Leaders or followers?

Leadership is a difficult activity: You have to work out what the reality of the environment is; try to predict what will happen over the coming period; decide what possibilities exist or what latitude for action exists; work out where you want to take the company, organisation or country; articulate the same in a way that everyone understands and can buy into; decide the appropriate time scale; methods and so on.

It's a difficult job even in the best of times. However when the environment starts to change or become volatile leading gets really tough. Things are made considerably harder when leaders find it difficult to separate reality from perception. Harder still when emotions start to alter our view of reality.

The research (press release here) I referred to in the last blog has showed that whilst just about all leaders say that they make decisions based on the data, 4 out of every 5 leaders recognise that these decisions , especially in uncertain situations, usually have a heavy emotional basis.

My question is how do leaders learn to make decisions in difficult and uncertain situations?
The answer appears to be not through any formal process. One leader told me:

"A university education is a good start and an MBA helps however it never prepares you for dealing with uncertainty. In fact it makes things worse.You tend to leave thinking that the answers are in the data. In hard times all the data in the world won't help you a jot. It's how you see things and how you fool yourself, and we all do, that counts. Their way of thinking is great for stable times but if you follow their guidance when things are less stable you are going to end up in a lot of trouble."

Another leader stated:

"It is important that people believe I know what I am doing. I have to admit that like many people, when things are foggy you can't in all honesty say I do know what I am doing. I think we all just trust to luck a bit and cast about and see what others are doing. I know it's not satisfactory but what can you do when things are changing so fast?"

.

"What I have learned since taking control of the service is that all the research and models you get fed in training and from college are historical. Not one of them tells you what to do when things have changed or when they are changing. New situations need new thinking, not old research and education. I would place the ability to make good decisions in the face of ambiguity and to be able to think new thoughts in new situations as the number one leadership attributes these days, not the degree someone has." Reported a CEO

Agile Leadership is the ability to be able to lead well in difficult and ambiguous situations, the very circumstances others are clueless in. There is precious little formal preparation for leadership in uncertain times anywhere in the world, which is why leaders are increasingly looking to each others for answers. We run Agile Leadership programs and modules (PDF version)designed to fit in with existing leadership training or as stand alone packages, that develop these attributes. The growing popularity of these events is testimony to the need for something different in formal education and training. I am not saying what is going on now is wrong. It is useful and has it's place. It just doesn't equip people for difficult times, dealing with uncertainty and rapid change where they need to solve problems, make good decisions and lead when everyone else is sat around wondering what to do next; just waiting to see what everyone else is doing (just like the current economic situation where rumour and volatility are rampant). That is being a follower not a leader.

Leadership - leading or following?

Does leadership development come up with the goods particularly when it comes to preparing leaders for dealing with a crisis or ambiguous situations?
Do leadership developers (trainers) know how to develop critical and creative thinking?
We are just finishing off a 5 year research project looking at leadership decision making, problem solving and agility in times of difficulty - when things are uncertain and ambiguous (I will post the articles from this when they are ready). What is becoming very clear is that most leaders have no personal strategy for dealing with difficult situations or ambiguous conditions. The study has found that only about 11% of leaders have such a strategy, or even think about it.

What, you may ask, is the number one leader's strategy for dealing uncertainty or difficulty?
The answer is not very encouraging. It is to see what others are doing and copy it. It's a sort of safety in numbers mentality.

Most leaders don't have a personal strategy for what to do when things get difficult or ambiguous

The second most popular response? To collect more data. The problem here is that the leader's report that this is usually self defeating as the data is normally conflicting and the sheer amount available is confusing. The ambiguity of this strategy usually means that leaders end up making a decision about what data to accept and which to omit. As you can probably guess they largely choose to omit the data that is less optimistic, more confusing and that which they don't understand. When they are confused by the data they fall back on strategy 1. See what everyone else is doing.

The current economic crisis is actually crisis of leadership

You only have to have a look at what is happening in the financial markets at the moment to see this behaviour writ large.

This current crisis is a crisis of leadership. It has been leadership decisions both at corporate and governmental levels that lead us into current economic mess.

Over 83% (the sample size for this study was 1628 leaders from business and service industries in 7 countries) said that they they would not consider them selves to be particularly creative or that they struggled with creativity.

We will look in greater depth this week at leadership development and more from the study.

Leadership when people are scared III

When you are leading people who are scared here are some do's and don'ts:

DO

1. Learn to be become emotionally resilient. In a recent study we found that this is the single biggest factor in dealing well with difficult and ambiguous situations. This means that you can control the balance between your emotions and thinking whilst still keeping in touch with your instincts and remaining empathetic. More about this.
   
2. Give people a sense of positive direction and movement. This really helps when people are unsure and emotions are running high.
3. Communicate lots and keep in touch with people. One of the biggest failures, especially in situations of flux and change is not to keep people with you every step of the way. You should be acting as if you are on a mountain in bad weather with poor visibility. You rope everyone together and move as a group.
4. Listen lots. All to frequently when the going gets tough , managers and leaders become autocratic, start telling and stop listening. History is full of such instances where leaders wouldn't listen to 'negative talk'. This is a big mistake. Listening to everything can notify you of so much like how people are thinking and feeling, dangers on the horizon are closer and more. The special forces (SAS etc) have what is called Chinese Parliaments. These are group meetings where everyone regardless of rank or status can and are expected have their say and put forward ideas, thoughts or questions including criticisms of leadership decisions and thinking. This form of tough love has lots of advantages.
5. Keep people busy and thinking. The more they have to think the less time they have to feel scared. So let them solve problems rather than what most leaders tend to do is do the solving themselves (often poorly - see this). Make sure any tasks you give people are real tasks. people know when they are just being kept occupied with meaningless tasks. Navigating difficult and ambiguous times is a team effort.
   

DON'T

1. Panic! Keeping your emotions is vital now. If others think that you are in a negative emotional state and making knee jerk reactions rather than using the resources around you, they are unlikely to follow willingly. Additionally you may find that people start to loose respect for you.
2. Make decisions in isolation no matter how good you think they are. Test them out and modify them in the light of different thinking from others.
3. Surround yourself with comforting people who think like you do. This will just lead to group think. Find diversity in views and challenge. Now more than ever everything, and I mean everything needs to be challenged. Failure in difficult and uncertain situations usually come about because of the assumptions people make that go unchallenged. Paradoxically right now you need people who will confront, contest and question, which is the opposite often of what most leaders do in difficult situations which is to surround themselves with people who will agree and make them feel comfortable with their decisions. This is another reason why you need to be emotionally resilient.
   
4. Shoot down daft ideas. Right now you need all the creative, imaginative and innovative ideas you can get. Treat one idea with contempt or anything less than being very welcome and you will kill creativity stone dead. Even the daftest (to you) ideas could well lead to an opportunity or the solution you need. Far too many leaders and their teams shut down prematurely on ideas and never find that killer concept. Nurture all ideas and see what flowers.
   
5. Try to control things too much. The normal response to difficult times is to start to put in place tougher controls. This is often a very big mistake as it stops great and creative things happening, those happy accidents that get you out of the pile of poo you are in. These are known in complexity theory as emergent properties and they can only really occur when things are allowed to flow. More controls are frequently a sign of an emotional response to what is seen as a negative situation. Chill, look for opportunities and play!
   

Risk averse innovation

A number of research surveys including this report in Management Issues highlight the link between risk and innovation.
The ability to think new thoughts, try new things and innovate requires that we break out from the thinking and practices of now. There is a saying

If you always do what you've always done you always get what you always got.

in other words if you want something different you have to do and think different things. The issue here is that in order to do something different takes nerve. To do and think like everyone else, as we have before, may give comfort and make us feel safe, part of the pack. However if we want innovation we have to risk being different, not part of the crowd.
Part of the report mentioned above quotes George Davie, a Managing Director of The Hazelton Group, an Archstone Consulting company:

The survey also found that having a culture that does not foster risk taking was the biggest impediment to innovation.

Basically innovation requires risk taking, the ability to stand out, to think, be and look for difference. Risk averse attitudes brings at best adaption and slow change, making sure that every step is thought through and makes 'sense' - by the thinking of now.
How many organisations reward difference? How many leaders promote real risk taking? How many managers expect and are happy to allow errors and mistakes to be made? Deciding that we need innovation means opening the doors to errors. As any innovation is new there is no knowing what will come up and whether any particular innovation will work or what effect it will have. Indeed many don't, at first at least and need to be played with, tweaked and allowed to mature. For every successful innovation there are many, many ideas that never make it. People who want innovation must be or must become comfortable with ambiguity and risk. The mindset of minimising risk will reduce the appetite to trial and error, experimentation and will stifle innovation. In organisations around the globe the wish to 'just make sure' holds them back. In fast moving and ever changing markets and conditions playing safe is anything but.

Something is missing

I was working with a group of senior leaders in a very large national institution last week. For 90% of the 2 day long meeting the leaders were all working on the problem of how to develop better leadership underneath them and create a more agile and ambiguity tolerant workforce.
The main problem they mused was that people were following orders blindly, not challenging and that there was a total lack of creativity in the workforce.
Solutions abounded about how to fix 'them' and what should be done to solve the problem.

When asked what it is they are doing to increase their own tolerance to ambiguity, develop their own creativity and challenge people in a developmental way there was silence. Indeed if any of us honestly ask ourselves what we are doing to increase our own tolerance to ambiguity and increase our creativity and critical thinking we would draw a blank.
The first issue probably is that we just hadn't thought about it. Once you do start to think about it the second issue then naturally comes forth - just how on earth do you develop your tolerance to ambiguity? Over the next few blogs I will be exploring just that. How can we all get better at dealing with ambiguity?

Back to the meeting - we explored the effects and affects of emotions on problem solving, ambiguity, perceptions of us and them and critical thinking - evidence based thought. It was widely agreed that the key to al of this was understanding our own emotions and the effects they have on our reactions and thinking; emotional intelligence if you like.

So 90% of the meeting was talking about leadership and how to create a more agile, ambiguity tolerant leadership below the board. The other 10% of the time was spent at the end of the meeting reacting to the news that the responsibility for training of new recruits was being removed from this group and was being given to a central agency.

"Our founder would turn in his grave if he knew what was happening"

"We need to stop this before it goes any further"

"They need to be shown the red card"

"This is outrageous how can we indoctrinate them with the right culture if we are not doing it - we need to do something about this now."

The next blog will concentrate on emotional intelligence - what is it and what does it do for us?