The hallmarks of good leadership

"Who will be our next president?” "Will Zuma get re-elected?", “What do we think are the characteristics that our next leader should have?” These questions are vigorously debated in every newspaper and radio show. So, I thought that some insights from leading leadership researchers might shed some light.

A classic way to understand a concept more clearly is to concentrate for a while on what it isn’t before turning to what it is. And the first thing that needs mentioning about leadership is that it isn’t necessarily good or desirable in itself! Leadership is always a means to an end, and the question of where we are being lead, is after all of major importance. Our last century has had its fair share of “outstanding” leaders who managed to mislead their followers into situations of untold suffering and tragedy.

Though strong leaders, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Gaddafi, Mubarak and Mugabe, are hardly models of excellence likely to inspire a new crop of aspiring leaders. For the question must always be asked: to what end are they leading people; how valid is their vision? A second issue is that leadership is not simply a case of charisma. In fact, the Hitler’s, Mao’s and gang probably suffered an overdose of charisma which was their Achilles’ heel, rendering them over-confident, inflexible and ultimately focused on themselves rather than their original cause. In contrast, Peter Drucker, a management philosopher, identifies three American Presidents who were singularly effective leaders (e.g. Harry Truman), yet none of whom “possessed any more charisma than a dead mackerel!”

I do not want to argue that charisma doesn’t help the leadership function, but rather that, by itself, charisma does not guarantee good leadership. Also, many effective leaders are short on charisma. To summarise what good leadership isn’t: leadership isn’t necessarily good or desirable in itself - it must always be judged by the ethical and spiritual validity of the vision it promotes; and leadership is not simply a matter of charisma. What then does constitute good leadership?

A number of surveys on what constituents regard as the characteristics of admired leaders, place honesty and integrity at the top of the list by far. It is as though people everywhere are saying to leaders: no more bullshit! Tell us the truth, even if it is unpalatable! If we find out you have been lying to us we’ll attack you and unseat you; if you are consistently honest with us, we’ll support you.

A second important insight is that people want leaders who inspire them. This is the heart of leadership. If you are trying to exercise leadership in a local situation, ask yourself: does my thinking, my talking, my behaviour, my enthusiasm, my energy, my honesty and integrity, my care and encouragement inspire the people around me? If yes, then you are exercising some leadership. If no, then whatever else you are doing it’s not exercising leadership. You will see that inspiring people is not one simple thing. It is the result of how passionately and sincerely you do a number of things. Leaders often inspire people because they love what they are doing – and it shows. Their vision is a love affair with an idea or an ideal; it’s about wild, intemperate love that touches people, raises their sights and energises their spirits.    

A third critical characteristic is that leaders must have the ability to make things absolutely clear and simple; they must cut through complexity and communicate the essentials. The skill of clarifying situations, goals, priorities, direction and vision is what people are often crying out for in their leaders. And after clarification comes clear communication. We don’t want mixed messages but we also don’t want long silences from our leaders. Good leaders clarify the issues and communicate regularly with their constituents; they take care to keep you in the picture.

A final insight is that the functions of leadership and management are different and equally essential to the health and survival of our organisations, our communities, our institutions and our nations. While management focuses on enabling people to deliver, it is leadership that inspires people to perform beyond the ordinary. Leadership engages people’s spirits and aligns organisational energy by focusing on the fundamentals – cause, purpose, vision and values. So, leadership provides us with direction and hope. It inspires people to keep going when things are tough.

So, given these insights on leadership, how do our South African leaders past and present stack up? What about other world leaders, especially the present crop? And what about us: those of us involved in leadership of any sort in our communities? How do we measure up to the hallmarks: Do we have an ethically and spiritually sound vision? Is our honesty and integrity beyond reproach? Is our leadership inspirational, are our messages clear? Is our communication focused on the fundamentals and is it regular and consistent? Where do we need to improve?

The importance of going round in circles

We all tend to think in a simple linear fashion. That “x#@*!!” taxi driver passed me on the left hand side, cut right in front of me and caused me to swerve to avoid him, resulting in my crashing into the side barrier while he disappeared into the traffic. Now in a cause-effect way that may describe what happened. But it doesn’t get us anywhere in understanding (and ultimately rectifying) the problem of accidents caused by the bad driving of many taxi drivers. To crack that nut we need to think systemically, in circles rather than in straight lines.

