This is the post that I mentioned yesterday. As Wally points out so elegantly “do as I say and not as I do” doesn’t work anymore — if it ever did. (BTW, you might find this post on leadership as a profession of interest.)

“There is no leadership without leadership by example.” ~ Captain James Westley Ayers, USMC

Captain Ayers was right. There is no leadership without leadership by example. What he didn’t say is that example can be good or bad. You don’t get any choice about whether you lead by example, only about the kind of example you set.

Most writing about leadership by example assumes a good example. If you work hard, the people on your team will work hard, too. If you’re honest, they will be, too. It’s the way it is. It’s human nature.

Human nature has a baked-in capacity and desire for hierarchy. That’s why you must be careful. It’s easy to set a bad example.

People Are Watching

If you’re the person responsible for the performance of a group, the other members watch you. That’s because you have some power over them. It may not be much, but it’s there. They watch what you do as a guide to what they should do.

Everyone I know who’s been promoted in large organizations has some version of the same story. A leader does something without much thinking about it and people take it as a guide to behavior. The story I like best is the one told by Linda Hill about when she was promoted to President of General Dynamics.

She went shopping for a new suit to celebrate her promotion. The salesperson sold her a scarf with the suit and showed her an interesting way to tie the scarf. She wore the suit and the scarf, tied in that special way, her first day on the job. What happened, in Ms. Hill’s own words.

“And then I came back to work the next day and I ran into no fewer than a dozen women in the organization who have on scarves tied exactly like mine.”

Another friend tells about his first day on the job as plant manager. He made several casual comments about how they could move equipment to be more effective. The next day, when he went to the plant, he found that all his “ideas” had been implemented overnight.

Then, there was the friend who forgot to get his usual morning coffee on the way to the office on his first day in a new position. When he realized what he’d done, he said out loud to himself, in his office, “God, I wish I had some coffee.” Within minutes, three cups of coffee arrived.

Be careful what you do and what you say. People are watching.

Be Careful What You Praise

Praise is a power tool. You use it so that people will do things or keep doing things that you want them to do. We love praise. Just remember, people are listening.

You will get more of what you praise. If you praise great ideas, you will get more of them. If you praise courage, people are likely to be more courageous. But if you praise people who work long hours. other people will start putting in more time. If you praise people who answer email in the middle of the night, folks will start sleeping with their phone by the bed.

How Do You Act When Things Don’t Go Your Way?

Some things will not work the way you’d hoped. Some news will be bad news. How you act tells your team members some important things.

If you receive bad news gracefully and take it as information, people will be more likely to bring it. Even more, if you thank them for letting you know. People don’t mind being the messenger that gets praised for doing a good deed. They don’t want to be the messenger who gets killed.

When you’re interrupted it’s another opportunity to set a good example. Treat the people who interrupt you with respect and courtesy. Then, if the interruption is inappropriate, tell them why.

What You Tolerate, You Condone

It’s hard to do, but you need to address behavior or performance that violates your standards or values.

Mark Deterding tells a story from early in his career. Mark was in his mid-twenties, when he was transferred and promoted to plant manager. During his first few meetings, he was struck by the amount of swearing by the seasoned veterans on his team.

He decided he would just model the right way and his team members would change. But it didn’t work that way. They went right on swearing. Here’s the lesson Mark said he learned.

“It’s not enough to just model the way. It’s just as important to clearly and immediately address any issues that violate the values of the organization. When you allow unacceptable behaviors to go unaddressed, you send the message that the behavior is okay.”

Bottom Line

When you lead by example, you use your behavior to influence the behavior and performance of team members. Your influence is a leadership superpower. And, like any superpower, you can use it for good or for evil. What’s your choice?

Image credit: Wally Bock

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Most founders love to talk about leadership and there’s little question that they consider themselves leaders.

But leading is a lot more than creating a vision and raising funds.

Leading means modeling the right choice and who better than Wally Bock, my favorite leadership guru, to explain what that really means.

