Since 1975, Doug Baker and I have been actively involved in small, personal groups that have helped us navigate personal challenges with our families, careers, and health. Our group is a place where we have explored the important questions in life, and clarified and reinforced our own True North values. At their best, group members serve as caring coaches and thoughtful mentors.
Over the years we have been asked by friends and acquaintances, "How can I form such a group?" So the idea for True North Groups was born. It describes the important role that small, intimate groups are playing in personal growth and in developing leaders with high levels of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. The latter part of the book provides "how-to" manual for creating a True North Group. Our belief in the value of these groups is what motivated us to write True North Groups and form the True North Groups Institute.
What is a True North Group and what sets it apart from other groups?
6-8 people meet regularly for personal discussions
Primary purpose is the journey of self-awareness that develops stronger leaders
The members follow a structured curriculum to guide that journey
Participants develop their hearts, forming a balanced head-heart combination
True North Groups provide the best vehicle to help people develop as human beings and leaders, providing a powerful path between our personal lives and the organizations we engage every day. They enable us to become fully alive, awakening to the enormous possibilities within each of us.
A True North Group can serve as a nurturer, truth teller, mirror and an inspirer, among other roles. It can be an antidote to social isolation, which is being increasingly recognized as a serious issue in modern society. This sense of isolation helped give rise to the “Facebook phenomenon,” which helps connect millions of people online. But social media is certainly not a substitute for intimate, trusting relationships where people can discuss their most difficult challenges, as they can in True North Groups.
The book is organized around a familiar sequence – forming, norming, storming, performing, and reforming. In forming your new group, the most important thing is to gather a strong group of members who are compatible and respectful of each other. Groups of people in similar age range and life stages are usually most effective.
It is my hope that this book will provide you with a deeper understanding of the important role that a True North Group can play in your life and how you can form one. I invite you to share your stories of True North Groups on my website and connect with other True North Group members on Twitter with the hashtag #TrueNorthGroups or on Facebook.
Tomorrow marks the Minneapolis launch of my new book, True North Groups: A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development, written with co-author Doug Baker. We have had 1,500 students at Harvard Business School participate in these groups, which we refer to there at Leadership Development Groups. The comments on True North Groups in the following video come from participants in last February’s first executive education course in Authentic Leadership Development. They give a good cross-section of opinions about the value of small groups for leaders.
Today at 2:00 pm EDT (1 pm CDT/11am PDT) I will be giving a Webinar on "How to become a Better Leader with True North Groups." At this time we will discuss ways to develop as an authentic leader, and the importance of having a support group in your life, including a True North Group. The Webinar will also include a preview of my new book, True North Groups: A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development, written with my colleague Doug Baker. It will be published on September 1. I hope you can join us on line. You can register for free here.
We have scheduled a second course at HBS on September 25-30, 2011 with the same great faculty: Dean Nitin Nohria, Rob Kaplan, Scott Snook and Joshua Margolis. Hope you can join us. Applications are open at HBS executive education.
Last week I served as faculty chair for Harvard Business School's new executive course, "Authentic Leadership Development." Sixty-four executives from 60 global companies spent five intense days honing their leadership.
Here's the catch: They concentrated almost entirely on leading themselves, not others.
What does leading yourself have to do with becoming a leader? Everything, actually.
Traditional leadership development programs have missed the mark for years, as they tried to remake leaders into someone different. I had this unfortunate experience numerous times in my career. It was never successful.
One boss told me that I needed to improve my management style, which was an accurate observation. When I asked for clarification, he said, "Be more like me." That feedback wasn't helpful, as his style and strengths were completely different than mine. If I emulated him, others would have seen me as phony, and I would have been much less effective as a leader.
We've all seen dozens of leaders fail in trying to emulate great leaders. At a recent conference, I asked the participants, "Can we all agree that the 'Great Man' theory of leadership is dead?" The essence of leadership is not trying to emulate someone else, no matter how brilliant they are. Nor is it having the ideal leadership style, achieving competencies or fixing your weaknesses. In fact, you don't need power or titles to lead. You only have to be authentic.
In observing leaders for 40 years, I have never seen someone fail for lack of IQ. But I have seen hundreds fail who lacked emotional intelligence (EQ). Psychologist Daniel Goleman first popularized the concept in his 1995 book, "Emotional Intelligence.'' He defined EQ as competencies driving leadership performance, including:
• Self-awareness: reading emotions and recognizing their impact;
• Self-management: controlling emotions and adapting to change;
• Social awareness: understanding others' emotions and comprehending social networks;
• Relationship management: inspiring, influencing, and developing others while managing conflict.
