Amplifiers

How Great Leaders Magnify the Power of Teams, Increase the Impact of Organizations, and Turn Up the Volume on Positive Change

Tom Finegan

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781119794554
• eBook ISBN: 9781119794561
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consulting
• Index: Business

Wall Street Journal bestseller Discover how to enable strategic change efforts by relying on your best people

In Amplifiers, entrepreneur and expert management and technology consultant Tom Finegan delivers an insightful new way to think about human behavior in the execution of corporate transformations. Through an exploration of the career journeys of several leaders and analyses of "True Amplifiers" in action, the book demonstrates how to deliver strategic and transformative change by relying on the efforts of key, exemplary followers. This important book:

• Explains the different ways that being a true amplifier is experienced by different ethnicities and genders
• Describes the "Cell Concept" of amplifiers, and how they interact with other stakeholders of your organization
• Discusses the work of amplifiers across global industries and organizations

Perfect for executives, managers, and other business leaders responsible for change management and strategic execution, Amplifiers also belongs on the bookshelves of anyone who hopes to contribute to or lead organizations as they change direction.

II
Finding and Developing Amplifiers

4
Finding and Developing Leaders, Followers, and Amplifiers

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

When Doug McMillon started at Walmart at the age of sixteen unloading trucks, it seems unlikely that anyone in the Walmart chain of command saw him as the future CEO.¹ Of course, very few entry-level employees will work their way up to the top spot at a company, but how many are passed up because nobody takes the time to better understand the true potential of these individuals?

The best leaders invest in talent. This is one of the greatest responsibilities that leaders have. They commit professionally and personally to developing their followers, and the followers that invest in their own development get the most attention. Leaders need to take the first step and invite their followers to participate in the leader's own development. Amplifiers report that those leaders who are patient teachers, have skin in the game, foster a sense of mutual trust, and make them feel valued are the leaders who make the most lasting impact on the Amplifier's career.

Our experience working with great companies and exceptional leaders has highlighted various character traits, operating styles, and motives of leaders, the combination of which creates the unique fingerprint of each leader and the organizations they shepherd. In the previous section, we dug deeper into what sets apart leaders, executives (or bosses), followers, and subordinates. We followed that up with a review of leadership, followership, and Amplifiers. We contrasted them with management, titled executives, bosses, and subordinates in order to tease out the differences and separate the aspects that differentiate exceptional companies and their top performers. We also identified a long list of character traits, took a fresh look at operating styles, and evaluated the motives behind the high-performing professionals we see in action. By design, the list is longer than it should be, but it is illustrative of a set of character traits, like muscles, that can be strengthened with exercise. In order for anyone to magnify their strengths and shore up their weaknesses, they need to gain a sense of awareness and true critique of where they stand today.

Being a leader means influencing others. Every leader, or boss for that matter, is a teacher. These leaders are either teaching what to do or what not to do. People throughout the organization study the behavior of leaders. True Amplifiers are the best students of leadership behavior. It is not a casual course for them to take. These Amplifiers are in fact on a PhD journey.

Hassinger shared with me a story of his development journey. He was flying back from a trip to Asia—one of those trips where the flight lasts forever after a grueling week, and although he was completely exhausted, he couldn't sleep. As he was reflecting on the progress his team was making in Asia and thinking back over his career, Hassinger jotted down on paper every one of his leaders into three buckets. The first bucket was the managers no one ever wishes they had. The second bucket contained managers who taught skills and were good examples. This category plays a critical role in talent development, because skills need to be taught in order to develop employees to most effectively get the job done and carry out the mission of the organization. This was a really long list. The third bucket was higher up on the impact to his career and, frankly, how he hoped he had affected others. The key difference in this third bucket was that they cared—they genuinely cared about him and his family. They took a special interest in his development, both as a professional and as an individual.

Early in his career, Tim Hassinger worked for Jim Theis, one of his toughest managers. Theis was the VP overseeing the entire function and had a reputation throughout the organization as a no BS, highly demanding manager. But Theis ended up being one of Hassinger's best managers. When Hassinger was assigned to the department under Theis, he was new to the functional area and his learning curve was straight up. Theis knew this, understood his potential, and immediately set into motion with Hassinger's immediate manager a strategy to ensure his development.

