Situational Leadership

This morning I began preparing my slide deck for Sunday’s lesson in leadership. Before moving onto the topic of Servant Leadership, I decided to explain Situational Leadership more fully to the class. As I was thinking about it, I realized that after the experience of the Leadership Development Program at the Center for Creative Leadership, there isn’t a more impactful leadership training program that I have gone through than situational leadership. In fact, I believe it’s as impactful as the LDP because it can be applied to virtually every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally.

When I became an IT Director at Pfizer, I attended their management training programs called The Leading Edge and Sharpening the Edge respectively. Each program is a week long and both are based on Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership II program. The Leading Edge is situational leadership in a manager/subordinate relationship. Sharpening the Edge is situational leadership applied to the group dynamic. Before being allowed to attend the Sharpening the Edge program, we had to put Leading Edge practices into place for a full year.

The basic premise behind situational leadership is that there is no single “best” leadership style. Effective leadership is task-relevant. The most successful leaders are those that adapt their leadership style to the capability level of the individual or group they are leading. Effective leadership varies not only with the person or group that is being influenced, but also depends on the goal, task, job or function that is to be accomplished.

The pre-work for The Leading Edge program was a lot of fun. About six to 8 weeks before attending the program, they sent me an interactive DVD. This wasn’t your standard training DVD, this was actors in a high-quality movie responding to your leadership inputs. The scenario is a 19th century gold mining operation in the old west. You are the mine’s operations manager. If you respond to a situation with the incorrect leadership style, all kinds of bad things happen. Once I was responsible for blowing up the mine and putting my workers in the hospital. I was lynched, jailed and shot all because I used the wrong leadership style with my subordinates. Eventually, I did make it through because I learned from my mistakes and made a small fortune in the process. It was a real hoot!

But truth be told, some managers experience frustration almost every day because they’ve never learned to lead people differently based on the situation. Followers also experience frustration because their managers don’t lead them appropriately. You may not blow up the mine or get lynched, shot or jailed, but when frustration reaches high enough levels people look for new opportunities. I’ve heard it said that workers don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses. Situational leadership is a simple to understand process, but it takes practice to develop a high level of competency. Do what you can to learn more about it and put it into practice for yourself. It can make a world of difference for you and those you lead.

Mentoring a Future Generation of Leaders: Leader Behaviors

The final part of our first Sunday school lesson in leadership is a discussion of leader qualities or behaviors. It was a bit revealing to watch a couple of the teens display facial expressions and other body language signals indicating that they were uncomfortable with portions of the topic. Some of them shifted in their seats, one bounced his leg up and down as if he wanted to run out of the place and one young lady’s facial expression spoke volumes about her sometimes mischievous behavior. Keep in mind, I don’t know these young people well, but the message their body language conveyed convinced me they were uncomfortable because they realized don’t always live up to the expected standards of behavior. We discussed the following fourteen behaviors:

• Ability to encourage and nurture those around us—delegate so people will grow
• Charismatic inspiration—attractiveness to others and the ability to leverage this esteem to motivate others
• Cooperation—work well with others
• Empathy—Understanding what others say, rather than listening to how they say things
• Environmental Awareness—the ability to understand the environment they lead in and how they affect and are affected by it
• Optimism—very few pessimists become leaders
• Picks Winners—the ability to choose winners - recognizing that we cannot (in general) teach attitude
• Preoccupation with a role—a dedication that consumes much of a leader’s life - service to a cause
• Rejects determinism—belief in one’s ability to “make a difference”
• Results-orientation—directs every action to complete a mission
• Role model—leaders may adopt a persona that encapsulates their mission and lead by example
• Self-awareness—the ability to “lead” one’s own self prior to leading other selves similarly
• Technical/specific skill at some task at hand
• Vision—A clear sense of purpose (or mission) - clear goals - focus – commitment

The teens understood most of this without much explanation with the lone exception of “rejects determinism.” Determinism is a philosophical view that every event is causally determined by previous events and that they are out of our control to change them. If you believe you can make a difference in this world, you must reject determinism.