In researching my 2007 book, "True North,'' several colleagues told me they hoped we could identify the definitive traits of successful leaders. More than 1,000 prior studies had failed to do so. In interviewing 125 authentic leaders, we learned that the essence of leadership comes from not from having pre-defined characteristics. Rather, it comes from knowing yourself -- your strengths and weaknesses -- by understanding your unique life story and the challenges you have experienced.
Everyone has a life story they are eager to share if anyone will listen in an accepting, nonjudgmental way. I have great admiration for Sen. Scott Brown's courage in telling his story of being sexually abused as a child. His story acknowledges the life forces that shape who we are. In sharing their stories at last week's program, the executives found liberation and power by claiming who they are, not by trying to emulate someone else.
This isn't a new idea. Four thousand years ago the Oracle of Delphi said, "Know thyself." What's new is that we are learning how important self-awareness is to leadership development. Being self-aware is easier said than done. That's why so many leaders engage in self-defeating behaviors that cause them to fail.
How can you become a self-aware leader? Start with experiences in leading others in school, sports, or early work assignments. However, having one experience after another is not sufficient. Instead of plunging immediately into the next experience where you are prone to repeat your mistakes, you need to reflect on what you learned. Introspection can come from keeping a journal, meditating, praying or just sitting quietly.
Next, seek honest feedback from people you work with. The best developmental tool is 360-degree feedback from peers, subordinates and superiors. As one leader said, "Feedback is the breakfast of champions."
Finally, develop a small group of people with whom you can be completely open and honest in sharing your joys, sorrows, fears and dreams. They will support you in challenging times and provide invaluable insights that enable you to grow as a human being and leader.
We call these small groups "True North Groups" because they help you stay on course.
Leadership is not exerting power over others or exhorting them to follow you. Rather, it results from your example of empowering others to step up and lead. Leaders do that by learning to lead themselves, becoming self-aware and behaving authentically.
I am very excited to share with you information about a new leadership course that I will be leading for executives on the HBS campus, along with Dean Nitin Nohria and a terrific faculty. Called “Authentic Leadership Development,” it compresses the popular 12-week MBA course I created in 2005 into five days. It will be held on February 12-18, 2011. Joining us on the faculty will be Professors Rob Kaplan, Joshua Margolis, and Scott Snook.
This course is aimed at rising executives who want to develop their leadership and are prepared to participate openly in discussing their leadership journeys, their crucibles, and the challenges they face. The course will draw on my book, True North, along with exercises drawn from Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide. We will focus on the leader’s inner journey and ways to improve your EQ and self-awareness in order to become a more effective leader. In addition to personal reflection exercises and class sessions, you will be part of a 6-person Leadership Development Group.
On August 13-14, 2010 Yongey Mingur Rinpoche and I co-led a two-day retreat in Minneapolis on the subject of “Mindful Leadership.” Over 400 people participated actively in the retreat. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a Buddhist Rinpoche and a leadership professor have joined forces to explore this subject and see how Eastern teaching can inform our Western thinking about leadership, and vice versa. Rinpoche led several guided meditations over the course of the two days, but this was strictly a secular event, not a Buddhist teaching.
The Mindful Leadership retreat enabled us to explore such complex subjects as the impact of mindfulness on leadership, new neurological research on the impact of meditation on the brain, understanding and framing your crucibles, the role of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in leadership effectiveness, gaining self-compassion, shared awareness through small group support, leading others mindfully, and self-actualization to contribute to a better world.
None of these subjects was easy, nor did we reach definitive conclusions. Our dialogue took the issues to a deeper level that engaged the participants and enabled each of us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Gaining awareness of oneself – our motivations, our destructive emotions, our crucibles, and our failings – is essential to being an effective leader. Based on my research into leaders, I have found the greatest cause of leadership failures is the lack of emotional intelligence and self-awareness on the part of leaders. I cannot name a single high-level leader who failed due to lack of IQ, but am aware of hundreds of leaders that have been unsuccessful due to their lack of emotional intelligence (EQ). The destruction of organizations caused by their shortcomings is staggering.
Mindfulness – the awareness of one’s mental processes and one’s mind works – offers leaders a path to address these issues in a non-judgmental, non-threatening way. Meditation is the secular process that enables us to develop mindfulness and to approach challenging issues in a calm, thoughtful manner.
