Mastering Leadership

An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results

Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119147190
• eBook ISBN: 9781119147213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Is your leadership a competitive advantage, or is it costing you? How do you know? Are you developing your leadership effectiveness at the pace of change?

For most leaders today, complexity is outpacing their personal and collective development. Most leaders are in over their heads, whether they know it or not. The most successful organizations over time are the best led. While this has always been true, today escalating global complexity puts leadership effectiveness at a premium. Mastering Leadership involves developing the effectiveness of leaders—individually and collectively—and turning that leadership into a competitive advantage. This comprehensive roadmap for optimal leadership features:

• Breakthrough research that connects increased leadership effectiveness with enhanced business performance
• The first fully integrated Universal Model of Leadership—one that integrates the best theory and research in the fields of Leadership and Organizational Development over the last half century
• A free, online self-assessment of your leadership, using the Leadership Circle Profile, visibly outlining how you are currently leading and how to develop even greater effectiveness
• The five stages in the evolution of leadership—Egocentric, Reactive, Creative, Integral, and Unitive—along with the organizational structures and cultures that develop at each of these stages
• Six leadership practices for evolving your leadership capability at a faster pace
• A map of your optimal path to greater leadership effectiveness
• Case stories that facilitate pragmatic application of this Leadership Development System to your particular situation

This timeless, authoritative text provides a systemic approach for developing your senior leaders and the leadership system of your organization. It does not recommend quick fixes, but argues that real development requires a strategic, long-term, and integrated approach in order to forge more effective leaders and enhanced business performance. Mastering Leadership offers a developmental pathway to bring forth the highest and best use of yourself, your life, and your leadership. By more meaningfully deploying all of who you are every day, individually and collectively, you will achieve a leadership legacy consistent with your highest aspirations.

Chapter 1
The Promise of Leadership: Meeting the High Bar of Expectations

When we step into positions of leadership, we make a whole set of promises we may not know we are making. These promises are profound and come in the form of high, often unspoken expectations. Understanding, managing, and living up to these promises defines our leadership.

We all expect great things from our leaders, and these expectations constitute the Promise of Leadership. Leadership expectations come in two forms:

1. Explicit: Expressed expectations for certain outcomes that come with the role and that show up in the leader's job description (things like fiscal responsibility, accountability, strategy, and execution).
2. Implicit: Unspoken expectations that stakeholders have of their leaders (things like competence, fair treatment, commitment, engagement, listening, acting on suggestions, and providing inspiration, meaning, and direction). Leaders rarely understand the impact these implicit expectations have on their perceived effectiveness.

Stakeholders judge their leaders' effectiveness on both explicit and implicit expectations, even if these expectations are unrealistic or not understood. When you take on a leadership role, followers silently believe and expect that you will fulfill both my explicit and implicit expectations. However, since these expectations are sometimes unrealistic and often unexpressed, leaders may feel that they are set up to fail in their efforts to fulfill the perceived Promise of Leadership. Leaders succeed or fail depending on whether or not they clarify role expectations and keep their promises. Organization success or failure likewise depends on leaders fulfilling the Promise of Leadership.

How can leaders discover the explicit and implicit expectations that people have of them? The obvious answer is to ask. We often find that leaders don't ask those who work with and for them about their expectations of them. All leaders can accelerate their progress toward effectiveness by asking, learning, and then managing expectations, thus allowing the clarified expectations to become the bar by which they are measured.

HIGH BAR OF EXPERIENCE AND EXPECTATIONS

When we ask people to identify the extraordinary leaders they have worked for or with, most cannot identify more than one or two, suggesting that we hold leaders, and are held as leaders, to very high standards. The expectations are so high that few leaders meet or exceed them; in fact, only 5–10% of leaders are seen as fulfilling the Promise of Leadership.

Given these violated expectations, we might wonder why anyone would want this job. Leaders carry enormous responsibility and operate in a world of increasing change, complexity, and connectivity. They are asked to work with more transparency and disclosure as they endure greater scrutiny. Despite these challenges, many leaders love their jobs and see what they do as a calling. They relish the chance to influence people, create positive results, and change things.

LEADERSHIP MATTERS

Leadership makes a difference in the results we create and the quality of life we live.

Bill: My first corporate job out of graduate school was as a Management Development/Organizational Development Consultant at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. In my role, I was primarily responsible for improving the effectiveness of managers and their teams across the organization. It was a dream job because the company was hiring high potentials out of college to fill the talent pipeline. This aggressive recruiting effort resulted in a group of about 100 young, high-potential leaders. As you can imagine, we bonded as a group of new hires and developed relationships that last to this day.

I worked across this group of high-potentials in every area of the company, and over 18 months, I noticed a pattern. About 12 months into their employment with the company, many of these new hires started to move around the organization, searching for a position where they could grow, have impact, and have a life. In many cases, they moved to areas that they had not previously considered their primary career path; however, the leaders who ran these areas were considered to be the best, and these high-potentials wanted to work for them.

The conversations went something like this: “As soon as you can transfer into Aubrie's organization, you should do it—she is really a great leader.” These high-potentials started to refer to these zones of great leadership as “refugee camps” because these groups provided refuge from the culture of compliance that permeated the organization. The best and the brightest were escaping poor leadership. They were voting with their feet and moving to work for great leaders.

