The Leadership Triangle

The Three Options That Will Make You a Stronger Leader

Kevin Ford, Ken Tucker

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781614485896
• eBook ISBN: 9781614485902
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Mentoring & Coaching
• Index: Business

Tired of leadership clichés? Ready to become a truly life-changing leader? In The Leadership Triangle, Kevin Ford and Ken Tucker explain the three types of challenges leaders face and the three options they have to choose from to confront these challenges, offering practical tools to help leaders from all walks of life. Weaving together innovative leadership principles and personal conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders in business and the nonprofit world, The Leadership Triangle will become a well-thumbed companion in your own leadership journey. You will learn how to recognize leadership challenges for what they really are, choose strategies based on the specific challenge you face, build incredible, high-functioning teams to overcome any challenge, and implement cutting-edge strategies and tools that will revolutionize the teams you lead.

Chapter 1 Preview of:

Your Intentional Difference:
The One Thing that Changes Everything

Coming Fall 2013

For more information
www.intentionaldifference.me
[email protected]

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Chapter One

How are you Different?

YOU ARE DIFFERENT. YOU are absolutely unique. So is everyone else. Except that almost no one celebrates their difference, let alone embraces it. Even fewer people know how their difference impacts their daily life, relationships, and potential.

A few may. But most people don't appreciate the real truth – that your different-ness makes all the difference.

You are you because of how you are different.

But what is your difference? How are you different?

Ask any five year old, “How is this doll, truck, block, or car different from this other one?” The child effortlessly points out the unique features of each toy. Ask adults, “How are you different?” and a curious thing happens. They recoil. They grimace. They look away. They fidget. Their demeanor changes as they struggle to respond to the question.

We did ask people ranging in ages from 18 to 90 years of age from all walks of life to answer the question “How are you different?” Many responded with silence. Others asked us to explain what we meant by ‘different.’ We told them to give their best answer in response to how they understood the question. We received answers such as, “I am different in how I think. I am analytical. I am strategic. I am discerning, intuitive.” Others provided answers such as, “I am different in how I do things. Once I start something I have to finish it. I have to plan my actions before I start a task.” Still others responded, “I am different in how my feelings impact my decisions. I go with my gut.” We received a variety of answers, all of which were duplicated at one point or another by someone else. We saw subsets and themes, but no significant differentiation appeared among the responses.

Our staggering conclusion from this research is that people were unable to identify how they were specifically and uniquely different from every other person. What about you? Can you identify specifically how are you different? Are you able to name the ‘different’ in you and qualify how that intentionally impacts what you do, feel, say, and produce each day?

People are different—but what does their ‘difference’ look like? This seed thought fueled our research for 15 years and eventually led us to fine tune our focus specifically to successful people and how their difference uniquely expressed itself. Do successful people possess a different, ‘different’? If so, What is different about successful people? Is there a unique ‘different’—unique trait(s), that highly successful people possess? Not generic traits, but personality characteristics that are distinct and measurable.

So we began studying data from leaders in health care, government, education, the not-for-profit sector, and corporate industries. We looked at measurements such as the leaders’ results on Clifton StrengthsFinder©, Myers Briggs Type Indicator © (MBTI), CoreClarity ©, 360-degree feedback and focus group interviews.

The problem? The data revealed that the leaders in our database are all vastly different. They all have unique combinations of talent themes as revealed by the Clifton StrengthsFinder©. On the MBTI some are introverts and others are extroverts. On the CoreClarity © analysis there are leaders representing each of the twelve archetypes. Whether or not you are familiar with these instruments, you see our point:

Every one of the successful leaders we studied were different from one another!

This finding was at first very disappointing. No trait emerged as common among leaders. Each leader was different. There was no magic key. Darn it!

And, of course, we should have known that all along. People are different. There is no one exactly like you. You are the ONE. The first and only of its kind. Naturally original.

So we thought we had it figured out: Could it be that people are successful because of their differences? So we looked at the data again with that question in mind. We were wrong again.

People are not successful simply because they are different. Being different does not automatically equate to being successful. The people in our study were all different but not all of them were successful. Many leaders have failed because they are so different from what the organization needed or wanted during the time they were in leadership.

Sigh. Back to the research again. This time we noticed a pattern that we had missed. The measurably successful leaders had one thing in common—and surprising to us—it did have to do with the fact that we are different from one another. BUT it was not simply the “difference” that made them successful or unsuccessful as leaders. These leaders were successful because they put their difference to purposeful, determined, and productive use. In other words, successful leaders were intentional with their difference. And that intentionality made all the difference in their ability to lead well!

