Field Notes: Two Part Leadership Survival Guide
To Lead is to live dangerously. Leadership is an improvisational art. You may be guided by the companies overarching vision, clear values, and a strategic plan, but what you actually do from moment to moment cannot be scripted. Leadership lies in the capacity to deliver disturbing news and raise difficult questions in a way that moves people to take up the message rather than kill the messenger.
Purpose: Make a positive difference in the lives of others
Objective: Be a symphony conductor - A coach, negotiator, problem solver, and improviser, rather than simply a director
Part One: Relating to your organization and the people in it.[Designed to protect you from those trying to push you aside]Observe self. Step back, get objective, and watch yourself from 'the balcony' so you can see what is really happening.
Observe others. Deploy emotional intelligence to observe others.
- Tactic. Push your chair a few inches away from the table after you speak. That can create the literal and metaphorical distance you need to become an observer.
Don't under-estimate the side process. There is the formal process, and then there is the real process where decisions actually get shaped. Knowing both gives you a better read on the system and the people moving it.
- Tactic. Have coffee once a week with the person most dedicated to seeing you fall.
Tactic. Practice what you preach. Model the way, especially when the pressure is on.
Tactic. Lead the message, not just the mood. Disturbing news lands better when people trust the messenger and understand the purpose behind the message.
Accept the losses. Change is costly, and people give things up. Leaders who ignore that reality usually lose credibility.
Tactic. Acknowledge your own responsibility for whatever problems the organization currently faces.
Risk. If you point too readily at others, you risk making yourself a target. “Remember, you are asking people to move to a place where they are frightened to go. If at the same time you are blaming them for having to go there, they will undoubtedly turn against you.”
Cook the conflict.
- Have a productive range of distress. Keep the pressure high enough to motivate change, but low enough to prevent shutdown, backlash, or collapse. Tactics include:
- Create a secure place where conflict can freely bubble up.
- Control the temperature so the conflict does not boil over and burn you in the process.- Speak to people’s fears and, more critically, to their hopes for a more promising future.
- Use humor or find an excuse for a break to temporarily ease tensions.
- Keep the heat high enough to motivate people, but low enough to prevent a disastrous explosion.
Part Two. Looks inward, focusing on your own human needs and vulnerabilities.[Designed to keep you from bringing yourself down]
Tactic. Anchor yourself. Find ways to steady and stabilize yourself. Establish a safe harbor where each day you can reflect on the previous day’s journey, repair the psychological damage you have incurred, renew your emotional resources, and recalibrate your moral compass.
Find a Coach/Confidant. Do not confuse confidants with allies whose motives support corporate initiatives.
- Principle. Distinguish between your personal self, which can serve as an anchor in stormy weather, and your professional role, which never will.
- Someone you can talk to about what is in your heart and on your mind without fear of being judged or betrayed.
- Separate what is worthwhile from what is simply venting.
- Let them pump you up when you are down and pull you back to earth when you start taking praise too seriously.
Caution. Faults and human hungers matter.- Desire for control: Can be a source of vulnerability. In your desire for order, you can mistake the means for the end.- Desire for importance: A grandiose sense of self-importance often leads to self-deception
Risk. When you take personal attacks personally, you may unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action. You make yourself the issue.
Watch item. When attacks on you are highly personal, read them primarily as reactions to how you, in your role, are affecting people’s lives.
Watch item. People attack your personality, style, or judgment when they do not like your message.
- Risk: Cynicism, often dressed up as realism, undermines creativity and daring.
- Risk: Arrogance, often posing as authoritative knowledge, snuffs out curiosity and the eagerness to question.
- Risk: Callousness, sometimes portrayed as the thick skin of experience, shuts out compassion for others.
Caution. Separate role from self. Do not confuse your worth with your position. The role can be challenged. The self must remain intact.
Tactic. Stay humble enough to learn. Confidence matters. So does the ability to keep learning when the room gets difficult.
Caution. Protect your center. If you lose your center, the job starts running you instead of the other way around.
Bottom line
Leadership is not safe. It asks you to absorb pressure from the outside and stay disciplined on the inside. If you want to lead well, you have to stay objective, manage yourself, read the system, and keep the work moving without losing your credibility, your purpose, or your center.
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