At some point in the rise of the modern leadership movement, and the ensuing profit-making industry, leadership and management were set on divergent courses, with leadership presented as the brilliant star and management as the subservient drudges.

The results of this extreme focus on vision and influence are being felt globally in the form of the economic meltdown led by the Wall Street leadership who were above the mundane and wouldn’t dirty their hands with the gritty details of management.

In a brilliant opinion piece, Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University, founding partner of Coaching Ourselves and author of numerous, says, “U.S. businesses now have too many leaders who are detached from the messy process of managing. So they don’t know what’s going on. … Unfortunately, detached leaders tend to be more concerned with impressing outsiders than managing within. “

The current rise in advanced degrees in leadership can do nothing more than exacerbate the already dangerous attitude that so-called leaders are different/unique/special and, therefore, entitled.

And it is that sense of entitlement, exemplified so well by John Thain, that got us into this mess.

Those who want only to lead should become consultants and stay out of line positions, executive or not, where they can do so much damage.

Consultants are paid for visions, excel at influencing and then walk away bearing absolutely no responsibility for the results.

When will we stop this nonsense and accept that, depending on circumstances anyone can lead, anyone can follow, the positions aren’t cast in stone forever and the whole shebang needs to be managed along the way.

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One of the greatest mistakes that managers make is buying into the belief that being in charge means being in control.

Both views start before that first promotion and are influenced by how they are managed and their reaction to it.

As with kids who are raised by a compulsive neat nick, they typically grow up either emulating that trait or totally rebel and become slobs.

Being in charge means taking responsibility for the myriad of things needed to accomplish the goals assigned to their group. That includes the actual goals, acquisition of new talent, care, feeding and professional growth of the team, maintenance and improvement of the physical environment, culture and anything else that comes up.

Control leads down a different path—one geared to power, restriction, manipulation, domination and even oppression.

Yes, the managers you had before promotion influence you, but it is your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that makes the choice of which road to follow—just because you work for Attila The Hun doesn’t mean you have to do it the same way.

And even if you did head down the control path that doesn’t mean you have to stay on it the rest of your days.

You can change; you can always change; like an alcoholic who chooses sobriety you can choose to go from controlling your team to being in charge of it.

If you do make that choice expect to find yourself working less and accomplishing more; having more fun and achieving greater personal satisfaction; having less turnover and receiving better reviews and being the manager for whom everyone wants to work.

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This might come as a shock, but there is no Eleventh Commandment stating, “Thou shalt place thy career above all things in thy life and draw all sustenance, mental and spiritual as well as economic, from it.”

For decades I’ve held (and preached) the career-as-part-of-life MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) as opposed to the reverse. Life is LARGE; career is but a small part of the whole.  A major problem is created when the adjectives (and, therefore, the attitudes) are reversed.

Steve Roesler has a great post on a better way to look at your work and your life.

“The issue of work-life balance is about what kind of a life you want to have. Work plays a part in that. Decisions that you make about life determine how much work and what kind of work you do. Spending time getting clear about who you are and how you are talented is time well-spent. You may not even like the answer at first. It may conflict with expectations from you, your family, the community, and even society at large.

Maybe that’s the place to start. For those who work best with a label, perhaps Life Integration would offer a better target than Work-Life Balance.”

I like that—Life Integration.

Very few people choose how to die, but too many don’t choose how to live.

They allow the expectations of parents, educators, friends, colleagues, movies, society-in-general and the ever ubiquitous ‘they’ to choose for them.

Most will deny this publicly, but anyone who honestly remembers the power of peer pressure in school will privately admit that it doesn’t cease to exist upon graduation; in fact the pressures increase dramatically while becoming more covert.

Few successful people care to admit that the goals for which they are working and even how they spend their non-work time are more about fitting in than personal desire.

They chase the goals and do the things that ‘everybody’ is doing in the name of being ‘with it’. And that includes “work/life balance” and “having it all right now.”

So the net time you are ready to tear your hair out STOP; stop, take a step back and honestly determine whose goals you are trying to reach.

The answer may surprise you.

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Millennials and those who study them love to position them as demanding different things from the workplace than their predecessors.

The latest is a list from LeaderTalk that describes Millennials’ Five Leadership Truths:

Truth #1 – Leadership development begins with self development; it’s about the individual; what is the first question most people want to ask a new leader?

Truth #2 – You can’t do it alone

Truth #3 – The foundation of Leadership is Credibility

Truth #4 – You either lead by example or you don’t lead at all.

Truth #5 – Being forward-looking most differentiates leaders.

Nearly two years ago Success Television listed Gen Y’s 10 main turnoffs…

1. Inflexibility.
2. Judgmental attitudes.
3. Close-mindedness.
4. Fear of and an unwillingness to use technology.
5. Unwillingness to listen to and respect Gen Y’s opinions, ideas and views.
6. Intimidation.
7. Being told they have to “pay their dues”.
8. Lack of professional and leadership development through the company.
9. Emphasis on traditional dress (coat or suit and tie are out).
10. Lack of intellectual horsepower. [By what yardstick? Miki]

Now I ask you, what on either of these lists is new? It seems to me that they are the same things that Boomers and Gen X (and previous generations) have been complaining about for years; the language changes, but the concepts aren’t new.

Sadly, I believe that the workforce will be complaining of the same types of things long after I’ve turned to dust.

