Observations on leadership - part 5

Leadership is about encouragement, not management

We had another planning session in Noosa. This was years ago when the mighty corporations cared about people and spent money on them. That’s another quality of a good leader it seems to me – you need to care about people. And interestingly it’s an organisational cultural attribute as well as a personal one. Maybe organisations don’t have cultures, maybe they have values. But whatever your philosophical standpoint, valuing people is really important. We’re often much quicker to tell someone he cocked it up and not quick enough to tell him that he did a good job. Validating people’s contribution is important: it doesn’t need money or a lot of time. Get a senior person to send an e-mail to a more junior person complimenting them on their performance. It takes you no time and it works every time.

But, anyway, back to Noosa. Simon Ensleigh had been in the Army and he had been chief of staff to some Minister or other in the early years of the Howard government. Realising that being chief of staff to a Minister rather limited the concept of work-life balance he opted to join us as a client executive. We had some free time at Noosa and Simon, two others I cannot recall and I decided to hire a motor scooter each and blast off into Noosa the town. Off we went. Riding these scooters was non-trivial and the trip was further than I thought. We kept having to stop and start. When we arrived at Noosa I realised that, as we had stopped and started and come to terms with our machines, the three of us had each been determined to arrive before the others. Simon on the other hand had been concerned that – as a group – we all got to Noosa OK. His Army leadership training was quite clear – success is about bring the team across the line and safely home.

Life is not a race. Running a business is not a race. What we do usually depends upon others’ efforts and we need everyone across the line to succeed. Two things strike me about this. The first is that teamwork is important but also that a good leader must facilitate that by delegating and then encouraging and supporting, never ever by micro-managing. The best delegators may know that they could do the job better but never let on – or they recognise that they certainly could not do it and leave well alone. The second leadership attribute is the ability to value each member of the team, to understand their strengths and weaknesses and work with them.

Observations on leadership - Part 4

A good leader knows her limitations

I remember Phyllis Hampton really well. I worked for Digital Equipment (DEC) in the 1980s and Phyl was my manager for the whole 5 years I was there. I joined DEC from ICI and it was an amazing change. Gone was bureaucracy, gone was hierarchy and gone was stability. DEC’s revenues were $4bn when I joined and over $12bn when I left. Change was the norm. Phyl’s boss was a man called Geoff Beacroft and Phyl had worked for Geoff for years, at Honeywell, at ICL and now at DEC. I remember Phyl saying to me that she did not want Geoff’s job, that she was a good number two. At the tender age of 33 I was flabbergasted. How could you only want to be a number two? It took me a long time to realise that Phyl was showing another quality of a good leader – and she was a good leader. She knew her limitations: she knew what she was good at and that’s what she was happy doing.

A good leader is committed to the cause

I didn’t really know Judith Maltby particularly well. She was an corporate vice president. The corporation in question was an odd entity – like a curate’s egg, good in parts. What it was not particularly good at was picking senior leaders who listened. I used often to think that when you were elevated to the senior ranks you would have your ears cut off. Perhaps the idea was that if you said something enough times it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy – though it would be more likely to be a self-licking ice-cream! Another weak feature of the culture was a tendency for the loudest voice to hold sway – you’re OK if your trumpet plays the loudest. Unfortunately that can disadvantage some people – and they’re often the people that you want to hear from.

One of the things that this corporation was perennially focussed on was account planning. All the big organisations I have worked for have done account plans – they get thought about, written up, sometimes reviewed by people who are too distant to have any useful idea about anything, and then put on a shelf. They get to a point where they’re useless not so much because they’re not used but because they are demanded purely as part of a process. Senior people expect them because ... well, just because. I used to facilitate these account planning sessions from time to time. Generally speaking there would be a senior person who would turn up, sound off and push off. Sometimes she or he would promise to return at some point – but rarely did.

At one such session Judith turned up ... and she stayed the entire time. When we broke for lunch she was back on time. She did not open her laptop or take a call. This was so unusual that I commented on it saying that when she was ready to go to ends of the earth I would go with her. Perhaps that was a rash statement but she showed commitment. And commitment is a really important trait in a leader. It’s no good saying you’re committed – you have to show it and that often requires some degree of sacrifice.