Leadership by Example

“There is no leadership without leadership by example.”

I heard that bit of wisdom from the lips of Captain James Westley Ayers, USMC. But I only remember the quote because of the example he set.

My father said that, “You’re alive as long as they tell stories about you.” Many of us who knew Captain Ayers are still telling stories about him half a century after we experienced his leadership. The big lesson for me was: leaders care for their people.

That’s Marine doctrine. A leader has two jobs. You must accomplish the mission and you must care for the people. But this is more than “leaders eat last.” This is a way of thinking about your responsibility for the people you lead.

One set of Captain Ayers stories revolve around the “meat he couldn’t use.” Our unit had lots of young, married Marines who were living off base, trying to make it on the couple hundred bucks the Marine Corps paid us, and whatever their spouse could bring in. By the middle of the month, it was always hard times. It was time for peanut butter sandwiches and fried baloney for dinner.

And then Captain Ayers would show up at the door. He always asked, “I wonder if you can help me?”

The problem was something like “I’ve got a whole bunch of meat I can’t use, and would you take some off my hands, as a favor?” Sometimes he bought more than he could handle. Sometimes his freezer had broken. Sometimes he bought all that meat for a reunion that got cancelled. Whatever it was, he asked if you would be kind enough to take some meat, say enough for a couple of months of meals, off his hands.

By the time I encountered Captain Ayers, the Marine Corps had drilled into me the idea that a leader‘s goal is to accomplish the mission. Captain Ayers showed me what it means to care for your people. Most of that caring wasn’t dramatic. He encouraged and suggested. He told you the truth.

I experienced that when I wanted to apply for a program that required his recommendation. He spent a half hour telling me that he wouldn’t do it because I wasn’t ready and explaining why. Then he took another half hour to tell me what I had to do to be ready in a year.

I haven’t always lived up to Captain Ayers’ example, but it’s always been there as a shining standard for me. That’s what leadership by example is all about.

When I got out of the Marines, and started in business, I encountered something very different. I won’t give his name, because I hope he’s reformed since I knew him, I call him “My Worst Boss Ever.”

Worst Boss Ever’s example wasn’t so great. He was selfish, haughty, and mean. He relished catching people doing something wrong and belittling them in public.

Leadership by Example Is Like A Superpower

Leadership by example is a superpower. It influences the people you lead and affects the choices they make. Like any superpower, you can use it for good or not.

The people who lead you early in your career have a huge impact on the way you lead. My research in police agencies produced “leadership trees” of good supervisors who had learned their craft working for other good supervisors early in their career.

You’re Going to Set the Example, So Set A Good One

I was fortunate. I experienced Captain Ayers and other effective leaders before I experienced my Worst Boss Ever. When I encountered him, I knew he was a jerk, and how he acted did not model the leader I wanted to become.

You don’t have any choice about setting the example. That’s built into human nature. The only choice you have is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.

Bottom Line

There is no leadership without leadership by example. You don’t have a choice about that. Your only choice is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.

Copyright © 2018 Wally Bock, All rights reserved.

Bad examples have always been with us, but they have a much higher profile these days.

Think Travis Kalanick (Uber) and Parker Conrad (Zenefits).

Then think Marc Benioff (Salesforce) and Stuart Butterfield (Slack)

Then choose.

Image credit: HikingArtist

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that are still relevant, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of some of the best posts during that time.

Today is a two-fer, because, when discussing leadership, commentary on followers should be required.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since these two posts, 5 years on the first and 10 years on the other, were written and the world has changed drastically. It is far more complex and moves much faster than ever before. What hasn’t changed — contrary to the impression you get from both traditional and new media, whether mainstream or on the fringes — is how much influence so-called leaders actually exert on their followers.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Hate, Intolerance and Responsibility

Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.

Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.

What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?

Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.

The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.

And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.

During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.

Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.

We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.

I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.

Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.

Leaders aren’t responsible; we are because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.

That about sums up my attitude

What’s yours?

