Why it is so hard for companies to find great leaders?

A guest post by By Dan MacDonald

When leaders are chosen, the decision is often based on the wrong criteria. Many look to people with strong, charismatic personalities, or passion for personal achievement. They may also look to people who are commanding or who manage the efforts of others well. Some people even look to physical attributes as an indication of leadership ability.

The misconceptions of what makes a person a good leader are not limited to these factors. They also include our choices of personality characteristics. Some see great leaders as people who can mesmerize a crowd with their stage performance, who can make those around them relax with their confidence, or who can think circles around other senior people in the organization. In reality, these traits and characteristics are not indicators of great leaders. Rather, great leaders are characterized by their focus on integrity over stage performance, passion for what is best for the company over self-importance, humility and passing forward credit over ego, and empowering their people over making decisions on their behalf. There have been numerous books written, researches conducted, and data compiled that point to these findings; however, even extraordinary companies with insightful, intelligent, and experienced boards of directors and senior executives have erroneously chosen leaders based on their perception of leadership capabilities.

Leadership Development at HP

Take Hewlett Packard for instance. In January of 1999, Hewlett Packard’s board of directors met in the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto, California to discuss, among other things, the rapid changes in business caused by the unsubstantiated growth of internet IPOs. There was concern among the board that changing times may call for a leader better suited to lead the company into the future. In his book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins summarizes this concern best, stating that, “HP’s stalling growth and languishing stock price relative to the skyrocketing technology sector lend credence to a growing worry that HP needed an entirely new type of leader”. At the meeting, Lewis Platt, then CEO of HP, suggested he retire early to make room for an appropriate leader. The board accepted and replaced him with Carly Fiorina, announcing in July of that year, that she would become the next CEO of Hewlett Packard.

Lewis Platt and the board of directors believed that a new CEO with a fresh perspective would help mobilize the company towards the rapidly-changing landscape of the technology industry. Fiorina, who once held Forbes magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Woman in Business’ title and had an impressive sales background as Executive VP at AT&T, was just the type of executive HP was looking for. In retrospect, it seems as though the board of directors may have erred in its judgment; during Fiorina’s tenure HP realized its first loss, its stock price fell from $45.36 to $20.14 and heavy job losses were incurred. In comparison, Platt, the Ford Taurus-driving down-to-earth former CEO, grew HP’s annual sales from $16.2 to $42 billion and earned Chief Executive Magazine’s distinction as the 11^th highest wealth creator of all time.

After closely examining HP, it becomes evident that leadership plays an important role in the rise or fall of an organization. Leaders can either drive organizations to market capitalization of hundreds of millions dollars or to losses as equally great. It is hard to dispute that leadership does not play a vital role in the success of a company, yet many organizations do not have systems in place to identify and develop potential future leaders.

Leadership Development at Wal-Mart

Consider Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart. From a young age, Walton displayed a natural ability to lead. In high school, he was the starting quarterback of the football team and never lost a game. He was Vice President of the student body in his junior year and President his senior year. He was voted ‘Permanent President’ of his graduating class in university. But Walton didn’t fit the standard description of a leader. He was not an Ivy League school graduate and did not hold an MBA. Walton was a humble, scrappy, pick-up driving country boy.

Walton went to work as a manager trainee at JC Penney three days after graduating university, marking the beginning of a passionate love affair with the retail industry that would help shape the remainder of his life and affect the lives of millions of people. At JC Penney, Walton embraced the customer centric JC Penney approach to retailing – especially JC Penney Ideas #2 and #3, guiding principles related to giving the customer the most value for their money. But Walton was not the most thorough employee; he hated making the customer wait while he completed paperwork, so his books were a mess. His boss often threatened to fire him, saying he was not cut out for the retail business. Walton managed to keep his position due to his ability as a salesman. After only eighteen months with the company, Walton resigned.

If JC Penney had systems in place to identify the leadership potential in Walton, they may have been able to entice him to stay and develop him into their future leader. Instead, he started his own department store which would rival and eventually surpass JC Penney in the quest for retail dominance. As many companies begin to adopt the ‘promote from within’ mindset, leadership development systems are becoming more and more common. The problem remains that many companies base their criteria for identifying future leaders on misconceptions of what makes a great leader.

Identifying Leaders

So the question remains—how do we create a system for identifying great leaders in the early stages of their development? Do we use psychometrics profiles to identify the leaders with the best traits and fast track them on a path to more senior roles? Do we let people inside or outside of the organization decide who will be the next leader?