Change is about loss

Change is about loss. It’s surprising how often this comes up in my day to day life.

Of course, the first challenge of change is to get managers to focus on it at all. There’s no problem getting an executive to agree that change is important because “it’s important that we bring our people with us ion the journey”. But that rhetoric is sometimes – and sadly too often – as far as it gets. The rhetoric has to turn into dollars and it has to turn into the commitment of senior time and permission for others to spend time championing the change. All that is straightforward. But we often make a serious mistake when we are thinking about change.

Those involved in the creation of a vision or the description of some brave new world are – almost by definition – sold on its attractions and benefits. But for those who are about to be changed, that brave new world doesn’t look quite so brave. They are about to be asked to stop doing something that they are used to and that they feel comfortable with.

Change is about loss. Change is about giving something up. Sure, it may be about getting something new. But when faced with a new thing we often don’t have a frame of reference to evaluate the new. If we only create that frame of reference in terms of the new – which so many change agents try to do – we will not be successful. We must craft our story from the perspective of the targets of change. They need to be pushed as well as pulled!!

The big life events are about loss in some way – when we get married, have a baby, buy a house, retire – all these events involve loss. The future is an uncertain place and that’s what can make it scary.

As change agents we need to understand and articulate what people are giving up and craft our story of the future in those terms.

Observations on leadership - part 3

A good leader makes use of silence

Geoff Peterson smoked a pipe. Over thirty years ago he was my third line manager – I think that’s right, my boss’ boss’ boss. He had a goatee and he was a thinker. He would call you into his office because by talking to us people lower down the food chain he would find out what was going on. I worked for ICI – a company that was then more bureaucratic than any public service: you knew everyone’s grade and what the pay scales were and the increments each year were absolutely standard. And like a good hierarchy talking to your boss’ boss was a rare event indeed (talking to one’s own boss was sometimes hard).

Geoff would sit you down in his office and ask you a question. As he finished asking the question he would start filling his pipe. Now, pipe smoking isn’t really about smoking. It’s about all the boring and reaming of pipe and bowl. It’s about the challenge of getting the thing lit and then keeping it lit. So the process of kick-starting the pipe was a long one – and it was longer than the time it took you to answer Geoff’s question. Of course Geoff was too busy with his pipe to say anything so silence reigned. Now, silence is embarrassing ... but you sat there. And Geoff kept playing with his pipe.

Eventually fear would get the better of you and you would start babbling. And it was that babbling that Geoff was after – he wanted to hear the real stuff, not the stuff you trotted out for form’s sake. So you would end up talking yourself into a hole – but giving Geoff what he needed. He was, as a result, a man in a senior position in a very hierarchical organisation who was almost intimately connected with what we did and with our problems – and all because he said nothing. Leadership is not about talking: it’s about getting others to talk. If you have got others to talk then you cannot have the data you need to make a decision – to lead.

I used this trick years later. The government decided that it needed to do a review into something or other and A Great Man was commissioned to undertake this review. I was foolish enough to volunteer to write the corporate submission to this review (I will never do anything like that again!) and I ended up going along to meet The Great Man. I was supposed to be accompanying the regional CEO who was really the mouthpiece but he was taken sick so I was on my own. Not a problem – you get to a point in your life when you no longer worry about what people think if you!! I walked into a room full of bureaucrats sitting around a large table at whose head was The Great Man. We shook hands, sat down and he said “Well, what’s your first point?” Not much by way of ice-breaking but I trotted out the first message. I finished. He said nothing. I said nothing. Silence reigned for maybe 30 seconds (which is a long time) and the bureaucrats began to shuffle. He gave in first!! “What’s your next point?” he asked. I replied. Same process. Silence. Discomfort from the audience – but that was it. After that we had a really good conversation. I suppose it was a power play though for what purpose I don’t know. But, thank you Geoff Peterson!!

Observations on leadership - part 2

A good leader inspires you

George Benson was a mathematician. He was a master at my school. As a young boy he was an enigmatic man who strode purposefully from A to B. His trousers were hitched up above his waist and his trouser legs flapped in the breeze as he walked. One of the features of our school was the Prefects’ Path. The Prefects’ Path was a short path that cut off a corner and saved its user perhaps 5 yards. It required the user to mount 2 steps. George never used the Prefects’ Path although as a Master he was so entitled. We young boys were sure that this brilliant man – and he was brilliant – had worked out that the energy required by the two steps outweighed the energy used by walking the extra 5 yards.