While systems thinking dates back to the early Greeks, in modern times we should probably start with biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy who published his book on General Systems Theory in 1968. Since then it permeates the thinking of virtually every discipline and provides essential insights necessary for successful living. As you will see, some of these insights are pretty counter-intuitive!

Major insight:  everything is dependent on, and influences everything else. Fritjof Capra, a physicist who lectures in the philosophy of science has written some marvellous books on this theme: The Web of Life, and Hidden Connections. His thesis is that we are all linked in myriads of ways, some obvious, others obscure, others hidden. And our biggest delusion as a species is that we are independent individuals able to act without reference to our considerable interconnections.

The problem for us, despite what these great thinkers say, is that we find their complexity theories, well…too damn complex. Some of them, however, offer us a great way out: the method of thinking in systems circles as a way of understanding and then solving complex problems. Take the infuriating taxi drivers.

Event A: Taxi owners pay drivers commission per passenger carried and per trip made. So, the more trips they make, the more passengers they carry, the more they earn.

Event B: Drivers are encouraged to speed and break the traffic rules to get the extra trips and passengers because this earns them more money!

Event C: Inadequate traffic policing, results in very few negative consequences to bad, illegal, discourteous driving.

Event D: My imaginary accident, in which the driver gets away without any negative consequences to himself. In fact, he is rewarded by the taxi owner for his extra passengers and extra trips. And the taxi owner is better off by perpetuating the commission system. It’s a vicious circle!

So, to break this negative, vicious circle what can we do? Well, the only thing that makes long-term sense is to campaign for tackling the source of the problem: the commission system used to remunerate drivers. Anything short of this will only result in isolated redress to particular accident sufferers without any real impact on the rogue system that is causing so much stress.

Let me finish with a positive circle.

Event A: A group of “white” residents in a smallish rural town offer to teach English to classes of Afrikaans speaking, “coloured” children at the local Primary School. The children begin to respond positively to the weekly language classes and to the English speaking teachers.

Event B: The teachers and the children begin to react warmly and positively to one another when they meet outside the classroom in the town shopping area.

Event C: The Headmaster and staff begin to accept the English speaking teachers as part-time volunteer colleagues, and the relationship between the “coloured” school and the mainly white towns people improves with the town seeing these kids and this school as “ours”.

Event D: who knows?

Event E: who knows?

It has been a systemic intervention that has created a positive circle. It may be one that eventually draws people from the economically divided communities together. However, we don’t know because while social change can be led, the complexity of social systems will ultimately determine what emerges or evolves.

Positive circles as well as negative ones can be changed, but our interventions need careful consideration. We need to think systemically, in circles before we decide what to do to bolster positive systems or break negative ones. And change takes time: there are often delays, which if we are not expecting them can make us despondent. However, this is a further benefit of thinking in circles: it provides us with an accurate perception of reality rather than the impatient, uncomprehending distortion that demands change immediately.

Try using the 80/20 principle

Richard Koch has authored and co-authored 18 books, the best-known of which is his The 80/20 Principle. The 80/20 principle started as an economic theory put forward by Vilfredo Pareto in 1897. Not surprisingly some people still call it the Pareto Principle. It has also been called the Rule of the Vital Few and the Trivial Many, and you will soon see why.

First insight: the universe is wonky, it’s not neatly balanced! There appears to be an inbuilt imbalance between inputs and outputs, causes and consequences, efforts and results. The 80/20 Principle is a neat way of stating this imbalance. For example, in business approximately 20% of your products will usually account for more or less 80% of your total sales and profits; and 20% of your customers will usually account for 80% of your sales and profits. In communities, organisations and institutions 20% of the people make 80% of the positive contributions. And conversely 80% of the negative vibes circulating are caused by 20% of the people – the Vicious Few!

