Leadership positions are not for "people pleasers". Because real leaders have a personal vision for the way they want their world to be, they are focused on doing the right thing to make their vision a reality. Since any vision involves change, it also inevitably means that some of the old rules will be broken and the existing "establishment" or the traditional way of doing things will be challenged.
This lesson in leadership is distilled from the gospel of Luke where Jesus announces his vision and mission in his "home church". His vision challenged the traditional wisdom that being Jewish alone made a person more valuable to God than the Gentiles. Talk about bombshells--Jesus launched his mission with a bang! He also first articulates the timeless truth "no prophet is ever welcome in his home town" just before the Nazareans, the people who had known him since birth, run him out of town.
Everett Rogers classic research into the adoption of innovation sheds some light on this incident. Rogers evaluated more than 1800 studies looking into the way in which new ideas and technologies are adopted, and then classified the various types of responses to these changes into 5 groups of people. His groups are:
1. Innovators (2.5%)
2. Early adopters (13%)
3. Early majority (34%)
4. Late majority (34%)
5. "Loyal defenders of the present" (16%)
It is most likely that members of this last group led the charge in running Jesus out of Nazareth. As Everett clearly proved, in any large group, nearly 1 in 6 people will actively resist ANY change proposed by a visionary leader (or anyone else). Jesus, being a supremely insightful leader, did not stay to debate or persuade these people; rather, he left town!
Contrast this strategy to those of most "leaders" in organizations large and small. When a new initiative of some kind is announced at some "all hands" meeting, there is nearly always an opportunity for questions. Of those asking the questions, most will be members of the "loyal defenders of the present" faction, and they will be passionate and persistent in expressing their views and challenging the new plan, process, or whatever. Both during and after the meeting, the "people pleasers" in the leadership team will devote endless hours to trying to get these vocal opponents "on board", to no effect.
These ineffective leaders take the opposition to change personally, and frequently express the opinion that their inability to get "everyone" to sign on is a personal failure of their leadership ability. It is, but not in the way they think. It is a failure to understand that some people never change, and don't want to, period. Visionary leaders focus their efforts on those who are interested, not on those who are resistant.
So here are the lessons:
First, all leaders have or develop a substantial group of opponents by virtue of the fact that they have a vision for change and are inspired talk about it.
Second, visionary leaders don't waste energy trying to convince the unconvincable. They move on.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Walking the Walk: Leadership Lessons of the World's Greatest Leader--list of lessons
Walking the Walk: Leadership Lessons of the World's Greatest Leader is a work in progress, but I have drafted a list of the lessons learned from the Gospel of Luke. Each of the lessons will be explained in a separate post over the next few months, along with additional business stories and analysis from the leadership literature. The first lesson and introduction were posted earlier, the entire list follows:
The Lessons:
1. Visionary leaders have a vision before they begin.
2. Visionary leaders make some people angry, especially those who are "loyal defenders of the present".
3. Visionary leaders don't waste time trying to convince the un-persuadable,they move on to those who want to listen.
4. Visionary leaders are forthright, confident, and authoritative.
5. Visionary leaders avoid personal celebrity that would interfere with their mission.
6. Visionary leaders recruit loyal followers by giving them a purpose that's essential to enabling the vision, and confidence to step out on a new path.
7. Visionary leaders work with those who want to learn and be changed.
8. Visionary leaders form relationships with other leaders who have different values.
9. Visionary leaders have a sense of urgency.
10. Visionary leaders lead by telling stories with a message (parables).
11. Visionary leaders defend their followers from attacks from the "loyal defenders of the present".
12. Visionary leaders reinterpret the old truths and give them a new twist consistent with the new vision.
13. Visionary leaders, after careful contemplation, select a small core-leadership team that is diverse and committed to the vision.
14. Visionary leaders clearly articulate the values that they believe.
15. Visionary leaders publicly praise and reward those who exemplify the visionary values in action.
16. Visionary leaders rely on the support of their followers.
17. Visionary leaders mentor their leadership team and answer their questions about how to lead.
18. Visionary leaders act on their vision but when the change they bring frightens people, visionary leaders don't struggle to overcome the opposition, they move on and leave a follower to carry the message.
19. Visionary leaders, after a period of mentoring, give their leadership team a mission at a formal ceremony, including the authority to carry out the mission, a set of values to live up to as leaders as they work to further the vision.
20. Visionary leaders promote action learning; after a period of time in action, leadership teams return to their leader to report and for a leadership retreat.
21. Visionary leaders retreat from daily distractions to have conversations with their leadership team about their understanding of the vision, mission, purpose and values.
22. Visionary leaders keep their followers focused on the vision and the mission not the past or other distractions.
23. Visionary leaders select future leaders, give them partners, and send them out with a clear mission in service of the vision.
24. Visionary leaders keep their focus on their vision and the core leadership team that will make it happen, reinforcing the message at every opportunity.
25. Visionary leaders sometimes take dramatic action to demonstrate their core values in action and continue to reinforce the message about the vision, purpose, and values.