Even more exciting are the research indications that meditation can enable us to reshape our brain (much more so that we can do for the IQ). One leading researcher at the seminar explained that measurable impacts have been found even after as short a period as eight weeks of meditating. Of course, people need to have consistent practices in order to sustain and strengthen the impact.
As Rinpoche said, we spend a great deal of time and effort in developing our bodies; shouldn’t we do the same for our minds? Just as we need sound habits for keeping our bodies in shape, we need regular practices to be mindful.
After working with Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama during the course of the past year, I have reached a preliminary conclusion that gaining mindfulness through meditation may be the most effective way to gain self-awareness and to develop self-compassion. Another important aspect is through group support that provides honest feedback, compassionate support, and deeper understanding of oneself. Having practiced meditation and having been part of a support group for thirty-five years, I have personally experienced the highly beneficial impact that they have had on my leadership effectiveness.
Having observed hundreds of leaders under pressure, I have no doubt that self-awareness and self-compassion are the essential aspects of effective leaders, especially when they are under stress and pressure. Leaders who develop and maintain these qualities are better able to lead others mindfully and to empower people to perform at a very high level. With a shared sense of purpose and common values, organizations can then take on very challenging goals and overcome great difficulties and achieve outstanding results on a sustainable basis.
Let’s look at some of the specifics of these two days and what can be learned from them:
Reflections on Day 1
The first day of sessions focused on developing self-awareness through leadership and though meditation. A key part of the Summit was devoted to learning from Rinpoche how to become mindful through meditation. After I outlined the plan for the summit, Rinpoche shared the story of how he first started meditating at nine years old. Suffering from panic attacks, Rinpoche turned to meditation as a method for facing his panic and calming his anxiety rather than letting them dominate his mind and his life.
Rinpoche noted that everyone has love and compassion within themselves, yet the hardest person we have to lead is ourselves. Through meditation we can become mindful in our leadership, especially when we are facing extreme challenges. He taught the group many different types of meditation: open awareness, breath, sound, object, and emotion.
Here are some of Rinpoche’s takeaways on meditation:
Mindfulness is like space, it is always there. But the monkey mind, the restless, confused part of our mind that is filled with random thoughts, often takes over our thinking. Give the monkey mind a job by focusing its restlessness to find greater clarity. Problems come to the surface during meditation, which is natural. The key is to use these problems, rather than surrendering to them.
Rinpoche suggested that we need to challenge our minds to bring those things that we don’t like about ourselves into our meditation. By owning them, they don’t own us.
Don’t force the mind to focus on one specific thing, but become mindful through awareness of our body and our surroundings.
Self-Awareness and Leadership
In the following session, I challenged the group to think about how they can gain self-awareness through understanding their life stories and their crucibles that will enable them to discover their authentic leadership and develop their emotional intelligence.
I also recommended Professor Paul Lawrence’s new book, Driven to Lead, which discusses how the mind can be remodeled for leadership. Lawrence has rediscovered Darwin’s theories that are not about the survival of the fittest, but development of the mind’s leadership qualities that can enable more effective decision-making. Developing a clear mind enables leaders to integrate the drivers of their minds – security, material acquisition, bonding with others, and the search for meaning – into an effective whole.
In the 21st century, leaders need to empower other people to lead rather controlling them through a hierarchy. Leader must learn to empower those around them to feel that they are a part of something special and to take on leadership challenges. Leadership no longer means getting people to follow us but rather about serving those around us.
Becoming a leader is not a straight line process; rather, it is a series of ups and downs. In those down periods it is your values, or your True North, that will enable you to successfully navigate the crisis.
Destructive Emotions
We closed the first day with a joint session on destructive emotions. Rinpoche and I encouraged the group to face their fears and those things that were dragging them down. We need to recognize that the things we don’t like about ourselves – our negative qualities – are just as much a part of us as are our positive qualities. I shared part of a David Whyte CD where he read his poem, “One Day the Hero Sits Down,” as a way of illustrating the importance of recognizing those things about ourselves that we suppressed long ago.
Reflections on Day 2
Day one of the Summit prepared us for the work on self-compassion that came on day two. Rinpoche opened with a remarkably effective meditation on compassion. It was composed of four successive parts: compassion for someone you care about; compassion for yourself (which is much more difficult than compassion for others); compassion for those you don’t know; and, most difficult of all, compassion for someone you don’t like or respect.
In my following session, I examined how to gain self-awareness, how to develop compassion for yourself, and the role of shared awareness through group support. We also talked about how support groups work, noting there are five keys to a successful support group: 1) openness, 2) trust, 3) confidentiality, 4) honest feedback, and 5) candor. The group then divided into six-person groups to practice the technique.
