Taking your Leadership to the Next Level

What does it take to move up the ladder of leadership?  That has been a frequent point of focus from a number of my coaching clients.  The questions often presume one best path to the next leadership level.  The challenge with charting the course, providing some advice, or giving clear answers is that there is no one right path.  This is particularly true in today's constantly changing environment.  What may have seemed a sure path to the c-suite yesterday gets confounded by organization restructuring, the loss of a key senior level support and mentor, or other significant change that makes a once well thought out path irrelevant.

All that being said, I believe there are a number of steps that can be taken to position oneself for the next level of leadership.  Moreover, many of these same steps remain relevant once a desired leadership position has been obtained, including that of CEO.  In no particular order, here is my Top Ten list of what to do to position yourself - and maybe hold on to - that next level of leadership.

One: Solidify your own personal mission, vision and values.  Be clear about who you are as a person and as a leader.  Develop a clear and intimate understanding about how you want to lead and what legacy you want to create.  Don't just focus on the "business" side of the equation.  Equally as critical in this process of personal introspection is going to be identifying for yourself how your personal and family life fits into your overall view.

Two: Be sure of your own motivations and commitments to becoming a CEO or other senior leader.  How will this role fulfill you? How clear are you on the benefits - and costs - associated with the next step up?  Are you pursuing the next role because others expect you to or want you to?  It's lovely to be courted and wooed as a leadership candidate but make sure you objectively evaluate your readiness and desire to take on the challenge.  Be true to yourself.

Three: Excel at your current role.  Personally, I find it hard to take somebody seriously as a candidate for their next desired role when they are not blowing me away in the performance of their current duties.  Paraphrasing a baseball term, "Keep your eye on the ball".  In this case that means doing an outstanding job where you are right now.  If you neglect your current role because you are too busy sizing up the furniture in your future fantasy office I suggest that you'll slip on your own stardust.

Four: Connect with other leader's in your targeted role.  Learn from them - both good and bad.  What was their path?  What steps did they take?  What mistakes did they make?  Keep in mind that their path should not be your path (particularly in the mistake category).  These won't be your answers but they will help inform your options and decisions.  Have the humility to listen and learn and you may find a few gems that work for you.

Five: Related to point four above, be open to learning from anyone and everyone - even those who are not in defined or recognized leadership roles.  Those who are being led can give you as much value and insight about what makes for a good leader (and what makes for a poor leader) as any formal leader will.  All perspectives are valuable. 

Six: Network, network, network - find ways to become known (for all the right reasons).  You might be an excellent leader in the making and have excellent leadership characteristics but that's only of value if others know that.  Many of us are shy about networking or personal marketing but it is a critical skill to master.  I guarantee that in any competition it is of more than passing consequence to be known beyond what shows up on your resume - which is on pile with a host of others.

Seven: Get involved in relevant professional and community ventures - community causes, charitable organizations, professional association, etc.  I believe this is only effective if done from a place of genuine and authentic interest.  Do not engage with a venture simply for personal gain and the exposure that you might get as a result.  Do it because you believe in the particular cause or venture.  Your passion and integrity will shine through and I believe you will showcase your skills and abilities to a greater degree as a result.   

Eight:  Continue to learn and develop.  I have often said that remaining relevant is directly proportional to one's ongoing energy and enthusiasm for continuous learning, development and improvement.  I'm not just talking about formal education that can come from a university, college or one's professional association.  Your mind and your leadership perspective is likely to benefit from a change of pace and opportunity which will arise by learning how to swim, how to use a telescope, climbing a mountain, or learning a musical instrument.  Plus, by undertaking new activities you'll learn to overcome your anxiety in taking on new challenges and more than likely meet people with perspectives quite different from your normal experience.

