RealTime Leadership

 The following is the second in a series of five questions and corresponding answers on leadership.  (See question #1: How to Motivate and Inspire Others? )

2. What is the biggest challenge in leading an organization?

Communication is the most important and most challenging task when leading an organization.    Leaders must communicate organizational goals and strategies, especially during difficult times,  but there is also the need to communicate at a personal level with everyone in the organization.  This is one reason emotional intelligence is considered to be more important than traditional intelligence when it comes to predicting success and happiness in life.  The ability to communicate, listen to others, manage conflict, deal with our own emotions, provide feedback, invoke humor, empathize, etc.  These are all skills that require a high level of emotional intelligence.  In the past, organizations have tended to put too much emphasis on so-called “hard skills” like strategizing, crunching the numbers and analyzing the data.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, with advances in search technology and analytics these skills are becoming less important while soft skills like communication and emotional intelligence are becoming more important.  The biggest challenge in leading an organization is dealing with people and that requires leaders who are master communicators and emotionally mature.  Good communication skills are also the first step toward building trust which is critical for creating a high-performing culture.

RealTime Performance has identified the following behaviors that lead to good communication:

• Listens effectively
• Is fully open to the ideas and opinions of others
• Creates a safe atmosphere for open communication
• Expresses ideas clearly, is direct and to the point
• Asks penetrating and challenging questions
• Communicates clearly and succinctly in a variety of communication settings and styles
• Keeps others informed so there are no unnecessary surprises

The following resources can help you build your communication skills:

Books

1. Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, (Bantam Books, 2000)
2. Smart Questions: The Essential Strategy for Successful Managers, Dorothy Leeds, (McGraw-Hill, 2000)
3.  The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, (Jossey-Bass: 1995).

Article:

1.  The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage, John Hamm, Harvard Business Review, May 2006

Blog

1. ConversationAgent - a great blog on all things related to communication, marketing, and social networking with a heavy bent toward business.

When I was studying mathematics at the University of Puget Sound in the early 1990s my professors were extremely excited about a newly purchased, and quite expensive software program called Mathematica.  There were only a few copies available to our department, but when I got my hands on one I immediately recognized the power of Mathematica as a teaching tool.  You could type in a complex function, press a button and voila, there was a graphic representation in two or three dimensions.  Then you could tweak the function slightly by raising it to third power or taking the derivative and the modified graph would emerge.  For the first time I began to visualize the functions I was working with.  It’s hard to describe in words the advantage this new visual mindset afforded me when it came to mathematical comprehension and problem solving.

The intellectual force behind Mathematica was Stephen Worlfram.  So when I came across an article  yesterday in the New York Times about a new search engine called WolframAlphathat actually answers your questions, I took notice.   Most search engines point you to the most relevant websites for a particular query based on the number of other pages that link to the website.  Traditional search works great if I’m researching a generic topic like “The State of Oregon” or “IBM.”  But what if I want to know the average temperature in Oregon during the month of May? Or the sales per employee at IBM over the past 10 years?  A typical search engine like Google will take you to a few general sources on Oregon or IBM where I could then do some digging to hopefully find the answer I’m looking for.   WolfrmAlpha aims to provide the exact answer.  They do  this by tapping into a large knowledge-base of information using sophisticated  tools and search algorithms (some of which are built on the mathematica platform), to find specific answers to questions.

I don’t know if WolframAlpha is the search engine that is going to crack the code on answering specific questions, but at some point we will create such a solution and it will have a profound effect on how we use information.

In the future, finding and displaying information will not be a problem.  However, truly understanding information, recognizing trends in the data, connecting the dots from various sources and generating new ideas and innovative approaches; these are the skills that will be truly valued in leaders.  In the past, people were valued for carrying around vast amounts of data in their heads so they could answer obscure questions quickly.  WolframAlpha is democratizing this information so it is available to everyone. 

As we think about developing the next generation of leaders we must create new methods and learning activities to teach these analytical skills.  It is the ability to understand information and recognize trends that will set great leaders apart from the rest.

I was recently involved in a research project asking me to submit my views on leadership development.   The following is the first in a series of five questions and corresponding answers.  I found the exercise to be extremely useful and encourage you to come up with your own answers to these questions.  It will help you clarify your personal approach to leadership.

1. How do you inspire and motivate others when you lead?

In a nutshell: communicate the mission and vision of the organization and then start removing obstacles so people can get there.  My feeling is that people are naturally motivated to do great work.  How many people get up in the morning and say to themselves, “I’m going to deliberately try to do mediocre work today?”  I don’t think it works that way (assuming people are in a field they are passionate about).  Most people start with the intention of delivering great work and making a difference, but they encounter obstacles that prevent them from achieving real success.  My job as a leader is to inspire people with a clear vision of the future and then start removing obstacles and getting out of their way. 

Leaders must communicate the mission and vision of the organization.  It is a message that needs to be delivered over and over again.  Ideally, both the mission and the vision should impact people at an emotional level.  For example, at my company, RealTime Performance, one way to look at the mission is to say that we build and deliver leadership assessment and development tools.  But that doesn’t resonate emotionally with people.  So we define our mission in a way that inspires and motivates.  Our mission at RealTime Performance is to elevate the quality of leadership globally.    We want to make better leaders and positively impact the globe.  There are a lot of bad leaders out there (these are the obstacles I was referring to earlier), and the cumulative effect of this poor leadership is a negative impact on our organizations and the economy.  When we talk about RealTime Performance in this way we tap into the natural inspiration and passion that people have to improve the world around them.

If you want to learn more about this approach to inspiring and leading others, here are the best books I’ve encountered on this subject.

1. The Leadership Challengeby Kouzes & Posner.
2. Built to Lastby Collins & Porras.
3. The Art of Leadershipby Max Depree