Many leaders have their plate full with the BAU stuff, you know the simple things like running the company, so it is hardly a surprise that this monopolises a leaders thoughts and thus a teams focus. In my role as an executive coach and leadership developer I have come to witness the leaders that are able to focus on the centre (BAU), whilst at the same time keeping an eye to the outer regions, the edges of the company.

I don’t mean the geographical edge, but the edge of peoples thoughts and thinking, the stuff that people think is not ’board room’ compatible, and thus in that moment many great ideas get lost and nullified, I agree that not everything needs to be a presentation to the board, but the proposition I put to you is:

• Scenario
  Presume that there are a huge amount of great ideas out there, that are lost in the ‘filtering’ that occurs to get to your heady heights.
• Challenge
  What are you go to do to find the one that you should know about?

I am a great believer in the hidden talent that never gets spotted, forget the 9 box talent grid in this context, still use it, but what about the people that never make it onto the grid, the ones that perhaps have been there a little too long, have lost the faith, the ones that if approached could ‘tell you how things really are’, the ones that if given a new line manager would flourish…..How are you going to find them? Or are you only after the talent that can make it up in the template. Nothing wrong with that, there is much excellence there.

But I wonder if there are enough weirdo’s in your company? Not trouble makers, but the people that might see the next curve, the ones that have a sense of the market and it’s direction from a perspective that you might never see in the often ‘soften and rounded’ data that is presented to you.

A few years ago I was facilitating an away day for a very successful company that had a strong focus on direct mail and cold calling and had built a very successful business. They had a researcher come in from a well known organisations that went onto the explain that if people kept signing up to Telephone Preference (I centralised site that makes it illegal to call that number), then within 6-8 years the pool of people to call would be minuscule.

The reaction, “well there wasn’t one, it was ignored completely”, what became apparent very quickly was that there was no room for ‘left of centre’ thinking, one person actually said, “why did we get someone in that doesn’t understand our model” (I don’t have to explain the blinkers on that statement do I?). Of course as you then looked at their Talent Process, it existed, but it only found and developed people that “understood their model”.

So what is the thinking? For me as an Executive Coach, it is to challenge the habits that we get into, the fact that we put in the process to find the talent and then years later we are in a ‘happy rut’. Sir John Harvey Jones was reported as having listened to his HRD on the topic of talent management, Sir Harvey (with his only qualification being a ‘signalling’ qualification from when he was in the Navy), asked (paraphrased), “would this programme have found me, if I was applying now”…..apparently not! So that was the end of that!

More importantly when you look to the fringe of peoples thinking and ideas, as a leader you are seen as being a very different animal to the ones that don’t (which will be nearly everyone else!)

Look to the edge!

I recentlty watched the BBC news and saw Dr.Robert Holden being interviewed and frankly was transfixed by this man. Recognising the experience I was having was due to seeing true leadership in front of me. This isn’t a sportsman, all 6ft 6inches of muscle, or some on screen Adonis of who we often refer to as Hero figures, this was a man who as a doctor lead a normal life of hard work and being ‘normal’ in the context of a professional man who was about his daily business and then something happened.   

For on that day four suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured nearly 800; on that day the No.30 bus in London Tavistock Square (07.07.2005) was blown up outside the Headquarters of the British Medical Association and to quote Dr.Holden, “I thought ‘I am really in it now’”, he then goes on to say that he thought to himself, “You have been trained for this…come on”.   

He goes went onto explain that he’d been trained to take control of disaster situations, though he had never done it before, “people knew I had had the training and they all looked to me, one person said, “Robert what do you want us to do?”. He goes to say how he said he needed a moment, sat down and on a piece of paper jotted down the things he needed to do.   

Dr.Du Feu was quoted  as saying, “the scene was chaotic until Dr.Holden stepped in….he just assumed responsibility for everything…so people knew what to do and they knew who to ask…the scene was transformed into something resembling sense”.   

When on the couch the interviewer kept saying, “so what did you do?” wanting to hear about how he was running around being heroic Dr. Holden seemed unsure about answering this until he came out with something that will stick with me forever, he said, “my job was to keep my hands in my pockets”.   

And there it is, “keep your hands in your pockets.” He said that he knew that that would be the hardest thing to do as he would want to jump in there and do what he was best at, but he knew that once he did that all would be lost .   

This is something I experience in many senior leaders, they are often heroic in terms of the late hours, the getting stuck in, taking on huge workloads and feeling a huge responsibility for everything; but unfortunately they fail to see how impornt the second part of this story is, they don’t know how to and/or can’t ‘Keep their hands in their pockets’.   

