How to be a better leader
A detailed guide to becoming a better leader for your business.
The greatest leaders have an effortless ability to inspire their team to go above and beyond. The people they lead follow them out of choice and not out of coercion. There is a well known African proverb that states: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together".
Chapter 1: The Qualities of a Good Leader
Chapter 2: Can a Manager Also Be a Leader?
Chapter 3: The Seven Keys to Successful Remote Leadership
Chapter 4: How Can You Maintain Belief in your Leadership Vision?
Chapter 1: The qualities of a good leader
During our careers, most of us have worked with both good and bad leaders.
When leadership is good, the results can be phenomenal. Charles A. Coffin, the former CEO of General Electric, could easily have followed in his predecessor Thomas Edison’s footsteps by setting himself up as the indisputable genius of the company and employing thousands of workers to assist him. But Charles Coffin didn’t share Thomas Edison’s ego. He knew that the success of the business relied upon the skills of his employees, so he developed his managers and scientists and empowered them to work on their own. He had the vision to negotiate a patent agreement with Westinghouse Electric to create a duopoly in the electrical manufacturing market, and he had the innovation to build America’s first research laboratory. It’s no wonder that Fortune magazine called Charles A. Coffin the greatest CEO of all time.
When leadership is bad, the results can be disastrous. During his first year as Kodak’s CEO, Kay Whitmore’s hubris and lack of vision cost his company a valuable opportunity to team up with Microsoft and lead the digital photography market. As a result, Kodak went into a steep decline. The company’s share price plummeted, and thousands of highly skilled workers lost their jobs. Fortunately, a lot of those workers found jobs with Kodak’s competitors. The New York Times called it “a reminder that a corporation’s fall can leave behind not just scars but also things to build upon.”(1) Even though Whitmore was fired in 1993, the rot had set in. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Somehow, the company is still managing to hang on (mainly thanks to the Hollywood film industry), but Whitmore’s terrible leadership has ensured the days of the iconic ‘Kodak moment’ are unlikely ever to be repeated again.
If you want to avoid Whitmore’s short-sightedness and channel your inner Charles A, Coffin to become a more successful leader, I hope you’ll find this new series of articles useful.
What are the qualities of a successful leader?
A successful leader has a vision. A vision they’re passionate about. A vision their employees understand and believe in too.
Their employees understand and believe in the vision because their leader is an excellent communicator. Their leader has articulated the vision and convinced the employees to follow it. Most importantly, the leader has told their employees the vital role each of them plays in making the vision happen.
Because their employees know they’re essential to the vision, they also know they’re the perfect people for the job. Because they’re the perfect people for the job, the leader trusts them to do their job in a way that suits the employee (and the vision) best. The successful leader doesn’t micromanage their employees. They make sure their employees have all the tools and support they need to get the results that will make the leader’s vision a reality.
Because their leader trusts them, listens to them, and acknowledges how valuable they are, the employees feel empowered. They know they’ll be recognised for their hard work and encouraged to develop in their careers because their leader respects them and wants them to achieve success as well. Why? Because the leader knows that the more successful his/her employees are, the more successful the business will become, and the more successful the leader will be. In return, the employees work even harder.
Occasionally, the leader will have difficult decisions to make. But he/she will make those decisions based upon the best information available. That’s because a successful leader isn’t self-serving. They only make correctly informed decisions that are right for the business and the people working in it. A successful leader also holds themselves accountable for their decisions, taking responsibility for them and making sure they’re followed through. Everything a successful leader does is transparent. As a result, the employees have respect for their leader because the leader demonstrates empathy, integrity, and holds themselves to the same high standards the employees are held to.
Because of that, the employees feel happier and more secure in their work. Because of that, they’re more focused and productive, and they’ll do everything they can to make the business – and their leader – more successful. When the employees are outside of work, and they’re asked about the work they do, there’s an excellent chance they’ll talk highly of the business and maybe even mention how fair and effective its leader is. Over time, that’s the kind of positive word-of-mouth which will encourage others to want to work for that business too. As a result, the leader will both retain their existing employees and also have the pick of the very best candidates whenever there’s a new role to be filled.
Because this is a self-perpetuating cycle, the business will continue to thrive, the employees will continue to thrive, and the leader will continue to be successful.
When you think about it, successful leadership is a lot like reading a good book or watching a great film. When you’re engaged in the story and trust where the author or filmmaker is taking you, you’re much more likely to give it a good review when it’s finished.
What are the qualities of a bad leader?
Bad leaders don’t have a vision. Even if they do, they don’t know how to communicate their vision clearly and compellingly to their employees, which is usually because their vision is unfocused or incomplete. When a leader doesn’t have a vision, there’s nothing for their employees to hook onto and feel passionate about. As a result, the employees don’t have a sense of purpose. What they’re doing is just a job. Hopefully, it will pay the bills until a better one comes along.