I have shared some slides from my discussion on developing a support group. I encourage you to think through how you can develop a group among your peers that you can turn to in times of crisis.
Leading Others Mindfully and Self-Actualization: Toward a Better World
In the final afternoon, Rinpoche and I had two dialogues on “leading others mindfully” and “how self-actualization can lead to a better world.” The mindful leadership dialogue focused on how to empower others, and how to give them honest feedback and compassion through effective leadership. In the final dialogue we talked about how we can create greater compassion for the world around us and that through compassion gain greater wisdom.
I was moved by the turnout this past weekend, not just the numbers but the depth to which people actively engaged in these complex topics and dealt with them on a personal level, not strictly an intellectual plane. For all of them, our hope is that this seminar will result in an acceleration of their journeys to authentic leadership.
As the minutes ticked away in the U.S.’ decisive World Cup match against Algeria, U.S. superstar Landon Donovan was determined not to permit a repeat of the U.S. 2006 World Cup disaster, when the Americans went home without a single victory. As his teammates felt their 2010 dreams slipping away, Donovan knew the soccer hopes of the nation rested on his shoulder. This time he could not fail.
As the U.S. saw chance after chance denied by the tenacious Algerian defenders and a lone goal disallowed on a missed call by the referee, even the neutral announcers declared the U.S. deserved to win. This time around an older and wiser Landon Donovan knew deserving success and achieving it are two different things.
Taking an outlet pass from his keeper, he raced down the hundred meter field, looking more like a track star than the crafty midfielder he is, and played the ball forward to teammate Jozi Altidore. When the Algerian keeper pushed away yet another shot, Donovan didn’t hold back. Moving forward toward the goal, he pounced on the loose ball and drove into the back of the net. Pandemonium erupted in the stadium and throughout the U.S. as the entire team piled on top of Donovan’s prostrate body.
When the game ended two minutes later, Donovan buried his head in tears. All he could say to the announcer was “We worked so hard the last four years, we couldn’t let this opportunity slip away.”
What enabled Landon Donovan to rise to this leadership moment? The answers can be found in the disappointments he has suffered from the 2006 letdown, to disappointments playing in Germany and a failed marriage in 2009.
Since he was a teenager, soccer watchers have seen Donovan’s potential to become America’s first world-class soccer player and fulfill the dreams of American soccer lovers. After a solid debut as a 20-year-old on the 2002 U.S. World Cup team that reached the quarter-finals, Donovan was expected to lead the Americans to even greater success in 2006.
It never happened. More than any sporting event in the world, the World Cup is an intense national competition that requires both mental and physical toughness. In 2006, Donovan hadn’t learned what that required. Nor was he prepared to step up to the leadership role expected by his teammates and his country.
Needing a win against Ghana to advance to the Round of 16, the U.S. instead lost the match and was eliminated. Donovan and his teammates earned only a single point in three games. Donovan himself had a rough ride, as he went scoreless and was criticized by U.S. fans for a soft, directionless performance.
Things didn’t get any easier for Donovan after the Cup. He endured difficult stints playing professional soccer in Germany where he only occasionally saw time on the pitch. He endured a difficult breakup with his wife and additional professional strife when news broke of a rift with world-renowned David Beckham, Donovan’s L.A. Galaxy teammate.
But Donovan did more than just “play through” the tough times. He dug deep into the root cause of his problems, and used his self-exploration to grow as a player, a person, and a leader. He even took up meditation to become more introspective.
Donovan told FanHouse.com that his recent struggles made him realize that all-important leadership lesson: the buck stops with him. “I am in control of what I do,” Donovan said, “and before, I thought different things determined how I would play or how I would respond or how I would act on the field.”
That sort of take-charge leadership style has propelled Donovan to new heights. He received the MLS MVP award in 2009 and won the championship with the Galaxy. On the world stage last week, as the U.S. stared at a 2-0 deficit at halftime against Slovenia, Donovan’s new calm and resolve showed through. In the third minute of the second half, he ignited a U.S. rally with a perfectly slotted ball from an impossible angle. When the U.S.’ winning goal was called by another erroneous call, he shrugged it off, saying, “We will focus on what we can control.”
Landon Donovan has learned from the searing pain of his personal crucibles. Rather than deny his disappointments, instead he used them to become a more mature leader, ready for the burdens of leadership placed on his shoulders by his teammates and his country. As the pressure mounted, he played through fatigue and disappointment and somehow kept going at a tireless rate.
