“Interesting question.  This is where I’d go back to the basics of leadership.

As you know, I define “leadership” in my book as a process of paying attention simultaneously to four dimensions: (1) Motivating purpose (2) Task progress and results (3) Group unity (4) Individuals’ needs.  So I’d say that paying attention to all four dimensions should motivate your team.

Dimension #1: Motivating Purpose

To take the first dimension, as others already suggested, you need a common motivating purpose.  A purpose they care about, that they want to achieve.

It could be a vision, but it doesn’t have to be a vision.  It could instead be expressed as a mission, a goal or a target.  Whatever it is, it must provide a motivating purpose.

And as [another contributor] said, the leader doesn’t have to provide this common purpose.  He or she doesn’t have to be like Moses coming down the mountain with tablets of stone; the team members can decide the purpose together.

A clear, shared, motivating purpose is the first key, in my view, to motivating a team.

Dimension #2: Task, Progress & Results

Moving onto the second dimension, if you don’t translate the vision/target/goals/mission into purposeful activity, then it’s just a dream.  So people have to work on making it happen.

That’s when you all need a plan, people need to have clear responsibilities, they need to be following up, solving problems as they arise, adjusting plans as failures occur or surprises happen and so on.

You also need an emphasis on quality and timeliness of execution, not just from the leader, but from peer pressure too.  I’ve found that having a clear role and feeling pride in being part of a team with high standards is itself motivating.

Dimension #3: Group Unity

But there’s the third dimension too.  It’s motivating, in my experience, to be part of a team that feels like a team.  Where every individual is subordinating his or her selfish interests to the team’s aims and supporting each other.  This is what the French call “esprit de corps” and we call “team spirit”.

It’s the sense of working for a cause that’s bigger than us; it gives us the all-important feeling of belonging that’s so important to motivating a team.

For me, this means making sure that everyone feels included and noticed; that everyone understands how decisions will be made and that they’re okay with that; and ensuring there are no hidden agendas – that people are saying what they’re really thinking and feeling and have learned to conflict productively, not brush big issues under the carpet.

Dimension #4: Individual Attention

Now people say “the team is more important than the individual,” but the paradox is that every team is made of individuals.  And individuals differ.  That’s why we’re individuals.  We have different skills, different levels of confidence and resilience, different ambitions and different things going on in the background of our life.

This is where the fourth dimension of leadership comes in.  In my experience, you can’t treat every member of the group the same.  You have to treat individuals as individuals.

You have to understand what makes them tick, how much autonomy they want, what’s worrying them, what their ambitions are and, of course, you have to be good at selecting them in the first place. You also have to give them the opportunities to grow themselves as members and leaders in their own right.  Just as important, you must be ready to have the tough conversations and fire or discipline people when necessary.  This is all part of paying attention to individuals as individuals.

Attention to Basics

So in a sense there’s no one best way to motivate your team.  That’s because great team leadership isn’t one-dimensional.

For me, it’s about attention to basics, which means attention to the four dimensions of leadership.  Get them right and your people will be motivated, performance will be good, creativity will be high… and members of the team will most likely feel they’re having a fulfilling experience.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

Q8. On page 170 of your book, The Three Levels of Leadership, you state: “Over time, the number of limiting beliefs in your psyche usually increases and forms what I call the False Self.”  What are the primary sources of the disinformation leading to these limiting beliefs?  Can this disinformation be squelched at source to avoid contamination of the Self?

“You ask, what are the primary sources of the limiting beliefs comprising the False Self?  Well, I assume you’re talking about the limiting beliefs at its core; the limiting beliefs about our self-image and how life works.  These beliefs limit our ability to lead a happy, fulfilling life… and, of course, our ability to lead others.

Now regarding the sources of these limiting beliefs, I’d say these are the main ones:

• Interpretations of the behaviour we receive from other people.
• Interpretations of life experiences.
• Interpretations arising from the collective unconscious.