What makes it worse is that a bad leader isn’t forward-thinking. He/she doesn’t listen to advice unless it serves their agenda. They won’t make decisions based on what’s right for the company and their employees because they’re only concerned about themselves. Bad leaders flip-flop around, which leaves their employees flip-flopping too. Their employees become even more dissatisfied because what the leader does isn’t transparent. The employees know their leader doesn’t have any care or understanding of what they do. They see the leader doesn’t listen to their ideas and concerns. They also know that when things go wrong, they will probably be in the firing line because a bad leader rarely admits to their own mistakes.
Because bad leaders don’t have empathy, they don’t trust or value their employees. A bad leader might say they do, but they’ll never demonstrate that in real terms. A bad leader won’t thank their employees for a job well done. The chances are they’ll take the credit for themselves because “doing their job is what my employees get paid for.”
A bad leader won’t invest in his employees’ development, and he won’t be concerned if his employees are unhappy. A bad leader doesn’t have integrity. According to a white paper produced by the Center for Creative Leadership, integrity is one of the four character strengths all successful business leaders need. The white paper is entitled ‘The Irony of Integrity’, and it makes for interesting reading. You’ll find a link to it at the bottom of this article.(2)
Because of everything mentioned above, a bad leader’s employees won’t be as productive as they could be. There will probably take more time off due to illness, especially stress-related illness. They will feel unhappy and demotivated, they’ll almost certainly tell people outside of the business how bad it is to work there, and they’ll leave their job as soon as the opportunity arises.
Because of that, the bad leader’s business will continue to stagger unhappily along until it eventually dies.
That’s the kind of damage bad leadership can do.
If bad leadership were a book or a film, we’d stop reading or walk out within the first ten minutes. Because, as we all know, that’s only as long as it takes to realise the story’s poorly written, it’s a premise that’s going nowhere, and we don’t want to waste our time.
Bad leadership is just as easy to recognise. It’s endemic. Even if we were a customer or client and never met the leader in person, we’d quickly suspect that something isn’t right. It would be in the culture, the way the employees communicate with us, and the way the service is delivered. Because people who work for good leaders care. They often go the extra mile. People who work for bad leaders want to get the job done and go home.
Now that we’ve examined the differences between good leaders and bad leaders, it’s time to concentrate on helping you become the most successful leader you can possibly be.
We’ll start in the next chapter.
2 https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ironyofintegrity.pdf
Chapter 2: Can a manager also be a leader?
“What if I’m a manager or a team coach?
Can a manager be a leader, too?”
That’s a good question. Let’s take a closer look at it.
Managers vs Leaders
In the first chapter, we talked about the essential qualities of successful leadership. At the top of the list was ‘vision’. A successful leader has a vision, something they can see so clearly, and they’re so passionate about, that their employees will understand it and feel passionate about it too.
But even though a manager isn’t in charge of the vision, they are instrumental in helping to make the vision a reality. And, to accomplish that goal in the very best way possible, they’ll need to utilise almost all the other qualities that make a successful leader. After all, managing people is a lot easier when your team members trust who you are, understand what you’re asking them to do and why you’re asking them to do it, and know you’ll listen to them and support them whenever they need your help.
Here’s an example of two management styles. Both these managers are doing the same job, but in my opinion, one of them is a manager who is also a leader. Give it a read and see what you think.
A management case study
Anyone who’s ever worked in a call centre knows they are busy, stressful, and often pretty unpleasant places. The pay is minimal, the targets are punishing, and the shifts are often unsociable. This particular call centre was focused on raising money for charity. The calling floor was huge and split into several different teams, and each team had a different charity they were working for. Two of the teams were especially successful and consistently hit their targets, but the managers that looked after them were very different.
Manager 1’s management style was, to put it very kindly, “business-like.” She hardly ever interacted with her team on a personal level. She’d barely even say good morning when they arrived for their shift. As far as she was concerned, her team were here to work and meet their targets, and she was here to make sure they did. She’d watch the live-streaming data like a hawk, but only to make sure her team were achieving their service levels. If any of them weren’t, she generally wouldn’t take them aside to talk about it and ask how she could help. She’d make a note, so she could put them on the spot about it later and tell them they’d have to do better tomorrow.
If one of her team members had a problem on a call, she wouldn’t assist them. That wasn’t a job. Instead, she delegated that task to a team member she’d made the ‘her deputy.’ Her deputy didn’t get any benefits out of doing that role. There wasn’t any career development. It was evident to everybody that Manager 1 had only given him that title so he could do all the tricky jobs she didn’t want to do herself.
Manager 1 hardly ever briefed her team, unless the bosses upstairs gave her some news and told her to pass it on. Briefing the team was problematic because it meant taking them off the phones, which meant calls wouldn’t get made and targets wouldn’t be achieved. She also never thanked her team for the work they were doing or reminded them how important they were to the rest of the business. If the charity they were working for gave her positive feedback, she wouldn’t think to tell them about it. But if the feedback were critical, and threatened to put her in a bad light, she’d quickly haul them over the coals.