Being different is so us as humans, right? Yet, at the same time it is not us. Not in practice. We do not practice being different. In our daily lives, often we do the opposite and go to great lengths not to be singled out as “being different.” We try not to be noticed as being unusual. That's what junior high is all about, right – fitting in?

We often default to being just like everyone else rather than intentionally using our difference to excel.

Ah, but the most effective leaders in our database took a risk to discover, embrace, and repeatedly employ their difference to make an impact on their environments. The common denominator for successful leaders in our database is that successful people put to good and productive use that which is different about them.

Stop. Think about that a moment.

Without apology, discomfort, or excuse, or reluctance, successful people are intentional with what is naturally different about them.

My Friend George

George is intentional with his difference. He offers no apology, feels no awkwardness, uses no excuse, and suffers no reluctance in being intentionally different.

When George laughs, you know he's a teenager. Full of joy about his new driver's license, full of plans for his band, George is bursting with life. Get him talking about girls and see the color rush into his face, even as he ducks his head to let his too-long bangs cover his face. A great, normal kid. Even his fights with his brother are good- natured – playful shoving matches, wrestling bear hugs on the rug, and laughing cries from his brother of, “Mom, George is hitting me again!”

George brings a special kind of energy with him. He loves to play, to have fun and to discover new things.

Nowhere is his appetite for discovery more evident than in his love for a diverse range of music from classical to rock. A natural at the guitar and the bass, George is now teaching himself drums. It's like a switch turns on in his brain when he touches an instrument. He instinctively knows how to reproduce the sound playing in his head on the instrument in his hand.

Yet it was when George picked up the cello that the magic happened and George's influence and impact began to expand.

George's mother, Sharon brought a new cello to their home for George to play. As his father Mike watched in wonder, George, not yet eight years old, listened to the soundtrack from The Lord of the Rings and immediately began picking out the haunting Celtic theme music on the cello. He then continued to do it with each new piece of music he heard. From the point at which he received that cello, he could not be stopped.

“With music I just hear something and I can play it. I can figure out the notes and put them in the right order without even thinking about it, I just do it,” says George, now eighteen years old. “I just can't explain what or how I feel when I am making or even listening to music. I feel like I'm being carried on a never-ending wave, it just keeps going and going. I feel like I'm in my zone.”

George has this yearning, a demanding appetite for musical expression. In this way, perhaps he is like other teens – talented teens – who discover their special ability and become consumed with a need to perfect it. The difference between George and many of those other teens is a simple one: George was born without arms.

George was not expected to live. Born without arms, he was abandoned to the horrors of a Romanian orphanage while only an infant — abandoned to a notoriously inhumane system by parents who did not believe they could care for him. Or who — more importantly — did not see how their little baby could make it in the world.

Then the Dennehy family of Connecticut entered the picture. Devoted to helping differently-abled and special-needs children, Sharon and her husband Mike had three biological children of their own but looked to add to their family.

They found little George in that orphanage, underweight for his age, under a sign that warned potential parents that he might not live to adulthood. “Unable to Thrive,” the sign said, while the medical chart that hung on his institutional crib warned that he might not last another six months. A daunting prospect for any parent. Still, the Dennehys took the tiny baby home, making him part of a household of love that would grow to include eight other adopted children.

And in doing so they provided an environment where George would discover, optimize and unleash his Intentional Difference.

Yes, George has no arms, the very things you need to play the cello. You can't play the cello without arms, can you?

You can if you are George.

George took that which was naturally different about him – his ability to make music – and started to embrace that difference with intentionality. He demonstrated the one thing we found in successful people in our leadership study that made all of the difference. George used his natural difference in an intentional way. This intentionality fueled George's growth, his passion, his skill development, and gave him energy to be successful.

You can discover what George has uncovered too when you learn to unleash what is naturally different about you and become intentional with that difference. Discovering how to become intentional with your difference is the one thing that changes everything.

Sharon and Mike are committed and obedient to the calling upon their lives. That alone makes for a great story. However there is a greater story illustrated here, one that we may miss completely or often overlook. It is the story of why humans are made different. Why such an endless variety of individual traits and capacity? Why? Because,

You are made different to make a difference.

That is the one thing that you have, that we all have, that changes everything—our capacity to turn our natural difference into our intentional difference.

So, have you discovered your Intentional Difference? Do you know how your I.D. improves your interpersonal relationships? Are you using your I.D. to optimize your work performan...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Section One: Leadership has Three Options
• Section Two: The Strategic Option
• Section Three: The Tactical Option
• Section Four: The Transformational Option
• Chapter One: Preview of: Your Intentional Difference