Closing the Leadership Gap
Has your
own attitude to leaders changed in your life, and if so, how?
When
I joined the Air Force in 1984, the concept of leadership was much different
than it is today. At 19-years old, my
view of leadership consisted of my parents, the best athlete on our sports
teams, and my shift supervisor at McDonalds.
That would all change the minute I stepped off the bus at 2300 hours at
Lackland AFB in Texas for Basic Training.
I knew right away who was the leader and who wasn’t.
The
Air Force quickly presented me with facts and expectations. From team exercises to classroom training,
the first few weeks of Air Force life cleared demonstrated the importance of
awareness and knowing one’s place in a larger mission. As time progressed in my career, I began
studying leadership primarily for promotional opportunities. Leadership was clearly a military imperative
and they had their historical share of great leaders. I studied names like Billy Mitchell, General
Henry “Hap” Arnold, the Wright brothers, and the first enlisted man to win the
Medal of Honor, John Levitow. The Air
Force described these leaders in great detail and in the process I couldn’t
help but notice many of the people that I worked for did not resemble the
people I was studying.
It
was during my first enlistment that I realized the leadership learning process would
teach me how to lead but also how “not to” lead. With real-life experiences, hours of study,
and the onset of a strong desire and ability to lead, my perspective, style,
and influence was beginning to grow.
What
started as studying leadership for promotion has become a desire to help
others. The more I have learned about
leadership, the more I have become focused on helping others. In the early years, my leadership was more about
my career, my reputation, and me. Thirty years later, my leadership is based on
authentic character and compassion for others.
If we take
as a starting point the attitude to those in authority/leaders as held by your
grandparents, and then look at those attitudes held by your parents, and then
by you, and then by the younger generation, is there a changing trend? If so,
what is it?
As
I stated earlier, leadership has evolved from a one-man-show into a more
holistic approach with leaders identified throughout the chain-of-command. Traditionally, leadership was reserved for
those at the top of the organization chart with a corner office. Over the years, it has slowly moved down to
take a collective perspective with strong leaders at each level.
From
the quality initiatives to organizational innovation, the trend of leadership is
sliding away from singular individuals and to teams and work groups. While the benefits of teams and delegation
have always been known, it has only been in the past twenty-years that it has
been respected as its own entity rather than something the “top leader”
recommends.
Why do you
think that this has occurred?
In
1980, the General Motors plant in Fremont, CA closed its doors. High levels of animosity existed between
workers and managers. Eventually, five
thousand workers were laid off and managers had lost all faith in their ability
to motivate and inspire their workforce.
Part
of the problem dates back to the early 1930s with fear and intimidation ruled
the workforce. And reeling from the
Great Depression, workers would stand for almost anything to get a paycheck. In the 1950s, American workers began to unite
and form unions. While these factions
protected the workers, they did little to mend management and labor
relations. The Fremont plant seemed an
unpleasant extension of the distrust and ill will that seemed to permeate the
American workforce.
In
Change or Die, Alan Deutschman (2007)
describes how Toyota stepped in with a plan to revive the operation. By establishing trust and treating workers
with respect, Toyota chief’s changed the hearts and minds of the former employees. They hired back nearly all of the 5,000
workers and turned the plant around.
Toyota’s philosophy was based on two ideas and this is one of the
reasons we have seen a leadership change over the years. Deutschman stated, “The first was that the
average worker is motivated by a desire to do a job that enhances his
self-worth and earns the respect of other workers. The second premise was that the worker is
inspired by an employer who places value in the worker’s input” (p. 107).
MacGregor’s
Theory X and Theory Y in the 1950s began to highlight a new way of thinking and
in the process created a new way of leading.
Seeing value in people, giving them room to grow, and encouraging them
rather than abusing them has produced greater results, more innovation, and
fewer turnovers. It works in the office,
at home, on the ball field, and in the boardroom.
Additionally, while we live in a world with
more information about leadership and leadership practices, why is it that we
have an apparent gap in the quality of our leaders?
In their book Why Are We Bad At Picking Good Leaders? Cohn and Moran (2011)
started their introduction by stating, “Let’s face it, we are lousy at picking
leaders. Why does this happen? Why
don’t’ we do a better job of picking effective leaders? For starters, because
sleeking the right people can be very, very hard” (p. 1). Our society is a performance-based arena
where the best and brightest individuals sit atop an empire saturated in media
coverage and fanfare. As history has
shown, most people don’t care how they got there.
I believe Bill George (2007) said it best
in his book True North, “Under
pressure from Wall Street to maximize short-term earnings, board of directors
frequently chose leaders for their charisma instead of character, their style
rather than their substance, and their image instead of their integrity” (p.
xxv).
When current leaders and large groups of
people select leaders without considering the person’s emotional intelligence
or their inner qualities of integrity, character, and compassion, they are
taking a significant risk with their business, their team, and their
organization.
How do you think we can close this gap?
From personal relationship to professional
assignments, if we hope to minimize the quality gap in leaders than we must
focus on the internal attributes before we are blinded by the external
possibilities. Cohn & Moran (2011)
identify seven leadership attributes of integrity, empathy, emotional
intelligence, vision, judgment, courage, and passion.” They said, “These seven qualities must be
taken as a whole to capture the essence of leadership” (p. 8).
From Kouzes & Posner to Jack Welch and
John Maxwell, it is incumbent on today’s leaders to look deeper than a sales
report by placing more value on the how and not merely the what. I think Stephen M.R. Covey (2006) said it
best in his book The Speed of Trust when he said, “The ability to establish,
grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders—customers, business
partners, investors, and coworkers—is the key leadership competency of the new
global economy” (p. 21). And then, most
importantly, he highlights that trust is a function of two things: character
and competence.
Competence is extremely important in
leaders. However, if we ignore a leader’s character, we do so at our own peril.
Steve
References:
Cohn, J., & Moran, J. (2011). Why are
we bad at picking good leaders? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Covey, S.M. (2006). The speed of trust. New
York, NY: Free Press.
Deutschman, A. (2007). Change or die. New
York, NY: HarperCollins.