Many experts have spent countless hours researching enduringly successful companies in order to develop a list of traits that might be an indicator of an individual’s leadership potential. These experts paid close attention to key characteristics commonly held by the leaders of these organizations. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, and Jason Jennings, in his book Think Big, Act Small, discuss the patterns that emerged in their research.

The patterns that emerged were often surprising even to the researchers. The researchers determined that great leaders were passionate about doing what was best for their companies. This drive for the advancement of the company took precedence over their drive for personal advancement and recognition. The leaders of these companies also exercised personal humility by passing forward credit and accepting blame. Additionally, they asked questions as often, if not more often, than they gave answers. This empowered their people to make important decisions which increased their confidence, skills, and commitment to the organization. These leaders also exhibited commonalities within their personal lives. Many of the leaders studied were extremely modest. They often preferred domestic cars or pick-up trucks over exotic sports cars. They also had a tendency to live in moderate houses instead of sprawling mansions or estates. Though humble and modest, these leaders were not meek. They tended to be stoic when it came to important business decisions. They would make tough decisions without great emotion and fanfare but rather with quiet resolve and determination. In short, great leaders are defined by their humility, integrity, determination, and strength of character, not by their stage presence and strength of personality.

The characteristics described above help in the development of a personality profile which can be used to identify strong leaders. Companies need to work to determine which other qualities are required for their particular company or industry. Once the leadership profile is complete, a company can begin building systems that identify these characteristics in its employees. There are many effective tools available to assist in this process including psychometric testing, 360 degree feedback, personnel assessments, and employee surveys. To achieve the best results, it’s important to combine a variety of these tools. As Shane Sabatino, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for The Brick LP Group said, when it comes to identifying potential leaders, “There really is no silver bullet”. Sabatino recommends incorporating a variety of assessment tools into the hiring and strategic planning processes. These processes should continuously evolve, however, they should continue to focus on identifying and developing leaders who possess the required traits.

Lasting Leadership

The question remains, “How do I know the right combination of assessment tools to implement?” To answer this question, it may be useful to examine companies which have experienced enduring success regardless of changes in their leadership. The Fortune 500 list is a great place to being your research. This annual ranking of America’s largest corporations has chronicled the spectacular rise and fall of hundreds of companies. If you compare the first Fortune 500 list published in 1955 to the most recent edition, you will find only 68 companies appear on both lists. Some of these companies have even appeared on this list every year. The exclusive list of companies who have achieved this continued success year after year include General Electric, Procter & Gamble, and Marathon Oil. It is no surprise to learn that each of these companies invests heavily in leadership development.

General Electric is world renown when it comes to leadership development. It is considered to be one of the greatest leadership development schools in the world, which is impressive for an organization that is not an educational institute. General Electric invests hundreds of millions of dollars in the continual development of their potential leaders and even has a school in Crotonville, New York, that is dedicated to achieving this objective. As part of their employment, senior leaders in the organization must dedicate time to teaching or learning at this school.

A.G. Lafley, former CEO and President and current Chairman of the Board of Procter & Gamble, takes leadership development seriously. He views leadership development as a source of competitive advantage for P&G. This makes it easy to understand why he spends over thirty percent of his time on leadership development. Lafley views effective leadership development as one of the most important components for the future success of Proctor and Gamble therefore, he is supporting a full leadership evaluation program that assesses how people lead and manage within the P&G organization.

Marathon Oil in another Fortune 500 company which invests heavily in partnerships with leadership and management training companies to help develop their executive team. They constantly conduct 360 degree evaluations and provide classroom training and online support to their management and leadership teams in efforts to help them develop.

Unfortunately, many organizations do not invest in leadership development until there is a pressing requirement for it. This is a poor and often ill-fated approach. A company cannot afford to be partially engaged in the development and identification of its future leaders. As JC Penney learned, great potential leaders can be overlooked by failing to fully engage in this process.

Dan MacDonald is President of Business Improvement Solutions (BIS), an Alberta based training and development company. He is the co-author of three books: Leadership, Management, and Success. To find out more about BIS visit www.bisconsulting.ca

Sources:

CNNMoney. (2009). Fortune. CNNMoney. Retrieved September 19, 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/full_list/401_500.html

Collins, J. (2009). How the Mighty Fall. USA: Harpercollins.