When the opportunity presented itself, he didn’t flinch or choke. As he said, “in that instant, time just stopped,” no doubt as he recognized the chance to overcome the pain of the past and achieve his goal. Afterward he even thanked his ex-wife on national television for her help.
Was Donovan lucky? Not exactly, unless you believe (as I do) in Oprah Winfrey’s definition of luck as “preparation meeting opportunity.”
Now Donovan leads the U.S. team against Ghana on Saturday in the playoff round, with a chance to revenge the difficult 2006 loss. He is a battle-tested leader, who has learned to share the pressure, excitement, and joy of the World Cup with his teammates and now-loyal fans. As the Italian and French superstars head for home, Landon Donovan has learned from his crucible and is ready to lead with confidence.
The Millennial generation -- those offspring of the baby boomers -- are not short on the "three D’s": dedication, drive, and delivery.
Young adults today study harder and more often, engage in more community service, participate in greater numbers of extracurricular activities, and hold a more optimistic outlook on the future than any other generation in modern history. Lauded by parents and pundits alike as beacons of youthful optimism that shine in uncertain economic times, these future leaders are eager for leadership opportunities and thirsty to impress.
Having grown up on Twitter and Facebook, today’s youth respect their communities and recognize the importance of staying engaged. As the 2008 elections showed, Millennials proved they could walk the walk and flocked to the voting polls, many for the first time. Moreover, Millennials appear to have a high moral compass. Case in point: youth from around the nation responded to the earthquake disaster in Haiti with food drives led on Facebook, service trips, and fundraising efforts via email campaigns. A number of my HBS students embarked on trips themselves to lend a hand in subsequent months, writing blogs and sharing their experience with others back home.
Millennials seem eager to stay in touch, any way they can, double-timing on iPads and Smartphones. They have grown up in a culture where the defining theme is "velocity," both in terms of the rate of change and the pace of information. Consumer and behavioral trends shift monthly, technology evolves constantly, and information flows with sometimes overwhelming abandon, saturating Millennials with 24/7 political newsfeeds and social networks.
This hyper connectivity certainly has many useful purposes -- workplace productivity, community engagement, and civic mindedness, among others. But does it come at a price?
Despite their collective activity level and propensity for community engagement, this generation may be at risk of becoming too accustomed to constant exposure, of becoming too quick to say: "Got it - on to the next one." In charging ahead, are Millennials failing to take time to focus and reflect? Are they so caught up in keeping up that they will ignore vital real-life lessons that are needed to gain the wisdom to stay pointed toward their True North?
Over the next decade, Millennials will be asked to step into important leadership roles and take part in helping to resolve the complex issues facing the U.S., and the globe. As Timothy Egan notes in last week’s NY Times, they are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of actions taken today. From foreign policy to the environment to international economic issues, Millennials will need to adopt a long-term sustainable view. Who wants to create a startup, invent a new product, serve in politics, or generate a new business model 20 years if our society is selfish, partisan, and dysfunctional?
To develop the insights and the intuition required to address these daunting hurdles with experienced perspectives and informed temperaments, Millennials must commit to their long-term leadership development. Such a commitment will prepare them for the more daunting challenges that will inevitably come their way. Developing the qualities of emotional intelligence like self-awareness, introspection, empathy, and empowerment will determine their future success, but this requires the time and commitment to reflection and introspection.
Here are some of my ideas on how to develop these qualities:
For my family and me the most important step we have taken is to meditate daily. Back in 1975, my wife dragged me to a meditation retreat “kicking and screaming,” and I have meditated twenty minutes twice a day ever since. My sons – Jeff, a business executive with Novartis, and Jon, a head-and-neck surgeon – both meditate regularly. Meditation has enabled me to find calm, creativity, and clarity, in spite of leading a high-stress life.
A second approach is to take time for yourself to reflect. There are many ways to do this – through prayer, journaling, jogging, yoga, or just sitting quietly. The important thing here is to turn off all the instant communications and just be with yourself.
A very different approach involves having a leadership development group (LDG) – six to eight people with whom you meet regularly. Since 1975, I have been part of group of guys that meets weekly to discuss the important issues of life and to share our challenges and joys. My wife and I are also part of a couples group that has met monthly since 1983. These two groups have been a godsend in my life, providing support in difficult times, deeply honest feedback, and wisdom that have helped me in so many ways.
