What's in a name - is it a letterbox, a postbox, or a mailbox and does it matter?

OK, I'll be the first to admit that this is an odd image to use for this week's newsletter.

Last week I offered to help some friends with a magazine drop campaign their children had initially signed up to. Signed up to hand deliver 1000 magazines across a certain geographical region. When they realized the extent of the work involved, they backed out and their parents decided to complete the task....and asked me if I could help them.

It occurred to me as I delivered these magazines to all manner of homes that each one had a different type of 'letterbox' (UK) or what my North American friends refer to as 'mailbox'.

Bear with me...

It then got me thinking about all the different types of ways that these mechanisms are perceived as well as impacted by things like the country you're in, the color, their size and dimensions as well as the actual positioning of where you place said letterbox.

Regardless of the size, color, dimensions, or position of these letterboxes (or whatever you call them), they all do the same thing and serve the same purpose, namely as a repository to receive mail into (or send mail from if you're using a postbox). Which got me thinking about leadership.

As you know from my work, I advocate that the world doesn't need another leadership book, methodology, or framework - it needs and is crying out for a conversation to simplify leadership and create the conditions for having honest conversations about how we evolve the identification, recruitment, onboarding, and development of future leaders.

We also need to go back to basics.

There are so many different theories about what works and what doesn't work in the world of leadership today that we are often forgetting the basic handful of qualities that leaders need to be great leaders.

Just the other day, a well-meaning conversation between a leadership practitioner and I played out in this vein, with their perspective being that great leaders need to develop 37 key skills and mine focusing on just 5-6.

To further illustrate what I mean, research conducted by Charn McAllister, Sherry Moss and Mark J. Martinko (Why Likable Leaders Seem More Effective), found within the top six management journals over the past five years, ‘134 articles on leadership promoting at least 29 different leadership theories including “authentic,” “transformational,” “charismatic,” “ethical,” and “servant” leadership. The authors also found 161 articles focused on discussing various leadership theories and styles.

This is what I mean.

Contrast the above with the very real challenges that are facing CEOs in organizations, namely what is keeping them up at night (see below for the outputs of research from global leadership think tank DDI | Development Dimensions International .

Just 12% of companies surveyed by DDI are confident in the 'strength of their bench'.

Shouldn't we, as leadership practitioners be helping companies like this be focused on getting those companies equipped with the necessary leadership qualities they need instead of trying to 'one up' each other by introducing a plethora of different leadership methodologies, frameworks and approaches?

I aim to simplify how complex we seem to have made (and are making) leadership.

And by simplify, I mean cutting through the crap, the noise, and the politics and focusing on the core essential leadership qualities that are needed to effectively identify, recruit, onboard and develop great leaders for the disruption of tomorrow.

Much like the plethora of terms for the letterbox, when we boil it down, the letterbox is designed to do one simple thing - enable someone to put a letter/magazine or any other such leaflet through it. That's it. Simple. Nothing fancier than that.

Now imagine if we took the same approach to preparing our emerging leaders for their leadership careers - equip them with the core and essential qualities needed to be a great leader, without all the bells and whistles. That's it. Simple. Nothing fancier than that.

I think of what one prominent leadership practitioner said about my work - you may know of Marshall Goldsmith .

Recently I was interviewed by the esteemed Karen Mangia who writes for a range of publications, including Medium .

One of the questions I was asked included this one:

Based on your experience or research, what are the top five traits effective leaders exemplify now?

From my analysis of research, effective leaders are characterized by the traits outlined below. These traits will also increasingly be needed by leadership and organizations to navigate ongoing disruption and they serve as the handful of core and essential leadership qualities that I'm referring to.

These qualities are:

1. Challenge — leaders who are courageous challengers of the status quo. This is easy to say, and harder to do in practice. Unless you embed it into how your staff and leaders are onboarded. Companies like CDK Global have taken the stigma out of troublemaking’. This was achieved through the company sending a letter to the entire team introducing the concept of a troublemaker. The company has embedded the need (and expectation) to challenge as part of every staff member's (and leader's) role. The feedback so far indicates an increase in both productivity and effectiveness.
2. Purpose Focused — leaders who are purpose-driven, build trust quickly and curiously innovate. The name Ted Selker may not mean anything, though Ted created the ‘red dot’ on the IBM /Lenovo ThinkPad. Leaders like Ted can’t stop coming up with new ideas; it’s just how leaders who are purpose-focused are wired. When they see a problem, they want to find and work with people to find creative ways to fix it. They want to simplify complexity. They dare to think differently and don’t apologize for how their mind works. While they can come up with ideas on how to make incremental improvements, they’re often more motivated to rethink or redesign the entire thing, whether that be a product or a process. They’re never satisfied with how things are because they constantly see how things could be better. To use a cliché, they’re ‘big picture thinkers’ and inspire those around them with this different way of thinking and approaching leadership.
3. Real — leaders who are real show up authentically in every setting, not just as a leader. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, being real as a leader in everyday practice as a leader seems to be an anomaly. I found a leader called Nick Sarillo who did the unthinkable. He told the truth. He prematurely expanded his pizzeria and was facing decreasing revenues. Against the advice of his bankers, shareholders, employees, friends, and others — Nick posted a public letter on the restaurant’s website titled ‘An Uncertain Future’. I think it’s a masterful lesson in being real. No leadership development playbook exists on this, yet this is what being real is all about.
4. Transparent — leaders with this trait are congruent with words, behaviors, and actions — essentially, what you see is what you get. They are also driven by purpose before ego. This trait is also about cutting through the bureaucracy and being intentional in your approach without agenda or malice. The ousted former CEO of Airbus, Christian Strieff is one such example of a leader with this trait. When he was brought in, Airbus was seriously behind its production schedule — to the tune of two years — of the A380, which is to this day the world’s largest passenger plane. He knew what needed to be done and was brought in for the health of the company. Despite a 12-month recruitment campaign, his recommended strategy was not welcomed by the Airbus board. Strieff refused to play the political game, opting instead to address the reality that Airbus was two years behind on its production promises and this could lead to insolvency and would have a bigger impact on the respective economies Airbus served. He had prioritized the survival of the company over the literal politics of some of its shareholders. Strieff was eventually fired by the Airbus board after he delivered a ‘back me or sack me’ resignation threat. Streiff had a plan that would work for the good of the organization to the tune of €5 billion. He knew it was the right thing to do for the entity that had been entrusted to his care. When he began to do what he was hired to do, however, he ran afoul of the politics surrounding the multinational. He was faced with two options: Stay and play the game, thereby betraying the best interests of Airbus, or pursue what he knew was right and let the cards fall where they may.
5. Curiosity — leaders with this trait always ask why things are the way they are, can be a constant source of new ideas and innovation because they think differently and approach things from a beginner’s mindset. Tech founder Michael Dell was once asked to name an attribute CEOs will need to survive forthcoming disruption. His succinct answer: ‘I would place my bet on curiosity.’ Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, with blockbuster films such as A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 to his credit, wrote in his book A Curious Mind, ‘If you’re the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you’re laying the foundation for the culture of your company’. He had a practice of going around the world and having ‘curiosity conversations’. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said, ‘We run this company based on questions, not answers’. Patagonia founder Yves Chouinard wrote in his book Let My People Go Surfing, ‘[T]he worst thing said about him is that he was “uncurious”. And how about research from Oregon State University which provides solid data to back up these leaders’ perspectives In the paper ‘Outside the box: Epistemic curiosity as a predictor of creative problem solving and creative performance’, the researchers found a correlation for people testing higher for the trait of curiosity on personality tests and their ability to creatively approach tasks. Just their innate inquisitive nature allowed them to be more innovative.

Continued research from DDI found a strong correlation exists between what DDI considers critical leader skills for the future and the above five leadership qualities (I have circled the four leadership skills that align with the five outlined above.

Despite this though, there is a worrying concern about the gap that exists between leaders who consider these critical skills and the percentage of leaders who are currently receiving training in these leadership skills.

We as leadership practitioners still have a lot of work to do to prepare future leaders for their leadership journey of tomorrow.

Identifying a handful of core and essential leadership qualities is critical as we consider how to begin identifying, recruiting, onboarding, and developing our future leaders.

If you're interested in how to develop these qualities in your aspiring, emerging and future leaders, take a look at my work in this field.

Please feel free to share what we're doing here with those in your network who might benefit from it.

Thanks for reading this far. If you or your organization needs any help with preparing for the future, please email me at [email protected]

Cheers

Paul Mac