As it turns out the first guest speaker for my HKUST course, aimed at full-time international MBA students, was from Silicon Valley and has spoken in my SCU courses on many occasions. Ken Wilcox, CEO/President of Silicon Valley Financial Services, was in Hong Kong visiting with some of their local executives and customers and made the time to stop by and share his perspectives on leadership, in the segment we call “Being a Leader – Personal Perspectives on Leading by Leaders.”
He started by pointing out how his own views of leadership are influenced by where he grew up: Flint, Michigan, which has been tied to the fortunes of the automobile industry for many years (and GM in particular). For example, Ken doesn’t believe in layoffs (which is the reality of what life was like growing up with the auto industry being the dominant employer in your community). GM laid people off in bad times and hired them again in good times. Ken’s view was that GM, in particular, lost its leadership position through negligence (and some arrogance) because their leaders stopped paying attention to their competitive environment. The counterpoint was his own father’s advice: “Look at life from other people’s perspectives rather than from your own or even for yourself alone.”
“The fate of organizations is more dependent upon leadership than anything else,” claimed Ken. And, he believed that anyone can be a leader, that it is learned. The problem for organizations, however, he said, was that too often people got promoted because they were great at doing something (functionally or technologically) rather than because they were good at leadership. What’s required if you are to be a leader, according to Ken, is that you (a) need a vision (“stand for something”) and (b) a genuine appreciation for people (“people won’t follow someone who doesn’t care about them.”). After these there are some technical skills one can learn to help you do the job as a leader but the first two have to come from within. Finally, Ken maintained that the primary responsibility of a leader is to communicate with people – about where we are headed (the future), where we’ve come from (the past) and how we are doing right now (the present).
On final insight was Ken’s “Rule of 3.” He said that about one-third of the people will buy your vision, one-third won’t, and the final third are just “not sure.” So his advice was to put your energy into working with the first third so that the ones in the middle (“not sure”) who desire that same attention from you will move in the direction of your vision. If you try to change the minds of the people who don’t “buy-in” than you risk losing the ones in the middle and you probably won’t change any of the former, so this becomes simply a lose-lose situation for leaders.
Finally, Ken reminded us that “lending money” is mostly a people-oriented business. After all, he said, it was “people who pay you back, not assets, collateral, and the like.”
It was an exciting beginning to the class. Thanks to Ken for sharing his perspective and insights.
We’re excited to see what Halloween brings us ... in Hong Kong! Hope you and yours are not haunted.
Barry
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Mastering the Art of Leadership
One of the points Jim Kouzes and I have made is that leaders are great learners. Part of this happens naturally because of their willingness to be open to new ideas and to remain in awe of the world and people around them. Indeed, we never know where our next inspirations will come from (i.e., leadership opportunities).
For example, did you happen to see the recent movie “Julie and Julia”? A lovely movie (a New York Times Critics’ Pick) and it got us (Jackie especially) to go back and look at Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France. Her perspective on learning to cook is a lot like what it takes to learn to lead:
This is my invariable advice to people: learn how to cook -- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun” (p. 328).
No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. No one is born a great leader, one learns by doing.
The NYT’s reviewer offered this additional observation. She notes that the title of Julia Child’s book is:
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking” — not “How To” or “Made Easy” or “For Dummies,” but “Mastering the Art.” In other words, cooking that omelet is part of a demanding, exalted discipline not to be entered into frivolously or casually. But at the same time: You can do it. It is a matter of technique, of skill, of practice.
On Saturday, I finished up the leadership course I had been teaching in Shenzhen, primarily to first and second-level managers (a few divisional and general managers, as well). Since then I’ve received a number of very gracious emails from the students about the seminar, along these lines:
I would like to thank you again for teaching us great lessons about leadership and how to become a better leader. I expect that with intentional practice we can become someone's most admired leader.
And that’s precisely the point that Jim Kouzes, Julia Child and Barry Posner, among others, have been making over and over again. You can learn to lead. You can become a better leader. But no one says that it will be easy, or that you will get it right every time (almost never the first time), or even that you won’t get fired some time along the way. “Mastering the Art of Leadership” sounds like a good title for our next book.
Hope all is well in your part of the world.
Barry
For example, did you happen to see the recent movie “Julie and Julia”? A lovely movie (a New York Times Critics’ Pick) and it got us (Jackie especially) to go back and look at Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France. Her perspective on learning to cook is a lot like what it takes to learn to lead:
This is my invariable advice to people: learn how to cook -- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun” (p. 328).
No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. No one is born a great leader, one learns by doing.