A fourth idea is to get involved in service to your community, being engaged with diverse groups of people whose life experiences are entirely different from your own. Community service, especially in leading volunteers, is an excellent way to develop skills like empowering others to lead. You learn a great deal about yourself through helping others and understanding their perspectives about life. Service opens you up to developing compassion and empathy for others, especially those less fortunate that you.
It is important to build habits and practices like these into your daily life at a relatively young age. You may be surprised at how you stick with them for decades. At first, you may feel like you don’t have time for them. That was my reaction, but now I realize that these practices make me much more efficient in using my time, more compassionate in dealing with other people, and ultimately more effective in leadership roles. Most important of all, I feel better about myself and my life.
What’s not to like about that? It’s the best way I know to stay on the course of your True North.
A revolution is reshaping America's best-led companies. Authentic leaders focused on customers are replacing the old guard of hierarchical leaders who concentrated on serving short-term shareholders. The old "command-and-control" style is being replaced with an empowering, collaborative style.
During the last half of the 20th century, business leadership became an elite profession, dominated by leaders who ruled their enterprises top down. Influenced by two World Wars and the Depression, organizational hierarchies were structured like military models.
Their leaders used multi-layered structures to establish control through rules and processes. People climbed hierarchies in search of power, status, money and perquisites. As stock holding periods dropped from eight years to six months, hierarchical leaders focused on generating short-term results, often to the exclusion of long- term growth.
In the past decade it all blew up, from the ethical scandals exposed by Enron and WorldCom to the Wall Street meltdown. As a result, people lost trust in business leaders to build sustainable institutions instead of serving themselves and short-term shareholders.
In my 1960s class at Harvard Business School our professor cited the Department of Defense and Catholic Church as the most iconic organizations. Business followed their lead, as General Electric, General Motors, AT&T and Sears became their role models.
By century's end, the latter three were in long-term decline, while GE was revolutionized by Jack Welch. Hundreds of other organizations like Kodak, Motorola and Westinghouse followed similar patterns of self-destruction. The hierarchical model simply wasn't working.
In retrospect, it seems obvious people weren't responding to "top down" leadership. Why not?
The craftsman-apprentice model has been replaced by learning organizations, filled with workers with greater knowledge than their bosses.
Young people are unwilling to spend ten years waiting for their chance to lead; instead, they want opportunities now, or they move on.
People are looking for more than money, as few are willing to spend their lives in unfulfilling jobs, just for the compensation. Rather, they seek genuine satisfaction and meaning from their work.
To lead in this new century, we need authentic leaders who align people around mission and values, empower leaders at all levels, focus on serving customers, and collaborate throughout the organization, in order to achieve superior performance.
Aligning: The leader's most difficult task is to align people around the organization's mission and shared values. Gaining alignment takes regular engagement with employees at all levels. It is especially difficult in far-flung global organizations where local employees may be more loyal to native cultures than their employers, especially regarding business practices and customer relationships.
Global organizations thought they could solve this problem with rulebooks, training programs and compliance systems, and were shocked when people deviated. Aligned employees committed to the mission and values, and want to be part of something greater than themselves, form an enduring organization that is resilient through crises.
Empowering: Hierarchical leaders exert power over others and delegate limited amounts. These days that isn't leadership at all. Authentic leaders recognize they need leaders at all levels, especially on the front lines, where people must lead effectively without direct reports.
The leader's job is to empower people at all levels to step up and lead. Empowered leaders need sophisticated accountability systems with closed-loop management to ensure commitments are met.
Serving: Leaders' first obligation is not to their shareholders, but rather to their customers. Any organization that does not provide its customers with superior value relative to competitors will find itself going out of business. Employees are much more motivated to provide customers with superior products and services than to increase stock prices.
Collaborating: The challenging problems businesses face these days are too complex to be solved by individuals or single organizations. Collaboration—within the organization and with customers, suppliers, and even competitors—is required to achieve lasting solutions. Leaders must foster this collaborative spirit by eliminating internal politics and parochialism and focusing on cooperation internally to be competitive externally.
The ultimate measure of 21st century leaders is superior results. In today's business world, organizations filled with aligned, empowered and collaborative employees focused on serving customers will outperform a hierarchical organization every time. Top-down leaders may achieve near-term results, but only authentic leaders can galvanize the entire organization to sustain long-term performance.
Since 1975, Doug Baker and I have been actively involved in small, personal groups that have helped us navigate personal challenges with our families, careers, and health. Our group is a place where we have explored the important questions in life, and clarified and reinforced our own True North values. At their best, group members serve as caring coaches and thoughtful mentors.
