Exorcising Our Ghosts

Growing up I had my fair share of fears as I suspect most kids do.  In particular, I somehow learned to fear the dark and more particularly all the evil creatures that might be lurking under the bed, in my closet or just outside the window.  Every noise and small movement of shadow seem to be amplified, the precursor to my impending doom.  Several decades removed from those childish fears I still find myself somewhat anxious at the thought of a night out with my telescope observing the heavens.

The reality is, however, that in my youth those monsters were quite real.  And in truth it was only over time and not through any particular parental logic that there were overcome.  I profess to still having some fear of the dark but more often it is borne out of knowledge of what is really out there - farm dogs who might perceive me as a threat; skunks, coyotes or other wild animals; and other humans who might have less astronomical things on their minds.  My fears are more grounded in reality these days but yet they don't hold me back from pursuing one of my personal passions.  So what gets me out there in the middle of the night regardless of perceived or real ghosts?  In this case, it is the opportunity to gaze upon celestial wonders of far flung galaxies, nebulae and the rings of Saturn. In some bizarre and metaphorical sense I am driven to face my fears by a higher purpose.  Pun intended.

As an executive coach - and a leader/entrepreneur in my own right - I experience and realize that I can be subject to a number of different fears.  Most of these come down to self-doubt and the courage to take on new and different challenges in my career and business.  And I see similar behavior in many of the clients that I work with.  The mythical monsters that have lived in the closets or just outside our windows in our youth now stalk the halls and alleys of our hearts, souls and minds.  These monsters and ghosts are some of the most insidious we will ever face.  They know us well and play upon and magnify our weaknesses, insecurities, and doubts.  Left unfaced, they grow in strength and hold us paralyzed with fear striving to ensure that we never take that next step forward.

These ghosts just don't operate purely or even mostly on horror and shock value.  Rather, they are more cunning and possessed of a powerful voice, constantly talk us out of taking that next bold step into the future.  They are the voice that suggests that we really aren't qualified to apply for a new position.  They help us procrastinate and rationalize to the point where even if we were to apply and get an interview we would show up with the belief we didn't belong.  We display our anxiety to the point that those who would make the selection decision recognize our lack of confidence and make the non-selection decision we have been expecting all along.  We become our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

But like conquering our own childhood fears success in facing our more mature fears is possible.  My success and that of my coaching clients is proof of that.  In my first year away from an executive role and into my new venture I probably had more sleepless nights - and self-talk - than I'd had in the previous ten years.  What made this the right move?  Was my business plan just wishful thinking?  What made me think that my marketing efforts were the right ones? And so on and so forth.  I could say that it was a powerful vision of my ultimate success that kept me going but that would be too easy a way to rewrite history.  Truth be told, I was probably just too proud and stubborn to give in.  But I did ultimately face and conquer (most of) my fears.  I often did so with the encouragement, support, inspiration and examples of others.

In similar fashion I have been inspired by the courage that many of my coaching clients have ultimately demonstrated as they struggled with realizing their potential, seeking out new opportunities, and taking on new challenges.  We have helped them face their fears, challenge their self-limiting beliefs and powerfully own their strengths.  A quote from one of my coaching colleagues comes to mind in this regard - "Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood to go into alone."  So together, we have walked the dark halls and alleys of their mind, challenging assumptions, taking small steps, all in service of a grander vision of what is possible for them.  To realize their potential and open up new vistas that they had not even imagined.

The fears and doubt never truly go away.  I still fear the dark, I still fear swimming in open water, and I still fear that success enjoyed today is fleeting.  Even as my clients enjoy their current success (e.g., new job, award, raise, promotion) they still wonder how they will maintain or build upon that success.  Our fears and doubts won't go quietly into the night.  But perhaps rather than paralyzing us they can serve a more useful function of keeping us sharp and helping us prepare for potential (and reality-based) setbacks.

