Why Mediocre Leaders Succeed...

Back in June I posed a question about what kind of leadership we were really looking for in our organizations today.  For me this question reflected disillusionment between what management literature - and most of us being led - identify as the desired characteristics of our leaders and the all too common reality we experience that falls short of these expectations.  In other posts - primarily focused on political leaders - I have been able to highlight some of these failed leader scenarios.  If we all desire to be led by a Level 5 leader as identified by leadership guru Jim Collins then why does it seem so often that we fail to recruit or develop such leaders for our organizations?  How do we
continue to "allow" less than stellar and even destructive leaders to continue to rise to the top.

At the time of my June post I received relatively few answers.  I certainly got a lot of affirmation from the personal experience of others as they navigated their frustrating array of challenging leaders.  But "misery loves company" did not make for resolution.

It was only this past week that a glimmer of light came to me through a somewhat unexpected source.  As some of you might know I'm a voracious reader.  Not just for business-related material but rather a quite eclectic array of literature - Astronomy, Foreign Policy, Military History Quarterly, National Geographic, Triathlete, The Economist, science fiction, a lot of history of almost any nature, and biographies of historical figures.  Every once in a while I find a gem in these readings that I can relate to a current business or leadership challenge.   

The source of this insight is bound to lead some of you, or all of you, to wonder if I've gone off the deep end.  Or merely confirmed your suspicion of that truth all along.  So before going there I'm going to go back to Jim Collins for an answer.  For without perhaps saying it directly he touched on my dilemma as he described what a Level 5 Leader looked like.

My understanding of a Level 5 Leader is one who is unassuming and ambitious for their organization rather than for themselves.  This contrasts sharply with the character and behavior of leaders we may commonly find at the pinnacle of many organizations - those that present as charismatic and larger than life and are DEFINITELY ambitious, but for their own personal gain.  So should we - or more particularly me - be surprised that these are the leaders I encounter too often and am left uninspired by?  They are geared and driven to get to the top to achieve their personal ends whereas Level 5 Leaders - because they are more ambitious for the success of their organization - are more inclined to sublimate their personal achievements in deference to organizational goals.  In my assessment, they are far more inclined to be humble and self-sacrificing than their more ambitious counterparts and as a result are more likely to be overlooked for leadership roles.

So now here comes my highly controversial and perhaps overreaching insight from a very different source of information.  I recently completed a book authored by Sebastian Haffner in 1978 and translated from it's original German in 1979.  This analysis of a prominent historical figure of our time was entitled "The Meaning of Hitler".

Right off the mark you might now question how I could at all reasonably tie an assessment of Hitler's reign to that of anybody in a leadership role today.  What possible insight could I have gleaned from a book analyzing the actions of a genocidal megalomaniac?  Simply this.  Haffner analyzed both Hitler's successes and achievements and contrasted that against his failures and defeat.  What he concluded from both was that the rise and fall in Hitler's fortune was not as a result of any physical, mental, emotional, intellectual or other change in Hitler himself.  He suggests that Hitler was quite dogmatic and unwavering in pursuit of his ends and the means to achieve those ends.  Rather, Haffner states, "[The] key lies not in any changes in Hitler.  It lies in the change and alternation of the opponents with whom Hitler had to deal."  He goes on to say "Successes always involve two [people] - and the success of one is the failure of the other.  Given constant strength one can be successful against a weaker opponent and unsuccessful against a stronger one...Hitler's successes and failures become instantly explicable if one turns one's attention away from Hitler and towards his opponents at the times in question." (underline is my emphasis).

In short Hitler only succeeded as a leader when he faced weak opposition, when he faced weak leaders - Chamberlain, Daladier, and others within and outside of Germany - in the years leading up to World War II.  After the invasion and subjugation of Poland, and most definitively after 1941 and declarations of war on the Soviet Union and the United States, Hitler faced a decidedly different calibre of leaders in the form of Churchill, De Gaulle, Stalin and Roosevelt.  He ultimately was defeated even though his character and tactics had not changed at all from those that had led to his early, spectacular successes.

This may seem like a somewhat belabored point but the insight I gained from this unlikely source is that mediocre leaders, poor leaders or destructive leaders succeed not so much by what they do but by what we ourselves fail to do.  If we desire different leadership we must have the courage to look for it, to ask for it, demand it and support leaders that will inspire us to some more noble goals and achievements.

If the collective WE fails to exert our own expectations and standards for the type of leadership we desire than we likely deserve the hand we are dealt.  Misery may love company but it's no recipe for success.
______________________________


Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
Executive Coach/Consultant
BreakPoint Solutions
gregh@breakpoint.solutions
780-250-2543

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.

