Strategic Discipline Blog

Great leaders constantly learn and adapt.

To be an outstanding leader, you must understand yourself and consciously bring your unique qualities and personality to work every day. Excellent organizations are run by leaders who bring their distinctive attributes to the job and encourage their people to do the same. They get the most out of themselves and their organizations. They are learning about the world, their industry, and the people around them—but they are learning about themselves.

In chapter 8 of Harvard Professor Robert Steven Kaplan’s book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential, Kaplan acknowledges the first step for those who aspire to lead, achieve, and grow, is to BE AWARE!

Kaplan’s specific stories in this chapter are peppered with CEO’s and aspiring leaders who lost track of who they were, and how their behavior affects their leadership and the people they lead!

What To Ask The Person In The Mirror - Reaching Your Potential 

Leaders are Readers/Learners – A Lifelong Process

Superb leaders are consistently learning about the world, their industry, and the people around them. Most importantly, they are learning about themselves.

Kaplan asks:

• Are you pursuing a path that is consistent with your assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, and passions?
• If not, what are you waiting for?
• Have you developed your own style at work?
• Do you speak up, express your opinions, and conduct yourself with confidence?
• Do you encourage your people to be authentic and express their opinions?

You need to learn from others yet develop a leadership style that fits you.

Do you create an atmosphere at work where your people are encouraged to be authentic and reach their unique potential?

Watch Robert Steven Kaplan - The Importance of Building Strong Relationships 

Understanding Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Discovering your strengths and weaknesses should be a never-ending process. Just because you become CEO, or even if you never change jobs again, your job will continue to change. The world changes, and the needs of your business change.

You must be willing to learn and improve.

To reach your desired leadership position and make a success of the opportunity will challenge you to keep learning about yourself and building on your skills.

It should be a permanent part of your mind-set.

Kaplan emphasizes, “When you’re through learning, you’re through.”

Passion for What You Do: Achieving Sustained High Performance

Many executives believe certain key tasks must be done by them, whether they suit their competencies or interests.

Delegating a task you perform poorly or irregularly is not a sign of weakness, however.

Do you focus most of your time on the tasks you really do enjoy, at the same time leaving other important functions unattended?

Match your time to the organization’s key priorities and concentrate on tasks that fit your skills and passions. Whether you do tasks yourself or delegate them, critical responsibilities needed to be accomplished at a high level of quality must be identified and completed by leaders who best fit the needs of the organization.

Develop an Effective Leadership Style to Fit Who You Are

Your “leadership style” is the way you do your job. Here are several questions to ask yourself to unravel the fundamental elements of your style.

• Do you like to joke around, or are you by nature a more serious person?
• Do you prefer to meet with people one-on-one or in groups?
• Do you prefer being blunt and direct, or would you rather be less confrontational?
• Are you highly analytical (learn by doing extensive analyses), or do you learn more by talking to people, or do you like a combination of the two?
• What is your theory of human motivation—do you believe people need a club over their heads to perform, or do you believe that given clear direction and coaching, people are highly motivated to excel, and you simply need to give them the proper incentives?

The answers to these questions have a powerful influence on how you behave every day, and how you approach your job.

Your answers must feel right to you and fit your distinctive emotional needs.

There is no one effective leadership style. (See Lie #9: Leadership is a Thing) There are many. In any given situation, one or more could be highly effective.

The challenge for you is to develop a leadership style that fits not only who you are but also the needs of your enterprise (the situation). If your style doesn’t fit who you are, it is unlikely to be sustainable.

If your leadership style fits you but doesn’t fit the demands of the situation, you are unlikely to be successful. One of the ongoing challenges of being an effective leader, over a sustained period, is to make corrections to your leadership style necessary to keep your organization on track and still fit your personality and distinctive traits.

Write It Down

Write down the words that describe your leadership style.

What are the fundamentals of your leadership style? Have you thought sufficiently about this?

Many people don’t consciously think about whether they prefer one-on-one or group meetings, or how they go about doing their jobs.

• Do you feel good about your style?
• Is it effective?
• Does it fit your values?
• Were you wincing as you wrote down its component parts?
• What made you wince, and why?

Do You Have Faith That Justice Will Prevail?

