Episode #17: Develop Your Superpower As A Leader

We need the leader to provide direction, hope, guidance, the way forward. That same leader needs to be able to communicate the vision for the team and to build the people power under their accountability. What do we get though? Leaders who can’t lead and can only manage the processes. We get poor commitment from the team because they don’t know the “why” of what they are being asked to do. It doesn’t have to be like that.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

Japanese people are very reluctant to take their paid holidays. In fact they rank lowest in the world and feel the most guilty about it. They are only taking 50% of their annual leave and 63% feel guilty when they do take it. The reasons cited for not taking leave are “lack of staff” and “colleagues not taking days off”. Interestingly 33% said they did not know whether their bosses were supportive of them taking paid vacations. I notice it in my own office. I am constantly pushing my team to take holidays, but they always have large amounts of unpaid have accrued to them. The crazy thing is they can only accrue it for two years and then they lose it. Nevertheless, they keep accruing and losing, year after year. I even brought in separately 5 days just for sick leave, to try and get them to use more of their holiday leave, but it hasn’t worked much so far. Let’s see if they change their thinking about taking annual leave.

This is episode number 17 and we are talking about how to Develop Your Superpower As A Leader.

Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

Job descriptions, performance reviews, incentive schemes, recognition programmes are often box ticking activities in organisations, which often lead nowhere. Overviewing these various systems and their execution may make the managers feel like they are earning their keep, but are they really contributing all that much to the required outcomes?

Counting what the heads do, getting those heads to think and think together are different challenges and the latter necessitates cultivating people. Cultivating people is the “new black” for managers, as they must move up and into real leadership.

So what is the difference between being a manager and a leader? There are many definitions but it doesn’t have to be complex. Leadership is all about creating environments that influence others to achieve the group goals, because people will willingly support a world they create. Management is the creation, implementation and monitoring of processes. People will willingly comply with a process that helps them succeed.

Moving forward means designating the next level of achievement. In a busy life, with a deluge of emails every day, spiced up with endless meaningless meetings, we can sometimes forget what is the point to all of this, as we are totally consumed with activity. We need to set the vision for the team of where we want to be and what is the next level for us.

It must be concrete, clear and well communicated. I ran across one the other day: “delivering extraordinary customer experiences”. Rather ambiguous – you could be delivering extraordinarily bad experiences to your customers! A bit more clarity needed back at HQ by the look of that one.

It raises the point though, that clarity in the communication is key, if you want to get people behind your direction. Don’t kid yourself, semantics matter.

So where possible, get buy in to the vision, such that it is a shared process. This may be difficult when “The Vision” is lofting down from on high, but there are always sub-visions for the work group, that can take it to a further concrete stage or which further clarify the main message for the reality facing the team.

With a successfully shared vision, the troops cease seeing their role as robotic task completion and switch to results completion. How about down at your shop – is there a shared vision (or shared sub-vision), are the team focused on painting by numbers or on producing a group triumph, do they know what the designation is for the next level?

We ask people to step up, but that also asks them to take on risks of the new or the different. The outcomes must be totally defined and clear, and the team must buy into achieving them in order to step out of their current mode and take on the risks of the unknown. “There be dragons” is a strong gravitational pull away from innovation or anything shiny and new. It must be countered by you, the leader.

“Leadership” begins to include “self-leadership” when we have buy in and clarity, because it allows the team to be more self-directed, handling their available resources without the need for micro-management. We can all quote the buzz words such as “empowerment,” “empowered behavior” etc., but actually realising that desired state is another matter.

The poor communication skills of those in charge are often the breakdown point. The “Vision Statement” penned by the CEO goes up on the wall in a nice frame, on expensive paper, safely protected behind glass and there for all to completely ignore from now on. No, no no! It has to live.

If your people can’t quote the company, division or section vision on demand, from memory, you are not even on the first rung to having a real vision. If you can’t remember it you can’t live it. It is not a one-shot all dancing, all singing pronouncement and move on affair. It always amazes me, how often to you have to keep telling the team the same thing, for it to really permeate. The leader will certainly get tired of saying it all the time, but has to keep going because the listeners always take much longer than expected to absorb the content. It just points up the fact we are competing with a whole bunch of “other stuff”, for the real estate of cluttered minds.

When you ask senior executives to identify the most significant personal characteristic needed by management, they will dutifully trot out “the ability to work with people”. Take a look at the expense line in your P&L – people are a huge component. Yet, so many leaders are woeful communicators. They are often promoted into position of accountability, on the basis they count. They are insular, brainy technical experts, they are CFOs who can’t grow but can watch the bottom line like a legend, they are the idiosyncratic salesperson who does it “my way”, but can’t teach it to anyone else.

We need to teach these smart people how to be “people smart” – it is a different attitude and skill set. The executive decisions get carried out by people, but how much time does your leadership team spend building your people, as opposed to issuing directives, giving orders, providing technical guidance etc.? These activities are all about the “how” and zero on the “why”?

Time to start work on some personal leadership, strongly communicating the “why” and getting the team to create a shared vision of your organisation’s better and brighter future.