Leader vs. Leadership: A Vital Distinction for Success

Posted by ralphjacob

Why we are so disappointed in our leaders?

We expect leaders to possess superhuman strengths, clairvoyance, sound judgment, integrity and charisma that most of us may personally lack. We are quick to criticize and become disappointed when those above us on the organization chart fail to meet these expectations.

As an antidote, there are tens of thousands of books and articles that give advice to those leaders to promote our fantasies of what leaders should be.

False Hope?

Yet today’s leader’s impact on behavior (as evidenced by the general level of leadership in corporations and the government) demonstrate that thee intended improvements from books and training have failed to materialize.

In short, despite the investment of billions of dollars each year on leadership development, the needle has failed to move much.

Rather than continuing to be disappointed on such a massive scale, perhaps we should develop a more effective set of best-practices in leadership development.
Rather than promote leaders as paragons and then be disappointed when they are not, I recommend we shift how we think about leaders in the first place and then change how we do leadership development.

Redefining “Leader”

A “Leader” is a person. When we focus on leader, we evaluate individual capabilities and hope that the individual uses the information to improve their performance. Sometimes we provide additional support to help the person make the change.

This is the medical model for leadership development:

Determine what is broken and then fix it.

A variation on the model is to find the person’s strengths and encourage them to exhibit more of them. The reasons these approaches don’t work are many and could itself be a future whitepaper. Some are explained in this webinar with Training Magazine Network.

Redefine “Leadership”

Rather than defining leadership as hierarchical, what if we saw it

• As a corporate function similar to HR and Finance that has…
• Three measurable deliverables: Direction, competence, and implementation…
• That are completed not but just the people at the top…but is a shared responsibility…
• That people complete by using processes that many have learned and by
• Using the best organization/leadership language and tools…
• That people have learned in  practice fields in which people use the new language and tools to address the existing strategic challenges
• We are able to work across silos as a network of leaders who are closely bonded together because they jointly are responsible for the three deliverables, use common processes, language, and tools, and have had shared experience/competence/and confidence to work on the complex issues that matter.

Redefine Leadership Practice

Then we could…

• Reduce individual competency/personality assessment
• Focus on the strategic needs of the organization and not individual development needs
• Create a stronger connection between leader development and improved organization performance
• Rely less on the capacities of a few individuals and instead build organization-wide resilience
• Move from leadership development activities which have demonstrated limited impact on organization performance to practices which help organizations more directly achieve strategic objectives
• Build organizations that can more readily adapt to change
• More easily able to re-engage employees who for far too long have focused on survival and not thriving
• Significantly reduce the waste of time and money on analysis and instead focus on effective collective action

For specific ideas for new leadership tools and language,  check out these tools in The Leader’s Toolbox

The Implications:

Organization consultants, Human Resources and organization development professionals will need to realign their products and services to deliver more powerful products and services.

We need to stop writing about the trivial, have the fortitude to face the facts, realign our deliverables to clients/internal customers, and focus more fastidiously on outcome rather than process results.

This will requires the fortitude to say to ourselves that we have been less than successful and embrace the willingness to take on something new.

Recalibrated Leadership Mindset

In 1995 after having used the conventional leadership methodologies, I woke up one morning and realized this:

• No one had ever thanked me for providing 360-degree competency feedbacks
• No senior leader ever asked me when we were going to do the next one
• I could never tie business results with organization performance

I faced the fact that my work had been less effective than I wanted. I contacted a number of peers who experienced the same. I then spent five years writing Leading for a Change: How to Master the Five Challenges Faced by Every Leader as a way to find a more productive framework.

I no longer provide competency or personality assessments as part of leadership training focusing instead on practical language and tools to do the leadership work.

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Ralph Jacobson is the founder of The Leader’s Toolbox
He provides a powerful platform for change through Coaching, Training & Consulting

The Leadership Lesson They Don't Teach In Business School But Should

Mike Myatt,

 

I’ve always believed leadership exists to disrupt mediocrity, but I’m afraid in recent times many leaders are losing that battle. Somewhere along the way, they threw in the towel and settled for a weak-kneed, watered-down version of leadership – they have rationalized and justified themselves into an acceptance of mediocrity.

The sad reality is that in many cases, the education, training and development leaders receive today is woefully inadequate. We are producing analysts and risk managers and labeling them leaders. We’ve taught them to be practical, analytical, and risk adverse, but have failed to equip them to lead.

Too many leaders look alike, think alike and act alike. It’s almost as if courageous leadership has been bled out of many of those holding positions of leadership. Great numbers of leaders seem to have wandered off course and are badly in need a road map to help them regain their bearing. I have recently authored a new book, Hacking Leadership (Wiley), which is being released next Monday (12/16). It’s my hope this book will serve as just that road map.

Today’s column will not only provide you with a brief overview of my book, but I’m hopeful it may rekindle a spark still flickering somewhere deep down inside you – that it will cause you to reexamine your definition of truly remarkable leadership. Whether you read the book or not is up to you, but if we don’t start viewing leadership through an altogether different lens I can guarantee you won’t like the outcome.

So, what is hacking leadership? It’s a framework for thinking, acting, and leading differently. It challenges conventional leadership constructs, and offers insights on why what we’ve been duped into referring to as leadership is actually very far from the real thing. The thought is to use adaptive, applied, and creative thinking combined with enhanced problem solving skills to become a more skilled leader. To become more self aware as a leader, to more rapidly identify blind spots, and to close critical gaps keeping you, your team, and your organization from reaching your leadership potential.

In my book I define hacking as follows:

Hacking [hak-ing] – present participle of hack (verb) to discover an alternate path, clever and skillful tricks, shortcuts and workarounds, breaking the code, deciphering complexity, influencing outcomes, acquiring access, and creating innovative customizations to existing/outdated methodologies.

While there are many things that can cause a leader to fail themselves and those they lead, I’ve identified 11 critical leadership gaps and blind spots, which if not identified, understood, and addressed can be fatal to both leaders and there organizations. While entertaining, what they teach you in business school, and what you read in most books is radically different than what you experience in real life – is it not?

As the world continues to evolve, so must our leadership acumen. Real leaders must learn to hack time-tested leadership principles to make them more relevant, practical, and effective. Leaders must stop holding on to false truths held as real, and lead in new and different ways. Leaders must spend more time exploring what they don’t know rather than waxing eloquent about what they do know. They must seek out diverse and even dissenting opinions in search of what’s right rather than being concerned about who gets the credit for being right.

The bottom line is this – the principles contained in Hacking Leadership will not only challenge your current perceptions and beliefs, but they will provide you with an actionable road map to becoming a better, more engaged, more relevant leader. Here’s a brief excerpt from the book:

“Leadership means many things to many people. And not all forms of leadership are created equal. Leadership can represent a pursuit, discipline, practice, passion, skill, competency, obligation, or duty. Leadership driven by any of these constructs can be effective, but where leadership really gets interesting is when it combines all of these traits to become purpose driven. The best leaders understand the critical importance of transforming personal values into a greater sense of purpose. It is only at the point where leaders become committed to purpose that they’re able to surrender to it and let purpose guide their approach to leadership. It’s often this revelation that transforms leaders in title only into passionate purpose-driven leaders.”

So, my question is this: are you ready to challenge your own leadership beliefs to discover whether or not they’re serving you as well as you think?