There are lessons for leaders from this story:   

• How often do I rob others of their capacity to learn by me telling them the answer?
• How often do I assume control, when I could actually not?
• How do I develop my people to the point I can & do keep my ‘hands in my pockets’?
• How do I learn to change my fear of doing this into a leadership skill?
• Where do I receive honest ‘support & challenge’ as to how I do this?

Dr. Robert Holden

Conflict exists! And it is pretty well everywhere. Max Lucado the prodigious author (some 50+ books) said that, “Conflict is inevitable, combat is optional” and that’s a pretty good place to start, especially as a leader. It’s a farce to presume that we should all be at one with the universe, as most of us are (when I last checked) pretty well struggling with being human.

People irate people and that is a fact. Let’s face it, if I introduced you to 10 people at a party, how many would you like? Then what if I told you that regardless of your thoughts, you were now going to know then for then next 5 years and have to have them in your life for around  7 hours a day, sound familiar? Well if not welcome to the workplace and generally its a lot more than 10 people.

As an executive coach I get to work with people who are constantly trying to navigate the emotional map that is ‘other people’, I get asked how do I manage my relationship with X or Y? And over the years I have come to understand that of course there are processes to managing a relationship, you could do a lot worse than the Covey approach of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in understanding the habit of ‘Seek first to understand, before you seek to be understood’ and the philosophy of ‘win/win’ outcomes; these are googleable and easily accessible.

However there is something that sits in front of the process of managing the ‘situation’ or the ‘person’ that is identified with the conflict and that is in asking your self this simple question: “In handling this conflict, how much of what I am doing is focused on the other person and not on me?”. It’s an important point, for as a leader you are not just judged by the size of the stick you brought to the party, or simply the way you ‘soughted’ the situation, I’d say that generally you are judged, after the fact, on reflection about the ‘experience of you’ whilst you were handling it.

As you approach conflict situations, consider the following:

• When this is done, what do I want the commentary from others to be?
• If I was able to watch myself on a TV documentary, handling this situation, what would I be shouting at the screen?
• If the people involved were my own children (even if you don’t have any) how would I approach this?
• How much of what I am doing is to ‘sort this in the short term’ or ‘healing it for the long term?”
• Is your presence relieving those in conflict of their responsibility to own the answer and way forward?

However these individuals seemed to be getting negative feedback that indicated career limiting reactions, from senior players. Why? Well on review and observation it became clear, that the choice to be ‘authentic’ and ‘true to yourself” is a powerful position to live from, however the ‘choice’ to do these things doesn’t necessarily mean that you are thus automatically good at it. As an executive coach I see this quite a bit, the good intentions of a course, workshop, book etc….leading to the desire to be a ‘better’ leader and thus new actions. What I also see is that we are not always able to ‘self calibrate’ how effective we are with this new behaviour; and rather like the participants on the X Factor, who don’t seem to have a real friends to tell them “Stop!”, as leaders we can easily fall into this trap of believing just because it is the right thing to do, then we are automatically good at it.

So the learning seems to be:

• Yes move ahead with new actions
• Whilst seeking counsel and feedback as to your effectiveness
• Be overt about your new intentions so others don’t have to guess
• Be seen to adjust your behaviour, after seeking feedback, so others feel connected to your behaviour

Rather brilliantly though Gordon Brown didn’t stop there, no! He hurtled on with reckless speed and a gathering momentum:

• He bad mouthed an old lady
• Blamed his aid
• Went to a radio show, didn’t realise he was being filmed and showed his true reactions
• Thinking it would help (it didn’t, it looked staged, because it was) went to the ladies house to apologise
• Didn’t think to do so to his aid, after bad mouthing her too

Frankly as an Executive Coach, even I don’t know where to start, especially as this sits on top of allegations of ‘bullying’ his staff, to which a senior civil servant trying to help said, “Gordon isn’t a bully he just has very high expectations!” (Like Stalin?)

OK! Well enough with the comedy, there is a serious point here which has to do with management of ones personal brand. I could go onto to give some facile tips on what not to do:

• Always check your microphone is off
• Ensure you don’t talk ill of others

But the reality is that though accurate, it’s not good enough, the key here is a person’s personal moral compass and the culture/environment that they build around them.

Moral Compass
Do you believe in only talking of people when they are not in the room, in the same manner you do when they are?

Culture
Do you encourage people to give you honest and open feedback, that you don’t just tolerate, but that you actively encourage, to the point it is aberrant behaviour to not give honest ‘support & challenge’?

