Last week we talked about being an original; now let’s look at something that underlies several of the items on Bennis’ list.
Among the 13 things that leaders do are investigate reality, ask what and why, and challenge the status quo. They may sound different, but the same action underlies each one.
The ability to do all three of these means that you do not make assumptions (the ‘A’ in AMS).
What will you find if you start your investigation from the viewpoint that certain parts have more validity than others?
How can you hear all the input when questioning the premise of an action if you are predisposed to hear one thing (or person) above another?
How can you challenge, let alone upset, what currently is if you blindly accept any of its underlying premises?
Typically, assumptions are buried in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and require a heightened level of self-awareness to recognize them. With effort, it’s possible to build an automatic MAP monitoring system that sends a warning when assumptions start creeping into your actions. Remember, assumptions are insidious, sneaky and often masquerade as common sense/logical thinking.
For instance, you are assuming if you
evaluate/judge a speaker based on looks, clothes, position, cohorts, even reputation;
request information, but already have your position roughed out; or
consider your ideology inviolate and not open to question.
Ridding yourself of assumptions is difficult; in fact, it’s one of the most difficult skills you’ll ever develop, but you can develop it by staying aware of your own thoughts and being brutally honest with yourself.
Assumptions blind you so you cannot see and deafen you so you cannot hear.
There’s a ton of stuff on the Net about leadership, not to mention miles of books, hours of podcasts and days of videos. And a lot of it is very good stuff, even when its focus is on the people out front—or those who want to be.
So how does that fit in with my constant harping that leadership isn’t positional and the skills are for everybody?
Simple; just sort through the skills and intelligence offered, tweak it as needed and apply it to all parts of your life.
With all that’s available, where do you start?
I thought today I’d offer up links to new, or slightly off the typical search path, material. These links take you to massive learning resources. I hope you’ll come back and let me know if you find them useful.
Have you ever wished that you could go back to school? Have the luxury to take course with professors at a top university?
Few working people can do that, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the best. Check out these links; find more at almost every university’s site.
MIT Open Courseware that offers lecture notes, exams, and videos of all MIT courses totally free. It may not count for credit, but you certainly can improve your skills and knowledge in countless ways!
No question, men and women think differently—at work, at home and in every other situation.
And for years the argument has raged as to which approach is better; which thinking clearer; which to follow.
When ignored, the differences are the basis for miscommunication and the resultant misunderstandings, dissatisfaction, frustration and anger.
In rare shows of common sense, some companies focus on understanding the differences, sharing the intelligence across their workforce and creating a stronger corporate culture that takes advantage of both sets of styles and skills. The result is more employee satisfaction, improved productivity, and better retention—all direct contributions to the bottom line.
If you’d like to get a handle on this Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business is a good place to start. Authored by Michael Gurian, best-selling The Wonder of Boys, and Barbara Annis, a top consultant on gender issues, the book provide and in depth look at two decades of both scientific research and real-world anecdotal evidence that different isn’t better or worse, or, as Gurian says, “I think what we’ve been able to prove over the last 20 years is that there is not superiority or inferiority.”
Homogeny isn’t good, especially in business. To interact and do commerce with the real world requires not only diversity of thought—gender, racial, ethnic—but respect for and the ability to interact and work together for a common goal.
The major part of Leadership And The Sexes is in the form of five gender tools that walk you through a process to help you understand the differences and effectively deal with them.
GenderTool 1 Improving Your Negotiating Skills with Both Genders
GenderTool 2 Running a Gender-Balanced Meeting
GenderTool 3 Improving Your Communication Skills with Men and Women
GenderTool 4 Improving Your Conflict Resolution Skills with Men and Women
GenderTool 5 Practicing Gender-Intelligent Mentoring and Coaching in Your Corporation
Written as pure brain science the book would be much drier, but the real-world examples and anecdotes offered save it from that and make for a more relatable read.
The need to acquire gender-intelligence is undisputed, whether for your company or yourself.No matter what you do or how powerful you are gender-intelligence will help you improve.
Finally, to give you an additional inducement to dig into this subject and absorb what it offers, here’s an interview with Michael Gurian.
On a post over at Managing Leadership, Wally Bock left a great comment that’s germane to my recent posts and to the notion that the idea of ‘leadership’ has been corrupted by the leadership business and the media.
“…people prefer magical thinking to accountability.”
They sure do. That magical thinking is just great for all those who don’t want the responsibility of making their own decisions. It’s wonderful to have a ‘leader’ tell you what to think and how to act. That way, when things get screwed up, it isn’t your fault; it’s the leader’s fault. You get to say, ‘S/he told me to…’ and poof—instant absolution with no strings attached.
“There’s a joke about a professor who says that a certain idea is “fine in practice but may not work in theory. We didn’t have a problem identifying who was the leader before we had leadership theory. Nobody worried about whether that Caesar fellow was a true or real or authentic leader. They just followed him.”