Eventually, I found myself in the same position. After three years, I went to work for a leader named Larry L. Payne. I wanted to report to someone who would help me learn and grow and to work in a productive, fulfilling culture. Larry created a life-sustaining, high-performing culture. Our group produced great results and we loved our jobs. It was my refugee camp.

Of course, not all new hires could move into one of these refugee camps, there simply were not enough to go around. The number of great leaders was limited to a handful. Due to this dearth of quality leaders, many high-potential hires chose within three or four years to move on to another company. In their exit interviews, they listed poor leadership and a non-productive, harsh culture among their reasons for leaving. Thus, much of the investment in building the talent pipeline was wasted because of poor leadership and a dysfunctional culture.

This lesson early in my career has influenced how I assess leadership effectiveness. It was a firsthand experience with why leadership matters. Often as leaders, we have a tendency to pass on the predominant culture, rather than changing it into an effective one. I learned that great leaders create great cultures regardless of the dominant culture in the organization. As leaders, they know that they can sustain what works or change what does not in the culture every day.

The Promise of Leadership highlights the Leadership Imperative and puts a premium on leadership development. We know that leaders are not just born—they are made. They learn and develop over time. Great leaders can be cultivated to meet and exceed our high expectations of them. In order to fulfill the Promise of Leadership, leaders must know what people expect of them, manage those expectations, and develop into the person who can perform against them. When this happens, execution is extraordinary—performance is high, stakeholders are engaged, and work is fun and fulfilling.

FOUR UNIVERSAL PROMISES OF LEADERSHIP

From our research and field experience, we have identified four universal promises of leadership: 1) Set the right direction and create meaningful work; 2) Engage all stakeholders and hold them accountable for performance; 3) Ensure that processes and systems facilitate focus and execution; and 4) Lead effectively—maintain relationships of trust to achieve and sustain desired results (see Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Four promises of leadership

We often explore these promises in our early conversations with senior leaders. While most are familiar with them, few see them as promises. We now describe each promise from the perspective of a CEO (L1) and their direct reports (L2).

Promise 1: Set the right direction and create meaningful work

L1 and L2 leaders come together on the Executive Team. They are responsible for setting direction, defining the vision and strategies required for sustainable growth and profit. They also identify markets and products, and establish the mission, vision, values, and culture. These elements constitute the essential components of meaning in the organization. Setting direction and creating meaning are vital if the organization is to thrive. Stakeholders hold leaders to this promise.

From direction and meaning flow the organization's identity or brand. Executive Leaders need to define how the organization creates value and answers the question, “What is it that you uniquely as an organization can contribute to the world?”

When we work, we invest our life's blood (time, talent, and energy) into an organization. Therefore, we want to readily identify the meaning of the work we do, see rewards beyond money, and contribute to the organization's higher purpose. Leaders set the context and create the conditions in which individuals and organizations thrive. When the Executive Team ties the company's direction to the work at hand in meaningful ways, every employee then has a clear line of sight into how their contribution makes a difference. This shared identity provides the foundation for corporate meaning—a requirement to fulfill the second leadership promise.

Promise 2: Engage all stakeholders and hold them accountable

When direction and meaning are confined to Executive Leadership, value is minimized. With this promise leaders are expected to fully engage employees in owning the company's direction. They are expected to earn trust and the commitment to perform by providing the why behind the what of work.

The why comes from directly connecting the value created by the organization with the personal contribution of each individual. Employees expect that leaders will draw forth their inherent potential—the hidden talent, discretionary energy, and passion that people put into their work—by creating a culture where people thrive, strive to contribute, and are valued for their contribution. When leaders, for example, set challenging goals, they specifically address the reasons to work toward those goals, each individual's role, and the significance of each person's contribution. They also recognize individual and collective contribution toward the goals because there is a strong link between recognizing individual strengths and talents and capturing their potential as full, committed participation.

This leadership promise can be difficult to keep. While Executive Leadership (L1 and L2) and even Senior Leadership (L3 to L5) often clearly understand the direction of the organi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction A Universal Model of Leadership and the Leadership Circle Profile Assessment
• Chapter 1 The Promise of Leadership: Meeting the High Bar of Expectations
• Chapter 2 Leadership Effectiveness and Business Performance: The Primary Competitive Advantage
• Chapter 3 Mastery and Maturity, Consciousness and Complexity: The Leadership Development Agenda
• Chapter 4 Stages of Development: The Backbone of the Universal Model of Leadership
• Chapter 5 Five Levels of Leadership: Structures of Mind and Performance
• Chapter 6 The Universal Model and Metrics: Global Leadership, Cross-Cultural, and Gender Application
• Chapter 7 The Leadership System: The Central Organizing System
• Chapter 8 Reactive Leadership: An Insufficient Triumph of Development
• Chapter 9 Reactive Leadership at Work: From Patriarchy to Partnership
• Chapter 10 Creative Leadership: Fulfilling the Promise of Leadership
• Chapter 11 Six Leadership Practices: Spiritual Boot Camp for Leaders
• Chapter 12 Integral Leadership: Built for Complexity, Designed for Transformation
• Chapter 13 Unity: Journey's End, Development Turned Upside Down
• Appendix 1 Leadership Circle Profile Dimensions
• Appendix 2 Theorists Integrated into The Leadership Circle Universal Model of Leadership
• References
• About the Authors
• Index
• EULA