Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing. - Warren Bennis, Ph.D. On Becoming a LeaderBuilding ExcellenceLeaders do not command excellence, they build excellence. Excellence is "being all you can be" within the bounds of doing what is right for your organization. To reach excellence you must first be a leader of good character. You must do everything you are supposed to do. Organizations will not achieve excellence by figuring out where it wants to go, then having leaders do whatever they have to in order to get the job done, and then hope their leaders acted with good character. This type of thinking is backwards. Pursuing excellence should not be confused with accomplishing a job or task. When you do planning, you do it by backwards planning. But you do not achieve excellence by backwards planning. Excellence starts with leaders of good and strong character who engage in the entire process of leadership. And the first process is being a person of honorable character.
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. - Marcus AureliusCharacter develops over time. Many think that much of a person's character is formed early in life. However, we do not know exactly how much or how early character develops. But, it is safe to claim that character does not change quickly. A person's observable behavior is an indication of her character. This behavior can be strong or weak, good or bad. A person with strong character shows drive, energy, determination, self-discipline, willpower, and nerve. She sees what she wants and goes after it. She attracts followers. On the other hand, a person with weak character shows none of these traits. She does not know what she wants. Her traits are disorganized, she vacillates and is inconsistent. She will attract no followers.A strong person can be good or bad. A gang leader is an example of a strong person with a bad character, while an outstanding community leader is one with both strong and good characteristics. An organization needs leaders with both strong and good characteristics, people who will guide them to the future and show that they can be trusted. Courage - not complacency - is our need today. Leadership not salesmanship. - John F. KennedyTo be an effective leader, your followers must have trust in you and they need to be sold on your vision. Korn-Ferry International, an executive search company, performed a survey on what organizations want from their leaders. The respondents said they wanted people who were both ethical and who convey a strong vision of the future. In any organization, a leader's actions set the pace. This behavior wins trust, loyalty, and ensures the organization's continued vitality. One of the ways to build trust is to display a good sense of character composed of beliefs, values, skills, and traits:Beliefs are what we hold dear to us and are rooted deeply within us. They could be assumptions or convictions that you hold true regarding people, concepts, or things. They could be the beliefs about life, death, religion, what is good, what is bad, what is human nature, etc. Values are attitudes about the worth of people, concepts, or things. For example, you might value a good car, home, friendship, personal comfort, or relatives. Values are important as they influence a person's behavior to weigh the importance of alternatives. For example, you might value friends more than privacy, while others might be the opposite. Skills are the knowledge and abilities that a person gains throughout life. The ability to learn a new skill varies with each individual. Some skills come almost naturally, while others come only by complete devotion to study and practice. Traits are distinguishing qualities or characteristics of a person, while character is the sum total of these traits. There are hundreds of personality traits, far too many to be discussed here. Instead, we will focus on a few that are crucial for a leader. The more of these you display as a leader, the more your followers will believe and trust in you. Traits of a Good LeaderCompiled by the Santa Clara University and the Tom Peters Group:
Retreat Hell! We've just got here! - Attributed to several World War I Marine Corps officers, Belleau Wood, June 1918. (key ideal - take a stand)AttributesAttributes establish what leaders are, and every leader needs at least three of them:
Goddam it, you will never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me! - Captain Henry P. "Jim" Crowe, USMC, Guadalcanal, 13 January 1943. (key words - follow me, NOT "go")Perspectives of Character and TraitsTraits (acronym - JJ did tie buckle)
The Image of Leadership - John SchoollandWhat kind of a leader are you going to be - the kind who thinks he is the best?Or will you be one of the very few greats Who attributes success to the rest.
The U.S. Army's Eleven Leadership Principles
Organizations consist of three components:
U.S. Army 23 Traits of Character
More Thoughts on CharacterAre managers leaders? Are leaders managers?Managers need to be leaders ... their workers need vision and guidance! On the other hand, leaders need to be good managers of the resources entrusted to them.Is Character Developed Via Nature or Nurture?I do not believe that the nature vs. nurture debate is linear enough to put percentages on it -- on one side of the fence we have nature and on the other side we have nurture. And while nature (genes) certainly has its influences on us, the environment (nurture) normally determines the impact of a gene.