Integrity is foundational to authentic leadership, but not in its common everyday definition of honesty. I purposefully left it off of the list of leader behaviors in order to explain it in the following way:

• Self-awareness leads to integrity
• Integrity is the integration of our outward actions and inner values
• Outward actions are called our personas
• Inner values are our characters
• When our persona and our character are integrated as one (integrity) it is authentic leadership

In stark contrast to the list of leader behaviors we examined Romans 1:28-32 for a list of anti-leader behaviors that are diametrically opposed to leader behaviors and must therefore be constrained by leaders.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Romans 1:28–32, KJV)

Finally we talked about what to expect when they arrive in the working world. None of them had ever heard of performance evaluations or 360 reviews. They were surprised that “report cards” don’t end when you finish school and that so much of our success depends on what others think about us. We closed with this question:

If we were to ask six people who know you very well to give us honest, anonymous feedback about you, what would they say about you? Would they say:

• You are a good Christian?
• You are a leader?
• You can be a real brat at times?
• You are disrespectful to your parents and teachers?
• You try to get away with bad behavior when you think nobody is watching?
• You enjoy argument and debate?

The kids gave great feedback as did some of the adults that sat in on the class. They seem to be looking forward to the next two weeks as we examine the greatest leadership role model of all time.

Mentoring a Future Generation of Leaders: Leadership Styles

As astute as the students in the Sunday school class are in defining their limited understanding of leadership, there was one word glaringly absent from the list they came up with. That word is “influence.” Leadership is a process of influence. Anytime anyone seeks to influence the thinking, behavior or development of people toward accomplishing a goal in their personal or professional lives, they are taking on the role of a leader. There are formal aspects of leadership such as can be found in political and business arenas or through positional authority; or informal aspects as in one who influences a group of friends. The term leadership usually implies some “leadership skills” or competencies. Of course, the teens weren’t familiar with the word “competency” so I needed to explain that it means the skills, knowledge and ability to do something.

We discussed how everyone has a particular leadership style and that no matter what that leadership style is, it is going to fall into one of three categories:

• Authoritarian or autocratic
• Participative or democratic
• Delegating or Free Reign

This is where we began to play our next game. I posted the words authoritative, participative and delegating on the board and asked them to decide for each of the twelve common leadership styles I was going to present, which ones fell into which category and that some leadership styles may belong to more than one category. Out of the twelve categories, they guessed 11 right. These are the leadership styles we discussed:

• Autocratic Leader: has total authority; has the sole power to make decisions
• Bureaucratic Leader: very structured; follows all procedures as they’ve been written
• Charismatic Leader: leads by infusing energy and eagerness into to their team members
• Democratic Leader: studies team members’ ideas and makes the final decision; everyone contributes to the final decision
• Environment Leader: nurtures a group or organizational environment; uses organizational culture to inspire individuals to and develop leaders at all levels
• Laissez-faire Leader: “Leave it be” leadership; gives no continuous feedback or supervision; associated to leaders that don’t lead at all
• People-Oriented Leader: supports, trains and develops his personnel
• Servant Leader: accomplishes goals by giving team members what they need in order to be successful
• Situational Leader: uses different leadership styles depending on the situation and the type of employee that is being supervised
• Task-Oriented Leaders: focuses on the job and concentrates on the specific tasks assigned to each person; shows no involvement in the team’s needs; also known as a micro-manager
• Transaction Leader: power to evaluate and correct team members; rewards or punishes the team’s performance
• Transformation Leader: is highly visible and uses chain of command to get a job done; motivates the team to be effective and efficient; focuses on the big picture

For some reason the term Laissez-faire Leader generated a lot of laughs. I told them it was probably easier to remember this type of leader as the Lazy-faire leader. They might also remember this leader as a “LOSER!” The one they had the most difficulty categorizing was Charismatic Leader. They believed a charismatic leader would be a good delegator, when the opposite is true. With charismatic leaders, the organization or group they lead rises and falls on their personality and ability to motivate. If the charismatic leaves, the group falls apart because there isn’t anyone equipped to take over and lead. The charismatic leader likes to hold all the power. In my mind this is authoritarian, passive-aggressive perhaps, but authoritarian nonetheless.

So how did you do in categorizing these leadership styles? Did you do better than the teens? If you want the answers as we discussed in class, send me an email and I’ll shoot them out to you.