The NYT’s reviewer offered this additional observation. She notes that the title of Julia Child’s book is:
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking” — not “How To” or “Made Easy” or “For Dummies,” but “Mastering the Art.” In other words, cooking that omelet is part of a demanding, exalted discipline not to be entered into frivolously or casually. But at the same time: You can do it. It is a matter of technique, of skill, of practice.
On Saturday, I finished up the leadership course I had been teaching in Shenzhen, primarily to first and second-level managers (a few divisional and general managers, as well). Since then I’ve received a number of very gracious emails from the students about the seminar, along these lines:
I would like to thank you again for teaching us great lessons about leadership and how to become a better leader. I expect that with intentional practice we can become someone's most admired leader.
And that’s precisely the point that Jim Kouzes, Julia Child and Barry Posner, among others, have been making over and over again. You can learn to lead. You can become a better leader. But no one says that it will be easy, or that you will get it right every time (almost never the first time), or even that you won’t get fired some time along the way. “Mastering the Art of Leadership” sounds like a good title for our next book.
Hope all is well in your part of the world.
Barry
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Leadership: Relationships, Roles and Responsibilities
Caroline Wang was the guest speaker in my Shenzhen class this past weekend. She was once the highest ranking Chinese female executive for IBM, having served previously as CMO (Asia Pacific) and CIO (responsible for the Y2K conversation), and now serves as an IBM “partner” working as an advisor for several of their key clients (e.g., Haier). She had been introduced to The Leadership Challenge over 20 years ago and has found it an invaluable approach to making a difference. Indeed, she explained to the class, comprised mostly of technically-trained managers, that it is precisely the “soft skills that differentiate people from one another.” She also made it clear that she believed “while leaders may be born, leadership is made... because it is not about personality but about their behavior that matters.”
Caroline also extended our understanding when she explained that while “Kouzes and Posner correctly say that leadership is a relationship, they need to add two additional R’s to their statement: Roles and Responsibilities.” Relationships vary, she said, depending upon our role in the situation and our responsibility. For example, she said that she was a wife to her husband, a sister to her siblings, a subordinate to her boss, and a leader to her reports, and she needed to make certain not to confuse her relationships given these roles and responsibilities. For example, not being a wife to her boss, a sister to her direct reports, or a boss to her husband.
Her motto with her reports and associates, and for herself, was to “pursue excellence and allow mistakes and demand progress.” She felt her leadership responsibility was to “help others to succeed” but that she always demanded progress (“add value or be out of the way.”). She provided this advice for developing leaders, which she adopted over and over again in her own career, and that was to ask from her managers two questions: “What does it take to get the highest evaluation? Will you help me?”
From the Personal Best Leadership case studies generated from these Chinese managers (students) we, once again, found that everyone had a story to tell and that their actions as leaders were much more similar than different in spite of the context and circumstances of their challenges. In analyzing their Leadership Practice Inventory responses and “Survey of Workplace Feelings” this week (which I will share with them on Saturday) statistically significant differences were found (even more significant given the relatively small sample size). Those who were more active and engaged as leaders than their colleagues were also more positive and engaged in their workplaces (e.g., proud, committed, motivated, and satisfied).
This weekend (Saturday and Sunday) we’ll focus on energies on building skills as leaders, through practice and coaching. Their assignment is to bring examples to class from this week of the impact of people engaging in the Five Practices (well and even poorly). One last piece of empirical data: Encouraging the Heart was their second most frequent leadership practice.
Hope all is well.
Barry
Caroline also extended our understanding when she explained that while “Kouzes and Posner correctly say that leadership is a relationship, they need to add two additional R’s to their statement: Roles and Responsibilities.” Relationships vary, she said, depending upon our role in the situation and our responsibility. For example, she said that she was a wife to her husband, a sister to her siblings, a subordinate to her boss, and a leader to her reports, and she needed to make certain not to confuse her relationships given these roles and responsibilities. For example, not being a wife to her boss, a sister to her direct reports, or a boss to her husband.
Her motto with her reports and associates, and for herself, was to “pursue excellence and allow mistakes and demand progress.” She felt her leadership responsibility was to “help others to succeed” but that she always demanded progress (“add value or be out of the way.”). She provided this advice for developing leaders, which she adopted over and over again in her own career, and that was to ask from her managers two questions: “What does it take to get the highest evaluation? Will you help me?”