For example, one of the classic examples for discussing genes is Konrad Lorenz's work on the imprinting that occurs in baby geese -- they have it within them to imprint whatever is moving near them, which is normally their mother. However, it could be anything else that is moving around them, such as a person. But no matter what they imprint on, rather it be their mother, a human, or an inanimate object, the piece of the environment that they actually imprint on is going to have a huge impact on their life. Thus genes provide the goal, but the environment provides the process. And it is what happens during the process that will determine the outcome. Piaget was probably the first person to think of children as species equipped with a characteristic mind, rather than as apprentice adults (little adults). He discovered they went through a series of five developmental stages that were always in the same order, but not always at the same rate: 1) sensorimotor, 2) preoperational, 3) concrete operations, and in adolescence they have 3) abstract thought and finally 4) deductive reasoning. Piaget's two contemporaries, Konrad Lorenz and B.F. Skinner took up extreme positions. Lorenz as a champion of nature and Skinner as a champion of nurture. Piaget, however, dived right down the middle of this debate. He believed a gene's meaning depends heavily on its context with the surrounding environment. That is, while a child goes through five stages of development (genes), it is the active engagement of the mind with the surrounding environment (nurture) that causes development. The two main forces of the environment are feedback and social interaction. From this, the child assimilates predicted experiences and accommodates it to unexpected experiences. For some time it was believed that animals grew no new neurons in the cortex of their brains upon reaching adulthood, thus their fate was basically sealed by their genetic nature. This was apparently proved by a Pasco Rakic, a neuroscientist. However, Fernando Nottebohm soon found that adult canaries made new neurons when they learn new songs. So Rakic replied that it was only adult mammals that could not grow neurons. But soon afterward, Elizabeth Gould found that rats grow new neurons. So Rakic replied primates could not. Gould next discovered that tree shrews grew new neurons. Rakic that higher primates could not grow new neurons. Gould then found them in marmosets. Rakic zeroed it down to old-world primates. Gould then discovered them in macaques. Today it is almost certain that all primates, including humans, grow new neurons in response to new experiences, and lose neurons in response to neglect. Thus, with all the determinism built into the initial wiring of our brain, experience with our surrounding environment refines and in some cases rewires that initial wiring. Nature may be our internal guide (map), but nurture is our explorer that has the final say in what we do (destination). ReferencesRidley, M. (2003). Nature Via Nurture New York: Harper Collins.
U.S. Army Handbook (1973). Military Leadership.
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The U.S. military leadership model is based on an overview of all great leaders, not just warriors. Thus, it is not surprising that it also captures non-warriors. In such a model, followers determine if a person is a great leader or not.
In Clark Aldrich's book, "Simulations and the Future of Learning," he tells the story of a manager who listened to the ideas presented to him by his subordinates and then went to his boss and presented them as his own. He then had the subordinates dismissed so that there were no witnesses left. I imagine that he was considered a good leader by both his boss and himself, yet the subordinates would of course had said otherwise. In most circumstances the best judges of leadership are the followers. I once worked with a retired Navy Chief who led one of our departments. Being located in the Pacific Northwest, the department has a good share of individuals who, let's say, have quite an opposing idea of the military. In addition, since the company provides same-sex benefits to its partners, it also attracts it share of people from the gay community. So here we have this ramrod-straight leader with perfectly combed hair, who even in civilian clothes looks as if he is still in uniform (starched, straight lines, etc.), quite conservative, and whose actions often paints the perfect picture of a Marine drill instructor. His subordinates, for the most part, have long hair, body-piercings, dress quite sloppy, are quite liberal, whose actions at times reminds you of the demonstrators you see during anti-war protests. However, they thought he was the greatest thing since the invention of peanut butter. They were in tears when he left the company to go on to greater things. Great leadership works in the military and civilian life because it is what one "DOES." Hitler and Aldrich's manager are deceptions who capture the essence of phoniness and are quite self-serving in nature. Gandhi and the retired Navy Chief are leaders because they capture the essence of truth and selfless service. Leadership is multifaceted in that it takes a path along many dimensions and perspectives. In the early stages of the Iraq war, a senior Army officer was charged with pointing a gun at a local and threatened to shoot him if he did not reveal some information. According to the officer, he needed the information to save lives and that he would not have actually shot him. His actions were applauded by many, to include the mothers and wives of the soldiers he was sworn to protect (one of the basic rules of leadership is that you look out for the welfare of those under you). However, senior Army officials had a different outlook on the matter in that he broke the basic leadership attributes of ethics, values, and character that it expects of its leaders. During Enron's heyday its officers were discussing how much money they could screw out of Aunt Millie. Leadership decisions often take paths that define our nation's humanity and character ... and it is not always one easy straight and narrow path, but rather a multifaceted undertaking that often has no one-correct answer. |