When it comes to making mistakes as a leader, the most important thing to remember is that often it is as important to STOP and take a moment to seek counsel, not from those that will tell you how to manage the situation (which is still relevant), but to seek counsel from those who can advise you on who to BE, as the situation unfolds; and frankly the person you are being will dictate the experience and thus your credibility as people judge you for what you are doing (which sometimes you’ll get right and sometimes you won’t).

Gordon Brown tried to ‘control & stage manage’ the situation, he consciously or unconsciously asked himself,”what should I do?”; which is the right question to ask, but he asked it at the wrong  time. His reflex questions, your reflex questions, the reflex questions of any leader should be:

• “Who am I going to be in this situation?”
• “What would a good version of me do next?”

I raise this as a more pertinent question as the higher up the ladder you go the reality is the harder it gets to really connect, because you are different, you have achieved more, you do have a better car, a nicer house…..you have in the eyes of anyone who hasn’t achieved as much as you…..done better (regardless of your own humility).

But once on the board or at an executive level, you are also lumped into the barrel with the executives that live in a world of excess. Abercrombie & Fitch for example have paid their CEO Mike Jeffries an extra $4 million to….now wait for it…….to reduce his travel of the company jet for personal use. It turns out that Jefferies in 2008 ran up a $1.1 billion bill for the use of the jet, to be honest I earn a reasonable salary and that’s one heck of a disconnect from the ordinary man on the street.

As an executive coach I often come across the senior manager who is talking about his new car, the holiday in Bermuda or the holiday home to someone who frankly is struggling to pay a mortgage. The executive will say they are ‘just being authentic’, which I applaud, my caveat is that there may be something about the a certain ‘sensitivity’ that one might want to bring into play.

So as I said this isn’t just about staying connected, it’s giving the impression that you are.

• Be sensitive to the reality of others
• Remember your every day is another’s ‘never going to happen day’

This was the accusatory tone that Alan Greenspan the former chairman of the Federal Reserve met when giving sworn testimony recently to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Rather fantastically there was a time when Alan Greenspan was considered the nearest thing to a deity, one could even say that there was a time when any form of statements against someone of Greenspan importance would have been an act of treason…..but not anymore, in deed those days are long gone.

In fact Greenspan stated: “In the business I was in, I was right 70% of the time, but I was wrong 30% of the time” , what I like about this is the reminder to all of those involved in Leadership that the ‘mighty have indeed fallen’ and this is a different time; in fact far brighter and senior people than you have fallen in the eyes of the observers of this factors. There are now huge portions of the public who don’t really believe in the leadership of the world any more, you only have to look at voter apathy to understand that people ‘don’t believe’; and that runs down all the way to the man on the street not holding senior management in the god like positions they may have done previously.

Greenspan was able to ‘demonstrate some humanity’, but I’m unaware of that ‘humanity’ existing pre-testification!  It often feels that the seeking of forgiveness only comes after things have gone wrong. There’s something there for us to think about, the ‘seeking of forgiveness as you recognise something has gone wrong’ not just when you might be caught.

As leaders there is something incredibly authentic, human and believable about someone who says, “sorry”, when they technically don’t have to. As an executive coach I often hear senior leaders verbalising that they have made a mistake and want to navigate their way through it and “what should I do?”. It’s a simple position that I take:

“Tell the people that need telling the truth”

I mean, really, if you are earning £150K+ with a 50% bonus, then you are doing alright, I mean how bad can the bad times be? Spain instead of the Bahamas, a BMW instead of a Porsche? Boo hoo!

Though it has to be said, it’s far more fun to work in a commercial setting when people are optimistic and the business has a sense of it can do no wrong. All of a sudden though the brakes are on and the ‘slash and burn’ has begun. Even the businesses that are making a healthy profit suddenly get a case of the heebe geebe’s and look to their bottom line to ensure they are not being seen as frivolous.

What’s also interesting is the psychology of leadership in these times, supposedly ‘strategic’ decisions often are the demonstration of a castrated executive team; who in reality cut back the entrepreneurial spirit and imagination, in a direct parallel to the cutting back of a budget. It shows up those who ‘need a budget to create movement’ and those who can ‘create movement on a budget’

But we know in our hearts that this is all cyclical, just like it always has been and as surely as Bell Bottoms will come back into fashion, there will be an up turn. But in the interim, opportunities will be missed, development curtailed and hires delayed.  But the reality is nothing has changed, not really!

Guess what? The sun will (I promise you) rise in the morning and the morning after and the morning after. This is important why? Simply because when you know in your heart that things are truly still the same, it’s a test of the leaders long term strategic thinking that sends a message out to the business. Keep going, nothing has really changed! Don’t believe the hype! We are strong and we know what we are doing!