about what you think makes a great leader. Leave a comment for us!

Synesi Consulting helps businesses and the people in them to become peak performing. We understand what the very best organisations do, and work with companies like yours to give you the skills, plans and structures to do the same.

www.synesiconsulting.co.uk