Boomers and Gen X were just as much a disruptive force in the workplace-of-that-time as Millennials are today.

Granted the willingness to stick it out has shortened considerably, but even the willingness to walk if you’re not happy is based to no small degree on a healthy economy where the next job is easily available.

Add time and a few age-driven responsibilities—kids, mortgages, aging parents—to the mix and soon Millennials will be the establishment with another generation ranting about their unwillingness to change.

The demands of each generation are what forces change, both large and small, upon the workplace—always has and always will.

Hat tip to The Leadership Hub for pointing the LeaderTalk post.

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Now check out this great cultural goal

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Check out this subtle target of greed

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Yesterday I gave you an example of policy that was costing a company thousands of dollars at a time they can least afford it. That policy was seriously flawed and poorly communicated.

I frequently talk about the role of communications and why clarity is so important in management.

Think of it this way, operational communications provide people information on how to do their jobs, while management communications tell them what their jobs are and why they do them, giving form and purpose.

Problems often arise when managers are careless, sloppy or use jargon in an effort to sound sophisticated, knowledgeable and “with it.” This leads to poor or inaccurate communications and misunderstanding, because people hear those words through the filter of their own experiences and apply their own definitions.

When communicating with your team you can eliminate this by remembering why, how and the overall goal.

The WHY: to provide your people with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible.

The HOW: by providing clear, concise, and complete communications at all times.

The GOAL: to make your company more successful, your employees happier and more productive and you a more effective manager with better reviews.

Companies need to establish the same three points—why, how and the overall goal—to their policy development.

The WHY: to provide your people with all the information needed to understand the principals and mechanics required for the company to run as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible.

The HOW: by providing clear, concise, and complete communications that provide both the policy and guidelines on its implementation at all times.

The GOAL: to make your company more successful, your employees happier and more productive and your investors/stakeholders more confident in your future.

You can change confusing to clarifying with just a little effort. Is it worth it?

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Continuing with more thoughts on yesterday’s post Leadership Is Fertilizer.

Fertilizer is produced in a lab with scientists controlling which chemicals in what amount are used and then mass produce that particular formula in a factory.

Anyone who gardens knows that there are a multitude of brands that produce different fertilizers, some considered “general purpose,” but most with specific formulas to accomplish specific goals, including forcing growth.

Experts say compost is a better choice.

Compost is natural, produced when multiple kinds of organic matter are brought together and left to decompose with the aid of a variety of organisms. The result is an incredibly rich material that produces sustainable results without damaging the environment.

Leadership is similar.

You have the kind that is produced in colleges and MBA programs, learned in a sterile environment, with ingredients that parallel the thinking of selected experts’ mindsets and attitudes. Thus, the student is indoctrinated in a set of specifics and is often prejudiced against anything that falls outside those boundaries.

Leadership learned through doing—taking the initiative and accepting the risk of failure—is different. It combines a variety of experiences, good, bad and indifferent and adds a variety of organisms in the form of the varied humans that populate the organization. The effect of those organisms on the experiences of individual initiative produces a deeper, richer, more flexible form of leadership.

Chemical fertilizer needs to be applied again and again as it wears out.

Compost mixes with and enriches the soil itself, so that the more you add the better the growth medium.

In which do you want to plant your people?

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How do you set policy at your company?

In Saturday’s links we have an example of just how badly companies write policy.

“His severance package gave him 6 months salary guaranteed, plus a 3 month extension if he still hadn’t found a job at the end of the 6 months. The culture of the company is such that most people just don’t notify the company when they find a new job, and so end up getting the full 9 months of severance. As a manager, he told people he had to lay off to do this (not report their new job), and his manager told him the same thing. He recently met with a former HR manager who is also now laid off from his former company and she is doing the same thing…not telling and just collecting the extra 3 months. She says it is common practice.”

The numbers are nothing to sneeze at, for an executive at $100K annually that’s 50 thousand dollars; Assuming it’s the same at all levels, a far more junior person, say $40K/yr, its ten grand. Even today that pays the mortgage for several months.

Sure, it’s unethical to take the money, but it’s also appears to be common practice in this company. It’s difficult to believe that the company, in the form or the CFO or someone else in finance, isn’t aware of what’s going on; HR certainly must know, since one of its own is doing it.

Who writes a policy such as this? Maybe HR, but since it involves severance it would be signed off by finance and, depending on the size of the company, the CEO.

So the question becomes WHY? Why would the executive team approve a policy that could cost the company tens of thousands of dollars when it could least afford it?

WHAT were they thinking? Two things come to my mind…

• The board favored a stingy severance package (although six months doesn’t seem stingy) and this was management’s way around that; or
• management is completely asleep at the wheel.

What do you think?

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To thrive in today’s world companies need to constantly innovate; innovation requires initiative; initiative is another word for leadership.

Because initiative and leadership are synonymous, leadership needs to be pushed out of the corner office and spread throughout the organization; doing so will encourage growth, creativity and innovation.

If leadership is the fertilizer then culture is the water, without which nothing will grow, and people are the seeds from which ideas come.

By spreading leadership evenly through out your company garden and watering regularly, leaving no unfertilized or dry patches in which a seed will be stunted or die, you assure yourself a bountiful harvest that will be the envy of your competitors.

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Remember to share your favorite business OMG moments for the chance to win a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running. The contest ends August 31.

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