It’s from these that we’re most likely to draw powerful negative conclusions about ourselves, usually  when we’re young (and by young, I mean up to the age of twenty).  But to be clear, limiting beliefs can develop beyond that age.  I’ll say a bit more about each source…

Interpretation of Behaviour Received

We can draw negative conclusions about ourselves – or more specifically, about our self-image – from the behaviour we receive from key people in our lives, like parents, peers and teachers.

So, for example, if our parents constantly ignore us when we’re little, we might decide we’re insignificant.  Or if members of the opposite sex reject our romantic advances in our teenage years, we might assume we’re unattractive or unlikeable.  And if we receive consistent criticism from teachers we might infer that we’re stupid, inept or useless.

Interpretation of Life Experiences

This is where we apply negative interpretations to our – or others’ – life experiences and then draw unhelpful conclusions about our qualities, flaws or potential.

To take one example, imagine someone who constantly fails his driving test.  He might decide this means he’ll never pass.  Even worse, that perhaps he’s useless!  Or imagine someone whose parents died in a car crash when she was young.  She might decide this means that life is cruel, that she’s on her own, that she’ll never be happy, that people she loves will always abandon her one way or another.

Interpretation of the Collective Unconscious

By “collective unconscious” I mean the world’s widely held ideals, archetypal life themes, beliefs, values and emotions.  It’s the shared ideas we take for granted, that we rarely think of challenging.

The collective unconscious can influence the way we interpret history and even how we interpret scientific test results.  It can also affect our behaviour – think of a lynch mob, where individuals will do things to others, including murder, that they wouldn’t consider doing on their own.  The point is that by absorbing limiting or negative interpretations about the world or ourselves from the collective unconscious we can create personal limiting beliefs.

This can come from what we absorb in the stories we learn and tell each other about what’s right and wrong, inevitable or avoidable, good or bad, heroic or cowardly or kind and unkind.  Think, for example, of what we take in from watching films, playing games, from what we read in newspapers and novels, hear on the radio or see on television.

Thus, instead of experiencing something directly, we can experience it indirectly, leaving the collective unconscious to set standards on, for example, what is true and false… or good and bad … or important and unimportant… or beautiful and ugly.

So for example, we might assume from reading about the economy that we live in a dog-eat-dog world, that we’re in constant danger and must always be wary of people we don’t know.  Or we might compare ourselves unfavourably with high-profile people – based perhaps on appearance, intelligence or natural talents and thus believe (and feel) we are second-rate.  Or because the collective unconscious tells us that boy-meets-girl-and-marries is the classic theme of adult life, single people may conclude from this that they’re unattractive or inferior.

Our Mental Interpretation is the key

Note that in every case it’s not the outer event itself that’s key.

The key is our interpretation.  That is, the meaning and significance we place on the other person’s behaviour, the life experience or the message from the collective unconscious – and what it says about us.

More Vulnerable To Negative Interpretations When We’re Young

As I mentioned earlier, our most powerful limiting beliefs are more likely to arise when we’re young.  Why?

Well, think about the term “self-awareness”.  It has two aspects: the capacity to be aware and the sense of self that we’re aware of.

Now an infant has the capacity of pure awareness, but it doesn’t have a well-developed self-image.  So how does it develop its early self-image?  Mainly by interpreting others’ behaviour towards it.  So, for example, if the parents ignore the infant constantly, even when it’s hungry or needs its nappy changed, you can understand why the limiting belief “I must be insignificant, I must be unimportant” might take hold.

You see, in infancy, we’re still forming our view of who we are and what we capable of.  And of course an infant has no mastery experiences against which to compare what’s happening to and around it and thus gain some perspective.  By “mastery experiences,” I mean those moments when we’ve coped or achieved in the face of resistance and obstacles.  They give us positive memories to lift us in times of trial and help us interpret events more objectively.  Thus, they can prevent us from drawing negative conclusions about ourselves too quickly.

And, of course, infants – having only a pre-language-based intellect – have no capacity for reasoning for and against any immature negative self-thoughts and so they can’t rebut them.  For example, it can’t say to itself, “Yes, mum and dad keep ignoring me, but Auntie Jane doesn’t, so that means I am significant to her and thus the problem is with my parents, not me.”