George only took sixth form classes – boys of 16 to 18 years of age. I took mathematics and George was what they called my Director of Studies. The story was that George had graduated from Cambridge a disappointed man. The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge, a position once regarded as the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain. George was reckoned to be in the running for Senior Wrangler. He missed out: he was the Second Wrangler. For George this was a bitter blow and he decided that he would spend his life teaching. Of course, you needed no teaching qualifications then and probably, if you had needed those qualifications, George would have failed. He never married and he was a brilliant Master (not that those two attributes are connected!!) No, he couldn’t teach but he could inspire you to learn. It’s not quite clear to me how he did this, possibly his sense of humour. “I like Handel’s Messiah’” he would say “when they don’t play it.” He had perfect pitch and couldn’t stand hearing anything played – he needed the notes on the paper!

“These University louts,” he opined, “if they hadn’t gone there, they’d be hooligans.”. It was these acerbic comments that enamoured George to us: through his wit he inspired us to do things that we might not have done – and he was wise enough to know when there was something that you shouldn’t do, and he would tell you. George was a leader – but he was a very strange sort of leader. He didn’t lead by dictat or by example, rather – somehow – he inspired us to be the best we could be.

Observations on leadership - part 1

A friend asked me today to talk about what I think makes a good leader. It’s not an easy question. Sure, there’s tons of stuff that Dr Google could tell you – but I kind of felt (with G B Shaw) that “those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach”. What I mean is that if I really knew what leadership was about I would be out there practising it and I wouldn’t have time to talk about it!

I rather lamely came up with the idea that the first attribute of a good leader is that she listens. I do think this is so but it’s not particularly helpful. But as I talked to my friend I realised that a piece I had been meaning to write for a long time would be a good way of thinking about leaders. That piece is a piece about the people in my life who have influenced me – the people who have made a difference to the way I am or the way I think and who I am.

Leadership is something that we all experience not only because we do it but also because we benefit from it – or not, of course, as the case may be. Leadership isn’t about being in charge but it is about making a difference. So this piece is about some of the people who have influenced me and why – and how I learnt about leadership – or what leadership means to me. Because leadership is personal: every leader leads in a different way – there is no magic formula. It’s about observation and practice.

Leadership is about other people – not about the leader

My first father-in-law (I have had several not all of whom I have met!!) was man called Jack Evans. He had taken a first in chemistry in the 1930s and had then decided that he would devote his life to teaching kids physics. Jack was a good sportsman in his younger days playing both rugby (union of course) and cricket for the University. When the captaincy of the cricket team was up for grabs there was a vote and Jack stood. He decided that the right thing to do was to vote for the other fellow and he lost by a vote!! Eccentricity was definitely a character trait!! When advised to wear orthotic socks that were available only in white he insisted on still wearing his customary black sock on the other foot.

He was in a reserved occupation in the war working in a munitions factory. When he was there, there was an explosion and a fire. Jack rescued some people and was recommended for the George Medal: he refused it.

When I knew Jack he would always leave the house at 6pm to go to the pub. His ambition was to drink as many pints of bitter as he could by 8pm. I never saw him drunk. I never saw him in a pub outside those hours. That’s an odd sort of discipline I know, but it’s a discipline nonetheless! Mind you, when he got home he would drink sherry with angostura bitters: as I say, eccentric. Jack got me into English literature. He would always say that he would die happy when he had read every book in world or when someone had told him where the first electron had come from. I guess he died unhappy.

Maybe Jack wasn’t a leader but he was a teacher and he helped make others leaders: he was basically selfless. I don’t think good leadership is always about the leader – it’s about the people that she leads. It’s about bringing out the best in people – and that’s what Jack did for me. I would never have been the reader (and I mean reader here – and perhaps also leader) that I am had it not been for Jack. And I wouldn’t have realised the importance of a pint of bitter in the great scheme of life! A leader understands balance – not everyone has the same view of what’s important as everyone else.