Caesar didn’t worry about it, either. He just did [whatever] and assumed that everyone would follow along. And follow they did, at least until he decided to make his leadership official. At that point their response was direct and very final.
We followers need to do something similar to the leadership movement; not necessarily as final, because it does have its uses.
We need to reform its thinking; recognize that leadership skills are for everyone—not just a select few—and stop it from appointing/anointing those selective few as ‘leaders’.
So, new mantra—everybody is a leader; lead yourself first and don’t worry abut the rest.
Leadership From The Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Lifeis a second edition, published on the 10th anniversary of the original.
What Kevin Cashman writes resonates whether you’re running a Fortune 100 corporation, raising a kid, or struggling to live a decent life.
As Cashman reminds us immediately, “we are the CEO’s of our own lives,” so if you read the book forgetting what you do or what you earn and focus on increasing your value to YOURSELF and those around you the book has great value.
However, if you read it as another part of a to-do list on getting ahead its value substantially declines.
Leadership From The Inside Out addresses understanding, growth and change in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) as opposed to a set of steps and check-off points in how to be a ‘leader’.
Unhappily for some, Leadership From The Inside Out requires you to not only think, but think deeply. To gain real benefits from it you’ll need to mull, cogitate and then enable change in many levels of your MAP. Doing so is neither easy nor comfortable, but it is personally rewarding and extraordinarily valuable.
The book is still more valuable if you recast some of the thoughts to broaden its scope, e.g., where Cashman asks how authentic you are as a ‘leader’, ask yourself instead how authentic you are as a human being? How authentic in your other roles—parent, friend, spouse, teacher, landlord, plumber, etc.
The book is divided into seven ‘masteries’, they are
personal mastery;
purpose mastery;
change mastery;
interpersonal mastery;
being mastery;
balance mastery; and
action mastery.
Cashman focuses on the fact that it’s not enough for you to master each of these, but that you must share them—passing them on to others within your world.
Although the book talks about executives, it’s not difficult to extend the intelligence to any level along with every-day life.
You always have to lead yourself, and you never know when you’ll have the opportunity to lead others, which makes the effort involved in truly utilizing what Cashman offers well worthwhile.
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CandidProf’s schedule requires reducing posts to every other week. Read all of CandidProf here.
Remember the bestseller All I really needed to know I learned in kindergarden? It still sells because it has a wealth of wisdom that addresses adult issues, but that most adults have forgotten.
Another font of wisdom for adult issues is Dr Seuss.
I think he has better advice on authenticity and motivation in leadership then all the pundits (including me) who blather on about it today. Best, his advice is short, sweet, easy to remember and doesn’t require any outside help to understand it—just compatible MAP.
Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) I meant what I said,
and I said what I meant
An elephant’s faithful,
One hundred percent.
Horton Hears a Who! (1954) Don’t give up! I believe in you all
A person’s a person, no matter how small!
On Beyond Zebra! (1955) I’m telling you this ’cause you’re one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
So, on beyond Z!
It’s high time you were shown
That you really don’t know
All there is to be known.
The Lorax (1971) Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990) You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
George cites Warren Bennis’ statement “There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial”
In part Nick said, “To be sure, for a person to be a good manager, s/he must have many leadership traits. I like your last comment which references leading first then managing. Good leaders are good managers and vice versa….Leadership and management are very tightly intertwined. Ignoring characteristics of one is done at the expense of the other.”
I believe that they’re more than just intertwined, I believe the combination is what facilitates the adjectives ‘good’, ‘mediocre’, ‘bad’ and various shades in-between when people discuss those for whom they work.
George uses the following checklist from Bennis’ On Becoming A Leader to critique his own performance.
Being a bit of a heretic I thought that starting tomorrow it would be interesting to critique one or two items a day in light of today’s modern workforce and I sincerely hope that many of you will weigh in with your own thoughts.
The manager administers; the leader innovates.
The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
The manager maintains; the leader develops.
The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
The manager has his or her eye always on thebottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
The manager imitates; the leader originates.
The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
Justin Menkes’ Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have shines a hard light on what sets executives apart. Why does one show brilliant insight while another moves at normal levels and yet another badly blows it?
Menkes makes a case that it is intelligence and the resulting cognitive skills that underlie the brilliance seen in executives such as Andrea Jung (Avon Products Inc.), Van Johnson (Sutter Health) and Jack Welch, as opposed to so-called emotional intelligence or charisma.
Menkes idea that it is intelligence that makes the difference is based on eight years of research on intelligence tests and cognitive skills and reveals the set of aptitudes that all brilliant leaders share.
Although 50% of an individual’s intellectual capacity is genetically influenced, Menkes makes the point that the remaining half offers fertile ground for teaching and improving Executive Intelligence. (He cites several studies showing the difference in test scores between students participating in interactive classes that stress critical thinking vs. more typical teaching methods that do well regurgitating information for standardized tests.)
