It is my belief that there are leadership basics that are practiced in all successful organizations. This first became apparent to me while running my own business. As CEO of Adirondack Beverages, I instituted a total quality management (TQM) program. In the process, I studied other organizations with successful TQM programs. What I discovered was amazing! Even though organizations named their programs differently – “Pursuit of Excellence”, “TQM”, “Continuous Improvement” – they all had similar practices and programs. Through further exploration, I began to see that these basics extended well beyond TQM programs and into every facet of leadership. Throughout my career, I have attempted to implement these leadership basics.
After I sold my business, I decided to further pursue my education. As part of my doctoral studies, I reviewed the research on leadership. I began reading everything on leadership that I could get my hands on in the hopes of learning what the “experts” had to say about the basics of leadership. Interestingly, my review of the literature uncovered that there are surprisingly few articles that attempt to summarize the basics of leadership. In reading a hundred years worth of writing on the subject, I was able to identify some of the basics scattered here and there. However, no single model or theory captured these basics in one place.
How could this be? How can any profession or skill be taught without starting with the basics? I simply could not understand this. A hint came in one of my readings. According to one expert, there are over 860 definitions of leadership – each with its own explanation of what makes an effective leader. When you consider that experts can’t even agree on what leadership is, it is no wonder we have such a difficult time teaching managers how to lead. This all culminates with the ineffective leaders we see every day in the business and political world.
My goal in this writing is simple – I want to share with you what I consider to be the basics that every successful leader must be taught. My theory is quite simple to summarize (aren’t the basics always simple?) yet exceptionally difficult to put into practice.
A Model of the Basics
What Leaders Want
Let’s start at the end and work backward. What do leaders want? Obviously, a successful leader wants to “win”. Winning might take the form of larger market share, or greater profits, or better efficiency. No matter how it is measured, leaders want to win.
Can Leaders “Win” by Themselves?
Of course not! A good leader needs good people. To be successful, those in charge need the cooperation of people they lead. There are three methods leaders can use to get people to do what they want. The first is coercion. Coercion has always been and remains a popular method of obtaining cooperation. However, this method requires constant monitoring and its effectiveness, therefore, is short lived. It is said that “you can’t afford to watch everyone all the time.” As soon as the follower can get away, he will.
Material exchange, also popular, is a second method – that is, giving a person something in exchange for their efforts. Again, this is sure to work in the short term. However, if people only cooperate with the leader for monetary reward, then there is no guarantee that they will contribute 100% of their efforts.
I believe that the most effective and enduring method of obtaining cooperation is through willing cooperation. This suggests that people cooperate because they “want to”. People who want to contribute to the success of an organization are highly motivated and highly committed. I call them co-operators.
The Importance of Co-Operators
A popular term in the academic literature is “follower”. Personally I dislike the term because the last thing a leader wants is a follower. If a leader is heading for a cliff the last thing he or she needs is people to follow. If the fall doesn’t kill the leader, the followers following on top of the leader certainly will! Leaders need co-operators who will grab the leader by the belt and tell the leader that there is a cliff ahead. The bottom line is that leaders are dependent on people at all levels of the organization, and need feedback and cooperation to be effective.
Organizations need people that will do more than follow the lead set by management; they need co-operators that will contribute their efforts to realize the goals of the organization. Willing cooperators who are engaged do more than follow – they willingly contribute their efforts.
How to Develop Co-Operators – The Basics of Leadership
I have made two points so far. First, leaders want to win. Second, leaders need the willing cooperation of employees to win. The most important question, therefore, is, “how can leaders create these co-operators?” Two facets of leadership are critically important: professional leadership and personal leadership. These are the basics of leadership.
Professional Leadership
Professional Leadership encompasses the “formal” part of leadership – setting the vision and mission for the organization, creating a process for achieving organizational goals, and aligning processes and procedures, people and infrastructure, to achieve organizational goals.
Providing direction entails setting a common purpose for the organization, which should include developing a “mission” (a reason to exist), “vision” (long-term goals), and overall organizational philosophy. Direction is critical because it is the responsibility of leaders to create a “common purpose” for their people and organization – a common purpose that can excite passion. Why? Because when people are passionate about a common purpose they will cooperate willingly. How can a leader create passion? First and foremost by being passionate themselves about the purpose – actions speak louder than words. However this is not enough, if a leader wants his or her people to be passionate about a purpose it needs to be based on a “win-win” philosophy. That is, the people win when the organization wins. There is no question that the opposite doesn’t work. When we have major corporations announcing record profits and subsequently announcing massive layoffs to improve the profits for the upcoming year, it is difficult to believe that their employees “want to” cooperate with the leaders.
Critical to the success of leader direction is providing, implementing and managing a systematic process. Most importantly, that process should have as its goal the attainment of the common purpose of the organization. Creating this “constancy of purpose,” as Dr. Edward Deming puts it, stresses consistent, persistent, and effective implementation of process designed to attain an organization’s stated common purpose. A process that works is the key to sustaining passion. Success breeds success.
Finally, coordination involves acquiring the essential elements necessary to operate the organization and then coordinating the various functions toward the common goal. Perhaps most importantly, coordination is the “strategic alignment” of an organization, its resources, and its members. Coordination is a crucial component in achieving an organization’s direction.
The key to effective professional leadership is proactive communication. People can only cooperate when they are aware of where the organization is heading and how they can contribute to the success of the organization.
Personal Leadership
Personal leadership is the personal behavior of leaders in performing the responsibilities of professional leadership. It can be thought of as the “people” side of leadership, and is most influential in developing co-operators. Leaders must realize that theirs is a position of interdependency and that they have to be able to build effective relationships both internally and externally. Personal leadership begins with building relationships.
As a leader attempts to build a relationship with an employee, that employee will ask five simple questions in assessing whether or not to pursue the relationship:
1. “Does this leader have expertise in this area?” Expertise is the perceived ability and competence of leaders.
2. “Can I trust this leader?” Trust is the perceived honesty, sincerity and dependability of leaders.
3. “Does this leader care about me?” Caring is demonstrated through empathy, listening, and politeness to employees regardless of the employee’s position in an organization.
4. “Will this leader share with me?” Sharing is demonstrated through sharing of authority, information, and rewards.
5. “What kind of morals does this leader have?” Acting morally is providing a moral code that is a guide for the behavior of leaders and members in performing their responsibilities in an organization. An effective moral code is based on generally accepted principles such as treating others the way one would like to be treated, integrity, fairness, and justice.
Only when the employee answers each of these questions with a resounding “Yes!” are leaders credible and a trusting relationship established.
Putting the Basics into Action
The basics of leadership are easy to summarize and difficult to attain. Strong leaders are not created in a day, a week, or even a month. It takes a consistent record of providing a strong direction, developing a process for achieving that direction, and coordinating the necessary resources to attain that direction in order for professional leadership to be established. This consistent behavior is even more critical on the personal side.
Treating people properly, acting morally, and developing credibility through consistent action all take time. I believe, though, that it is time well spent. Focusing on professional and personal leadership will help develop co-operators, and these co-operators will help make a successful leader.
Jason
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Put in practice
I feel that there are natural leaders in the world that know these basics and only have to be taught how to refine them into a better leader. I also feel that, unfortunately, many managers do not have the skills or ability to recognize employees they work with that are leaders.
An instance of leadership that I have been a part of is as follows:
I worked as a Quality Process Technician for a company that used four shifts of mixed hand assembly and machine assembly. During my training I was told my job description was basically to "police" the hand assemblers and machine operators to ensure procedures were being followed and to randomly open finished containers to verify quality. I had heard many stories of past QPTs finding non-conforming product and an operator or assembler receiving reprimands up to and including termination. While I can understand repeated quality issues coming from a single employee doing various jobs, always having trouble, causing reprimand, I could not see myself being the one to cause someone to get in trouble. I took another approach to the favored process of my job.
For the first two months, I would open random containers, I would "police" the floor, but, I also treated every person with respect and friendliness during those months. I would start every shift by visiting each and every work station running. I would briefly speak with each operator about anything THEY wanted to talk about. Some conversations would be work related, others more personal, but I always allowed the operator to open the topic and I would listen, commenting as needed. After those initial two months, I introduced my shift to a new type of "police". I stopped opening random boxes and started working with line inspectors, line leaders, and machine operators on what quality signs I was trained to look for. In effect, I trained my entire shift to be a quality technician. I no longer had to "police" my shift, they "policed" themselves and only relied on me to help troubleshoot any issues that might arise. It also allowed me time to search for opportunities for improvement and work to implement them.
Within six months of my start date, our shift had exceeded production and quality expectations, even breaking stated records for both. I attribute this to being able to work with the production department in a way that only a natural leader who already has the basics can do.
Being a leader is as much knowing how to work with people and learning as it is directing people in the right direction. I'm happy to see that others see what leadership is as I do. Thank you.
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Andy Ferbson
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Co-operator leader
By duplicating, like a DNA replication, the leader doesn't look for followers. They'd "follow" in order to duplicate the recent leader.
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Allen Shao
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Untitled
viswa
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Great Article on Leadership
Wonderful Article.
Going back to the basics.
Leadership scarcity is more nowadays in every area,in politics,society.
There is always space at the top.
Every nation needs a good leader.Every organization needs a motivating leader.
Creating a passion in cooperators,getting the trust of them,motivating them along the way are the basic traits of a good leader.
Thanks for sharing.
Bets Wishes,
Kannan Viswagandhi
http://www.growing-s
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Suresh Kumar Sharma
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Never before mission to generate Co-Operators... Become Global Leader ...
Demand for employment is an anti national act. Planet earth is facing a deep crisis.
Because replacing machines and computers means defeat for quality and quantity. Machines and computers need electricity and fuel, while these produce food, cloth and shelter. Those who want food, cloth and shelter do not produce the same. Would one want to do on this problem? Here is the solution go ahead...
http://knol.google.c
Matthew J Wilson
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L-ship 101
Jim Collins would say it's about getting the right people on the bus, and then deciding where it's going!
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bba747
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Excellent summary
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Anonymous
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Simple and Succinct - Very Good
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Ben Yates
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This is very hard to read
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