Typically then, causes, inputs or effort divide into two categories: the majority that have little impact and a small minority that have a major, dominant impact on outputs or results. For example, take “effort”: smart students know that 80% or more of exam papers can be well answered with in depth knowledge of 20% of the subject matter that the syllabus was meant to cover. The examiners are usually much more impressed by a student who knows a great deal about a relatively narrow range than only a fair amount about a wide range of topics.

Second insight: focusing on the vital few will dramatically improve the quality of your life! There are always a few things, a few people, a few friends, a few organisations, a few institutions (and so on) that are far more important to your happiness and well-being than the majority. This is invariably true. Richard Koch asserts that 80/20 thinking will definitely improve your life. The habit of looking everywhere for 80/20 insights will make your life more pleasant, easier and far happier. For example, putting effort into your vital few true friendships instead of spreading yourself too thin usually brings great rewards. Focusing your efforts on the vital few institutions or organisations you consider crucially important to Greyton will result in a far greater contribution to the well-being of our town than if you give a little of your time and effort to all of them.

Third insight: become what Koch calls a “time revolutionary” and only spend time on the 20% of activities that produce 80% of your achievements or happiness. In other words, forget managing time; rather identify the vital few things that really bring you joy – and focus totally on them. Also, identify the vital few things that result in your best accomplishments and focus your energy on them. And forget about the 80% of activities that are of relatively low value. Time revolutionaries make very good use of 20% of available time and in doing so discover that there is in fact no shortage of time! On the contrary, by making 20% of your time really count you can without guilt relax and play in the remaining 80%!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe summed it up neatly many years before Richard Koch. “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”

Go on; think about how the 80/20 Principle can apply to an area of your life right now; and ensure that you go and implement it. Then sooner rather than later look for a return on your investment far in excess to your input effort!

The importance of those few vital friends

Philosophers have had different views on the essentials of real friendship. Aristotle took the view that friendship is personal and mutual: “friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies!” So for Aristotle friendship is a fairly exclusive relationship between two people. He helps us understand what he means by true friendship by highlighting two forms of friendship which he regards as shallow impostors.

First, he rejects friendship based on the reciprocation of pleasure – when the pleasure palls the friendship dissolves.  Similarly the second shallow imitation of real friendship is one based on usefulness – when the other party is no longer useful s/he gets dropped.

Soren Kierkegaard rejected Aristotle’s view on the Christian ground that people should love all their neighbours, which cuts out friendships that exclude any neighbours. A.C. Grayling, a great 21^st Century philosopher, contends that the two views need not be inconsistent. You can nourish benevolent feelings towards humanity in general, and work for its good, while at the same time enjoying deep friendships with one or a few others.

Against this philosophical background it is fascinating to discover that the importance of friendships to our lives has been studied quite recently by Tom Rath who heads up research at The Gallup Organisation. Gallup Press published a book by Rath on this research: Vital Friends. Here are some of the insights.

First insight: friendship is better than Prozac! Research from numerous scientific studies highlights that people who have a few deep friendships thrive better than those who don’t. Lonely people suffer psychologically and physically. The absence of deep, vital friendships impacts negatively on our health, our spirits, our productivity and our longevity!

Second insight: friendship is the silver lining in a marriage!  According to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages”. And Tom Rath’s Gallup research indicates that the quality of a couple’s friendship could account for as much as 70% of overall marital satisfaction. So in answer to the question: “What drives marital satisfaction, sex or friendship?” the quality of a couple’s friendship is five times as important as physical intimacy. (Hey, I’m only reporting what the research shows…)

Third insight: no one best friend can be all things to your friendship needs. People are different. Even if your husband or wife or partner is genuinely your best friend, Tom Rath suggests that you probably need at least two more Vital Friends in order to be fully engaged and energised by your key relationships. Rath reckons that in friendships, because we are all different, we usually give different things than we receive. He proposes that there are at least eight vital roles that we and our special friends play and that no single friend is capable of playing all eight roles. So, it is unfair to expect that you or your best friends can be “everything” to each other.