Image credit: Street Sign Generator

Two kinds of followers

In general, followers fall into two categories—thinking and unthinking. All of us have issue-specific litmus tests and look for a general comfort level with other followers.

Thinking followers usually have a broader definition of comfort, critically evaluate individual ideas and attitudes, as opposed to blind across-the-board acceptance, and are more willing to consider compromises. They often challenge their leader offering additional considerations, thoughts, suggestions, as well as open disagreement.

Unthinking followers are more emotional, rarely disagree or argue and may opt out of all thought and consideration following blindly and allowing the leader think for them. At their worst, unthinking followers are fodder for cults.

Most of us would classify ourselves as thinking followers, but are we? I know that politically I have one litmus test that is absolute and a couple of others that have high priority without being locked into specifics. Beyond that, I’ve always considered myself pretty open.

However, as extremists have polarized various issues I find myself becoming more adamant in my own feelings and less open to listening to those who believe that their views represent truth with a capital T — but I still want to live in a country where they have the right to say it.

I’ve lived a long time and I never thought I’d say this, but the rise of social media, with its ability to say anything anonymously sans responsibility, has seriously compromised my belief in free speech.

Yesterday I shared a post from Wally Bock about the importance of trust — and its fragility. At the end Wally said, “Trust is one of the most valuable things you have as a leader.”

Obviously, trust is crucial in any kind of relationship, in or out of the workplace, but today I want to focus on the last word on that sentence — leader.

I’m asked all the time how to become a leader.

Degrees — MBA, PhD, MD, LLB, etc.— won’t make you a leader.

There is an entire industry — classes, coaches, books, pundits of all kinds — expounding on how to become a leader.

Many people think leadership is defined by a person’s position; after all, you hear all the time that someone was “promoted (elected/assigned) to a position of leadership.”

All well and good, but that doesn’t make them a leader.

According to the late Bill Campbell, who established a reputation as the “coach” of Silicon Valley, only one thing determines whether or not you’re a leader: the opinions of those you’re supposed to be leading.

Even having your team do what you tell them doesn’t make you a leader.

Intuit CEO Brad Smith, one of many who learned that from Campbell, says it best.

“Basically, how you make that happen is if you believe that leadership is not about putting greatness into people, leadership is about recognizing that there’s a greatness in everyone and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.”

So go ahead, term yourself a leader and even brag about your leadership skills, but at the end of the day it’s what your people say about you to their family/friends/colleagues that will confirm you as a leader — or not.

Image credit: Vic

Is there an eternal answer to the eternal question of ‘what should be learned/done to make oneself promotable’?

Yes,

The answer was recently expounded upon by Xin Li, a Staff Software Engineer At Google, in response to a question posed on Quora.

I work at Google Mountain View.  Here, if your base salary is around 200K, you are most likely a Staff Software Engineer.  The defining characteristics at that level are:

1. Go beyond being a technical expert to also being a domain expert.  You need to know what should be done, rather than just how things can be done.
2. Be an owner.  The buck stops with you.  If something goes wrong with your part of the product, it’s ultimately your responsibility, even if the mistake wasn’t made by you.
3. Work for your people, rather than have your people work for you.  That is be the one to volunteer to take on the tasks others don’t want to do.  Your job is to make your people look good.  Give them the opportunity to grow professionally, and support them where they need it, and clear obstacles for them, so they can be at their best.
4. Be a leader and a consensus driver.  Real world problems don’t have cookie cutter solutions, and not everyone will agree on what the right solution is. You need to have a vision, work across teams, and bring people together, resolve differences.
5. And of course you still need technical chops.  You need to be good at technical system design.  Be able to create an architecture that is as complicated as it needs to be, but no more, and no less.  It needs to serve the requirements of today, while robust enough to be extensible a few years down the road.

If you want to get to this salary level as a software engineer, I think the requirements are fairly similar everywhere.  As you can see, these requirements have less to do with any particular language you may or may not choose.  Focus on delivering value for your employer, and the rest will follow.