As a result, Manager 1’s team were unhappy. Even though they were reaching their targets, it wasn’t because they wanted to be there or they cared about the job. It was because they knew that Manager 1 could make life very difficult for them if they didn’t perform. As a result, they never asked her for help because they knew she wouldn’t give it. They never shared their thoughts with her about how the team could be more productive because they knew she wasn’t interested in what they had to say. They barely even talked to each other, until they were away from the desk and she was out of earshot, and hardly a week went by without at least one of them taking several days off sick.
Of all the teams in the call centre, Manager 1’s team had the highest staff turnover. Several of her people left even when they didn’t have another job to go to. But Manager 1’s team almost always hit their targets. As far as Manager 1 was concerned, that was all that mattered. It was total proof her management style worked.
Manager 2’s management style was very different. Whereas Manager 1’s team sat in silence when they were between calls and couldn’t wait to go home at the end of their shift, Manager 2’s team were positive and high-energy and genuinely enjoyed being there. Every morning, Manager 2 greeted his team, asked how they were, and openly demonstrated how pleased he was to see them. Throughout the day, he’d check in with each of them to let them know they were valued. Every Tuesday and Thursday, he took them off the phones for twenty minutes so he could brief them about what was going on in the business and, also, with the charity they were representing. Sometimes he’d even ask a representative from the charity to come in and brief the team themselves. It not only made his team better at their job; it also showed how much he valued them.
Just like Manager 1, Manager 2 kept a careful watch on the live stream data but only so he could stay informed about what was happening. If any of his team fell behind in their stats, he wouldn’t get negative about it. Instead, he’d monitor the situation and, if it continued, he’d quietly take the team member aside to have a chat and find out what was going on. Similarly, if any of the team had a problem with a call and needed his assistance, he’d step in to support them. He didn’t nominate a deputy. Instead, every month, he had a one-to-one meeting with each member of his team to work on their individual career development.
Unsurprisingly, Manager 2’s team were extremely loyal and hard-working. They rarely went off sick unless they were genuinely ill. They never applied for other jobs, because even though their pay wasn’t very good, they liked their work and they enjoyed being around each other. For most of them, that meant far more than money.
As a result, Manager 2’s team didn’t just hit their targets every month. Most months, they exceeded them.
About a year later, there was a big shakeup in the business, and one of the managers was made redundant. The other was promoted to Head of Department. I wonder which one...
So, to get back to the question, ‘Can a manager also be a leader?’
I think this story proves they can. I think it’s also an excellent example of the difference between an effective manager/leader and a manager who, even though they’re mostly getting the required results, isn’t a good manager at all. Management is about more than meeting targets. It’s about using the tools of leadership and inspiring your team members to excel.
By the way, that was a true story. It happened to one of my clients back in the early 2000s. He was Manager 1’s long-suffering deputy, and when Manager 2 was made Head of Department, my client took over Manager 2’s team. So now you know how the story ends.
Something else to think about
Before I go, I want to share one final thought. In 1977, a psychoanalyst called Abraham Zaleznik wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review which asked, ‘Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’(1)
Zaleznik specialised in the social psychology of management and, at the time his article was published, many people accused him of throwing a rock in the pool of management theory. Among the many things he wrote were, “Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly – sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully.”
He thought business leaders had much more in common with artists than they do with managers.
Zaleznik’s original HBR article includes two interesting illustrations: one of them depicts a manager holding a carrot while trying to coax somebody through a hoop. The other describes a leader as a kind of conductor or ringmaster, standing in a spotlight, taking a bow.
I think it’s much more complex than that, but also much more straightforward.
I think managers can be leaders, too.
What do you think?
1https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-different
Chapter 3: The seven keys to successful remote leadership
Even though remote working has become increasingly popular over the last few years, many employers have continued to resist it.
Now, the arrival of COVID-19 has changed everything, and many businesses have had to implement remote working to stay alive. Even though lockdown is easing, the government has told people to continue working from home wherever possible.
It looks as if, for many organisations, remote working is here to stay. But what are its benefits, and how can you become a more capable remote leader?
The benefits of remote working
Employing remote workers has quite a few advantages, but these seem to be the major ones.
For the employee; a better work/life balance (although I’ve heard that isn’t always the case because some people are working harder and longer hours now they’re based at home. That’s something a caring employer needs to address.)
No commuting stress, and money saved (because they’re not putting extra petrol in the car or paying for public transportation.)
Increased productivity and performance (because working from home is usually less stressful and has fewer interruptions. The employee can also set up their home office any way they want.)
A happier, healthier work-life (because remote workers can usually have a more flexible schedule, and are less likely to take time off sick because they’re less exposed to illness and stress.)
For the employer; long term cost savings. (According to the U.S. consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics, an average company can save approximately $11,000 per year for every employee who works from home because property costs, transit subsidies, etc are significantly reduced.)
Increased employee loyalty and better employee retention (because people like to work with employers who offer remote working.)
Better productivity and performance (including no lost productivity when employees might usually arrive late after being held up in traffic.)
Less sickness and unscheduled absence.