Keeping a higher purpose in front of us - the celestial heavens, the triathlon finish line, a successful and fulfilling career - is a foundation by which we can keep moving one step ahead developing our own level of reassurance that our fears are often overblown.  We can choose to live in fear or live in purpose.  We can look back on our past successes as harbingers of bigger things to come.  We can believe in our strengths an in our capacity to become stronger.  We can ultimately build the confidence and courage to overcome what is holding us back from our un-imagined potential.

Choose to face your ghosts, get off your (metaphorical bed), and shine a flashlight into the dark spaces.  What you don't find there might amaze you and lighten your load.

Exorcise your ghosts - own the night.

______________________________

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.

Resurrecting Deming

For some weeks now I've had the pleasure of teaching my first undergraduate course in leadership at Concordia University of Edmonton.  It's been a great experience and has allowed me to further develop and articulate my perspective on leadership. Just this past week it also allowed me to revisit the work of W. Edward Deming.  Over 22 years ago I studied his work as part of my master's thesis on total quality management.  

Perhaps too often the work of Deming and of other TQM, CQI, and quality guru's was viewed only through the lens of statistical process control.  More simply put leaders and managers limited the application, and impact, of TQM by implementing a set of tools.  These leaders missed out - consciously or unconsciously - on the changes that TQM required from a cultural and leadership perspective.  As I engaged my students this past couple of weeks on the topic of leading others the import of Deming's 14 Points on organizational culture and leadership effectiveness was reinforced as we reviewed the various bases of authority - legitimate position, coercion, reward, expertise and personal reference. 

Deming provided a leadership and organizational philosophy through his 14 Points that went far beyond a simple set of tools.  His first point - Create Constancy of Purpose - speaks to me about creating a long-term vision and adhering to a set of values that transcend short-term challenges or fads.  However, all too often leaders and managers fail to sustain a long-term direction whether because of a change in governing body, shareholder expectations, or other short-term considerations.  Whatever circumstance is used as the justification an organization and its staff are often left wondering what latest and greatest management initiative they are going to be tasked with making succeed.  Do this often enough and leadership credibility suffers and employee engagement declines.  A wait and see attitude prevails.  Sound familiar to anyone?

The next most relevant of Deming's 14 Points for me from a leadership point of view is End the Practice of Awarding Business on Price Alone.  How often do we do this either in the public sector as part of an RFP process or in the private sector as we grind down our suppliers?  From Deming's perspective a focus on up-front price alone fails to take into account long-term cost of a supplied product.  In colloquial terms you do in fact get what you pay for.  As a counter approach it is suggested that you build strong and sustainable relationship built on key values and common goals.  This approach can equally apply to suppliers and employees.  And maybe even competitors.

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 outside of the executive suite they would provide you with countless examples of where they felt they were being "managed", not "led".  A typical management response is to exercise greater control and oversight to make sure results get better.  More often than not in these circumstances 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. 

Drive Out Fear in the workplace.  Unfortunately fear continues to rule too many of our workplaces.  The recent economic downturn has only exacerbated this reality and affirmed that for some staff remain as disposable - perhaps even more so - as any piece of machinery.  Fear - like title or position of authority - can be an effective tool of leadership and compliance in the short-term.  But over the long term, compliance does not equate to high performance.  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.  With fear in place an organization shall continue to squander the full potential of its people and the organization to the detriment of the people it purports to serve.

Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets for the Workforce.  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 understanding the system in which that individual works.  If an individual is prevented from achieving higher levels of performance by a system (that management 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.  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 survey.  Only by changing the system and the organizational environment will better, more consistent results be achieved. 

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 as leaders change focus or react to external stimuli without, it seems, due regard to long-term objectives or stated core values.  This negative impact is often compounded by the lack 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.

Finally (at least within my view of leadership) Deming proposes that an organization Institute a Vigorous Program of Education and Self-Improvement.  In contrast, what does one typically see happen at the first sign of economic challenge in any organization?  Education and training programs are often the first cuts to be made.  When one considers the amount of transition that any organization faces in its environment today that seems tantamount to posting one's own going out of business sign. Businesses are unlikely to succeed by not investing in their most valuable assets - its people.  This can take the form of training in new tools and technology but these days can also equate to leadership development, management training and executive coaching.  Pay now or pay later.

