An article from Fast Company “The Leader of the Future” discusses the new role of the leader, described as: “to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make change“. The article is based on discussions between Fast Company and Ronald Heifetz, one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership and the director of the Leadership Education Project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and author of “Leadership Without Easy Answers“. The ideas from the article that impacted me are:
How Leaders See
“The real heroism of leadership involves having the courage to face reality — and helping the people around you to face reality. It’s no accident that the word “vision” refers to our capacity to see……. Mustering the courage to interrogate reality is a central function of a leader. And that requires the courage to face three realities…
- What values do we stand for — and are there gaps between those values and how we actually behave?
- What are the skills and talents of our company — and are there gaps between those resources and what the market demands?
- What opportunities does the future hold — and are there gaps between those opportunities and our ability to capitalize on them?”
Imagine the differences in behavior between leaders who operate with the idea that “leadership means influencing the organization to follow the leader’s vision” and those who operate with the idea that “leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and to live into its opportunities.” That second idea — mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges — is what defines the new job of the leader….
If the role of the leader is first to help people face reality and then to mobilize them to make change, then one of the questions that defines both of those tasks is this: What’s precious, and what’s expendable? Which values and operations are so central to our core that if we lose them, we lose ourselves? And which assumptions, investments, and businesses are subject to radical change? At the highest level, the work of a leader is to lead conversations about what’s essential and what’s not.
How Leaders Listen
Most leaders die with their mouths open. Leaders must know how to listen — and the art of listening is more subtle than most people think it is. But first, and just as important, leaders must want to listen. Good listening is fueled by curiosity and empathy: What’s really happening here? Can I put myself in someone else’s shoes? It’s hard to be a great listener if you’re not interested in other people…
What else does it take to be a great listener?
… in a conversation, the tone of voice and the intensity of the argument give clues to that subtext. Listening musically enables leaders to get underneath and behind the surface to ask, “What’s the real argument that we’re having?” And that’s a critical question to answer — because, in the absence of an answer to that question, you get superficial buy-in. People go along in a pseudo-consensus, or in a deferential way, but without commitment.
How Leaders Fail
It’s dangerous to challenge people in a way that will require changes in their priorities, their values, their habits. It’s dangerous to try to persuade people to take more responsibility than they feel comfortable with. And that’s why so many leaders get marginalized, diverted, attacked, seduced. You want to be able to stir the pot without letting it boil over. You want to regulate disequilibrium, to keep people in a productive discomfort zone.
How do you keep people in a “productive discomfort zone”?
Attention is the currency of leadership. The big questions for that kind of leader are “How do I use that attention? What do I focus it on? When does a broad agenda become too broad? How do I push the organization without alienating my core constituency?” You have to remember: Drawing attention to tough challenges generates discomfort. So you want to pace the rate at which you frustrate or attempt to change expectations.
That means distinguishing between “ripe” and “unripe” issues. A ripe issue is one in which there is a general urgency for action. An unripe issue is one in which there is local urgency — a readiness to change within just one faction. The work that it takes to ripen an unripe issue is enormous — and quite dangerous. It needs to be done, but it’s different from working a ripe issue…..
There’s a second big difference between people who lead with authority and people who lead without authority. If you’re leading without authority, other people’s attention spans are going to be short whenever you try to communicate with them. Forget two-hour speeches — most people aren’t willing to give you more than 30 seconds! So you have to use their attention wisely. You have to make your interventions short, simple, intelligible, and relevant.
How Leaders Stay Alive
Leadership is hard — on the people who work with leaders as well as on leaders themselves. How do leaders maintain the stamina, the energy, and the passion that they need to keep pushing ahead?
To sustain yourself over the long term, you must learn how to distinguish role from self. Or, to put it more simply: You can’t take things personally. Leaders often take personally what is not personal and then misdiagnose the resistance that’s out there.
Remember: It’s not you they’re after. It may look like a personal attack, it may sound like a personal attack — but it’s the issues that you represent that they’re after. Distinguishing role from self helps you maintain a diagnostic mind-set during trying times.
Leaders also need a sanctuary, a place where they can go to get back in touch with the worth of their life and the worth of their work. I’m not necessarily talking about a physical place or an extended sabbatical. I’m talking about practical sanctuaries — daily moments that function as sanctuaries. One sanctuary that I recently developed for myself involves getting an email that’s sent out by a rabbinic friend, who’s a mystic and a biblical scholar. Every day, he sends out an interpretation of one word from the Bible. It’s just a few screens long, but as I’m going through my email every day, I take a few minutes to read this thing, and it roots me in a different reality, a different source of meaning.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Book, Business, Failure, Listen, Communication, Psychology
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