The company had just completed a massive multibillion-dollar joint venture and it was just starting to put in place its leadership development program. It was in the early stages of formation and there was only rough scaffolding in place. The executives knew that they needed to rotate junior talent through key parts of the organization so that they could broaden their skill sets and learn other critical business functions. This ensured that as they progressed up the corporate ladder, they would be more effective at their jobs. After some time, Theis came to Hassinger and delivered this frank message: “I have a good understanding of the next job you'll be in position for and you're not ready. Every week we are going to sit down and review one aspect of the job and go through it in detail in order for you to be prepared to take on that new role and responsibilities.” When Hassinger was promoted to that next job, it was one of the smoothest transitions he had ever had.

Great leaders genuinely care about their followers. They take particular interest in one or more aspects of their lives beyond their professional responsibilities. Bosses with high self-interest do not endear themselves to followers. In these circumstances, followers may learn particular job skills or methods to be more effective managers. Ann-Marie Campbell shared a story about her very early years at The Home Depot. While working as a cashier one day, she saw a crowd of executives doing a store walk through and proactively joined the conversation out of curiosity. One of the executives, Lynn Martineau, asked a question. When no one answered, Campbell stepped up and answered his question, and then returned to her register. Impressed with her willingness to speak up and the content of her response, Martineau made a note to watch out for Campbell. Over the next several decades, he invested in her development as she succeeded in various roles over her career. With every promotion, she credited Martineau as a key driver of her career success, having believed in her even more than she believed in herself.

Even if they do not directly teach, leaders instruct by modeling their behaviors. True followers are sponges and absorb this model behavior. Many leaders fail to realize that what they are doing when they think people are not watching is just as important as what they're doing when they know people are watching. What they say is just as important as what they don't say.

Another aspect of Amplifiers emphasized by Helena Foulkes is the concept of “leading across boundaries,” especially as leaders advance their careers in large organizations. The best leaders she's encountered have been able to lead up, down, across, and sideways. One of her mentors was Tom Ryan, who was the CEO at CVS for two-thirds of her career. He inspired, challenged, and trusted her. In many roles, she was the only woman in a particular team or function. Ryan made it safe for her to express her opinion or different point of view on a particular approach.

Over the years, I have witnessed leaders advance to new positions and bring along the followers who have helped them achieve their success. These followers in turn bring along their followers. Leaders and followers possess this symbiotic relationship—it produces a special kind of energy from which they both draw strength and power. Several years ago, I was working closely with the CEO of a major contract research organization serving the biopharmaceutical industry. Although he is a bit older than I am, we both started our careers at the same consulting firm, working for the same partner. It was amazing that as we shared stories about our mutual mentor, we quickly identified how his positive habits left a lasting impression on us several decades later. We reflected on the lessons we had learned from him and what we, in turn, have tried to pass on to our followers. Early in our careers, we are learners and take more than we are able to give. Later in our careers, we are in a position to share a richer set of experiences and perspectives. We become givers rather than takers.

Any company that wants to develop its leaders needs to have a clear understanding of the leadership traits that are most important to the company and a strategy to develop its professionals. There are far more leadership traits being touted in the marketplace that companies should prioritize in their professional development programs. Leaders don't just fall out of trees; leadership requires a special combination of natural talent and nurtured development. In our consulting firm, most of the leadership we need to develop and display for our clients does not come from position power, but from true leadership and influence capabilities. Therefore, our leadership development programs focus primarily on developing leadership traits where position power does not exist. As consultants, it is critical that we get this right, for we achieve results through influence, not by issuing orders.

All organizations have leaders throughout their ranks, but leaders can lead the organization down the wrong path, as we have seen in the news regarding the emissions scandal at Volkswagen and the fatal consequences with Boeing's 737 Max. John Stumpf at Wells Fargo has denied wrongdoing or actual knowledge of what was going on with the fraudulent account opening scandal. As unlikely as that is, and we give him the benefit of the doubt, that means that the follower leaders under him at various levels led the Wells Fargo employees at the branches to pursue their illicit behavior. The challenge is to ensure that the leaders throughout the organization are pursuing the company's mission in an ethical and productive manner. This is where the interplay among leadership, followership, and Amplifiers comes to life.

In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis highlighted a new use of data science and analytics to identify the most impactful traits of baseball prospects for the Oakland Athletics organization. Companies who wish to identify top talent should take a page out of Lewis's book by professionalizing their “scouting” skills. I have never seen this “talent scout” role specif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• I: Leadership + Followership = Amplifiers
• II: Finding and Developing Amplifiers
• III: Amplifiers in Action
• Recommended Readings
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index
• End User License Agreement