There is a lot to be learned and relearned from Deming from a leadership perspective.  Despite the fact that his perspective was borne out of his work in the 1940s and 1950s there is still much relevance to leadership and organizational success today.  The fact that we still need to rediscover these lessons in so many of our organizations says much about our leadership maturity.
  ______________________________

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.

THE Leadership Lesson from VW

Just a couple of weeks ago I was covering off the subject of business/leadership ethics in my foundations of leadership class at Concordia University of Edmonton.  In doing so I was referencing some very classic examples of ethical misdeeds (e.g., Enron) and examples more local to Alberta (e.g. health care expense claims, TransAlta electricity rates).   Unfortunately, just by scanning my local paper, I was able to come up with more than a few examples of recent misdeeds that could help illustrate the conflicted motives of leaders and organizational cultures that made headlines for all the wrong reasons.  In some cases, it was interesting to see some of the explanations and justifications for past or current actions.  One of the more interesting of these made note of the fact that the letter of the law had not been violated. Spirit of the law??

Unfortunately I was able to come back to my students with an even more recent and powerful example of violation of ethical - and legal - guidelines with dramatic consequences for key executives, a historically well-respected company, and millions of customers worldwide.  On September 23, 2015, one day after acknowledging that 11 million Volkswagen-made cars possessed software that duped official emissions tests, Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned from his post.  The consequences seem clear for Mr. Winterkron.  Loss of a respected and highly paid executive role.

The consequences for Volkswagen continue to evolve - investors punishing its stock (e.g., $15 billion hit on one day alone) to the chance that the U.S. government will levy billions of dollars in fines, to class action lawsuits (already filed in Canada).

In his statement of resignation, Winterkorn said "I am shocked by the events of the past few days," and "Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group."  All that being said, he accepted responsibility for irregularities that were found and, like a warrior of old, fell on his proverbial sword.  He went further in expressing a perspective that "I am doing this in the interests of the company even though I am not aware of any wrong doing on my part." (italics my emphasis)

So let's assume that Mr. Winterkorn is forthright and truthful in his assertion that he was not culpable or aware of a manufacturing issues that allowed upwards of 11 million VW's to roll off its assembly lines that emit up to 40 times more pollution than allowed by US standards.  It's a hard assumption for me to swallow but lets go with that for now.

Presuming that this is all true I believe there is a much more challenging conclusion and leadership lesson that Mr. Winterkorn experience provides for all of us.  In the process of his admission he appears to acknowledge to me that either he had no influence or presence as CEO in establishing or sustaining the culture of VW or that by his leadership style and actions he helped to foster a culture that suggested it was quite acceptable to defraud customers, shareholders, the general public and government/ regulatory agencies in the service of the bottom line.  Either way not a very pretty picture of leadership.

Again presuming that Mr. Winterkorn was truly not aware of the massive fraud committed by VW under his watch, I tend to believe that more than just a failure of ethics this represents a unbelievably massive failure in leadership.  In my estimation, THE Leader is responsible for setting the tone for the quality of the organization's culture.  THE Leader defines the desired outcomes to be pursued, the balance to be maintained between competing objectives (e.g., profit versus environmental stewardship), and what the acceptable means by which these objectives are or not to be pursued.  What makes this example all the more egregious is the extent to which VW placed itself on a pedestal of its own making with claims of being environmentally friendly.

So aside from the legal and ethical implications that will get a lot more play by a variety of experts and pundits in the coming days and weeks, I challenge all of us to consider and consider again the impact you as a leader have on the culture and actions of all of your followers.  By your words and actions, even by what you don't do or say, you are setting the standards and expectations for your entire company.

At the end of the day if you are left to state that you "...are not aware of any wrong doing on my part..." as the epitaph on your leadership role it should be seen as a stunning admission that you weren't really leading at all.  And at the end, It's About Leadership.
_________________________________________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
Director - WMC
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.