Access to an unlimited pool of suitable employees because their geographical location is no longer an obstacle. If a remote worker has the necessary skills, they can be based anywhere in the world.
In many ways, remote working can be a win/win solution for everybody, but a lot of employers have been hesitant to introduce it because they’re concerned about leading their team from a distance. They find it easier to manage their employees face-to-face, and they’re afraid productivity will fall because they don’t trust their remote employees to work as hard as they do in their ordinary office. They’re afraid of losing control, and I think most people would agree that leading from a position of fear isn’t good for anybody.
The fact is, there isn’t much difference between remote leadership and ordinary, ‘in situ’ leadership. All you have to is show trust, patience, and empathy, and remember that clear communication is the most important leadership quality of all.
The essential qualities of remote leadership
Let’s take the current COVID-19 situation as an example. There’s already a lot of stress and anxiety wrapped up in being locked down. When you combine that with the unusualness of having to work from home, it can feel overwhelming.
Before COVID-19, the majority of employees were used to going into the office every day. Commuting might have been stressful, but it was a part of their daily routine. They were used to being around their co-workers and having a catch-up over coffee before starting work. They had meetings to attend, and colleagues they’d see throughout the day they could chat to and share information with. They knew where to access everything they needed to do their job properly, and they knew where you are if they ever needed your help. Their working day had a structure, and suddenly all of that has been taken away.
So, your first job is to help your remote workers find a new structure and acclimatise to the new normal.
1: Establish how this is going to work
A successful remote leader’s first job is to help their employees acclimatise to the new normal.
Make your expectations clear, but don’t impose rules.
Engage every member of your team by establishing:
What your expectations are: what is each team member responsible for, what are their goals, what are their deliverables?
Ask them what they need from you, as well as what do they need from each other? Are there any domestic circumstances you should know about that could impact the way they do their job? Do they have access to all the necessary tech, and do they know how to use it? Are the files and folders they need readily available? If they're in the Cloud, or on a separate drive or server, do they have all the permissions they need to download them? Are there any at-home distractions that might make their life difficult, or mean they'll have to be more flexible with their working hours?
Establish the ways you’re going to communicate with the team moving forward: when and how often will you hold team meetings and one-to-one meetings? When you send each other emails, texts, or direct messages, agree how long it should take you to respond. Encourage the team to stay in regular contact with each other, as well as you, so they can share information and generally break the monotony.
Don’t forget; these are the same people you used to lead when you were all working together in the same office. There’s no reason to distrust them. If you show your remote workers unequivocal trust, they’ll trust you too.
2: Stay connected
A successful leader doesn’t stand over their employees’ desk every minute of the day. They don’t regularly check up on what their team members are doing. They trust their team members and empower them to do their work in a way that suits them best and gets the most effective results.
However, a remote leader mustn’t be so ‘hands-off’ that your remote workers forget you’re even there. If they lose virtual sight of you, they might start to feel demotivated and begin to drift.
I’ve got a few suggestions to counteract that. For example, you could start each day with a quick 10- minute briefing and team talk, which has the bonus of ensuring you all begin the day together even if, throughout the rest of the day, your employees need to be more flexible with their working hours. A briefing connects you all, gives everyone a chance to talk about yesterday’s successes and frustrations, and helps keep the team on track.
Or, on the days you don’t hold briefings, send your team members a text or email wishing them a great day and reminding them you’re always here if they need you. Don't make it a long message because they'll stop reading or, worse, think you're trying too hard and being insincere.
Occasionally, send individual members of your team a text, email, direct message, or even make a phone call, just to ask how they’re doing or congratulate them on an outstanding piece of work.
3: Encourage collaboration
According to this Harvard Business Review article1, there are three kinds of distance to overcome if collaboration is going to be successful:
Physical: Place and time
Operational: Team size, bandwidth, and skill levels
Affinity: Values, trust, and interdependency.
The article suggests that the most effective way for managers to drive their team’s performance is by reducing the affinity distance between team members. One way to do this is by holding regular meetings via a video conferencing app like Skype or Zoom because seeing each other face-to-face is a much better way to establish rapport than through texts or emails. Another solution is to use an application like Slack to create a forum where employees can have virtual water-cooler moments and talk about subjects that aren’t work-related. There is a theory that the more we interact with people, the likelier it is that we’ll develop stronger relationships with them. It’s called ‘The Propinquity Effect’.
4: Use the rules of effective communication
Make all your verbal, written, and online communication as clear as possible. Succinct and concise is always best.
Be transparent about what you're doing and what's happening in the rest of the business. These are already uncertain times, so don’t leave your people in the dark. They need to know they can trust you, and that you trust them.
Deal with problems quickly, but always make sure you know the complete picture first: pause, take a moment to examine the issue, ask questions, and then take action. When something goes wrong (because it will), don’t reprimand the team member responsible because that will only make matters worse. Reprimands aren’t a good idea face-to-face unless they can’t be avoided, and reprimands at a distance can be even more disastrous. Instead, recognise the value of the work they’re doing, find out what the root cause of the problem was, and coach them so they’ll be able to reach a better resolution next time.
