First of all it’s worth noting I am fundamentally not interested in politics, as I believe that the soul went out of the whole arena when Kennedy and Gandhi were shot. There’s just something that has always struck me as unsavoury about the type of person that wants power and dominion over others.
A friend of mine is a policeman and he has always said about validating gun licenses, “there should be an automatic criteria for denying someone a gun license….we don’t give a gun to anyone that actually wants one. Instead we should give them only to people that have no interest in them”.
I like this type of thinking and have always thought the same thing should apply to politics, the criteria for selection should be only choosing those that don’t want the power, but do want the job! I digress….well actually not really. I have just never seen selflessness in the eyes of only but a hand full of politicians.
This brings me to Barack Obama, I have just been watching the speeches surrounding Obama’s acceptance as the Democratic nominee in Denver and by heck what an impressive set of speeches they were. Bill Clinton was superb bringing the two competing teams of Hilary Clinton and Obama together, at the same time with the brilliance that is Clinton there is a certain ‘loose cannon’ element about him.
Someone decided that just in case Bill Clinton went off message then there would be a five second delay on the broadcast similar to that used to screen callers on talk radio programs. The five-second delay, customarily used to censor callers who might use profanity or other unacceptable speech on a radio show, has never before been used in the broadcast of a speech by a former President of the United States. But convention planners, nervous that Mr. Clinton might depart from his prepared remarks in an unacceptable way, said that they were using the delay “just in case.”
Obama himself ‘I thought’ topped it off brilliantly with a 60 minute speech that I have now actually watched 3 times.
To watch the full videos visit youtube and type/paste in:
Joe Biden accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for VP
Bill Clinton Democratic Convention Speech – Part 1
Bill Clinton Democratic Convention Speech – Part 2
Bill Clinton Democratic Convention Speech – Part 3
Obama talks from the heart, he is authentic. Being honest I’m not really in a situation to say whether his politics are sound, whether his budget adds up but you know, “that doesn’t matter”. When you decide to ‘follow’ a leader the majority of the time you never really know the facts as they get to see them and most of the time you’re not as knowledgeable as they are, nor do you have the resources to back you up like they do. So what are you really buying into? Simply, whether or not you actually trust the person, the human being, the fact that if it all goes horribly wrong, even if you don’t really get it, you trust them to make a decision that you can and will believe in.
Watch the video. Do you trust the man even if you can’t be sure about the facts? The Executive Coaching Guru does.
I’m going to tell you a story about a new manager; he’s 34 years old, a dedicated and highly intelligent individual, used to succeeding in life through a high work ethic and a strong line of sight on the end goal.
Promoted to a senior role in a high brand recognition business, he deserved it and started to prove that the promotion was valid and pave the way for even greater opportunities. This showed itself in the way he didn’t delegate and I’d go so far as to say in the way that he wouldn’t delegate.
As each task came in this chap took it on himself and his workload increased, never mind what this was doing to his team, the belief started to be that they just weren’t trusted and people became disaffected and they then started to complain to his line manager (a senior partner in the business). The Senior Partner reacted in a very measured way, first of all he gathered the team together and telling them he’d listened very seriously to what they had to say he asked them a simple question, “Do you trust me?”
As senior partners go, this individual is a classic leader, very astute, highly emotionally intelligent and able to really sense the reality and need of the moment in any given conversation.
People looked around the room and then said, “Yes, we trust you……(pause)……..but” and then he held up his hand and said, “Do you really trust me?”, again there was a pause a few nervous laughs amongst the 30 people in front of him followed by lots of “nods and yes we do’s”. He simply said, “Good, I was banking on you all saying that, thank you”; and that ladies and gentlemen was that, everyone stood up and went back to work.
Over the next 2 months the Senior Partner increased the workload of the newly promoted manager, to breaking point, giving him every bit of new work that could possibly be aligned to that role. The new manager, burnt the midnight oil, worked through the night and the weekends and then finally snapped, walking into the Senior Partners office he let loose with the statement, “For gods sake I’m doing the work of 20 people!”
The Senior Partner, looked up at him and asked him to take a seat, called through to his PA and asked her to gather the new managers team together immediately; five minutes later everyone was in a meeting room, the Senior Partner turned and said, “I count 30 thirty people”.
Now I’m not advocating the style or methodology of anyone here, because it was the style of one individual that worked well for them, but I think you get can get the point of the story.
Now if this story is you take a moment and think about it; you have to trust people to delegate to them trust means ‘relationship and engagement’ to understand a persons capabilities. Delegation means the people are capable of carrying out the task, that they are positioned to succeed by a license to operate and that you are there to learn from them as much as to develop and coach.