From the Personal Best Leadership case studies generated from these Chinese managers (students) we, once again, found that everyone had a story to tell and that their actions as leaders were much more similar than different in spite of the context and circumstances of their challenges. In analyzing their Leadership Practice Inventory responses and “Survey of Workplace Feelings” this week (which I will share with them on Saturday) statistically significant differences were found (even more significant given the relatively small sample size). Those who were more active and engaged as leaders than their colleagues were also more positive and engaged in their workplaces (e.g., proud, committed, motivated, and satisfied).
This weekend (Saturday and Sunday) we’ll focus on energies on building skills as leaders, through practice and coaching. Their assignment is to bring examples to class from this week of the impact of people engaging in the Five Practices (well and even poorly). One last piece of empirical data: Encouraging the Heart was their second most frequent leadership practice.
Hope all is well.
Barry
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Getting Ready to Get Started
I have my first class this weekend, which I am both excited about and somewhat anxious. But more on that next week.
I appreciated the comments from my friend Patrick Connor (professor emeritus, Willamette University) who said that he was especially amused at the concluding thought in my previous blog ( “We know how to do leadership.”). He told me that he found himself saying something quite similar, after giving an organization change seminar for a few years, winding up the course with “Hey, folks, we know how to do org change. Everybody's got his or her 6 rules for effective change, 10 stages of successful change, whatever. They all say pretty much the same thing.” But what he remembered was a fellow he had heard speak at a conference who asked the audience: “How many of you know how to lose weight? Raise your hands.” Lots of hands were raised -- everybody’s, in fact. Then the speaker asked: “How many of you are 5 pounds or more heavier than you would like to be?” And, of course, there’s the rub, right? The gap between what we know and what we do.
I had lunch the other day with a senior executive who spoke with me about his leadership style as being a blend of “Chinese upbringing, Confucianism spirituality, and 30 years of work experience with an American-based company.” He maintained that while these three were each important, they were not at all in conflict with one another. What he concluded was that integrity (and being integrated) was central to being authentic in his position and self.
In a similar way, one of my current EMBA students at Santa Clara, recently wrote: “I want to share with you that I absolutely love this topic. International leadership is my passion. I know that I have a different way to look at stuff. I always use a holistic approach, which confuses a lot of people. But I believe in me and my style, and I want to keep working on it.” This from a women born and raised in Argentina, educated in the United States, and with years of work experience based in both the Netherlands and Spain.
This weekend I start teaching in the PRC (People’s Republic of China). The class, with 50 second-year MBA students, begins at 9:30 a.m. and finishes at 6:30 p.m. Their pre-class assignment was to prepare a “Personal Best Leadership” case study. Should be interesting, as we struggle to put into practice what we already know needs to be done (the knowing and doing leadership gap, and the challenge of being “as one”).
All the best,
Barry
I appreciated the comments from my friend Patrick Connor (professor emeritus, Willamette University) who said that he was especially amused at the concluding thought in my previous blog ( “We know how to do leadership.”). He told me that he found himself saying something quite similar, after giving an organization change seminar for a few years, winding up the course with “Hey, folks, we know how to do org change. Everybody's got his or her 6 rules for effective change, 10 stages of successful change, whatever. They all say pretty much the same thing.” But what he remembered was a fellow he had heard speak at a conference who asked the audience: “How many of you know how to lose weight? Raise your hands.” Lots of hands were raised -- everybody’s, in fact. Then the speaker asked: “How many of you are 5 pounds or more heavier than you would like to be?” And, of course, there’s the rub, right? The gap between what we know and what we do.
I had lunch the other day with a senior executive who spoke with me about his leadership style as being a blend of “Chinese upbringing, Confucianism spirituality, and 30 years of work experience with an American-based company.” He maintained that while these three were each important, they were not at all in conflict with one another. What he concluded was that integrity (and being integrated) was central to being authentic in his position and self.
In a similar way, one of my current EMBA students at Santa Clara, recently wrote: “I want to share with you that I absolutely love this topic. International leadership is my passion. I know that I have a different way to look at stuff. I always use a holistic approach, which confuses a lot of people. But I believe in me and my style, and I want to keep working on it.” This from a women born and raised in Argentina, educated in the United States, and with years of work experience based in both the Netherlands and Spain.
This weekend I start teaching in the PRC (People’s Republic of China). The class, with 50 second-year MBA students, begins at 9:30 a.m. and finishes at 6:30 p.m. Their pre-class assignment was to prepare a “Personal Best Leadership” case study. Should be interesting, as we struggle to put into practice what we already know needs to be done (the knowing and doing leadership gap, and the challenge of being “as one”).
All the best,
Barry
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