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