Don’t make the fatal error of jumping to task and think the harder you work, the more likely it is you will succeed, the contrary may even be true and always remember that managers control resources, leaders motivate people, the Executive Coaching Guru agrees with Marshall Goldsmith that success though often happening because of you, may well also sometimes happen ‘in spite of you!’
Top Tips for Delegation
Be absolutely sure you need it doing, people hate doing irrelevant work.
Choose the right person to do it, this isn’t always the most capable. Consider those that would benefit from the experience.
Ensure people understand the context of the delegated task, so they understand the value of their work.
Be sure to follow through on the task and be seen to do something with it.
Show people how this has/is/will make a difference.
It’s an old story but set SMART objectives, so people understand the whole deliverable.
Check back occasionally to demonstrate interest in the the individual and the activity.
Be sure to consider the individuals need in relation to the task, this means you are considering whether you are Delegating, Coaching, Directing or Supporting them in this endeavour.
Do you recall when you find out that Santa Claus didn’t exist, or the day you stopped dressing up as a superhero because you realised it wasn’t really true; sometimes being in a leadership role can be a little like that.
When younger you looked up to the person higher up, especially those people who had the title ‘Director’, which for many was/is the ultimate demi-god status and some directors are exactly what you are looking for; capable of leading the business on both an operational and strategic level whilst being able toalso capture the hearts and minds of people within the business. The Executive Coaching Guru likes Peter Druckers perspective on this:
“The final requirement of effective leadership is to earn trust.
Otherwise there won’t be any followers and the only definition of a
leader is someone who has followers.” Peter Drucker
What hurts the most then is a business that had the ‘hearts and minds’ of it’s people and then started to throw it away, a business that has from the outset achieved what many other enterprises can only aspire to, having a workforce that is inspired by the energy of it’s entrepreneurial founder and gives ‘on mass’ the type of discretionary effort that then drives the business forward to become a darling of the city. But then something happens, the step from SME to Plc and somewhere in that growth there is a subtle sense of loss, that is only picked up on the periphery, by those that are listening to the people and then this loss starts to grow and grow, from a point where it was a given that 80%+ of the population identified with the business, and now below 50% see the business as a great place to work.
How does this loss happen? It is the familiar story of the drive for numbers (£/$) outweighing the capacity of the business to develop it’s leadership community from within and it’s inability to recruit people into that business that ‘believe’ in the journey and the community that already exists. It happens when a business fails to realise that it wasn’t the brilliant leadership that actually created the success, but the add value and discretionary effort that was contributed to the business by those people that ‘believed’ in the dream and reality of what it meant to work there. It’s the senior management team not realising that the business was successful in spite of the leadership and finally as the uber coach Marshall Goldsmith says:
“One of the greatest mistakes of a successful person is the assumption, “I am successful, I behave this way. Therefore I must be successful because I behave this way!” Marshall Goldsmith
One of the greatest challenges for an executive coach is to facilitate the reality for successful senior managers that sometimes, maybe even often, they and the business is successful in spite of their behaviour.
George Bernard Shaw in the film Pygmalion, wrote that, “The difference between a lady and a flower girl, is not how she behaves, but how she is treated”. This is a key factor for those of us involved in leadership, recognising that the emphasis is not on demanding behaviour, but in treating people in a manner that facilitates the elegant behaviours that already exist inside. The Executive Coaching Guru loves the idea that the, “more you lead, the less you have to manage”. As a business if you are losing the internal battle of staff advocacy and engagement, don’t blame the credit crunch, the tough times or any other factor, as your role as a leader is to (sit down for this revelation)……..LEAD!
Leadership is about the being with your business in the moment as well as thinking about the future. To understand about leadership in the moment, follow the link and read the speech made by Colonel Tim Collins (when he made this speech the reporter said, “he went out to talk to the troops about taking their malaria tablets, looked around and then realised they needed something more and then spoke without notes and captured the moment). This speech sets the balance of not worrying about the language, or whether the facts would be cascaded, but just delivering from the heart and understanding that if the message is understood, it will spread of it’s own accord.
Being a Board Director is more than just numbers and achieving FTSE 100 status, it is about legacy, sustainability, integrity and something called ‘followship’, which is when the people decide to follow and the leadership team realise that making decisions based on ‘career and bonus’ aspirations will never deliver the value that decisions made on ‘people and sustainability’ produce.
Board Directors share a duty that goes far beyond their fiduciary responsibility, in the same way that being a parent goes far beyond, feeding and clothing a child. People today do not require management in terms of their daily activity, they require leadership to enable them to contribute beyond yours and even their own expectations.
Being a Board Director automatically comes with the badge of leadership, it’s time to not just step up, but to stand up!
Stand Up!
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