Fourth insight: focus on the positive roles that people play in your life and on what roles you play for them. No one person can be a “fun buddy”, a “mind opener”, a “network connector”, a “lifelong companion”, a “fellow crusader” and so on. So, Rath’s advice is: don’t be hard on yourself or your friends when none of you can be all things to all people. Focus on the great role that your fun buddy plays in lightening up your life and don’t expect him/her to necessarily be the fellow crusader who shares your deepest values and will work passionately alongside you in your favourite organisation.

Tom Rath’s parting thoughts are that, on reflection, he realised that throughout his life he had taken his closest relationships for granted. He had several malnourished friendships; they were by no means starved, but he had spent very little time consciously improving his best friendships. When he realised this he took concerted action to remedy the situation and his life took a dramatic upward turn.

In a sense we are who we eat with. Grayling writes: “friendships need tending and nothing replaces time together, in circumstances where other pressures are lifted so that the gates of communication can spring open, allowing free trade to pass between” Cheers!

Are you a Climber, a Camper or a Quitter?

How good are you at handling adversity? Family problems, financial difficulties, health issues, relationship problems, the impact of crime, major hassles with service providers and so on. Well, this week’s world-class thinker Dr. Paul Stoltz has developed a measure of the attitudes and skills that enable you to turn obstacles into opportunities. He calls it the Adversity Quotient (AQ) and it measures two key differentials of success: persistence and resilience.

Paul Stoltz is not only a research psychologist; he is also an experienced mountaineer. So he uses a mountaineering metaphor to explain how different people deal with our human drive to ascend; to move forward and upward in our instinctual effort to achieve whatever goals we have set ourselves in the limited time we have. In our metaphorical ascent through life we meet three types of people; they have different responses to life’s ascent and we can readily spot them in our organisations, our cities, our towns and village. Also, we ourselves fit into one of the three categories.

First, there are the Quitters: those who opt out, back out, drop out and choose to ignore their core drive to achieve. Their lifestyle is compromised: they have abandoned their dreams and do just enough to get by. In their relationships Quitters shy away from the challenges of commitment; instead they join those who bitch about “the system” as this allows them to vent without doing anything to put things right.

Second, there are the Campers: people who have stopped achieving and ascending and opt instead for comfort and security, and so try to avoid adversity. They are less compromised than Quitters, but they have sacrificed what could be for the illusion of keeping what is. Campers do what is required and have some initiative and drive, but they sacrifice their true potential and opt for relationships and lifestyles that avoid discomfort and are seemingly “safe”.

Third, there are the Climbers: they are dedicated to a life-long ascent; they energetically explore possibilities and live life with a sense of passion and purpose; they enjoy the journey! Climbers are true learners who overcome setbacks, make things happen and strive for their goals. They are unafraid to explore new frontiers and are unafraid of the potential and pain that accompanies deep relationships.

Paul Stoltz posits four dangerous forks in the trail to the top. The “Climber-turned-Camper” option offers the illusion that the campsite will stay stable; but waiting out the storm can lead to waiting out your life, and you risk physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual atrophy! Then there is the “Technology-as-God” option which is a shift from faith in human solutions to technical ones: technology, not teams of people, will tackle the major problems and issues we face; the “I can’t do anything but someone will invent something, someday” mentality. The third dangerous fork in the trail is the “Pump-up” option. This is the search for the quick fix, the motivational speaker type of solution. Tempting tools that offer pump rather than sustainable content, where euphoria dies quickly, leaving little change. His final fork is the “Helpless-Hopeless” option. Helplessness in the face of adversity can change to hopelessness which sucks one into a vortex of despair. Helplessness is a cancer of the soul for individuals, groups, teams and organisations.

Instead of taking any of the dangerous forks in the trail to the top of your life’s calling, Stoltz says you can strengthen your Adversity Quotient by dealing with the “CORE” elements that determine the level of your persistence and resilience.

C = Control: this is your perceived control over adverse events. When faced with adversity it is vital that you search for ways of increasing your control over the situation. Even if it is exercising greater control over your emotions. There is always something you can do to increase your feeling of control; find it! High AQ people are relatively immune from feeling helpless and unable to control at least part of what is happening.