Entrepreneur. (2009). Sam Walton. Entrepreneur. Retrieved September 8, 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.entrepreneur.com/growyourbusiness/radicalsandvisionaries/article197560.html

HP. (2009). Executive Team. HP. Retrieved September 8, 2009 from the World Wide Web:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/bios/fiorina.html

May, R. (2005, November 15). Leadership Development as a Competitive Advantage. Business Pundit. Retrieved September 19, 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.businesspundit.com/leadership-development-as-a-competitive- advantage

Siegel, B. (2009). A.G. Lafley P&G. Siegel Innovations. Retrieved September 19.2009 from the World Wide Web: http://siegelinnovations.blogspot.com/2007/10/leadership-ag-lafley-procter-and-gamble.html

Walton, S. (1992). Sam Walton: Made in America. USA/Canada: Bantam Books.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 17 Comments »

Author: Dave Esler and Myra Kruger

How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds,
Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew It’s Employees into Better People

I was sent an advanced copy of The Pursuit and Something Better and while I generally don’t like to read new books until I’ve had them recommended and ravely reviewed by others first but I’m glad I didn’t wait for this book, its absolutely brilliant! I read it back to back with The Adversity Parodox and both books are now in my definite top 5 for business and personal development books.  The Pursuit of Something Better is a story of a CEO who takes a mediocre company with high turnover to a thriving culture rich customer focused success.  Jack Rooney is that CEO of the company, U.S. Cellular and he comes in with a passion and belief in culture change being the cornerstone of the company’s success and that belief drives new systems and focus that is unstoppable.  There is more story and insight and example in this book than many others combined and it shows what can be done not only from top down, but also in other levels of the organization, your life and individual self improvement so don’t think this is an executive book only, its much more than that!

Rooney comes into U.S. Cellular and introduces a new concept known as the Dynamic Organization (the D.O.) which he lives and breathes by example and immediate sets new standards and expectations that all associates in the company will also start living that DO culture.  He delivers these systems with a proven track record and overcomes significant hurdles along the way.  I found these hurdles and ways they were addressed to be most inspiring as I see the same items in my work and often they feel like impossible roadblocks.  This story and book are proof and guidance to get past that!

So, I found there are 4 main themes to the Dynamic Organization in the book  and I’ll cover some specific things from each in this review.

Culture

This book outlines an impressive transformation that is built upon a new culture for U.S. Cellular, one far from the conventional business wisdom.  The culture is one that shifts toward a customer focused, caring and value based company.  One that seeks motivational leadership, provides impressive personal development systems and engages and expects every employees to contribute to these new cultural initiatives.  Among these deep messages built into the company come a focus to always do the “right” thing and expect that of all its associates, especially its leaders.

Rooney puts many stages of culture change into place and he does so with much resistance, as would be expected, but his systems built over time and prove themselves to be valid in building a better company and all of the culture changes become sought after both internally between departments and regions within U.S. Cellular and eventually outside the company as well. All three areas below are embedded into the culture and the core to making it all work is that this culture is actually what defines the business strategy.  In fact, it IS the business strategy.  Everything that is promoted in the dynamic organization and the culture for it, are actually the business focus to Rooney and all of the systems, decisions, leadership, and financing is put towards these cultural aspects.  This was the most exciting part to me, to see how the success of a company can come by focusing strategy on things that matter to the employees and customers, that things are done with moral leadership and that the company can focus on initiatives that lead to profits, without directly being steered by profits.

Customer Service

The customer deserves the focus and the customer gets priority are also embedded into this Dynamic Organization and it is taken to great extremes in many cases with long term benefits that certainly didn’t seem profitable in any way when first introduced.  Much of these initiatives in the story were created at a time when there was huge growth in the cellular industry and most companies were purely after capturing market share quickly to expand and take advantage of the available growth.  While this mattered to U.S. Cellular, it wasn’t a focus and the customers were treated better than competitors, service was of its highest quality and the company had expectations from every employee that decisions and actions were taken to ensure the customer would benefit as a result.  Many of these things were costly in the short term but they slowly saw the market shifting to recognizing this customer service and the loyalty of their customers grew.  It allowed them expand and ultimately hang on to market share while their competitors were still struggling to capture new markets without a loyal customer base.  The long term benefits of this payed off and the book outlines many of the challenges that were faced in doing this and how this customer focus was created and maintained at U.S. Cellular.