Building a Successful Team

Over my 25+ year career as a senior executive, consultant and coach, I've had extensive opportunity to be part of and lead many teams.  I've also had the privilege of assisting others build great teams or navigate the challenges of dysfunctional team environments.  I continue to have opportunities to diagnose and work with teams not performing at their optimal levels and continue to distill lessons from my own leadership experience to impart to them.  In doing so, I've particularly reflected back on what I still consider the best team that I have ever worked with which dates back almost 15 years.

When I first entered the picture as the new CEO of this particular organization it was experiencing more than a bit of stress - the organization itself was relatively new, it was experiencing the effects of significant budget cuts and service reductions, it had relatively poor standing with its public, the board itself was split along a number of different lines, and the past CEO - seemingly well-liked by the management team - had been let go.  Needless to say this wasn't an inviting environment and starting point upon which to commence my new leadership role.  By the end of my tenure though we had earned accolades and awards at a provincial level, had great relationships with our staff and unions, and performed at a level all out of proportion to our size.  We became the benchmark for other organizations like us - and many times our size.  What accounted for that success?  For me it had to be our level of teamwork, key elements of which I will describe below.

One of the first things I did was to take the management team back to ground zero.  Why were we here as an organization and what were we supposed to be focused on delivering?  We didn't have the luxury of building the mission, vision and values of the organization from scratch - the board had already done that to the perceived exclusion of the management team.  So I took them through each element of and, in some cases, each word of these statements and looked to develop better understanding for ourselves as to what worked in guiding our strategic and operational goals and activities.  This "reverse engineering" of our organization's mission, vision and values took time but it was time well spent.  At this point forward the management team owned these directions and goals.  We were all on the same page.

The team also created an environment in which all points of view were afforded an opportunity to be heard AND ACTED UPON.  I believe I led the way in this regard but all team members took probably what for them was significant risk in trusting that this new CEO meant what he said in seeking their input, information and guidance on a variety of initiatives.  I'm sure that for many "traditional" leaders looking in or experiencing some of my team meetings they would have described them as chaotic.  That might have been true, but I do like to think of it as organized chaos and that there was method to my madness.  I believe I was able to demonstrate that the answers to any question and challenge did not come from any one source no matter how authoritative.  The result was that we came to better solutions that everybody then bought into and supported.

Related to this organized chaos, was that this team had good, open communication which sometimes meant that our passions were freely expressed and differences of opinion were on the table.  We didn't agree for the sake of agreeing and we were prepared to challenge each other on a regular basis.  In our team, one was well advised to leave their ego at the door as it wouldn't long survive! We didn't suppress conflict or engage in conflict simply to be difficult.  We engaged in conflict precisely because we were passionate about our shared goals and were committed to being the best we could be as an organization in service of our clients and staff.  In this regard we also respected each other as professionals and for the experience we brought to the table.  We trusted each other.

We also set high expectations for ourselves, our team and each other. This equated to plenty of additional hours and taking on more than one set of duties to see something through.  This was true of all of us - including myself.  We undertook such effort not because it was demanded of us or mandated.  We did so because we were passionate about the work we were doing and we were committed to the team as a whole.  We didn't want to let each other down.  In a similar vein, we also took the time to support each other as needed.  Overall we were a very young team - on average I'm guessing that our management team's average age was 30 - but we did have some "veterans" on our team too.  Regardless, all of us seemed to recognize that we had opportunity to learn and develop and we gave freely of ourselves to others to strengthen them and our overall success.

Finally it is clear that while we worked excessively we did so because we truly enjoyed each others company.  We worked hard and played equally as hard.  Many of us have maintained contact and friendships throughout the intervening years.  I am exceedingly pleased when I do have the chance to meet again with some of my former team that they still describe our time together as the best experience of their career.  Sometimes it seems like that may have just been fortuitous but I also recount how challenged we were at the beginning of our time together.  I know that our success only came from a commitment to common goals, the courage and willingness to challenge each other and the status quo, and a passionate commitment to each other.

I believe a powerful team can be created with these "lessons" in mind.  It takes guidance from a leader to be sure but it also requires courage on the part of the leader to let the team develop its own path.  A strong and powerful team does not develop in the shadow of a leader but rather because a leader has the courage to let the light of the team and its members shine.
  _

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
Executive Coach/Consultant
BreakPoint Solutions
gregh@breakpoint.solutions
780-250-2543

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.

Power...and the Aura of Power

Albertans woke up today to see the latest in what has become the ongoing saga of the demise of our former Premier - "Rules broken, money misspent...Aura of power...Premier used public assets (aircraft) for personal and partisan purposes...Other areas of government were wary of challenging decisions made in the premier's office...".  The latest issue is now being handed over to the RCMP to assess whether  criminal charges are warranted.  As was to be expected, the governing party is taking all steps it can to portray the issues as the actions of an individual while the opposition parties are doing all they can to paint this as simply the most visible sign of a culture of entitlement of a party too long in power and accustomed to doing as it pleases.

