insecure leader

Below is a really good summary of the article and the authors share key points.

Seasoned hikers wouldn’t dream of heading off into the wilderness without a map and a compass.  But organizations do it every day.

Every organization is perfectly aligned to get the results it’s getting.  Unsatisfied with results?  Check your map and compass.

Strategic alignment is every bit as critical for organizations as it is for hikers.  Call it pathfinding.  Call it navigating to true north.  Call it mission and vision.  Call it taking responsibility for shaping events.  Call it good leadership.  Call it smart business.  It’s not a destination, it’s a journey.  Take charge.

Bottom-line?  Culture is a key performance component in every organization—your business, your team, your family.

It may seem like an oversimplification, but “culture” is in large part a product of the stories people create about their environment.  Note that word “create.”  Culture is not just about storytelling (although that plays a role).  It’s about story building.

Multiple studies show that most strategic efforts to change a company’s culture fail.  There are several attributes that are common to every successful change story.

“Storytelling is used to inspire certain behaviors in organizations, and some stories have true motivational power,” Amorim says.  “However, nothing is more impactful than seeing a leader behaving in ways that reflect the principles and values of the new culture.

Barney says that to be effective, culture-changing stories must have six attributes:

1.  They must be authentic, consistent with the values and actions of the leader who’s building them. This doesn’t mean that the leader never makes a mistake. But when a mistake is made, the leader must acknowledge it, then use the error to build a story that exemplifies the new culture that’s being built.

2.  Culture-changing stories must “star” the business leader.  Barney and his colleagues have never seen a successful culture change in an organization that was not—at least in part—“top-down” in nature.  

3.  The actions that business leaders take to build a story must break with the past and provide a clear path to the future.  They break with the past by clearly rebuffing the values and norms that dominate an older culture.  They provide a path to the future by exemplifying the kind of culture a business leader thinks will be needed to implement a new strategy.

4.  Culture-changing stories must appeal to employees’ heads and hearts, Barney says. “By heads, we mean there must be a compelling business reason to change the culture—usually because it is not aligned with a firm’s strategies.  If there is no business case for culture change, then culture change is a manifestation of a business leader’s ego.”

5.  Culture-changing stories are often theatrical.  Barney says this makes them memorable.  It also sends a signal that a business leader is deeply committed to culture change.

6.  Finally, business leaders need to encourage other employees in the organization to build their own culture-changing stories.  Barney says they do this by building multiple culture-changing stories themselves, by recognizing when others have built stories, and even by asking a few critical managers to build culture-changing stories.

“Mark Twain said that ‘actions speak louder than words, but not nearly so often,’” Barney notes. “It’s quite easy to announce the need for a new culture.  But such announcements are examples of ‘cheap talk.’  When culture change gets difficult—as it almost always does—it’s easy for business leaders to put this kind of change on the ‘back burner’ as a firm focuses its efforts on shorter-term financial or regulatory or other challenges.”

What’s the key to building stories that appeal to both the head and the heart?

Barney says that on the “head” side,” business leaders need to build stories that clearly exemplify what a firm’s new strategy needs to be, and the culture that needs to be created to implement that strategy. On the “heart” side, “these stories also need to invite employees to join with a business leader to build a better and more effective company that accomplishes great things.”

Let’s face it: The leadership training industry has a horrible and downright stinky record.

Chasing the next shiny thing?  Training with pontifications and Venn diagrams that first-line supervisors and middle managers can’t apply in the real world?  

This article provides five warning signs of leadership training that are likely to fail.

1. It’s just another flavor of the month idea.

You find out it doesn’t work in the real world because it was never (really) tested in the real world until you tested it out yourself and found out the bad news. You’re the first person to be pushed off the cliff.

Solution: Learn from somebody who’s already done your job successfully.  Think about it.  Don’t learn from a leader, instructor or leadership school if they don’t have direct experience with your type of job requirements.  If you’re a first-line supervisor, middle manager or senior manager, learn from somebody who’s proven that they’ve done your job successfully.

2. They don’t tell you exactly what to do.

They say things like “increase your communication” or “motivate your team” and create “a sense of vision.”  It’s a weekend training course; you show up to work Monday morning, and you can’t apply it—because they haven’t told you exactly how to implement these ideas.  If it weren’t so tragic, it would be funny.

Solution: When you receive training of any type, it should provide a specific, step-by-step implementation plan.  Certainly, it should give you theory along the way.  However, if all they’re doing is giving you these pontifications, avoid this training like the plague.

3. Even if the ideas are worth trying, you don’t have the time.

You’ve gone to a weekend-long training session with lots of great ideas, but they don’t consider how you will use this information while you’re still doing your job.  You come in the next morning and get slammed for another five or six days straight trying to implement ideas that simply take too much time.  It’s unworkable for supervisors who constantly incur massive direct supervision demands while making sure their team is producing the outputs defined by senior management.

Solution: Unless you know exactly how you will implement any leadership training, which includes knowing how much time you have available to do so, think twice before trying it out.  If the training system can’t answer that question, don’t pursue this training approach.

4. Even if the ideas appear to be worth trying, it’s too complicated.

There’s just no way you have time to implement somebody’s doctoral thesis.  These are often the programs that are quick to blame the trainee.  All these ideas looked great during the afternoon training; however, as they are based on extremely complicated formulas, they are often unworkable in the typical workplace.

Solution: Complex leadership approaches generally have no place in the world of the first-line supervisor or middle manager. Run in the other direction as fast as you can.

5. Even if the ideas are worth trying, you don’t have a supportive culture that accepts the change.

If the group above you didn’t attend the same training (even if they are the ones that sent you), your “new initiative boat” is heading for the rocks.  I wish I didn’t have to explain how idiotic this situation is, but I should because No. 5 is the most common and significant cause I’ve seen for wasting new leadership methodologies.  Hoping to influence positive change, you try to re-explain the approach, only to get the same answers from an entrenched culture.  Trying to make progress using this method is a miserable fool’s errand.  What do they say about repeatedly trying the same thing and expecting different results?  Yeah, it’s insanity.

Solution: Not all leadership training proposals require a culture change, but most of them do.  You need buy-in from your supervisor or the senior management group.  If this new approach is not compatible with the current culture senior management promotes, don’t waste your valuable life force.  Chances are good that you’re going to be running up a hill of sand with all four tires spinning without getting any traction and feeling just a lot of heartache instead.

What to Look for Instead

1. What you need is training from someone who’s done your job before and found effective solutions to your problems.

2. What you need is training that teaches you exactly step-by-step what to do next.

3. What you need is training that’s easy to implement, effective and transferable to real-world conditions.

4. What you need is training that is promoted by the current work culture, including senior management.

5. What you need is training that uses universal principles so you can go around and apply this to every human who works for you.

Any leadership training that cannot commit to these five requirements is the type of training approach you will likely want to run away from as quickly as possible.

Okay?  You’ve been warned.