Menkes breaks managerial work down into three areas—accomplishing tasks, working with other people, and self-evaluation—then identifies the cognitive skills that determine how well an executive performs.
Tasks – to correctly define a problem, identify the highest-priority issues, assess what is known and determine needs to be known in order to render a sound decision.
Others – to recognize underlying agendas, understand multiple perspectives, and anticipate likely emotional reactions throughout the organization.
Self – to objectively identify one’s own mistakes, encourage and seek out constructive criticism, and adjust one’s own behavior.
Much of the book relates to how important evaluating intelligence is when hiring and includes discussions with CEOs on their approach to recognizing its presence.
Menkes believes the best way evaluate a candidate’s talent and cognitive skills is found in a set of question that discuss hypothetical business problems, since this most closely mimics the way most business decisions are actually made.
Additionally, that the best tests in hiring measure the ability to accomplish tasks, work with and through others, evaluate oneself and adapt accordingly and he defines 17 critical skills that the best managers use to think their way through problems.
There is much food for thought in Executive Intelligence, but I was sadly disappointed at the lack of concrete how-to’s.
I realize that Menkes heads Executive Intelligence Group, a consulting firm whose revenues are based on providing the questions and other how-to information for it’s clients, but the lack of practical help in applying his excellent research left me with the feeling that the only solution was to hire his company—something completely our of reach to many companies and most startups.
What roll do you think intelligence plays in running a business?
Considering the intense focus on corporate values, ethics, and social responsibility, I found the interview with Lynn Sharp Paine, the John G. McLean Professor at Harvard Business School, along with the excerpt from her new book, both timely and thought provoking.Accounting scandals, stock option backdating and the increasing demands of a highly educated workforce for more social responsibility are driving the trend, but it’s not a new idea.
“Noting a seeming shift in public opinion, a leading U.S. legal theorist speculated in 1932, “…a sense of social responsibility toward employees, consumers, and the general public [might someday] come to be regarded as the appropriate attitude to be adopted by those who are engaged in business.”
According to the Millennium Poll on Corporate Social Responsibility, a 1999 survey of more than 25,000 individuals across twenty-three countries on six continents, two in three people say that companies should go beyond their traditional functions of making a profit, paying taxes, creating jobs, and obeying the law. In addition, respondents said, companies should also try to set a higher ethical standard and contribute to broader societal goals. In other words, companies should achieve profitability in ways that help build a better society. In all but three of the countries surveyed, 50 percent or more of those surveyed took this position…August 2000 survey in the United States. 2 Some 95 percent of these respondents said that companies should sometimes forgo some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities.
Indeed, as the size and importance of corporations have increased, so has the general propensity to view their activities through a moral lens.
Excerpt from Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance, McGraw-Hill, 2002
For those in, or who aspire to, leadership roles, this is about more than keeping your legal department happy or even focusing on the spirit, not just the letter, of the law,
“More managers are waking up to the ways in which positive values contribute to a company’s effective day-to-day functioning, as well as its reputation and long-term sustainability.”
Q: Having a positive value system in place can help contain costs by heading off trouble. But can improved values also add to the bottom line?
A: I’ve alluded to some of the ways positive values can add to the bottom line. And research points to others that I discuss in the book-better access to talent, enhanced employee commitment, better information sharing, greater creativity, enhanced reputation, and so on…But I caution managers against focusing only on the financial case for values…
What’s important to recognize, as I argue in the book, is that today’s companies are being held to a higher standard. Financial results are a must, but in addition, leading companies are expected to achieve those results by acting in an ethically acceptable manner. This represents a dramatic departure from centuries of tradition holding that corporations are by nature amoral and thus incapable of assuming responsibility, adhering to ethical standards, or exercising moral judgment. But abundant evidence shows that companies today are expected to do all these things…
This shift in our understanding of the corporate personality has profound implications for management. Among other things, it means that managers must develop more robust ethical reasoning skills and increasingly subject their decisions to ethical as well as financial analysis…
You should also be awake to the fact that this is the path to your own career success—whether continued or to come. Just as business is being held to a higher standard, so are its leaders.
If you want to be the person that people look up to, listen to and follow; whose suggestions carry weight and who comes to mind when a promotion or career-making project is being staffed, then remember that people aren’t stupid, so you need to embrace, walk and work by the values you talk.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
According to Warren Bennis there are 13 differences between leaders and managers. We previously discussed whether the modern workforce can actually be managed without doing both.
There’s a ton of stuff on the Net about leadership, not to mention miles of books, hours of podcasts and days of videos. And a lot of it is very good stuff, even when its focus is on the people out front—or those who want to be.
On a post over at 
Another font of wisdom for adult issues is Dr Seuss.
to critique his own performance.
Being a bit of a heretic I thought that starting tomorrow it would be interesting to critique one or two items a day in light of today’s modern workforce and I sincerely hope that many of you will weigh in with your own thoughts.
Justin Menkes’ 