O = Origin & Ownership: origin is who or what caused the adversity. Here Stoltz says it’s important that we see the bigger picture and don’t simply blame ourselves: “it’s all my/our fault”; “I’m such an idiot” or “we’re just not good enough”. Ownership is accepting accountability for doing something about the adverse situation: “we can learn from our mistakes and do something to correct the situation”

R = Reach: how far we allow any particular adversity to reach into other areas. Do we turn bad events into huge catastrophes? Do we allow them to spread like wildfire and to bleed into other areas? Or are we more likely to limit the reach of the event at hand; deal with adversity in discreet, chewable chunks?

E = Endurance: how long you think the adversity and its causes will last. People with a low AQ tend to think “things will never get better”; “this country/city is doomed”; “the whole local government system is going down the tubes” People with a high AQ are likely to consider adversity as temporary, fleeting and unlikely to recur; they see light at the end of the tunnel no matter how long the tunnel is.

                                                                        

If you are currently facing adversity, Paul Stoltz says don’t give in: difficulty is the nurse of greatness; a harsh nurse who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and ability. Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose but endure adversity through persistence and resilience. And emerge resurgent on the other side.

What do you say after hello?

How effectively do we interact with others? How easy are we to deal with? And how do we handle the “difficult people” we encounter? Do you find some people easier to communicate with than others? Do you feel on the same wave length with some, but feel that with certain other people the wires often seem to be crossed?

Eric Berne was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who became widely known with the publication of his best selling book Games People Play in 1964. Berne managed to take highly complex psychological concepts and make them accessible to a large non-professional readership. His last book, published the year after he died, had the marvellously simple yet incredibly thoughtful title: What do you say after you say Hello?  In other words, how do we interact with one another; what is our stance towards each other?

Berne’s theory is that when we interact with other people we do so in one of three specific ways or patterns. He calls these three patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving “ego states”. And he names them your Parent, your Adult and your Child. So, when you are in your Parent pattern of dealing with others you tend to think, feel and act just like one of your parents. If you are behaving, thinking and feeling in response to what is going on around you here and now, and using all the resources available to you as a grown up person, then you are in your Adult ego state. If you behave, think and feel like you did when you were 3, 4 or 5 then you will be acting out of your Child ego state.

First insight: it is the inappropriate use of the three ego states that screws up communication. Sometimes it is appropriate to act like a Parent. When you are chairing a fairly rowdy and disorderly meeting, you will need to take charge and act with authority in laying down the rules of conduct at the meeting. On the other hand, if you regularly behave in a bossy, authoritarian and finger wagging manner with other adults this will be a very inappropriate use of your Parent ego state. And it will cause you grief because other bossy parental types will fight with you. Also, people who regularly operate out of their Adult ego states will calmly reject your bossy attitude and suggestions with logical reasoning.

Second insight: if a group is all operating out of the same ego state, their communication can be clear. For example many tea parties are enjoyed by the participants because they are all communicating like a group of parents. They tend to criticise those who are not present, and point their fingers and vent their indignation on outsiders who do not conform to their particular view of life. I call these types of gatherings “isn’t it awful” meetings. “Isn’t it awful how young people behave these days etc. etc.” Most of us at some stage will have been part of an “isn’t it awful” meeting, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

Or you may find a group of friends operating out of their Child ego states. This can be fun, because our Child ego state harks back to a time when we were free of all the restrictions, rules and regulations that parents imposed. A guy “bull session”, or a girl “hen party”, well lubricated by inhibition-lowering glasses of fermented grape or grain can be a raucous evening of fun because everyone present is behaving like kids.  

Then a meeting called to solve the problem of flood damage and what to do about it, could also be an enjoyable one with clear communication if all present operate out of their Adult ego states. When you are all focused on solving an important problem calmly and logically the meeting can be enormously satisfying.  

Third insight: crossed communication usually doesn’t work. By this Berne means that if I address your Child from my Parent ego state and you don’t respond as a Child then the communication is crossed. For example, I may say to you (scowling, pointing and with a bossy voice): “You really should clear all that garden refuse from your pavement. It lowers the tone of the whole street!” Now if you respond from your Child (timid voice): “Gee, sorry about that. I’ll try to get rid of it this afternoon” then you have responded from the ego state I addressed (your Child) and the communication has worked. (Obviously, you will need to ask yourself if you were really happy with that interaction!)