Kaplan suggests you need to combine your self-confidence with the ability to make a “leap of faith.” To develop your style, pursue your passions, and improve your skills, you must believe you are part of a system that recognizes your unique attributes and ultimately rewards your efforts.

You must believe justice will prevail.

Kaplan’s experience and mine suggest leaders often underperform against their potential, because they lack confidence in themselves or because they don’t believe the system in which they operate would treat them fairly.

As a result, their behaviors sabotaged their upward progress, personal development, and, ultimately, their contributions to their organizations.

One leader I worked with didn’t have the confidence to make tough decisions. He too often waffled and as a result, undermined his authority, and failed to earn the confidence of his leadership team. He eventually resigned, something I felt was unnecessary had he chosen to simply address that aspect of his character.

Do You Instill or Undermine Faith in the Organization?

Kaplan asks are you “cynic in chief”?

Do you tear things down while you’re trying to build them up?

Successful organizations are built on faith. They are built on the faith that if you do the right thing, be yourself, help others, and sacrifice for the enterprise, justice will prevail. Do you have this faith? Have you created it among your people?

How do you do it?

First, watch your own rhetoric. People listen to every word you say, as their leader.

Second, reward employees for more than just commercial production.

Reward the behaviors you want to reinforce, be those: coaching, taking on tough assignments, recruiting, superb client service, relationship building, and being brave enough to turn down business that could tarnish the reputation of the firm.

Does it matter whether the leader is cynical, or lacks faith in the system?

Kaplan feels it matters a great deal! The cynical, disaffected leader finds it difficult to do the kinds of things Kaplan advocates in What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential .

You can’t please everyone. Focus on your strengths.

If you can’t get to your authentic leadership style—or take the challenge seriously, you create a powerful ripple effect.

When leaders don’t believe in the fairness of the system, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s more difficult to create a spirit of teamwork and to mobilize their troops to work for the good of the company. They discover they’ve encouraged selfish behavior that serves neither the interests of the organization nor its customers.

Kaplan warns, “Maybe this strikes you as a little too touchy-feely or as a little too much ivory-tower baloney. If so, I’d encourage you to think again. There are numerous examples of once-great companies that have declined over a period of years based on the erosion of a meritocracy. One central aspect of their deterioration has been a loss of faith in the leadership and in the company’s system of justice. This loss of faith undermined the ability of its executives to perform many of the key leadership tasks described in this book—creating a vision with priorities that mobilizes the troops; coaching, mentoring, and talent development; and creating and maintaining alignment.”

The Definition of Leadership

What does leadership mean? Does it mean commanding others? Does it mean you are charismatic or able to give a compelling speech?

Does it mean people simply want to follow you? Are you born with it, or is it something that you learn?

Kaplan’s definition of leadership is “a leader works hard to figure out what he or she believes, and then has the courage to act on it.”

Here are Kaplan’s recommended follow-up steps from the chapter:

Learn to Change.

With Artificial Intelligence, global market dynamics, and technology disrupting every industry, there’s never been a more important time to know how to change.

YOU are the Chief Change Officer in your organization.

TO change MEANS making sure what you do today is different from what you did yesterday.

That’s the hardest thing!

Why?

You have upwards of 60,000 thoughts a day! 90% are repetitive! Meaning… we think the same thoughts day after day after day. 80% of your thoughts are negative!

This is why you must be aware of your subconscious thoughts and change your thoughts first!

The only place we can change is in the present moment. Leaders who choose to become aware, consciously uncover the behavior, attitudes, and actions that betray their desire to improve, can strengthen their organization, grow themselves, and achieve dramatic results.

It starts with awareness, behaving differently, and making a life-long commitment to change each day to become greater than your environment, the body, and time.

In the coming blogs, you’ll learn more about how to change from my Neuro Change Solutions training and Dr. Joe Dispensa’s revolutionary methods to create change in your organization.

To create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best, contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting.

Let’s help you to turn your business into a growth organization!  

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

When I started these blogs on What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, I emphasized, that you don’t need to know all the answers. Next blog we’ll dig into why routinely making a conscious effort to step back, reflect, identify, and frame the issues central to leading your organization effectively into the future is a crucial leadership skill.

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – Gaining Perspective – What to Ask the Person in the Mirror