COACH: Being a Better Leader by Bettering the Team You Lead

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE

LEARNING TO LEAD

Preview

1. All leadership is either technical or adaptive by nature. Technical Leadership is focused on applying existing knowledge and solutions, and Adaptive Leadership is focused on creating change on the team and in the organization.

2. Though frequently confused, there’s a big difference between authority and leadership. Authority is having the power to act…Leadership is the activity.

3. There are three types of leader in many organizations, and each gets decidedly different results.

4. In this chapter, you will learn the benefits of moving from being a technical manager to an adaptive COACH.

Does the world really need another book on leadership or management? A quick, cursory search for these types of books immediately yields a virtual avalanche of titles. From obscure theorists to Captains of Industry, thousands have weighed in on the topic, delivering approaches that will move you from Good to Great, or make you a better One-Minute Manager. They compare leadership to everything from captaining a ship to a mouse looking for its cheese.

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.

- Harvey S. Firestone

While many of these books impart valuable, proven, insightful - even revolutionary - ideas on the philosophy of management and the qualities and habits of great leaders, it’s sometimes difficult to translate these high-level ideologies into specific, day-to-day practice in the field. Most focus on the qualities of the leader… but not so much on the quality of the team.

Some identify leadership as a solitary endeavor but don’t address how it is informed and influenced by the surrounding organization, teams and operational realities. Even worse, a few try to describe how to better manage people without addressing how to better the people you manage.

What is Leadership?

Let’s begin by trying to understand the basic nature of leadership itself.

Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire teammates and customers.

- Robin S. Sharma

Sometimes we treat leadership like a mysterious, innate quality possessed by some and simply not possessed by others. We say things like, Oh, he’s a born leader, and She displayed remarkable leadership potential early on. But if leadership is a talent given at birth - a lifelong trait possessed only by those blessed with its understanding - then all the books in the world won’t help you capture it. If you weren’t born with the Lucky Leader Gene, better to quiet down and accept the vision of those born into the role.

Not a chance! Everyone has the capacity for leadership and in this book, we’ll explore the different ways it can be exercised by different people in different ways, at any level of an organization.

Other times, when using the term Leadership, we speak of the position or role of a person who guides and directs a group or that person’s title within the organization. We talk about the leadership of a company as the individuals charged with its management and administration.

This focus of leadership on a person, role or position actually conflates leadership with the idea of authority. There’s a distinct and profound difference between authority and leadership. Authority is the power to act, not the action itself.

Authority or Leadership?

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

- Ken Blanchard

Contrary to conventional wisdom, authority is not granted by the system (the company, organization, government or other hierarchy). Authority is granted by those being led… not taken by the leader or system. People trade things when they choose submit to authority, whether at work or in society in general. In return for their time, work, deference or obedience they receive something in return, like money, safety, freedom, or belonging.

Leadership is something completely different and far less transactional in nature. Leadership is an activity. It’s an exercise engaged in by all members of an organization, not a role granted to one or a trait possessed by a few. It is a practice. A behavior.

Many people believe that the activity of leadership originates at the top of the organization and flows downward through the ranks in a hierarchical fashion.

However, upon closer examination of the practice of leadership within most organizations, you’ll find that the majority of leadership activity is deployed laterally and upward, not top-down.

The lion’s share of day-to-day leadership activity is displayed by individuals practicing it with their teammates, peers and other teams…and occasionally even leading those in positions of authority above them--have you ever had to lead your boss? In fact, it’s not uncommon for people who are in positions of authority to exercise too little or no actual leadership at all (ever worked for someone like that?)!

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

- George Bernard Shaw

The truth is, real leadership sometimes requires you to act beyond your authority, to deploy yourself in new and different ways, and to cause change within your organization and on your team. The problem is, all of that can sometimes be difficult, dangerous or scary.

The Hard Work of Change

The work of leadership is complex, and people who practice it aren’t always those who’ve simply been around the longest and have the most experience (often those in traditional authority positions). It cannot be done by simply knowing how to do things and then applying those solutions within your company or on your team. More often, it’s about changing the system rather than being a creature of it.

In their groundbreaking book, Leadership on the Line (2002, Harvard Business School Press), Dr. Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky explore a duality in the nature of leadership. They introduce the concept that all leadership activity exists on a spectrum, which is defined by technical solutions at one end and adaptive solutions at the other.

They define Technical Leadership as the application of existing know-how already possessed by a manager. For some businesses, this might involve the managerial duties of writing schedules, taking inventories, conducting audits or writing reviews and reports. Technical Leadership is excellent for delivering consistency and predictability. It’s easily applied and is often very effective at keeping things running smoothly and free of chaos.