When you brief your team, make sure they understand the why, how, and what of everything you’re asking them to do. If they can see the connection between their priorities and the overall business objectives, they’ll have a better understanding of what’s required and feel more committed to achieving their goals.
Regularly check that your team is happy with your leadership style. Is there anything you could change to make their job easier? Ask them for their constructive feedback and, where appropriate, act upon it. When your team knows you’re listening to them, and you care about what they think, it will strengthen their loyalty.
5: The importance of empathy
There are three types of empathy, and I think it’s vital that a successful leader (remote or otherwise) should be able to use them all.
First, there’s cognitive empathy: how do your team members view the world? Can you put yourself in their shoes and look at the situation from their unique perspective. What do you sense about their real feelings?
Second, there’s emotional empathy: the social psychology researchers Sara D. Hodges and Michael W. Myers say that emotional empathy has three parts:
Feeling the same emotion as the other person
Feeling our own distress because we realise the other person is in pain
Feeling compassion towards the other person
When your team member has a problem which is unsettling them on an emotional level, an emotionally empathetic leader will be able to understand how they're feeling.
Finally, there’s affective empathy: when you’ve observed enough to understand your team member’s perspective and the pain they’re experiencing, you’re able to respond appropriately and take action.
The silent movie 'Metropolis' (1927), which is about a violent uprising that takes place when downtrodden workers (exiled to the underground) clash with their above-ground masters who live in skyscraper luxury, ends on a simple message:
“Head and hands need a mediator. The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!”
In my view, that’s what every leader has to remember. It's especially important when people are working remotely and might not ask you for help when they need it.
6: Embrace technology
As I mentioned earlier in this article, video conferencing tech like Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangout (although many other options are available) are fantastic tools for encouraging collaboration and fostering team unity. You need to see each other face-to-face, and - as their leader - you especially need to have a visual presence. It's also vital to see everybody's facial expressions and read their body language because 55% of communication is non-verbal.
Also, when you hold video meetings, do your best to ensure that everybody's voice is heard. A lot of people find group communication difficult, and video meetings over a pc or laptop can feel even more alien. Try to ask each of the attendees a question, even if it's just "What do you think, XXXX?" and encouraging them to share their views.
On a final techy note, applications like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook for Business, are invaluable for exchanging comments and sharing information, so your team can stay connected with each other throughout the day and won't feel so isolated. Also, project management and tracking applications like Trello, Asana, and Hive, are useful for helping your remote workers stick to a schedule, stay up to date with tasks, and stay on track with their goals and deliverables. Tracking apps like these won’t just help them keep them on target, they’ll enable you to stay on top of what your remote workers are doing without your having to ask them.
7: The Two Biggest Questions
These two questions apply wherever your employees are based – whether in the office or remotely.
Are you communicating with your team members in the best way possible?
Are you encouraging your team members to use their latent skills and strengths?
When you know what your team members naturally do best, you can focus on their greatest strengths so they'll be more empowered, higher-performing, and happier in their roles.
To help my clients do that, I often use a personal development tool called CliftonStrengths. CliftonStrengths is an assessment test that measures each team member's natural patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, so that you can harness their skills and help them reach their (and your) goals more effectively.
It's a simple test that uses 177 paired statements to get to the heart of what your team member's do best in the areas of strategic thinking, influencing others, developing relationships, and making things happen. So, once you know what their primary talent is, you'll be able to fit them in the role that will benefit your team best. You'll also know how to communicate with them in the way they'll most easily understand.
CliftonStrengths is fantastic for finding out how each of your employee's tick, so you can uncover their latent talents (skills they might not even realise they possess!) and have a better understanding of their perspective on the world. It isn't the only tool that's available, but I've always been impressed with the results it's given me. You'll find more information about personal development tools in my previous blog, https://www.hillcoachingcompany.co.uk/blog/personal-development-tools.
Those are my seven keys to help you become a successful remote leader. It’s not a comprehensive list and you’ll find plenty more good advice online because, unsurprisingly, remote leadership is a very hot topic right now. However, these are the elements that are truly believe are most important.
There's one last thing that's worth mentioning; because of factors like employee safety and social and economic constraints, it looks likely that many businesses will continue remote working even when the COVID-19 crisis is eventually over. Remote working is a part of the business landscape now and, by 2028, it's anticipated that 73% of all teams will include remote workers2.
If you’re a remote leader who knows how to communicate effectively to get the best out of your virtual team, I think you’ll be far better placed for success in the future. What’s your opinion?
1 https://hbr.org/2018/02/how-to-collaborate-effectively-if-your-team-is-remote
Chapter 4: How can you maintain belief in your leadership vision?
A successful leader must have a vision.
What’s yours?
How are you going to communicate your vision to the rest of your team, so they feel as passionate about it as you do?
Is your vision even something your employees will want to follow?