Leadership

None of this great change could happen without great leadership and there are impressive stories and systems employed that can be modeled to help companies build stronger more focused leadership.  The Dynamic Organization expected drastic contributing to the new culture and that was reinforced with regular leadership development and feedback systems.  Peer based feedback systems for all leaders drove much of these expectations and it allowed all associates to identify the desired leadership factors which seemed to enable more and more grass roots leadership.

Ethics

I think the sheer volume of attention put to ethics in the Dynamic Organization was impressive and one of the most inspiring aspects of the book.  It shows how a company can still operate (and do so very successfully) with strong ethical boundaries and expectations.  Business competition often stems unethical behaviors and greed that dominate our news and media channels which is so obvious today.  These kind of stories and examples of doing the right thing no matter what the costs and the way U.S. Cellular put ethical boundaries and expectations into a company’s core culture is something to be honored and admired.

So, I’d highly recommend The Pursuit of Something Better to anyone interested in culture change, leadership, ethics and moral leadership and customer service.  I believe some of these changes can occur at any level of an organization but its especially useful for driving systemic changes and strategic change in your company.  I can’t say the book is really a clear guide of exactly how to do this, but the stories are inspiring and many of the systems and actions are described in detailed and will be easy to use as a model for similar systems in your own company.  I know I can use some of these in mine!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 16 Comments »

Author: Seth Godin

We Need You to Lead Us

I recently read Tribes and its the first book I’ve read by Godin, believe it or not.  I definitely want to get into a few more of his titles now since this book had some real gems in it on leadership.  The message throughout that book is that there are many ways to connect a group of people together for a common purpose and today’s technology, especially the web enable so much of that to happen.  It allows the formation of like minded people or “Tribes” that can collectively work together and create a movement for change.

Godin highlights a few areas of why business has changed and what Tribes enable people to do now.  A few points here really stood out for me and they are about how companies expect more people to lead than they ever used to.  Leaders are expected much more now at all levels than classic organizations where only few were expected to lead everyone else.  This is encouraging to anyone to be more involved as a leader.  Another point is about, how much influence and impact individuals actually have now on areas needing leadership, new products and just the rate that business operates.  Things change much more quickly than ever before in business and this opens many doors for new leadership to exist at all levels.  The final one of these points for me was about how exciting and fun leadership and new innitiatives can actually be and that so many people want to be involved in them.  This leaves many opportunities for anyone to help collect and lead a tribe toward a common goal and common passions and aspirations.  All these points show the benefits and need for more and more tribes and Godin does a fantastic job of calling out his readers to step into these so called “Tribes” and make an impact directly.

If you are interested in leadership and new business practices and in any way wanting to expand your own influence, then “Tribes” by Godin is a worthy book.  It was packed full of good advice and great challenges to help intice you to do more than learn about it, read a book about it and understand tribes, but to actually go and get involved in them and to become more of a tribal leader yourself.  The content of this book is really packed in and condensed as well, which makes for a short read yet there are many key messages and phrases that really deliver a powerful punch to inspire more leadership. Keep this in mind as Godin leaves out any practical advice on HOW to lead or make these tribes a success, he simply puts the challenge out their and leaves the responsibility solely up to each tribal leader, just how it should be.

I definitely recommend this one to anyone looking for more leadership ideas, inspiration and simple to those who wish to explore a bit more of the social media and internet style of communities, as this is explored throughout the book.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 8 Comments »

Strategy is an interesting topic and certainly not an uncommon one in business when it comes to planning, decisions and organizational leadership.  I am going to explore some pieces of strategy, how to develop and utilize a strategy and also extend that to other walks of life.

Timing Strategy

Strategy is all about the future and planning for things to come.  Or is it?  Well, I think it is more than that.  Strategy certainly has the future in mind but much of strategy is about executing a plan and the methods behind executing that as well.  It is about timing and controlling decisions to follow a plan at the right points.  The timing of strategic maneuvers is often the most important point of strategic plan and unfortunately, timing is also the thing that gets in the way the most of following a strategy successfully.  Things come up, issues occur, crisis hits and needs to be tended to, there just always seems to be another urgent thing requiring your attention and time before you can get to delivering on that strategy.

Strategy often seems like its counter-intuitive with urgent day to day ongoing work.  If that is the case, I say then you have either the wrong strategy or the wrong work.  Strategy shouldn’t be something that requires alignment of the planets to find the time to work on, it should be built into your day, your tasks and a regular part of your time spent.