Nine:  Look for leadership opportunities no matter how small.  You want to build a track record of success that might look good on a resume, will help build your confidence, stretch your abilities, expand your perspective on future leadership opportunities and demonstrate to others what you are capable of.  As with point seven, there is a need to be strategic in targeting, selecting or volunteering for leadership opportunities.  If you don't have a passion for a particular initiative your lack of enthusiasm is likely to show through in your effort.  You also want to make sure that the opportunity is aligned with your personal plan for where you are headed as a leader.

Ten:  Continuously and consciously evaluate your strengths and weaknesses as a leader.  As leaders, we may be doing an OK job in looking at our organizational financial statements and other metrics on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.  As leaders or aspiring leaders we need to apply the same vigor to an assessment of our leadership skills and plan.  Nobody is perfect.  There is always room for improvement.  There is ongoing need for adjusting and modifying plans based on a variety of changes in our personal and organizational demands.  This real, introspective work takes humility, courage, and discipline, but it is also a mark of an excellent leader.

Eleven:  OK, I said Top Ten but here's a bonus action to consider.  Get yourself an Executive Coach.
I've had the privilege of acting as an Executive Coach for a variety of clients and for over the past 3 years I have benefited from having a coach myself.   A coach can support your leadership development - either in moving to the next level of leadership or maintaining efficacy in an existing role - by surfacing and challenging assumptions, helping to clarify required actions, or simply by providing space to listen.  In how many other places can a leader be assured of complete confidentiality and unbiased perspective as they explore their own doubts, misgiving, hopes and dreams?

There is no one right path to the next level of leadership and what you see here are only my humble musings on what it takes to move up.  As a leader, let me know what resonates with you or what advice you would provide to others to chart their path.
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Constancy of Purpose

One of the first blog entries I penned over a year ago focused on the work of Dr. W. E. Deming - one of the key figures in the foundation of total quality improvement.  In that entry I focused on only a few aspects of his work and his famous fourteen points.  What was clear then and is still evident today is that his work still holds truth for us in today's business environment even though he expounded his framework over 60 years ago. 

Last week, while I was in San Diego with other TEC Canada/Vistage chairs I learned of yet another round of personnel and organizational changes in Alberta's health care system.  At this point I've lost track of how many changes this makes for the health care system since the creation of Alberta Health Services in 2008, much less the changes since the mid-1990's.  This latest change had me reflecting on Dr. Deming's first point in his fourteen points - "Create constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service."  What Deming was responding to and was trying to address in this point was the fixation on issues of the day by those in leadership positions.  He saw long-term planning and a focus on the future being sacrificed to a number of factors - need to produce immediate results, desire on the part of some leaders to rapidly climb the corporate ladder and hence change positions or firms on a constant basis, or rapid involuntary turnover in leadership roles when those people were not seen as being responsive enough to "crisis" issues.

While Dr. Deming might have had corporate USA in mind when he wrote in the 1950's it seems to me that his same commentary can hold true for the public sector - in the US, Canada and other nations - as well.  Too many of our public sector entities - and the governments that fund/direct them - are focused on tomorrow's newspaper headlines or public opinion poll results, meeting "expectations" of stakeholders, balancing the budget or minimizing the deficit, or otherwise meeting some limited metric of success that may or may not have anything to do with true system performance.   "The future is ninety days at most," said Dr. Deming, "or non-existent. There might not be any future. That is what occupies people's minds. That is not the way to stay in business [or provide publicly funded services]. Not the way to get ahead."  Dr. Deming commented, "It is easy to stay bound up in the tangled knots of the problems of today, becoming ever more efficient in them."

Dr. Deming recommended that any organization that was serious about pursuing its long term goals should focus intently on fostering innovation, invest in research and education, be relentless in continuously improving its product and services offerings, and continuously invest in its capital, equipment and other means to support production and/or service delivery.  Each of these is important, but more fundamentally, what constancy of purpose also implies to me is establishing and sticking to a plan. Establish and follow through on a well thought out, long-term strategic plan that recognizes that there will bumps along the way but ultimately holds the course based on well articulated and strongly held values.  At the end of the day this strength of commitment and consistency of direction - constancy of purpose - will allow all employees to connect with and drive forward on key actions.  Failing that, the organization becomes a rudderless ship that starts to define success as mere survival.