Very occasionally, a client will ask me to come into their organisation and talk to their leadership team, interview a few of their staff, and then tell them what their company’s vision should be.
I always turn those requests down because that isn’t the way a vision works.
People don’t buy into a vision that’s imposed upon them, just because it’s hooking into the latest fad or it sounds like the popular thing to do.
People buy into a vision that aligns with their own core values and engages their hearts and minds.
That’s how you’ll keep your employees believing in your vision, even during times when the going gets tough.
And when your employees believe in your vision, they’ll want to talk about it, promote it, and make it the centre of everything they do. As a result, your clients and customers will become engaged in your vision as well. They’ll want to work with you and stay loyal to you because they’ll know your vision has genuine merit and they’ll feel connected to your company’s values.
Examples of successful visions
In July 2019, the Fortune Global 500 published a list of the world’s top 50 largest companies by revenue. The American retail giant Walmart was No.1. What’s Walmart’s corporate vision? To ‘Be THE destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want to shop.’ Previously, their vision statement was ‘To be the best retailer in the hearts and minds of consumers and employees.’
It’s easy to see why employees, clients and customers will want to support that vision.
BP was No.7 in the Fortune 500 list. BP’s vision statement includes the phrase ‘To improve, and be accessible, inclusive and diverse.’ It’s a vision that leads naturally to their mission statement, ‘In all our activities we seek to display some unchanging, fundamental qualities – integrity, honest dealing, treating everyone with respect and dignity, striving for mutual advantage and contributing to human progress.’
Who wouldn’t want to get on board with that?
Apple, at No.11, engages their employees and customers with the vision statement, ‘We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that’s not changing.’ It’s simple, straightforward, and goes straight to the heart of why their employees want to work for Apple – because they are ‘dedicated to bringing the best user experience to customers through innovative hardware, software, and services’ (that’s Apple’s mission statement.) Maybe this is why thousands of people will queue overnight in the rain to buy the latest insanely expensive iPhone iteration?
Now let’s step away from the Fortune 500 list and look at a few others:
Oxfam: ‘Our vision is a just world without poverty. We want a world where people are valued and treated equally, enjoy their rights as full citizens, and can influence decisions affecting their lives.’
Starbucks: ‘To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time.’
InterContinental Hotels Group: ‘Our vision is to become one of the world’s great companies. For us, this means having great brands which lie at the heart of Great Hotels Guests Love.’
Walt Disney Company: ‘To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information… to entertain, inform, and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.’
When you look at any of those examples, it’s not hard to see why people will want to work for those companies, clients will want to work with those companies, and customers will want to buy from those companies. They’ve all got a clear vision that goes straight to the heart of their employees’ and customers’ core values, wants and needs. Also, when they’re recruiting new staff, those companies will attract the candidates who are in line with their values.
When you’re a leader with a clear vision and clear values, and your employees can feel connected to those values and see that the company is honestly practising them from the top-down, that’s the best way to make your vision sustainable throughout your entire organisation.
Creating a successful vision
A successful vision has three components.
It needs to be passionate, inspiring, and motivational.
It needs to align with your business’s values and goals.
Preferably, it should align with the core values and drivers of the people who are working for you.
In my experience, the best way to do this is to openly state “Here are the values I believe in as the owner/founder/board of directors” and share it with your people to get their genuine feedback. Don’t take the feedback personally, use it as a learning opportunity to improve your vision by refining it or changing it completely. One of the trickiest things about nailing down a leadership vision is you’re often so close to it that you can’t see the wood for the trees. You need to be able to step back and see your vision from every team member’s point-of-view. Is it coherent? Is it exciting? Is it a vision that you, and everyone else in your organisation, can truly believe in and feel enthusiastic about?
Successful leaders take feedback on the chin and work with it. If people challenge your vision or say they don’t agree with it, ask them why. Explore options you might not have considered. Find out what makes your employees tick; what are the values they believe in, that your vision can align with to make it even more powerful?
And whatever you do, do this yourself! Please, please, think long and hard before reaching out to a third-party provider. In fact, instead of spending money bringing outside people in, you’d get much better value if you spent that money on freeing up some of your existing people. By all means use a facilitator, but you won’t need anything more. If you do, you’ve obviously got more fundamental issues to address before setting out your true values.
Gone are the days when a company can throw a vision together and pay lip-service to three or four core values just because it makes their corporate strategy look good. In my opinion, businesses that continue to take this approach won’t survive past the next ten or fifteen years.
Why?
Because I believe that any business which plucks its own values out of thin air or picks out its SDGs (more about those in a moment) without consulting their employees first demonstrates incredible arrogance. It shows that they don’t really care about the values they pretend to be upholding, and they don’t really care if their employees believe in them either. Why should their employees believe in them, when the company hasn’t even made the effort to find out if these are the values their staff can get behind? It’s no wonder that so many employees have a condescending attitude towards their leadership and tell customers “It is what it is” or “It’s just the way we’ve been told to do things.”
In this day and age, that attitude simply isn’t going to cut it.