Developing a Strategy

In order to develop strategy so that it is timed as part of your regular tasks instead of a wishful “nice to have” then you need to develop it so it aligns with expectations and so you can align your focus at least in some part to that strategic work.

Developing a strategy requires that you step back from these all too common urgent fires and things you seem to “have to do” and look at where you want to develop yourself, your relationship, your business and career.  It requires you to look at plans from a future perspective and to consider the aspirations you have and what are the steps and plans needed to get there.  Once of the tools I’ve learned at a recent conference for strategic planning is called SOAR analysis.  It stands for:

• Strengths
• Opportunities
• Aspirations
• Results

Developing a strategic plans works well by examining each of these to ensure they are included.  Stop and ask yourself questions about each of these areas in your work or life and contemplate the answers so they can be used to formulate a plan.

Strengths

Utilize the strengths you have to ensure you are involved in areas you are competent and able.  I certainly don’t mean to limit yourself, as there is always value in stepping out of your comfort zone but strategy should be based on the strengths you have as that is your most likely area to advance the furthest as well.

Opportunities

This areas is to examine where there is a chance to progress and excel at.  These areas might be to expand existing strengths into new areas or markets and they might be to branch into new research or areas in life that are not yet ventured into.  An opportunity will offer some promise of success at the cost of some challenge to get there and is often what a strategy is formulated on.

Aspirations

Or as Jim Collins put it in his classic, Good to Great , big harry audacious goals.  These are the areas that help formulate a strategy from some dream or vision of a more idealistic situation that is desirable and sought after.  Aspirations don’t need to be future minded, they simply need to into account the dreams and ideas of what a better picture looks like, or the perfect situation for your life and career and company. They are the things you wish to happen and don’t need to be realistic or even reasonable.  They help to steer you in a direction when developing a strategic plan and to not loose sight of the dream.

Results

This area is often over-looked and it specifically helps to focus on what exactly would be going on in the way of deliverables, results and achievements if you were already in the position of the dream or visions behind a strategic plan being in place.  What is happening and what results you expect when you execute the strategic plan and successfully achieve it.  These results set the stage to include specifics in a plan so it can be more easily measured and tracked.  The results are also a promise of what is to come if you accomplish the plan.  Results are best if they are ongoing results as well, not time limited.  You don’t want a strategic initiative to immediately end when you achieve the results.  You want to envision and expect that you will continue to get those results.

Simplify Your Strategy

One of the things that often is the doom of a strategic plan is that it isn’t realistic and broken down into simple actions.  It’s often described or outlined as some lofty ambition that seems impossible to achieve and there is no obvious way to attach to the plan and become a part of it.  This is why simplifying it necessary so it can easily be understood, accepted and engaged into.  Strategy needs to become a part of normal tasks and it definitely needs to simplified so that it won’t suffer the urgent distractions offset that so easily kill strategy and meaningful tasks.  A simple strategy is one that becomes regular, easy and constantly makes visible the value and progress towards that strategic endpoint.  This may be by describing it in a way that connects it with your existing work or by making known the advantages of putting meaningful work before mundane and urgent tasks that occur.

Changing your mindset to follow a more strategic set of maneuvers can be very difficult.  For that, you must simplify it down to easier tasks and smaller pieces so that you’re not overwhelmed.

Strategy Day by Day

With a well understood strategy and having it broken down into smaller pieces you can then examine how to build strategic tasks into each and every day.  Strategy should not be separated as a seldom activity or event, it needs to fit into regular day to day actions so it becomes natural.  Strategy in business needs to involve all employees in some way and engage them by being part of their work.  For your own strategy in life or career, you need to ensure you have work that fits in some way your strategic plan so that you are working toward that accomplishment on a regular basis.

If your strategic actions are truly most important, its really a good idea to do them first.  Work away at them before anything else and put off the urgent fires until you have done something towards your strategic goals.

Strategy Answers Tough Questions

This section goes hand in hand with fitting strategy in day by day but it specially about controlling and responding to questions with your strategy in mind.  Distractions are going to come up, fires will never go away completely but you can respond to them differently.  What if you use your strategy to provide the answers to tough questions on actions plans, firefighting and urgent requests.  Use the strategy to respond to others when they request your time or service.  Ask them or for their help to decide if it is really more important than your critically important strategic plans and why it is more important that that work if something seems urgent.