However, Heifetz and Linsky also point out that there are a great many challenges and problems faced by teams that cannot be solved by a technical approach (authoritative expertise, standard operating procedures, or other answers from on-high). They call these adaptive challenges. They are adaptive because they require evolution. They require experiments, discoveries and adjustments from numerous places in the organization and various members of the team. They require change.

Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.

- William Pollard

Without change, teams can’t achieve meaningful improvement or overcome significant or recurring obstacles. It’s the function of Adaptive Leadership to introduce, define and manage that change. And the sustainability of that change depends on each member of the team adopting and internalizing it for themselves.

In short, Technical Leadership is safe because it allows leaders to apply experience and solutions that have worked well for them in the past…but it delivers the same results as in the past. Adaptive Leadership is more risky in that it moves the team into untested, uncharted territory…but it delivers new, often better, results.

Behavioral Leadership

To the Technical/Adaptive continuum, we will add behavioral leadership as a midpoint along the way. Somewhere between the technical work (where current knowledge works best) and the adaptive work (where curiosity, change and improvement rule) lies behavior. Behavioral Leadership is a waypoint where persistence and execution dwell. It’s an important transition between knowing what to do (technical), consistently doing it well (behavioral), and then improving upon it (adaptive).

For members of the team, each approach represents the difference between obeying rules and following procedures, understanding why they’re important and consistently executing on them, and believing in the greater mission and goals they are meant to accomplish…then seeking new ways to achieve them.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

- George Bernard Shaw

No one part of this leadership spectrum is superior to another. They are all equally important and must be deployed at different times and under different circumstances.

Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.

- Naveen Jain

Technical Leadership and ‘know-how’ is fundamental and necessary, but its value has a shelf life, as what is known today could be untrue or worthless tomorrow in a changing environment. Think about all of the things you knew to be true five years ago (about business, technology, or life) that may not be true today. Have your customers’ needs and expectations changed during that time? What about those of your employees? Are your market conditions the same as they were five years ago?

Technical knowledge is useful in the moment, but it is fleeting.

Behavioral Leadership builds upon the technical by delivering consistency and sustainability through constant coaching and invariable accountability. It means not just making sure the right things get done, but making sure they get done correctly and without fail. Behavioral Leadership moves past the basic training of your team (technical) and requires a more sustained approach. It’s about creating systems, routines and environments where execution, consistency and accountability are second nature.

Finally, Adaptive Leadership keeps the team moving forward by helping them learn, grow, and respond to changes in the environment. Good Adaptive Leadership focuses the team on the overarching, long-term goals of the business and allows them to flex their approach and discover new technical solutions in service of those goals.

As we go through this book, we’ll examine different ways to not only get the best technical excellence from your team, but to ensure it happens consistently at all times and that their performance continues to improve.

The Three Leaders

Based on this Leadership Continuum, we frequently see leaders fall into one of three categories.

•The Cop

•The Campaigner and

•The COACH

Depending on which set of skills and attitudes they possess or that make them the most comfortable, most leaders tend to settle near one of these three profiles with easily recognizable traits, habits and results.

The Cop

Close your eyes and picture a stern police officer in full uniform, complete with boots, holster and badge, holding a nightstick or a citation pad in his hand. Do you feel like you may have worked for this guy before? Replace that baton or ticket pad with a clipboard containing an audit sheet or performance review. NOW have you worked for him?

Don’t find fault, find a remedy.

- Henry Ford

Cop managers are easy to spot, but almost never easy to work for. They confuse leadership with authority. That is, they rely on authority to do the hard work of leadership for them. They’re characterized by the attitude that the team should obey and defer to them simply because of their position, title, tenure, experience or knowhow. When they are questioned, the responses Because I said so or Because I’m the boss expose this type of manager.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

While sometimes effective, Cop managers have some critical flaws:

•They’re solely focused on results. Cop managers lead with lists. Their work is often audit-like in nature. They observe the performance of the team or business, compare it against their list of expected outcomes and report the results. They’re almost myopically focused on the results of the audit rather than the behaviors, abilities, knowledge and commitment of the team (which ultimately influence and deliver the results).

•Cop managers typically only report failure. Much like an actual police officer who only engages someone when they’re breaking the law (ever get pulled over so an officer could compliment you on a terrific lane change?) , these managers only insert themselves when they see something wrong. This trait is exhausting for the Cop manager, as it puts him or her on constant alert for problems. It’s also very hard on the team, as they only interact with management in a negative way.

•Just as