26. Visionary leaders refuse to be suckered into pointless debates with those opposed to the vision.
27. Visionary leaders follow through with their vision and carry out their mission regardless of the personal cost.
28. Visionary leaders empower the core leadership team to carry on with the vision and mission after they leave.
Copyright 2009 Kevin Karlson JD PhD
All rights reserved.
The Lessons:
1. Visionary leaders have a vision before they begin.
2. Visionary leaders make some people angry, especially those who are "loyal defenders of the present".
3. Visionary leaders don't waste time trying to convince the un-persuadable,they move on to those who want to listen.
4. Visionary leaders are forthright, confident, and authoritative.
5. Visionary leaders avoid personal celebrity that would interfere with their mission.
6. Visionary leaders recruit loyal followers by giving them a purpose that's essential to enabling the vision, and confidence to step out on a new path.
7. Visionary leaders work with those who want to learn and be changed.
8. Visionary leaders form relationships with other leaders who have different values.
9. Visionary leaders have a sense of urgency.
10. Visionary leaders lead by telling stories with a message (parables).
11. Visionary leaders defend their followers from attacks from the "loyal defenders of the present".
12. Visionary leaders reinterpret the old truths and give them a new twist consistent with the new vision.
13. Visionary leaders, after careful contemplation, select a small core-leadership team that is diverse and committed to the vision.
14. Visionary leaders clearly articulate the values that they believe.
15. Visionary leaders publicly praise and reward those who exemplify the visionary values in action.
16. Visionary leaders rely on the support of their followers.
17. Visionary leaders mentor their leadership team and answer their questions about how to lead.
18. Visionary leaders act on their vision but when the change they bring frightens people, visionary leaders don't struggle to overcome the opposition, they move on and leave a follower to carry the message.
19. Visionary leaders, after a period of mentoring, give their leadership team a mission at a formal ceremony, including the authority to carry out the mission, a set of values to live up to as leaders as they work to further the vision.
20. Visionary leaders promote action learning; after a period of time in action, leadership teams return to their leader to report and for a leadership retreat.
21. Visionary leaders retreat from daily distractions to have conversations with their leadership team about their understanding of the vision, mission, purpose and values.
22. Visionary leaders keep their followers focused on the vision and the mission not the past or other distractions.
23. Visionary leaders select future leaders, give them partners, and send them out with a clear mission in service of the vision.
24. Visionary leaders keep their focus on their vision and the core leadership team that will make it happen, reinforcing the message at every opportunity.
25. Visionary leaders sometimes take dramatic action to demonstrate their core values in action and continue to reinforce the message about the vision, purpose, and values.
26. Visionary leaders refuse to be suckered into pointless debates with those opposed to the vision.
27. Visionary leaders follow through with their vision and carry out their mission regardless of the personal cost.
28. Visionary leaders empower the core leadership team to carry on with the vision and mission after they leave.
Copyright 2009 Kevin Karlson JD PhD
All rights reserved.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Law Firm Leadership: How Vision and Communication Create Greater ROI
Only two business challenges make law firm management into a daily headache: ineffective communication and mediocre leadership. I firmly believe that neither is necessary nor inevitable, and and I have seen for myself how some relatively simple strategies and tools can have a huge impact on the people and organizations now hampered by these very common challenges. Ironically, law firms seem to have the greatest difficulty with these two tasks, even though the organizations are full of smart people with above average communication skills.
That "vision thing"... the ROI is huge!
It is now generally accepted that a lack of a clearly articulated, shared vision for the future of an organization leads to results that are at least 30% below the performance of a comparable organization with a well-understood, shared, vision for the future in a typical year. In fact, Kotter and Heskett, two Harvard Business School profs found the difference in corporate performance between businesses with a clear and well understood vision and those without one was more than 900% over a 10 period for Fortune 500 companies that they studied! Here's a link to the book at Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/0029184673 Vision matters.
Vision + Communication = Leadership
And how does a dream become a shared vision? Through open, constant, repeated, talking and listening-effective communication. The most effective leaders in any domain-business, government, the military, the church-all share this important leadership skill. These leaders have a personal vision for the organization, they have a story, and they tell it over and over again. This inspirational story-telling is always balanced by an equally well-developed ability to listen, not just to the words they hear, but to the emotional themes they sense in the undercurrents of these interactions. Vision and communication create corporate culture.
Being in a position with formal authority does not automatically make the position-holder a leader-a manager, perhaps; an autocrat, far too often; an authority, certainly; a leader, only rarely-when vision and communication come together. This seldom happens by accident, and to be sustained, requires planning, persistence, and purpose.
Send me your stories and questions
For more than 30 years, I have been involved in helping people learn to communicate more effectively-as a therapist, leadership coach, management consultant, litgation consultant, and professor in law, psychology, and business communication. I have had the privilege to learn from many inspirational and insightful people, and some of them were experts, like Peter Senge, while most of them were clients, students, and colleagues. Those generous souls with the courage to talk about both their victories and defeats have taught me the most, and this space is my way of sharing that generosity.
Lead on!
That "vision thing"... the ROI is huge!