Now as the infant becomes a child, then a teenager and then a young adult, its self-image becomes clearer and better established.  And, hopefully, it gains mastery experiences it can use to steady itself when faced with negative interpretations.  But can you see that it’s when we’re young that our self-image is most easily bruised?  Which is why limiting beliefs are more likely to develop then.

Can We Stop the Negative Interpretations Developing at the Time?

You also ask, “Can this disinformation be squelched at source to avoid contamination of the Self?”

The answer is yes.  That’s what self-mastery is all about.  But only once you’ve realised the distinction between you, the Self, (a centre of pure awareness, will and imagination) and the False Self (the sum total of your negative beliefs).  For only then can you identify when the False Self is at work inside you and disidentify from it, reducing its power over you.

This doesn’t mean you need to know the terms “Self” and “False Self”.  But you do need to realise that you’re not your thoughts and feelings – that although you have them, you are not them, that you are more than them and can change what you’re thinking and feeling.  This is the philosophical basis of Cognitive Behavioural therapy and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive therapy.

Until this distinction is made, the Self is so identified with its False Self beliefs that it identifies itself as the False Self.  Thus, it assumes that everything it believes and feels is real, so doesn’t realise this is “disinformation,” to use your word.  So in practice, the ability to disidentify develops only after we’ve become self-aware enough to realise we’re locked into limiting habits and, from there, begun to look for the beliefs behind them.

I ought to be clear what I mean by “disidentify” for those who haven’t read The Three Levels of Leadership.  I mean the process of (1) realising that you are neither your mind nor its contents, especially its beliefs, passing thoughts and emotions; (2) identifying the specific limiting beliefs controlling your emotional states and behavioural habits; (3) examining them; and then (4) letting them go.  In chapter 9, I recommend techniques to help you with disidentification.

Once you’ve found and disidentified from your most limiting beliefs, it becomes easier to see and “squelch” (to use your word) limiting thoughts and emotions as they arise.  (These will often continue to appear because of old thinking habits.)  But, to do this, you’ve first got to put in the disidentification practice that’s central to self-mastery.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

“It depends what you mean by presence.  Do you mean real presence or what looks like presence?

What I mean by “presence” is something no one can fake.  It’s the real you, embodied, in action.  But “charisma”, as I explain in the second video in the series, “Presence versus Charisma“, is different.  I use the term charisma to mean faked presence.  Charisma can mimic presence, but it’s usually found out either because of the charismatic person’s negative effect on others or because he/she crumbles under pressure.

I’ll assume you mean real presence.  Now your question was, “What one thing do you think would help leaders with presence?” 

In my view, at the early stage of a leader’s growth, there’s no ONE thing that would help leaders begin to express their unique presence.  Anything that raises people’s confidence… their connection with their values and ability to express those values in the choices they make… the way they stand, move and behave (especially the way they talk) … and their capacity to choose their responses to other people (not blindly react)… will help.  You see, I believe there are degrees of presence and many ways to start expressing more of it.

But if you’d instead asked, “What one thing do you think would help leaders express their full, pure presence,” I’d have said something different.  I’d say, work on your sense of inner wholeness.

That’s because presence flows from an inner state – a state of wholeness.

By “wholeness,” I mean freedom from fear, inner conflict and the constant need to compare yourself against other people.  It’s a state of fullness; meaning that you’re not driven to achieve something from a sense of lack.  You experience an inner wholeness and yet also, at the same time, a desire to creatively express more of it.  So you don’t stagnate.  And you live your life with no fixed expectations about the future and what should or shouldn’t happen.  (That’s not to say you live life with no intent or plans, but you have no emotional attachments to the specific way life unfolds.)  Similarly, there’s no unhappiness about your past; no feelings that this or that shouldn’t have happened.

This is what I call pure presence and I describe it in more detail in chapter 5 of The Three Levels of Leadership.