Xin Li’s response specifically addressed a software career path, but is universally applicable.

“Focus on delivering value for your employer, and the rest will follow.”

That’s as close to a guaranteed formula to drive success in any career that I’ve ever seen.

Best of all, it’s never too late to start.

Flickr image credit: Chad Sparkes

This post is a follow-up to Wally Bock’s leadership critique yesterday — only I wrote it in 2009.

Leader, Manager, Bureaucrat

Frequent readers know that I am not a devotee of Warren Bennis, who famously propagated the idea that leaders and managers are not only different, but that ‘leaders’ are higher on the food chain possessing far more value than the lowly manager.

I have devoted numerous posts to dispelling this attitude, much like Don Quixote tilting at his windmills. (It’s not a new attitude; I’ve had a statue of Quixote and Sancho Panza for years:)

I was discussing this over lunch with several executives and voiced my thought that no manager at any level can function successfully in today’s climate unless they are a leader.

This brought forth a terrific response from one CEO that is well worth sharing.

“A manager who doesn’t lead is a bureaucrat.”

An astute, simple and very accurate statement for people who are, or aspire to be, in charge, no matter of what or at what level, to frame and hang on their walls.

If you don’t want to

• craft and share a vision of what, why and when {whatever} needs to happen and leave the ‘how’ to your team;
• share information openly and willingly;
• take the time to craft communications that can be heard and understood by all;
• help both your company and your team become all that they can be;
• shoulder the responsibility, but give away the credit; and
• think ‘them’ before ‘me’;

then you shouldn’t be in charge.

More on the subject tomorrow, but for more leadership insights today be sure to read the June Leadership Development Carnival.

Flickr image credit: Richard Heyes

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here

Jim Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School is my favorite brain at HBS Working Knowledge (if you don’t already subscribe, you should).

His postings are designed to stimulate discussion from a diverse and intelligent audience.

Most recently he asked why, since “servant leadership” has proved to be highly productive and valuable to both the organization and the person practicing it, it wasn’t seen more frequently.

(Many people like to infuse “servant leadership” with a religious theme, but that isn’t its source.)

Although Heskett was focused on CEOs, the conversation applies to everybody in a so-called leadership position, i.e., bosses.

Reading through some of the 116 comments, number 11, from Phillip Clark, Clark & Associates, caught my eye—probably because it perfectly summed up my own crotchety thoughts; he even ends his comment with one of my favorite lines.

Rather than write my own version, I thought I’d share his in its entirety.

Ego and Stupidity to put it bluntly stands in the way of having more servant leadership in the workplace. Normally, I am not so blunt but after 50 years in the workforce I am becoming old and crotchety about this discussion.

Let’s look at the issue. The “I’m more important than you” leadership usually limits performance and innovation because everything goes through a single control point the leader. The leader has to be always informed, has to give permission, always has “the best ideas” and focuses only on performance goals that make him, not necessarily the company, look good. That creates a huge bottleneck on the performance of the leader’s employees.

A servant leader, focused on getting the most from his or her employees, empowers and trains their employees to do their job, without the “mother may I” albatross hanging around their neck. The servant leader sends the employees working on the project to meetings and links them with resources to do their job. That way the employees can do their job without having to go through the single choke point “the leader”. This type of leader is not loaded with meetings because his or her staff are doing the job. It no longer is about ego but performance. What really is an eye opener is seeing the servant leaders influence explode throughout an organization since they seem to be everywhere. When really it is their influence being expressed by their entire staff at multiple points in the organization at the same time. Bottom line…hire right, support effectively, expect performance….and you will get it.

As a leader…do not become the choke point in your organization. How can you tell? Are you going to too many meetings where you have to follow-up and pass information to others? Are you overworked with too many interruptions from employees? Are you demanding deadlines to meet goals instead of having work appear on your desk completed? Are your employees happy and getting promoted? If not, take a close look in the mirror.

Which kind of leader are you?

Image credit: HikingArtist

It used to be that attending college exposed young adults to new experiences, new people and new ways of thinking—but that was then and this is now.