I’ve personally learned that nearly nothing is as urgent as it seems and I’ve been lucky to develop a habit of analyzing requests with a longer term mindset.  I’m a product architect, researcher and product development manager in my day job and those areas tie in heavily with strategic plans so I’ve been able to adopt a strategy first attitude and response system.  I rarely put attention to urgent requests because my main work strategies are about the quality products I’m involved in building and quality never comes fast or without solid planning.  Obviously not everyone has this same strategy and some may actually have a strategy around responding quickly in their role so then responses and expectations change but it can still be done with a strategic factor in answering those tough questions of what and when to do things.  The short answer for any of these tough questions when a well drafted strategic plan exists is to always put the things that align best with a strategy before other new or urgent items.  This can only be done when a solid strategy exists, it is well understood and you are willing to execute it consistently, instead of just making it and not then actually following it.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 10 Comments »

Podcast Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions

Nick was kind enough to invite me to do a management tip as a podcast with him on his blog.  It’s my first podcast and I think a useful tip for managing and leading others which has a been a strong topic here lately so may as well continue it!

Management Tip – Enabling Other’s Suggestions (9 mins)

Nick has a lot of other great tips at his blog and of course in his book as well.  For those that haven’t seen it, here is my review of his book, “Lead Well and Prosper,” or you can order it from his site for your own copy.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

This is the final part of a whole series on leadership.  Check the leadership introduction here for all articles in the series.

To me, leadership is often thought or even taught that it requires a person to be very pushy, aggressive and  must stand out amongst any possible competition. I’ve focused this series on looking at how leadership fits an individual, not how an individual has to fit leadership.  This is contrary since many still believe leadership needs that commanding, loud, direct personality with the best track record, skills and talents to make things happen.  Well I say, "Bah!!!"  That isn’t what leadership is at all!  A leader is not necessarily any better, smarter, or more skilled than others.  A leader does however, have influence and impact with others.  This unique capability doesn’t have to be a trade off for a compassionate personality or a label of someone with an "ego".  Leadership can be done with great humility and I believe it requires humility to truly be a great leader.  You don’t have to give up any bit of your personality to be leader, you can be a leader in your own way.  The problem is, it’s easy to lose your humility in achievement so this final topic on leadership is about staying humble with leadership.

"What should it profit a man if he would gain the whole world yet lose his soul." (Mark 8:36)

Humble Leadership

I’ve written several times about humble leadership both looking at what humility is and what I think it means to truly lead.  You might want to check out these previous articles for more on that.Being Humble: Leadership and Why Bothering to Be Humble? (or as Being Humble Series PDF download from the free resources page).

Even if you’ve read those before I’ll explore a little more what this humility means from the leadership perspective.

There are many leaders that think being a leader is about taking charge, having authority or a position to tell others what to do or to win influence over others because of self accomplishment.  That isn’t leadership, it’s power and they are two very different things.  If you want to be seen as a leader, stand out or emerge as a leader in your work or life, then likely that stems more from the desire of power than it does from leadership.  Leadership is nothing about you, it’s about others.

Humility is when you can remove the status and personal gains from what you do as a leader and begin to look only at what you accomplish in the lives of those who follow you.  You know that any accomplishment or changes come about through those you lead and without them, you are nothing. It’s about recognizing others before yourself and taking a far step away from any ego and closer to a compassionate and genuine concern to make others around you better and able to do more.  That is humble leadership my friends.

Blending Willpower and Humility

Willpower is a massive part of being a leader and having a strong will to improve things and change is what shapes the role of many leaders.  They can use that will through difficult times, to get through impossible situations and to inspire others like no one could ever hope to accomplish without the same willpower.  Blending that together with humility that a leader should have from knowing he needs others to accomplish anything will enable them as a much stronger leader.  Putting willpower at work towards the people being led progresses things even faster creating a much more loyal group of followers.  All of a leader’s efforts and willpower should be spent and shared with others to ensure they experience it first hand and are empowered by it themselves.  The blend of these abilities allows a leader to instil their own extreme level of will to all their followers.  Having a strong will without humility can easily (without even intending it), build on a leader’s ego and be a very negative influence to others.