Politics is certainly a dirty game and I don't operate under any illusions about the altruistic motives of any of the parties involved in this current (or ongoing) scandal.  Opposition parties sense that their time to make hay is now but I've become highly skeptical and jaded as to whether any politician is better than the next.  Similarly we see political colleagues of the former Premier doing all they can to express outrage at the abuses of political office and public resources.  This kind of retrospective courage seems to me to at best insincere and delusional.  At worst it is self-serving.

I wish that this might be the end of the story but I'm not convinced of that.  Prior to this scenario playing out we had previously seen stories out of the public sector relating to dubious expense claims, large and questionable severance packages or golden parachutes, and other abuses of power.  I believe that there is more to come and more to be uncovered.  The full reality of what exists will not come easily especially in light of how previous leaders have already fared in the court of public opinion.

The reality of leaders who abuse their power - even at the risk of public exposure or worse - continues to exist primarily because some leaders do feel entitled, all powerful and above reproach.  In some cases they may even believe that they are doing nothing wrong, that anything that benefits them somehow benefits all, and even if there are abuses they will never be discovered.  They operate with immeasurable confidence in their own superiority and are not reluctant to use fear and intimidation as weapons to build, sustain and grow their personal position.

More troubling though is that WE allow and facilitate this type of leadership.  Our former Premier and other leaders who have been turned out of the public service for similar alleged transgressions did not accomplish all they did on their own.  And make no mistake, this kind of leadership behavior is not isolated to the public sector.  Leaders - both good and bad - work with and through others.  Salaries ultimately have to be approved by someone, airplane manifests processed by others, expense claims submitted and managed, and so on.  Many of us might try to find some solace or comfort to say that WE were intimidated by our leader, that we feared for our jobs or careers, or that "we were just following orders".  Some of us may have even developed a misplaced sense of loyalty and confused that what was good for the leader was similarly good for the organization.

Worse is that we may have been co-opted by a flawed or narcissistic leader.  For those serving a political master they may have seen their political future tied to the rising star of another.  Maybe they hoped to gain a new or more prominent cabinet posting.  Others see loyalty as key to their leadership aspirations down the road.  And sometimes they believe that it is best to protect their leader for the sake of their party's standing and reputation.  Parallels in our own organizations certainly exist.  Our job satisfaction, salary, bonuses, enhanced benefits, and other perks can be used to build a sense of commitment to a flawed path.  WE are a multimillion or multibillion dollar organization.  There is great pressure and responsibility that comes to me as a leader.  What's wrong with a few extra hundred, thousand - or hundreds of thousands - dollars coming my way?

This doesn't happen overnight.  Rather it very much mirrors the iconic story of a frog slowly being boiled to death.  Slowly but surely we compromise our values and high ideals because no one step or decision seems critical or egregious enough to cause us to stand up for what we say we believe in.  One day we just wake up and know that we are well past the line we vowed never to cross - or maybe we now find ourselves having to deal with uncomfortable stories on the front page of our local newspapers.  Whether as governing boards, as peers, or colleagues there are ample opportunities for us to exercise oversight, fulfill assigned duties, ask questions, or find the courage to say no.

WE often don't lack for proper policies, procedures, processes and protocols to hold ourselves to high ethical, professional and organizational standards.  More often WE lack the courage to use those tools and to hold to our values.  More often WE are not prepared to pay the price or endure the pain that comes from exercising that courage.

I recently finished reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (author - Eric Metaxas).  It details the life of this German pastor, theologian, and author with a particular focus on his struggle against Hitler and Nazi Germany.  This is not a simple tale of right and wrong as it could easily have been turned into.  Bonhoeffer's struggles in finding his path are well documented by the author, and in the words of Bonhoeffer himself, as he determined what was right versus what was perceived as correct and loyal behavior for a German leading up to and through World War II.  He often fought with and was reviled by his peers.  He progressively lost his ability to practice as a pastor, to teach and to write.  Regardless he held true to his values and exercised choice in how he would live and lead.  His choice to not compromise his belief as to what was right for Germany and the Christian community ultimately resulted in his execution mere days before the end of World War II.

I'm not suggesting WE have to die for what we believe in.  What I am suggesting is that WE have far less at stake in holding ourselves and our leaders accountable than a Bonhoeffer, that WE have far more choice to do so than WE would like to believe, and WE have opportunity - and examples to guide us - in finding the courage to enforce a standard of leadership that WE deserve.

Be clear on your values, exercise your leadership, and make a difference because of it.
.

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
Executive Coach/Consultant
BreakPoint Solutions
gregh@breakpoint.solutions
780-250-2543

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.