Are You Committed To Being A Better Leader?
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL
I recently cracked open Leadership Vertigo, a book by S. Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer. I was immediately enthralled when the authors hit me with this tidbit. “Gallup research has found that the top 25 percent of teams (i.e., the best managed) versus the bottom 25 percent in any workplace (i.e., the worst managed), have nearly 50 percent fewer accidents and 41 percent fewer quality defects.” According to Gallup, managers who create active disengagement among employees cost the U.S. an estimated $450 to $550 billion annually! This was enough to get me to climb back on the leadership personal-development horse. But the reason the book was such a fortuitous read is the concept itself (i.e., vertigo being the brain believing false signals and responding accordingly). For pilots vertigo can be deadly, as instruments tell them one thing (e.g., flying at a step decline), while their body and brains register a completely different sensation (e.g., flying straight and level). Similarly, leadership vertigo is a false signal being sent by our brain asserting that everything is moving along just as it should, when in actuality the exact opposite is true. The notion highlights the importance of staying vigilant when it comes to personal development. Otherwise, as a leader, you can be blissfully unaware of a problem until it is too late. According to Brown and Naseer, there are four leadership principles (i.e., build community, develop competence, earn credibility, and cultivate compassion) on which to focus in order to prevent leadership vertigo from sinking your organization.
How To Foster A Sense Of Community
The founder and CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, states, “You need to bring together people with shared values and a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves.” So how do you foster this sense of community when charged with doing so with the employees you already have? Having a shared identity and purpose is a start. But a vision can feel hollow if not accompanied by other means. Two key elements toward creating a community are respect and recognition.
Respect
Billy Ray Taylor, a plant manager for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Fayetteville, NC (2010 – 2012), increased production from 31,000 to 38,000 tires a day. In addition, his plant also reduced its operating costs by $70,000 a day. How did he do it? Through actions that demonstrated the level of respect and care he had for those under his leadership. For example, working in a manufacturing facility, it would not be unusual to find the bathrooms to get a bit messy. When some plant workers approached Taylor about the conditions, he went to the cleaning crew, but not to find out who was responsible. Instead, he sought the necessary cleaning supplies. Though the cleaning crew insisted that they would get right on it, Taylor told them he wanted to do it himself “because I want you to see how important it is to me.” He realized that in order to create a respectful environment for employees, he needed to demonstrate that he would never ask them to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. While the idea of a busy plant manager taking time out of his day to clean dirty bathrooms might not seem like the best use of his time, Taylor’s actions reinforced the message he was trying to communicate — employees not seeing themselves as hourly workers, but members of a respected community driven to achieve shared goals. In other words, when made a leader, you aren’t given a crown, but the responsibility to bring out the best in others.
Recognition
Doug Conant is the retired CEO of the Campbell Soup Company. During his tenure, every day this leader would write 10 to 20 handwritten notes to thank various employees for their contributions and accomplishments. It is estimated he wrote over 30,000 messages of positive feedback to members of the Campbell Soup family. As Conant explains it, “You need to tell people how you’re going to behave and then behave that way. And when I was telling people we need to value your individual life journey if we hope that you would value ours, I implied that I was going to be paying attention.” Though this may seem like a seemingly insignificant gesture, over time it helped to build a culture that fostered a sense of community and belonging, one where employees were no longer looking out for themselves. While Conant realizes there are some cynics, he believes cynics aren’t going to be the ones to solve the world’s problems. “The people who are going to solve the world’s problems are builders — people who want to make a difference,” Conant attests.
Developing Competence Requires Focusing On The Positive
The second leadership principle Brown and Naseer discuss in Leadership Vertigo is develop competence. Doing this starts with some inward reflection and your use of positive versus negative statements. Did you know that according to research, management teams at high performing organization use five times more positive statements than they do negative ones? In poor performing companies, the ratio is .36 positive to 1 negative. While you might think focusing on continuous improvement implies finding and fixing fault, how you do this can communicate much more than you realize. Just as misery loves company, the converse is also true (i.e., happiness is contagious). When a leader is happy, the people around them tend to view just about everything in a much more positive light. That in turn, creates a sense of optimism, and optimists are much better than pessimists at achieving their goals. One of the best ways to develop competence isn’t by sitting in your office, but spending time on the floor where the work is happening. Research published in the Harvard Business Review notes that not only is this key to a leader’s morale, but critical to overall organization performance. As a leader, being mindful of the importance of providing employees with a positive and personally meaningful vision of the future helps them with dealing with the day-to-day work that needs to get done.
Earning Credibility And Cultivating Compassion Pay Dividends
Brown and Naseer’s leadership principles three and four (i.e., earn credibility and cultivate compassion) are not casual exercises, but require adherence and devotion to a way of doing things. While credibility is built on the three fundamentals of honesty, competence, and enthusiasm, it also hinges on authenticity, integrity, and awareness. Although this sounds like a triple word scrabble score using power words, you are probably wondering, “So what? I’m honest.” But ask yourself, when you as a leader made a mistake, did you honestly admit it as much, in an authentic way, to your employees? Believe it or not, your team will respect you more and be more willing to forgive you when they see that you are being authentic in accepting accountability for your foul ups. While admitting a mistake can be hard, ignoring the “pink elephant” in the room can be even more uncomfortable. An apology shouldn’t be viewed as conducting damage control, but expressing genuine contrition. See here for more on the anatomy of how to conduct an authentic apology.
A growing body of research suggests that the way to influence and lead is to begin with warmth. Compassion is not only about demonstrating our understanding and awareness of another’s reality or experience, but also of our willingness to do something about it. Mark Dickinson had learned that his grandson, Caden, was going to be taken off of life support. and needed. While rushing to LAX to fly to be at his grandson’s side, his wife called Southwest Airlines to explain the situation. As luck would have it, when he arrived at the airport he was greeted by that all-too-familiar scene of lengthy security lines. Dickinson feared he would not make his flight. But when arrived at the gate, he was met by the pilot and the gate agent. Dickinson said to the pilot (video here), “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” To which the pilot responded, “They can’t go anywhere without me, and I wasn’t going anywhere without you.” Southwest realizes that you can’t hold a plane for every customer. However, the company supported the pilot’s decision given the extenuating circumstances. Not long ago I witnessed the opposite of compassion at an airport, as a customer was told that her flight had left. Instead of showing compassion for the customer’s plight, the gate agent snapped at the lady saying, “Ma’am, what motive would I have for keeping you off of this flight?”
Although some might view showing compassion at work to be a negative, research has shown that experiencing compassion at work leads to a cascading effect of positive emotions among employees, leading to reduced stress levels, a decline in employee turnover, and increased job satisfaction — all of which give rise to tangible organizational improvements.
Bottom line: keeping the above four principles top of mind can prevent leadership vertigo from getting in the way of achieving peak organizational performance.