I learned this first hand several years ago in dealing with what I considered (at the time) people who couldn’t get the job done right.  I had the will power to want to do it faster and push the deadlines, but doing this by either saying or demonstrating (I made the mistake of doing both) that I could in fact do it faster did nothing to help me emerge as a leader of people.  It made me look strong in my skills, yes, but the people I had to work with didn’t see this as helpful or as leading them in any way.  Instead, it was very intimidating and quite a negative impact on them.  The damage that this has done is obvious now that I have learned from that experience.  I now see this in others as well and know better than to put my willpower to work for myself, because it does nothing.  Instead, when I put my willpower to empowering others, encouraging them, and working to help and convince them that our plans will work, are achievable and that we will all succeed, I can take them much further without ever a mention of my own abilities.  Blending humility with willpower is one of those areas that makes a difference between good leaders and great leaders.

Willpower is very useful for facing difficult situations, such as:

• to drive through low standards
• face mediocrity with a helping hand
• eliminate failure

Staying ambitious among a team and organization as a leader while remaining modest and non-boastful is what humble leadership is all about.  I dare say it’s the highest level of leadership, the most rewarding and it makes the biggest most lasting impact a leader can make.

Build Others

Leadership will always be about others and a great leader puts much attention towards that.  Whether it is for skill development, filling a gap, enhancing areas for even better results or for succession planning, building others is done best by humble leaders.  People want to learn from someone that doesn’t think they know it all or are better than you.  Staying humble while training and giving advice is an easy way to ensure they stay interested and lets you not only build their leadership skills, but also their confidence.  That’s because a humble leader will also encourage a person and credit them often.  They can encourage a person to realize that they have their own talents and skills within their capabilities and that the teacher (humble leader) just helps to surface and release those skills. Compare that to a egotistic style sounding like this, "Just do what I tell you to do, I’ve been there and already know best how to do it!".  Would you want to learn from someone like that?  Would it give you much self confidence?  I doubt it.

Leadership should also ensure that there is some level of succession planning.  The things that the leader does on their own should be eliminated, as it is a single point of failure among a group.  To get the best results from any team, there should not be a single point of failure and there should be built in through skills an inherent flexibility when it comes to resources.  The leader should look to build others’ with leadership skills the particular areas they do themselves so that ultimately they could be replaced.  Many fear this approach as they think it can put other candidates in place for their role and put themselves as risk.  It does in some ways, but from a leadership perspective, not really.  First of all, the best thing that a great leader could possible accomplish is to lead a group to be self contained and able to produce the amazing results and drive for accomplishment on their own.  A leader who can do this is extremely valuable, as they are a producer of leaders themselves.  You can lead anywhere if you have the ability to produce more leaders in doing so.  Listing that kind of value on your resume and portfolio has impact!

Servant Leadership

Finally I come to servant leadership. It’s foundation is humility and means that you put others first, above yourself consistently.  You’ll end up doing the things you don’t want to do and you’ll take any consequences away from others to relieve them.  These could be things like taking blame, sacrifice of work hours or giving up credit even when it is due.  And this isn’t done when convenient, it’s consistent!

There are many ways that servant leaders lead, and it is usually obvious in their humility.  Here are just a few:

• Will always take someone else’s suggestion or idea over their own
• They don’t ever need to get their own way
• They never argue to be right about something, they immediately close it and say, "you may be right"
• They hold their own opinion and let other’s share first
• Want and query the opinion of others often
• Appreciate what they have and are given
• Never make excuses, they simply accept responsibility (even if it isn’t theirs to accept)
• Will carry out any task, no matter how tedious
• Are happy to help others with anything

Servant leadership is based on love and help to others.  A servant leader demonstrates this in every action they do, which is how they lead, by doing.  I personally believe this is not only a noble way to lead, but a godly one.  It was taught by the only perfect servant leader, Jesus Christ and is a powerful humbling way to lead.  Learning this takes life experience (often the hard way by learning what NOT to do) and by studying and reflecting on other humble leaders.  What makes them humble, how do you measure or judge someone’s humility.  How far would you take things to be humble and for who?

Learning to be more humble requires great attention and a change in your character traits to relate more closely to human relationships and lasting endeavors in life that includes others.  Look to read more on servant leadership from leaders who have made great sacrifices and lead by love.  They are not the typical top CEOs or the celebrity leaders that get the most publicity, they are the quiet, graceful and often missed leaders that leave the greatest impact of the hearts of many once they are gone.

Please add your comments, please add your thoughts and I’d love to hear what you have to say about this article as the last in this series and the series as a whole.  Hold nothing back.  What did you love, what did you hate?  What was missing?  I appreciate any comments you have to offer!  And if you read this far and liked the article or series, please add a stumble review to help share it for me.  Thanks!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 19 Comments »