My interview on TVNZ Breakfast. I started the week on Sunday night saying I wanted to do more video. I didn’t realise TVNZ would be involved!
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/thursday-july-7-4289762/video?vid=4289869
My previous blog covers this topic too.
Stephen
We want leaders, we demand leadership and we expect a lot from leaders. But sometimes leadership fails. Unless you’re able to exercise coercive power, when followers lose confidence for whatever reason, then your leadership is probably over in that role. And that’s what happened to the CEO of the EMA this week.
Being a leader is like being a fish in a bowl – you’re magnified – everyone is watching, but very little information is getting into the fish. The fish doesn’t even know it’s wet I guess! My experience is that the bigger the role, the harder it is for leaders to get feedback from those in their organisation. As you gain more freedom, more profile and access to more people, you are told less by those that support you. If leadership is there to serve then isn’t that wrong? Don’t we all have a responsibility to our leaders to ensure that they are fully informed by what we notice?
The political price of leadership is the greater standard that gets applied. Authentic leaders don’t switch their leadership on and off – they are what they are 24/7. Which must mean at times being wrong, being vulnerable and stuffing up. The higher the standard the easier it is to make a hash of something and that’s what’s happened here. Which disenfranchised so many who need to be connected for that leadership to thrive. And so it ended.
Let’s learn something. What I’d like to ask of you is this: Do you have a leader where you notice things where you could help with feedback? Are you doing anything about it? Or are you sitting there waiting for failure? If you are, I say that’s wrong. Leadership is a relationship. A leader exists not for him or herself, but for a community, a team or a group and serves for that group. In every relationship there is a responsibility to empower and grow each other. Leaders don’t have all the answers and don’t always get it right. When leadership fails, so do the followers and the organisation.
I’m not saying this is the case with the EMA, but it strikes me that there’s a lot of people wanting blood. Wanting blood is a sign of failure for everyone. Those in a relationship don’t want blood. There’s a feeling of no winners in this leadership failure. Which is a shame, as leadership is so important.
Learn something from all of this and do your bit in Leadership Week by supporting your leader. We all have one somewhere. I’ll be on TVNZ Breakfast at 7.10am in the morning talking about this. Hope I make sense!
Stephen
It’s Leadership Week week in New Zealand, thanks to Sir Peter Blake Trust. It’s a week of awards and events in schools, businesses and anyone who’s interested or cares about leadership. That’s a great thing and I hope you can get involved somehow. You might also be thinking, well, leadership is a way of life for me in my role, my community and my organisation. I don’t need a week of it to be reminded. I agree, so here’s an idea. Why not think of one thing you want to change about your own leadership and disclose that to someone who won’t know.
It will be an opportunity to put authenticity into practice in a surprisingly refreshing way for the unsuspecting recipient. They’ll be able to help you and you them by showing vulnerability.
I’d like to say a personal thanks to the team at the Sir Peter Blake Trust. I find them authentic and engaging and this year you’ll find the Centre for Innovative Leadership on the inside back cover of their Leadership Magazine. Which makes leadership week, well, very worthwhile! And what better topic to celebrate for a whole week anyway. Enjoy.
Stephen
Next blog: Negative Splits
The real work is ensuring we make more money. That’s what the shareholders want and so we need to work hard, grow, and put energy into developing smarter ways to do business to, yes make more money. This is a reality of the context of many in business.
So when we talk authenticity it’s tempting to think that it’s nice, we’ll feel better, but in the end we’ll have the real work to do. I agree that you can push on, focussing only on pushing the business and you will most likely achieve some impressive results. You probably know people that do that. Or maybe you are one of those people. Maybe you admire those people – the high achievers, hard-hitters that take no prisoners. Maybe you secretly wish you were like that.
When I open a Leadership Forum in Wellington next month during Leadership Week
I will talk about authenticity and business results. I will challenge that if you look at the hard-hitting leader – the hard driver – you’ll likely notice one of two things: they move on or people around them move on. The leader who survives by pushing hard will have to keep pushing hard. Inevitably, pushing harder and harder becomes necessary until the next project. Which pretty well sums it up. A project.
The authentic leader pushes hard too. He or she knows when to drive forward in moments of crisis, when there are challenging changes to put in place. The authentic leader is not just running a driving leadership academy though.
The authentic leader leads from a place of understanding self, appreciating strengths and recognising that there will be strengths in his or her team that will form the bigger part of what they need to achieve. Not just what he or she has. So within that team there will be other leaders who will drive what needs to be driven at different times and when needed. A team from which will come leaders of tomorrow. A collective too, of IQ and EQ that has exponential capability beyond the numbers.
Are you the leader who only drives hard to achieve what needs to be achieved? Like a project manager. Or are you leading others authentically who will collectively drive the business results?
What will you choose? Both can work, we know that. Both will probably be remembered too. Will you be remembered for the things you created or for the people who grew to create more than you could?
I say do what is right for you and your circumstance, but don’t pretend. Either that it’s authentic leadership to drive without trust or be authentic while thinking that it’s just nice, but not real. It’s real alright. Real hard and risky.
Yes, authentic leadership is risky. You’ll likely be thought of as soft and not business-like. At first. Strange that – taking a significant business and personal risk but being thought of as soft. No way!
Stephen
Stephen Drain's Leadership Blog 