Following on this requirement for constancy of purpose, I believe that my blog entry from last year remains relevant.  With minor updates owing to current circumstances, I append them again here as key conditions for helping move an organization forward.
 

Point Seven - Institute Leadership. 

Dr. Deming calls upon management to lead rather than manage.  Simple statement but what does it really mean for us as leaders?  Well I'm pretty confident that if you were to talk to many of our frontline staff and management personnel they would provide you with countless examples of where they felt they were being "managed", not "led".  This bias towards "management" is without doubt enhanced by the immense pressure the health system is under to perform and achieve better results.  An unfortunate "management" response is to exercise greater control and oversight to make sure results get better.  More often than not efforts of this nature only seem to put more barriers in the way of getting good work done - more reports to generate, more signatures to get, more unreasonable timelines to meet, multiple and conflicting demands, and failure to hear and act upon input and recommendations from staff. 

Point Eight - Drive Out Fear.

Maybe fear appears an effective tool to get results in the short-term, but not if you are trying to create a high-performing organization for the long-term.  With fear in an organization there cannot be open communication, innovation, and teamwork - and these are all required for an organization to achieve the full measure of its potential.  Leadership of any organization - and at all levels of the organization - must actively model open communication, encourage appropriate risk taking and innovation, and promote teamwork from the board room, to the executive suite through to the front lines of operations.  With fear in place an organization shall continue to squander the full potential of its people and the organization to the detriment of the those it purports to serve.

Point Ten - Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets for the Workforce.

Everybody needs to measure performance.  Deming did not intend, nor do I suggest, that system performance not be evaluated on an ongoing basis.  Rather, what Point Ten addresses is the notion of trying to assess an individual's performance without reference to the system in which that individual works.  If an individual is prevented from achieving higher levels of performance by a system (that leadership has created or allowed to be created) then performance managing an employee, setting new targets for them to achieve, and giving them "motivational" speeches will have little impact on performance.  It is far more likely that such efforts will actually cause frustration, demoralization and reduced performance.  Deming's red bead experiment is a great illustration of this principle - given an equal number of red and white beads, an employee is tasked with collecting only white beads with an employer-provided scoop or paddle.  Inevitably, the employee collects some red beads in their assigned task.  As a result of "failing" in their assigned task, the employee may be given further direction by their supervisor, there may be encouragement to do better, they may be applauded if their red bead count has gone down, or they may be chastised if their red bead count goes up.  Regardless, their individual effort and various interventions at the personal level will have no impact on actual outcome.  It's like expecting employee engagement scores in an organization to go up simply by saying that the target is 10 out of 10 on the next engagement survey.  Only by changing the system and the organizational environment will better, more consistent results be achieved.  I see a strong correlation between Point Ten and the need to Drive Out Fear from an organization as noted earlier.  In fact, I believe that what leaders often create by exhortations to do better is an environment in which results and information are hidden through fear rather than being actively discovered.  And only by discovery can we improve.

Point Twelve - Remove Barriers to Pride of Workmanship.

In this point, Deming was referring to unclear expectations, lack of timely feedback (or any feedback), lack of training and support, and systems that focused on short-term results rather than long-term goals.  Staff and front-line managers are often frustrated by multiple tasks or changing priorities (see Point Seven) as leaders change focus or react to external stimuli without, it seems, due regard to long-term objectives or stated core values.  And unfortunately, more than one of us can relate to the fear that the performance evaluation process creates in us - either as provider or receiver of the experience.  Too often this is because we establish the evaluation process as a one-time event, not as a continual process of discussion, engagement and opportunity.  There is a need too to ensure that the evaluation process becomes an opportunity for leaders and staff alike to identify and invest in skills and intellect.  It is also a great opportunity for leaders to model desired behaviours and reinforce common goals.  On this latter point, I firmly believe that there must be a high degree of visibility and sincere engagement with internal audiences on par with leadership visibility and engagement with external audiences.  Without the kind of internal alignment that I believe comes from such effort the ability to deliver on commitments to external audiences and customers stands on shaky ground.