Mentoring a Future Generation of Leaders

Ever since I attended the Leadership Development Program at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC, I had promised myself that if I ever could, I would give my daughter the gift of leadership development. A gift such as CCL’s LDP is not only costly, but requires some working experience. The feedback intensive program requires input from superiors, peers and subordinates. It would be quite a while before before she would have the experience to even sit for a program such as the LDP. However, I was given the opportunity this month to mentor a group of about 35 teenagers in leadership. A little over a month ago, I received a phone call from my daughter’s youth Pastor. He asked if I could teach the youth group leadership topics during the Sunday school hour over the last three weeks of July. The youth group consists of teens ranging from rising freshmen to graduating seniors. I’m very grateful for the opportunity, but my challenge is how do I keep them interested in information that can sometimes be beyond the understand of some adult learners. So I asked my daughter how I should approach the class. She said, “Dad, keep the language simple so we can understand it and use lot’s of handouts. Teens like that.”

This past Sunday was my first lesson. I titled it “An Introduction to Authentic Leadership.” Since it was for Sunday school, I also had to include Bible verses to support the teachings. As I started to build my PowerPoint presentation, I knew I was going to be in trouble when discussing leadership styles. Some of the details of leadership styles is, quite frankly, tiresome. So I decided to make a game out of it. The strategy worked. The teens stayed engaged, interested and participative for the entire 45 minute session.

I started with a very brief introduction of me and my background in leadership development. Then we played our first game. It was a word association game where I had a volunteer write the class’ responses on the board. The question I asked is, “What’s the first thing that pop’s into your head when you hear the word “leadership?” Their answers were amazingly astute. They said things like control, authority, enthusiasm, love, wise, servant and about another half-dozen responses that I can’t remember right now. But I do recall thinking, these teens are pretty sharp.

We talked about why leadership is important and that each one in the room has the opportunity to develop into highly capable leaders in whatever profession or vocation they pursue. Then we began discussion leadership styles and leadership qualities. I do intend to share what I taught them with you, but for now I’m going to leave those two topics for future posts.

I didn’t have any handouts this past Sunday, but next week is a different story. I’ll be giving them a summary of what we’ve already discussed and some questions to stimulate their thinking. And yes, there may even be a homework assignment to prepare for the third class.

The Importance of Service Recovery

If you’ve ever taken a customer service training program, then you were probably taught about the importance of service recovery. Service recovery is taking the necessary steps to sustain customer loyalty after a situation has gone bad. In the context for this post, the word “customer” means anyone you are interacting with for any purpose. The reason I’m talking about this today is because I want to share with you an excellent example of service recovery that occurred within the past couple of days where I am the “customer” so to speak.

In the last couple of weeks I submitted a job application to a company in Johnston, Iowa for a Director of HR Technology position. This is a job I perform expertly. I’ve been supporting HR functions since 1995. Well, as with most companies, it’s necessary to go through a screening interview by a talent acquisition manager these days. I received a call on Monday to setup a telephone interview for Tuesday. The call was scheduled for 2pm Eastern and 1pm Central. Johnston. Iowa is in the Central time zone. I live in the Eastern time zone. The company was going to call me. I scheduled my day’s activities around the company’s promise to call at 2pm Eastern.

Shortly before 2pm, I went to my office, checked email, LinkedIn and Facebook and awaited the call. And I waited. And I waited. Checked my watch. Hmmm, 2:30pm and no call! I wrapped up what I was doing and began to move to the next task of the day when the phone rang. It was 3:00pm Eastern time. It was the talent acquisition manager, a woman by the name of Cindy. Cindy asked if I was ready for my interview. I politely said ‘no’ because it was scheduled for an hour earlier. The administrator who set up the appointment had put the Eastern time on Cindy’s calendar, not the Central time as we had agreed. Cindy and I agreed to reschedule for the next day.

Within a few minutes of hanging up with Cindy, the administrator called me and apologized for her mistake. We rescheduled for Wednesday morning at 10am Central, 11am Eastern. I planned my Wednesday morning activities around their promise to call. I entered my office just before 11am and as I did the day before, checked my email, LinkedIn and Facebook. And then I waited…and waited…and waited. I checked my watch. It was 11:30 and no call as promised.

Talent acquisition managers are often the first contact a candidate has with a company. They represent the face, culture and personality of the company. After scheduling two meetings and having those meetings fall through, what am I or anyone else for that matter supposed to think about that company in Johnston, Iowa. Red flags were flying all over the place. “Warning, warning Will Robinson…this might not be a pleasant place to work!”

Last evening when I got home from mid-week service, I had an email from Cindy. Here is what she said, “I apologize for missing our two scheduled times on July 6 & 7. There was confusion surrounding the first scheduled time due to time zone differences and the second time was totally my error.  Again, I apologize.”

It takes a big person to admit when they’ve done wrong in the business world. It takes a big person to admit they’ve done wrong period. It takes a person with strength of character and integrity to do as Cindy has done. I appreciate her for her service recovery effort. What I’ve learned from this is that first impressions might not always be the lasting one. When I think of Cindy now and that company in Johnston, Iowa, I’ll always think of them as valuing respect for people.

Learning One of Life’s Little Lessons

In my last post, I mentioned how wonderful it is to link back up with important people from my youth. During an exchange of emails with my friend Bill, he apologized for an incident that occurred one night when we were out together where he believed he had offended me. I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of what he was talking about…and still don’t even after he explained it to me. Yet, he recalls every aspect of the situation, knows exactly where we were standing,  what we said and what happened the rest of the night.  He remembers it like it was yesterday.

His confession spurred me on to make a confession of my own and seek his forgiveness over an incident that I was responsible for creating. It is the greatest regret I have pertinent to our years of friendship together. I have always felt bad for having mistreated him for a reason I can’t recall. The funny part is, Bill has no memory whatsoever of the incident I was confessing to. This exchange of confessions led to us both to the same conclusion. I hope he doesn’t mind, but I want to quote his email because it reflects the valuable life’s lesson we both learned.

Bill said, “It is really important how we treat others vs. how they treat us. Neither of us seem to recall or care about what happened to us but we seem to really care about what we did to each other. Wow! That's powerful. We could make an entire sermon out of this one.”

I couldn’t agree more heartily with Bill. Life is too short to hang onto regrets or guilt over something that we have done that may have offended a loved one. Please consider this lesson and do whatever you can to make things right with the people who care for you and who you care for.

”Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” - Colossians 3:13 (KJV)

The Unexpected Joys of Social Networking

Social networking is rather new to me. I started this past January at the suggestion of a book publisher. In one of our earliest email exchanges, she asked if I did any social networking or blogging as a way of self-promoting my book. At the time I had to say no. I did have a profile on LinkedIn with about 255 personal contacts I had made over the years through work or community activities. Facebook was a passing fad to me, designed for teen agers and the younger generations, not baby boomers. So in January I took the plunge and started open networking on both LinkedIn and Facebook. As of today, I have 605 friends on Facebook and almost 4,200 contacts on LinkedIn. And while the underlying purpose at first was self-promotion, I am thrilled to have discovered some genuine unexpected joys in social networking. I’m glad my initial impressions were wrong.

The joys come entirely from reacquainting myself with people I grew up with. Men and women who were very important to me at various times in my life who for some reason or another I lost contact with as our lives paths took alternate routes. For example, a little over a month ago, I was reminiscing with my wife and telling her about a little girl who used to chase me around the park that was situated behind our apartment building in Jersey City. We lived in the Curries Woods housing project. My parents moved us there from Brooklyn when I was four years old. We moved away from the projects when I was ten.

I remember this girl, named Lynn vividly. We went to kindergarten together. She used to chase me around the park and the PS 30 school yard. I never used to let her catch me because even though I liked her I was afraid of girls back then. Her parents moved her away after a couple of years. I never heard from her or have seen her since. We must have been around seven or eight when she moved. I always wondered what happened to her. Wouldn’t you know it, not even a few days after I told this story to my wife, I get a message on Facebook from guess who? None other than Lynn! What a joy to know she’s done very well for herself.

Then, there’s my best friend Bill from our high school years. We lived in the same neighborhood but attended different high schools. He was as a brother to me. We spent as much of our free time together as possible and some of the fondest memories I have are from spending time with his family during the summer at Manasquan at the Jersey Shore.

We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in almost 34 years. I found someone on LinkedIn with the same name as my dear old friend and sent him a message asking if he was the same Bill I knew in Jersey City. It was he! We spoke for about an hour the other day catching up on each others lives. It’s great to know he’s living in Austin, Texas and is happily married with three college-aged children. Even though so much has happened in our lives, the time we spent talking flew by. He’s still the same jovial person a long remember.

Yes, there have been some very unexpected surprises for me with social networking. But they’ve been great surprises, which bring warmth, joy and a rekindling of the affections that were so important to my upbringing.