There are companies I know that continue to work this way because they’re conceited enough to believe they’ll get away with it. They’ve established themselves over many years, they have all the staff they need, and they have a list of longstanding clients they think aren’t going to go anywhere. But that’s incredibly short-sighted and, over the next few years, they’ll pay the price for their hubris. They’re going to find it harder to attract and retain new high-quality clients. They’re going to struggle to recruit the best new talent. Why should our generation, and the generations coming up, continue to work for or with that company, when there are so many other companies with genuine values to choose from?
In my observation, if your employees, clients, investors, buyers, purchasers etc. don’t see that your company has a real vision and real values that are in line with their own, they’ll go elsewhere. Also, when you need new talent, especially the really strong candidates who can pick and choose where they’re going, they’ll be looking for a company whose vision and values are in sync with their beliefs and ambitions. If that’s not your company, it will be one of your competitors.
Don’t be arrogant. If you don’t deal with this now you’ll be left lagging a long way behind.
What are your values?
I recently worked with a client who helps companies identify their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were adopted by all the United Nation’s Member States in 2015, and they aim to tackle global issues like healthcare, poverty and climate change by making businesses more profitable, sustainable, and longer-lasting. But if the SDGs are going to work, they have to be part of a company’s values and culture. The employees must care about them passionately enough to follow them through. Businesses that try to introduce an SDG from the top-down, by telling their staff (for example) “We’re going to follow the Climate Action SDG by reducing paper wastage across the company” will generally be far less successful than businesses that choose their SDGs from the bottom-up, by talking with their employees and finding out which SDGs they feel strongest about.
That’s because people are far more motivated to work for a company that shares the same values they do. When they’re passionate about the SDG, they’ll take action to achieve it through their own natural instinct.
It’s the same with your leadership vision.
Don’t impose your vision. Make it a vision that’s inclusive to everybody. That way, you’ve got a much better chance of maintaining belief in your vision and making your leadership a success.
Chapter 5: Does Leadership Have To Be Lonely?
There’s a romantic notion that it’s “lonely at the top.” It doesn’t have to be.
That only happens when you make yourself the centre-point of everything and stop communicating effectively with the people around you.
Unfortunately, a lot of leaders do it.
Back in 2012, the Harvard Business Review published a CEO Snapshot Survey which found “half of CEOs report experiencing feelings of loneliness in their role, and of this group, 61 per cent believe it hinders their performance. First-time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation. Nearly 70 per cent of first-time CEOs who experience loneliness report that the feelings negatively affect their performance.”
According to the HBR, feelings of loneliness don’t just affect CEOs. Anyone who finds themselves in a position of leadership can feel isolated. A few months before the survey was released, the HBR talked about a phenomenon called ‘The Isolation Instinct’ when “ambitious professionals often possess a gravitational pull – an initial knee-jerk reaction – to feel left out.”
The Toxic Tandem
Stanford management professor Robert Sutton calls self-imposed loneliness-in-leadership “the toxic tandem.” He says that “People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centred and less mindful of what others need, do, and say. That would be bad enough, but the problem is compounded because a boss’s self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinised so closely by his or her followers [who] devote immense energy to watching, interpreting, and worrying about even the smallest and most innocent moves their superiors make."1
Sutton believes “the toxic tandem” happens all the time, but it’s especially prevalent during periods when the economy is bad. That’s probably why we’ve heard so many “toxic tandem” leadership stories over the past few months; 2020 seems to have been a banner year for leaders who do their own thing and don’t tell anybody else what’s going on.
Leaders who feel like they’re on their own because they’re too superior to listen to other people’s advice or believe it’s their responsibility to fix everything.
That’s terrible leadership.
Successful leaders are the ones we don’t really notice leading, and then amazing things happen because they’ve empowered other people to do what has to be done.
That’s important for so many reasons, not least because your worker’s performance will suffer when you don’t communicate with them, or you hold onto the reins so tightly they can’t do their jobs properly. When that happens, they’ll waste a lot of energy trying to second-guess you and figure out what’s going on. They won’t trust you because they’ll think you’re only concerned about yourself. Morale will suffer. Productivity will suffer.
You’ll feel lonely in your ivory tower, and they’ll feel lonelier on the ‘shop floor’.
Isolating yourself as a leader is the business equivalent of scoring an own goal, which is metaphorically what Daniel Farke did when he led Norwich City FC to failure at the end of this Premier League season.
Successful leaders are never the focal point
When the Premier League restarted after the COVID-19 lockdown, it was evident within the first few matches that Norwich City’s season was going to end badly.
You only had to watch Daniel Farke's post-match interviews to realise here was a man who was finding leadership very lonely, and his insistence on answering all the media's questions instead of referring them to his players only isolated him even further.
Why didn’t he let his players give their own answers at the end of each match? Some of the players subsequently made comments on social media, but that wasn’t enough. As Norwich City’s manager, Farke is responsible for setting up the team and deciding their tactics, but he’s not the one who ultimately performed on the pitch. The players did. So, in my opinion, Farke shouldn’t have isolated himself in leadership because it sent an uncomfortable message to the club and its fans.