It is now generally accepted that a lack of a clearly articulated, shared vision for the future of an organization leads to results that are at least 30% below the performance of a comparable organization with a well-understood, shared, vision for the future in a typical year. In fact, Kotter and Heskett, two Harvard Business School profs found the difference in corporate performance between businesses with a clear and well understood vision and those without one was more than 900% over a 10 period for Fortune 500 companies that they studied! Here's a link to the book at Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/0029184673 Vision matters.
Vision + Communication = Leadership
And how does a dream become a shared vision? Through open, constant, repeated, talking and listening-effective communication. The most effective leaders in any domain-business, government, the military, the church-all share this important leadership skill. These leaders have a personal vision for the organization, they have a story, and they tell it over and over again. This inspirational story-telling is always balanced by an equally well-developed ability to listen, not just to the words they hear, but to the emotional themes they sense in the undercurrents of these interactions. Vision and communication create corporate culture.
Being in a position with formal authority does not automatically make the position-holder a leader-a manager, perhaps; an autocrat, far too often; an authority, certainly; a leader, only rarely-when vision and communication come together. This seldom happens by accident, and to be sustained, requires planning, persistence, and purpose.
Send me your stories and questions
For more than 30 years, I have been involved in helping people learn to communicate more effectively-as a therapist, leadership coach, management consultant, litgation consultant, and professor in law, psychology, and business communication. I have had the privilege to learn from many inspirational and insightful people, and some of them were experts, like Peter Senge, while most of them were clients, students, and colleagues. Those generous souls with the courage to talk about both their victories and defeats have taught me the most, and this space is my way of sharing that generosity.
Lead on!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Walking the Walk: Have a vision before you begin
Leaders have a vision before they begin
(Luke 4: 16-21—all quotations from The Message by Eugene Peterson 2002)
16-21He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God's Spirit is on me;
he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, "You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place."
Jesus understood the importance of God’s vision for him, and his mission in the world, and chose to announce both on his home turf—the temple in Nazareth where he grew up. He also understood the importance of integrating the past, present, and future into his vision, and of announcing his personal and spiritual commitment to implementing that vision in the present.
Notice how Jesus communicates the “launch” of his incredible “venture”. First, he makes it clear that this is a personal “God thing” without explanation or apology: God’s Spirit is on me. Second, he lays out his mission clearly and simply: to preach…,to announce…, to set …free, and to announce…. No long speeches, no “go team, we can do this together” fanfare, no heavenly chorus, no miracles—nothing to distract from the simple elegance of this powerful announcement.
To put this in historical and social context, normally the traditional order of worship in the temple would lead to a sermon based on the prophetic text after the reading. Jesus limits his sermon to two short sentences, and then stops, further heightening the dramatic impact of his incredible announcement in front his friends and family. There is little doubt that a hypothetical headline in the hometown newspaper “Local Boy Makes Good” can’t even begin to describe the reaction of the hometown crowd to Jesus startling claim. To say that people were talking when they left the temple that day would be an understatement, I am sure. He knew that in this instance, less was certainly more.
Like Jesus, we all have a part in God’s big vision for the world, and a unique mission to fulfill in making that vision a reality. Our challenge is to be as attuned as Jesus was to our own unique missions and to be as trusting as Jesus was that the Father will provide us with the tools we need to be successful, even when we don’t know exactly what we should be doing or how to accomplish the tasks we know that need to be done.
But it all starts with a compelling vision.
(Luke 4: 16-21—all quotations from The Message by Eugene Peterson 2002)
16-21He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God's Spirit is on me;
he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, "You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place."
Jesus understood the importance of God’s vision for him, and his mission in the world, and chose to announce both on his home turf—the temple in Nazareth where he grew up. He also understood the importance of integrating the past, present, and future into his vision, and of announcing his personal and spiritual commitment to implementing that vision in the present.
Notice how Jesus communicates the “launch” of his incredible “venture”. First, he makes it clear that this is a personal “God thing” without explanation or apology: God’s Spirit is on me. Second, he lays out his mission clearly and simply: to preach…,to announce…, to set …free, and to announce…. No long speeches, no “go team, we can do this together” fanfare, no heavenly chorus, no miracles—nothing to distract from the simple elegance of this powerful announcement.
To put this in historical and social context, normally the traditional order of worship in the temple would lead to a sermon based on the prophetic text after the reading. Jesus limits his sermon to two short sentences, and then stops, further heightening the dramatic impact of his incredible announcement in front his friends and family. There is little doubt that a hypothetical headline in the hometown newspaper “Local Boy Makes Good” can’t even begin to describe the reaction of the hometown crowd to Jesus startling claim. To say that people were talking when they left the temple that day would be an understatement, I am sure. He knew that in this instance, less was certainly more.
Like Jesus, we all have a part in God’s big vision for the world, and a unique mission to fulfill in making that vision a reality. Our challenge is to be as attuned as Jesus was to our own unique missions and to be as trusting as Jesus was that the Father will provide us with the tools we need to be successful, even when we don’t know exactly what we should be doing or how to accomplish the tasks we know that need to be done.
But it all starts with a compelling vision.
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