Deming's principles were valid guideposts when penned 60 years ago.  They were valid guideposts last year.  They remain as valid guideposts today.
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Charisma and Leadership

Over the past couple of months in my executive coaching practice a few of my clients have expressed a desire to be more charismatic.  They see this as a necessary and required personality trait or skill that will allow them to become a better leader in their current position or to advance to the next stage of their career.  As they present this thought they express a desire to be like other leaders they have seen or experienced - leaders that stride powerfully into a room, articulate clearly their thoughts and directions, and apparently energize others to move forward on an initiative.  On the surface my clients seem to equate being charismatic with being an effective leader.

In my role as executive coach I have explored this perspective in some depth - what is it about being charismatic that equates to effective leadership for my clients?  As we probe these expressions of how they want to be as a leader other words and phrases come to the surface.  Those terms include "confident", "articulate", "inspiring", "competent", "energizing" and so forth.  Personally, I find these expressions of leadership more comforting, insightful and useful than a desire to be charismatic.  My point of view is that charisma may not be a true reflection of leadership acumen.  Rather, it can too often mask a lack of competence or character that in the long-term is detrimental to organizational success.  In my experience, charisma can simply be glitz and glam, whereas competence and character sustain and inspire long-term personal and organizational success.  Worse yet, charisma or charm can hide a lack of skill, some truly flawed personalities or an ugly agenda - no shortage of charismatic dictators in our world's history that have ultimately led their organizations or nations to an inglorious end.

The reality in recruitment and promotion to leadership positions does, however, lend some credence to the perspectives put forward by my clients.  We can all identify examples of leaders who have been selected or chosen because of how powerfully they present themselves in an interview or in a variety of public forums.  They are extremely effective in engaging with and making strong impressions on others.  They often hold strong opinions and are not afraid to push their positions forward.  They often possess a strong personality that in many cases simply overwhelms those around them.  They are crystal clear about what they want and what it will take to get there.  They also are usually quite effective in managing up.  As a result they do in fact often achieve positions of leadership or influence.  Why wouldn't my clients want to aspire to emulate these role models?

Don't get me wrong.  Being likable, charming, and charismatic are great qualities to have. This type of skill set and ability to connect with and convince stakeholders and decision makers is a critical business skill.  Being comfortable in being "on stage" and networking is certainly an asset when it comes to achieving an organization's objectives.  To the extent that a leader can galvanize their followers or stakeholders around a common and laudable cause or objective well that's a skill to be fully exploited. 

However, I suggest that charisma is not nearly enough to be an effective leader.  At least not over the long haul.  A charismatic leader without competence, character, compassion and commitment can be a destructive and dangerous force.  This is particularly the case when the goals of the leader are focused more on personal gain than organizational success.  Relying solely or heavily on charisma without some deeper substance, skill or commitment may work for a while.  It may be particularly effective if a strong team can carry a leader for some period of time.  However, once that initial grace period is over I believe effective leadership has to be supported by a more complete skill set.

So nothing wrong with aspiring to be charismatic and inspiring.  However, no leader is effective with only one arrow in his quiver or one tool in her toolbox.  So for my clients and for other aspiring leaders I encourage you to continue to work on developing other required leadership skills and capacities.  In addition, as and when you have the opportunity, whether as part of a governing body or a manager looking at a leadership hire, I implore you to look beyond a well-written resume and strong interview skills.  Dig deeper to understand the track record of your prospective leader.  Dig deeper with references and other means of validation to understand the true leadership skill set that is presenting to you.  Above all else, look for and test whether your prospective leader is going to be a strong representative of your mission, vision and values.  Your leadership choice will certainly define your organization - hopefully in the way you would want.
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.