But what if you respond to my bossy rudeness with your Parent? You would probably tell me where to get off in no uncertain terms, resulting in a failed communication – I was expecting you to respond meekly to my bossiness and instead you start yelling at me. Probably the best way to deal with bossy, rude “Parents” is to deal with them out of your Adult: cool, calm and rational as you decline to do what they are instructing! It will result in a crossed communication, but that’s OK because you don’t want them to succeed in hooking a Child response to their Parent bluster!

Perhaps we all need to think a bit about what we say after we say hello…

Yes, but how high is your EQ?

A friend who now lives in Natal visited Joan and I recently. “So, how are you liking Durban?” we asked. “Oh, it’s OK” she said, “But what I really miss is the high level of the gene pool you have here in Greyton!” She was of course referring to the unusually high ratio of intelligent people living in the village. We have more than our fair share of high IQs strolling around the place! And that makes this a very stimulating place in which to live. 

However, IQ is not the only measure there is! There are many people with reasonable rather than razor-sharp brains who are often much more successful than the top brains in the population. And their success stems from their high Emotional and Social Intelligence. Their Emotional Quotient (EQ) is high.

The world-class thinker for this week’s piece is the EQ guru Daniel Goleman. His breakthrough research on the vital importance of emotional intelligence has revolutionised our thinking about leadership and success. His best known works are Emotional Intelligence, Primal Leadership, Destructive Emotions (with the Dalai Lama), and most recently Social Intelligence. Picking out a few key insights from these great books is a real challenge, but here goes:

First insight: how we handle ourselves and our relationships often matters more than our IQ or technical skills. Your emotional intelligence has two main dimensions: a self-dimension and a social dimension. Self-dimension: people with a highly developed EQ are very aware of their emotions and moods and how these impact on others. High EQ people are also good at self-management; they keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control and maintain high levels of optimism, energy and enthusiasm. Social dimension: high EQ people are very aware, empathetic and tuned-in to the emotions of others. They take a genuine interest in other people and are good at managing relationships with others to minimise conflict and maximise cooperation in meeting everyone’s needs and interests.

In many towns and cities you often find a few clubs or associations that seem to consider themselves the intellectual cream of the community. It’s often fascinating to discover that some of these elite clubs or associations have virtually imploded because of fights among their leading lights. It surely demonstrates that while general intelligence (IQ) is very important, if it is not complemented by a high EQ success is not ensured! One is tempted to observe: sure they all have high IQs, but how high is their collective EQ?

Second insight: neuroscience suggests that our brains are “hardwired” to be kind and compassionate. Empathy and compassion are our automatic evolutionary responses to any distress we perceive in others. Another aspect of this is that smiles have the edge over all other facial expressions of emotion. World authority on facial emotions, Paul Ekman, has identified at least 18 different smiles. And the human brain prefers happy faces to those with negative expressions. Goleman calls this the “happy face advantage” Even among complete strangers a moment of playfulness, even outright silliness, forms an instant resonance and rapport. In fact, laughter may well be the shortest distance between two brains.

We don’t need to spell this out, do we? Neuroscience suggests that if we all lighten up, smile and laugh more, then we’ll have better relationships, live longer and enjoy life more. And we don’t have to have genius-level IQs to do that! All we need is a well-developed emotional and social intelligence.

Third insight: our moods are contagious and impact on everyone we encounter. This is especially true of those in leadership positions. So, if you run a business, a committee, or any organisation then be aware that your moods (fair or foul) are always noticed by your staff, your colleagues and your customers. And these moods are contagious; they spread like a virus and impact either positively or negatively on the moods and emotions of these crucial categories of people in your life. How important is it then for you to maintain a high level of energy, enthusiasm and optimism? Perhaps it is critical for your success!

The good news is that we can all improve our EQ (and our success as human beings) by increasing awareness of our own emotions and moods and by exercising better control over them; and we can improve our skills in managing relationships with others so as to ensure creative collaboration rather than destructive competition. It’s worth a try, I reckon!