People who don’t follow football think the sport is all about the central core of manager and players. But, as an ardent Canaries fan, what I particularly like about Norwich City is it’s more of a community club. Unlike the elite clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United, where there’s an expectation the team will win a title or it won’t, Norwich City fans don’t really have high expectations. When things go well, they go incredibly well, and when things go badly, they sometimes go spectacularly badly. As fans, we feel the triumph and the celebration, and we also feel the pain and the hurt, and all we expect from the team is that everybody should give 100 per cent. When that doesn’t happen, we don’t want the manager to stand alone in front of the cameras and make excuses for it. We want honest answers.
Farke probably thought he was being a good leader by keeping his players away from the media and making excuses for their dreadful performance. But by the time Norwich City had lost two games in straight succession, we knew that it was pretty much the end of our season. We could also see that how the Canaries were playing was toothless. There were no yellow cards or nasty tackles, there were no fouls, and nobody started any trouble, but as soon as things got tough, the team put its collective head down, and everyone felt bad. That happens in any sport. It can happen in business, albeit in a very different way when things go catastrophically wrong. But a good leader shouldn’t isolate themselves and shoulder the responsibility alone, especially when we’re all savvy enough to know they’re probably not being so staunch when the cameras are turned off. It’s dishonest, it’s disingenuous, and nobody likes getting the wool pulled over their eyes.
That’s why many fans lost their trust in Daniel Farke’s leadership when he stood up there on his own and regularly tried to defend the indefensible. In fact, when he used distraction tactics to argue that it was outrageous and arrogant of people to attack his player’s performance, I think he was being even more arrogant than the critics he was complaining about. When somebody’s on the back foot and trying to defend their actions, they frequently use terminology that unconsciously describes themselves. Did the Norwich City players deserve to be protected? Did making excuses for them make everything better?
I don’t think so, but Daniel Farke took it upon himself to play a leader who believed he had to answer for everything.
And all it did was make matters worse.
Meanwhile, Stuart Webber, Norwich City's sporting director, took the same approach when he was interviewed about the club's relegation from the Premier League. Just like Farke, Webber isolated himself as a leader by taking the blame for everybody else, including Farke. He said that even though relegation hurt it wasn't a shock because "we expected a tough, long, hard season and we have had some bad luck along the way with injuries. For us to be successful this year, we needed everything to work for us." He also said that everyone should remember what Norwich City accomplished last season and "we can't forget what [the players] have done for the club so far."
Making excuses and playing a game of ‘which one of us can throw himself on the sword first’ with Daniel Farke isn’t leadership.
In the world most of us live in, we wouldn’t expect our employer to justify our blatantly poor performance. We’d expect our employer to tell us, in no uncertain terms, to get our act together.
If a salesperson has a phenomenal first year and breaks all the company’s records, that still won’t protect them if their second year is appalling.
By contrast, when Sheffield United recently lost 2-0 against Leicester City, Chris Wilder, Sheffield United’s manager, didn’t play the lonely leader and sugar-coat his team’s resounding defeat. He admitted he was disappointed with his team’s poor performance and said it didn’t matter what successes they’d achieved in the past; it’s what they were doing now that mattered. He made it clear that he wouldn’t accept their minimum effort on the pitch, and that changes have to be forced when things are going badly. He didn’t praise his players and blame bad luck on the day. Wilder knows that’s not useful to the players and it’s not what the supporters want to hear.
When something goes badly wrong, a good leader doesn’t make excuses. They hold everyone involved accountable. It’s the only way to adapt and learn, and you can’t do that if you’re a leader in isolation.
Communication is key
Once again, it all comes down to the power of communication. If you’re not willing to communicate effectively, then leadership will be lonely. If you’re willing to put effort into talking to your people and making them feel valued and engaged, your leadership shouldn’t be lonely at all.
Don’t be afraid to seek feedback from your managers and team members and use any criticism as an opportunity to learn.
Be transparent and show them you’re dependable and trustworthy. That way, your people will feel much more comfortable about telling you how they’re truly feeling.
Cultivate relationships within your organisation and foster collaboration across all levels.
Find a handful of people you particularly trust, who you can bounce your ideas around with, discuss challenges with, and get a new perspective.
If all else fails, consider getting a coach. A coach can be especially useful because their sole purpose is to help you identify your goals, anticipate obstacles, and work with you to achieve success. They have no vested interest in the decisions you’ll make, but they have the knowledge and instinct to help you find solutions and uncover opportunities you might not have considered.
Here’s what it all comes down to; if you make yourself the absolute core of your business and the one person that everything depends on, leadership is going to be a deeply lonely place.
But if you communicate effectively and embrace as many of the people around you as you possibly can without losing sight of what’s happening, leadership doesn’t have to be lonely at all.
Which option do you choose?
1 https://hbr.org/2009/06/how-to-be-a-good-boss-in-a-bad-economy