Years ago, when writing about hiring, I said,

People want to spend their time with people like themselves, that is their comfort zone, and that is where they hire. Managers prefer to hire people

• from backgrounds they understand;
• working in areas in which the manager feels knowledgeable;
• with experiences and education to which the manager can relate; and
• with a resume that makes the manager’s decision look good even if the hire doesn’t work out.

Homophily has been increasing in most social settings, including the workplace, over the years and now young people have climbed on that bandwagon with a vengeance.

Instead of the adventurous attitudes that have always been the province of youth, they want to avoid discomfort; sidestep as many human vagaries as possible and spend as much of their time as possible with people like themselves.

This is especially true of college freshmen.

Helping them avoid discomfort is a market nitch occupied by the likes of Lifetopia and RoomBug, in collusion with their universities, as well as open sources such as URoomSurf and, of course, the ubiquitous Facebook.

But some worry that it robs young adults of an increasingly rare opportunity for growth: exposure to someone with different experiences and opinions.

“Very quickly, college students are able to form self-selected cliques where their views are reinforced,” noted Dalton Conley, an N.Y.U. sociology professor…

It is not a lack in the diversity of race, nationality or even gender that is worrisome; rather it is the lack of diversity of thought.

Homogenized thinking kills creativity, stunts innovation, increases intolerance and supports bigotry.

Homogenized thinking destroys leadership—today’s and tomorrows.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetone/3648783142/

Today we’re going to start with the general and move to the specific.

Last year we saw a generational shift during the Presidential election and that generational shift is happening in business, too.

Ethisphere recently spoke with William W. George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic and currently a director of both ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.

George considers Chip Conley too old at 49 to be one of those transformational leaders, which just goes to show how silly it is to define things by a random circumstance like birth date. It may seem to work as a generality for marketers, but it rarely holds up on a case-by-case basis. In a delightful post, Conley talks about his leadership lessons during junior high.

No, what Danari [13 year old grandson] wanted to know is which classes had the most profound impact on me as a leader today?

I do like Bob Sutton’s stuff, he’s a great writer and he always makes sense. In this post he looks the boss as a shield, not for herself, but for her people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since it’s the focus of an article I’m publishing in September’s issue of Harvard Business Review called “The Boss as Human Shield,” and of one chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss. There are many nuances to how bosses protect their followers, but it’s a useful simplification to say that the protection must be both tangible and emotional.

The recent stories of unbridled greed makes you think that nothing would surprise you, but any time you think that another story comes along and you realize that you ain’t seen nothing yet. The story of David H. Brooks, CEO of DHB, which makes body armor for the military and police, fits that category. It’s not just his greed, although that is stunning,

“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y.

but it was his defense that blew me away.

His lawyers also defended the hiring of prostitutes for employees and board members, arguing in court papers that it represented a legitimate business expense “if Mr. Brooks thought such services could motivate his employees and make them more productive.”

Unbelievable.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

Contrary to popular myths, venture capitalists invest in leaders with powerful management teams as opposed to investing in the technology or idea. That’s because change—markets, competition—happens often and shit—fatal flaws, the economy—happen more often.

In short, they look for leaders.

So what makes people want to follow a leader? We look for 3 key traits:

• The ability to articulate the vision
• The right kind of ambition
• The ability to achieve the vision

TechCrunch did a great post on three people who embody the key attributes that people want to follow.

And although I’m sure you’ll recognize Steve Jobs and Andy Grove, but you’ve probably never heard of Bill Campbell, who is by far the most interesting of the three.

Next, Scott Berkun offers a great summary, along with the video, of the best points in an Economist interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Finally there is Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, who suggests that one of the most important traits for a leader is energy.

I have a hypothesis that people instinctively want to be led by whoever has the most energy. … We’re all energy junkies, and our leaders are pushers.

Adams offers some interesting examples, so be sure to read what comes between these two sentences before deciding on the validity of his idea.

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr