Soft Skiils

Effective commonsense leadership

Amitava Sengupta focuses on the seven simple principles that can convert an efficient manager into an effective leader

“To lead people, walk beside them…
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
The next best, the people honor and praise.
The next, the people fear;
And the next, the people hate…
When the best leader’s work is done, the people say,
‘We did it ourselves!’”

—Lao Tzu

In a recent session with a group of young managers at a leadership program, I realized that leadership is possibly one of the most hyped and least understood areas in the business environment today. In this article, I have tried to summarize the presentation I made and discussion points addressed in this program. While most of the article could be loosely applied to leadership in general, it was primarily written keeping leadership in a corporate environment in mind.

Managers versus leaders

Though a lot has been said on this subject, I would like to reiterate the words of Ross Perot that “people cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led”. Leaders intrinsically differ from managers in the way they look at the world. While an efficient manager administers the group, manages the bottom-line, follows acknowledged best practices; the effective leader innovates, always keeps the bigger view in mind, and originates. Essentially, an efficient manager has to broaden his or her vision in order to be an effective leader. In the context of today’s extremely demanding and competitive world, this simple change in perspective can be an extremely difficult gap to bridge. The seven cornerstones of effective commonsense leadership are seven simple principles aimed to facilitate the move from efficient managers to effective leaders.

The seven cornerstones of effective commonsense leadership:

Before going on to the seven cornerstones, I will take a moment to talk about feedbacks. In most organizations today there is a very well defined and rigorous process for receiving feedback, from supervisors and giving feedback to people reporting to you. Unfortunately, the maturity of organizations and individuals has still not developed in a way that enables using formal mechanisms for 360 degree feedback. However, it is very important for an effective leader to make sure that informal mechanisms for receiving feedback from the group are always open. The effective leader understands that the group contributes to his/her success and focuses on keeping the group aligned to the overall objectives. The kernel of what I think constitutes the best feedback that a leader can have from his or her people is that, the feedback reflects what the leader wants to be known to stand for.

Goals and vision

“There is nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can’t articulate why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

—James Kouzes and Barry Posner

Leadership consists of three pillars—leaders, followers and goals. Effective leaders are known for their capability to articulate the organization’s vision and goals in a manner which is understood by the followers. This is also the first step towards effective leadership. Once the overall vision is defined and the goals are understood—the goals need to be broken down into sub-goals for each section and each level of the group. Many organizations today employ the balanced scorecard as an effective tool to cascade top level goals. I have used it personally and found it extremely effective.

Empowerment

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them when they do it.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

The team is an extension of the leadership. An effective leader knows how to enable and empower the team so that the team can work independently. With clearly understood goals and an overall vision to work for, the team’s ability to deliver increases if they feel empowered to act.

A good way of ensuring this is to make sure that individual goals are understood and reviewed periodically—the why and the when of each goal should be understood, the how should be left to individual enterprise. The way that I approach this is to spend as much time as required in defining and explaining the goals and then be available for broad directions and advice without defining the steps—in management terms, it is called ‘managing by outcomes’.

Prioritization

“The worst thing to do is to try to do a little bit of everything. This makes sure that nothing is being accomplished. It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.”

— Peter F Drucker

Many times you will encounter the common excuse that ‘we do not have time’. In this context it is important to see that a priority is defined and followed. The most important things to do are those that have the maximum impact in achieving your goals. A simple way to manage your time properly would be to first spend a few days in documenting all the communication flows that you encounter, how many you go through, think about and act upon and finally how many of these actually lead to a positive outcome to your goals.

Following this method for a few weeks will help you in setting up a process to identify the most important activities for you. In this context, it is inspiring to think about all the great achievers in history had actually the same number of hours per day that you have. Take the example of Leonardo da Vinci, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. A good practice that I follow, is to set aside some time each week to read about these great achievers. It does wonders in setting things in perspective.

Push for excellence

“Come to the edge.We might fall. Come to the edge. It’s too high. COME TO THE EDGE! And they came. And he pushed. And they flew.”

—Christopher Logue

An effective leader always pushes a bit harder to explore the boundaries of what is deemed possible. This push is to explore what lies beyond the obvious. An effective leader knows that by continuing to do what has been done so far, we continue to achieve whatever we have achieved so far. This push for excellence enables the effective leader to build the next set of leaders—a group of people who are willing to push the boundaries and explore horizons. In the corporate environment, one good way of addressing this would be to define stretch goals.

The effective leader does not play safe but is always looking for new ways to do old things, trying new things and finally, pushing the team to do the same. Defining and rewarding stretch goals is a good way of finding and rewarding excellence within the team.

Learning and flexibility

“... As we, the leaders, deal with tomorrow, our task is not to try to make perfect plans. Our task is to create organizations that are sufficiently flexible and versatile that they can take our imperfect plans and make them work in execution. That is the essential character of the learning organization.”

—Gordon R Sullivan and Michael V Harper

While most people in the corporate world talk about rigor, I feel that flexibility should be the main focus. In today’s dynamic change driven world, many corporations lose out in the long run because they define ‘rigor’ as one of the most important cornerstones of the organization.

This emphasis on ‘rigor’ enervates the older corporations, creating space for newer and more flexible ones to fill in the gap. The effective leader of today focuses on ‘flexibility’ instead. This is not to assert that process maturity and rigor are not important—rather, flexibility and versatility will be the key critical success factors. Any project manager you talk to will assert that requirements need to be defined well before the project is taken to execution. Any major project takes years to execute and unfortunately, the world will not stand still in the meantime!

Complementating team

“Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.”

— Dee W Hock

In this context, I would like to examine Jesus Christ’s leadership approach. Each of the apostles had very different characters and different approaches to achieving the same goals—however, with one unifying message and belief in their faith—they were able to lay the basic foundation of what is today’s largest world religion. Jesus did not select a set of people who behaved like him, rather he understood that each of his chosen team had specific roles to play and could leverage their strengths. Today’s effective leader has to follow the same principles—to define the vision for the group and then build a team whose collective strength can address the primary goals of the organization.

Building leadership

“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”

— Ralph Nader

The lasting contribution of an effective leader is to build a team of good leaders capable of taking the organization to greater heights when the leader will not be around. This is how I differentiate between a ‘good’ and a ‘great’ leader. The desire of a truly great leader is to build other leaders who will outperform him/her. The effective leader spends time and energy in building up leaders to carry on.

Conclusion

Effective commonsense leadership is exactly what it reads—a common sense approach to leading people. It is important to understand that though the style of leadership varies across individuals, the basic principles remain the same. In today’s global corporate world, it requires an appreciation of the very diversity they operate in, a willingness to learn, the humility to explore our self, and finally, focus on what we want to achieve.

Amitava Sengupta can be contacted at a171070@yahoo.com