Now I believe the path towards this state is narrower.  It’s about realising that the self-image you thought was you, isn’t real, but is just a mental construction… that instead the real You is a centre of pure will, pure awareness and pure imagination.  It’s also about realising that while you’re a distinct individual, you’re connected to everyone around you, not separate.

So if someone wants to express their pure presence, I believe they have to practise self-mastery.  This means seeing and disidentifying from their limiting beliefs, taking control of their mind and going beyond their old self-image – many times – in a upward spiral.  That’s when leaders will realise they don’t just HAVE presence, but that they ARE a presence.  That’s when leaders will radiate that certain something that makes others want them as their leader.

I suggest ways of working on self-mastery in chapter 9 of The Three Levels of Leadership.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

Q7. I’ve heard it said that paying attention to ideas and habits only strengthens them, so won’t I only strengthen my limiting beliefs if I unearth and examine them?

“There’s a difference between paying continued attention to limiting beliefs and simply defining and examining them in the process of letting them go.

Let’s define our terms.  For me, ‘continuing to pay attention to these beliefs’ means giving them the energy of your consciousness (your pure self-awareness), causing you to believe they are so true that you identify with them.  And because you identify with them, you habitually act on them.

Now if you identify with your beliefs and act on them repeatedly then, yes, you will reinforce them.  For as neuroscientists teach us, you’ll only strengthen the neural pathways in your brain that represent the habits.

However, the idea of working on your limiting beliefs is to see them clearly so you can learn to realise they are not true and stop identifying with them.  But of course it’s impossible to do this if you don’t first surface them.

The truth is simple: you can’t disidentify from a belief until you’ve first understood what it was you were identifying with.  Putting it another way, you cannot give away what you don’t first own.

So the key point is this: surfacing, defining and examining your limiting beliefs isn’t the same as continuing to sustain them.

If you think about it, hundreds of years ago we didn’t know about the dangers of germs and bacteria.  Indeed, they didn’t exist in the consciousness of people in the Middle Ages.  But that didn’t mean they weren’t there and it didn’t mean they weren’t causing problems.  So ignorance wasn’t bliss for people of that era.  But then Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria and our world began to change.  We learned to pasteurise milk.  And surgeons learned to wash their hands and clean instruments before surgery.

Now would anyone argue that because we’re recognising germs exist we are making our health worse?  No.  The truth is, now we are aware of them we can deal with the germs.

So no, accepting a problem exists is not the same as continuing to feed it.  And indeed, turning a blind eye to reality is an excellent way of letting the problem continue.  If you want to achieve self-mastery, grow your leadership presence and be the best leader you can be, you’ll have to become aware of and deal with your limiting beliefs.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

Q6. If you have a negative self-image arising from limiting beliefs and negative feelings about yourself stemming from the beliefs, can that reduce your self-awareness?

“In one sense yes, but in another sense, no…

Numbing Yourself Against Feelings

I say ‘yes’ because if you decide to defend yourself against the limiting beliefs that make up your negative self-image and their painful feelings (above all, shame) by numbing yourself against them, you can indeed reduce what you are consciously aware of.  Ironically, such decisions are usually unconscious.

Note what I just said: ‘you can reduce what you are consciously aware of.’  In other words, you stop feeling your feelings – or, at least, you stop feeling them as much as you did – in what I call your conscious mind.  This is the field of conscious awareness.

Using the model of the psyche I outlined in The Three Levels of Leadership, the conscious mind resides in the lowest of the four levels of your mind: physical mind.  This field of conscious awareness holds whatever you’re consciously aware of right now – the sounds around you, the meaning of the words you’re reading here, any sensations in your body and so on.

By numbing yourself, you either don’t notice your negative feelings or you make them bearable.  It’s not something everyone does, but it is a coping mechanism I’ve seen in some leaders, business owners and senior executives.

The Side Effects

Unfortunately there’s often a side effect: you not only lose contact with your negative feelings, you can also lose contact with your values and what’s happening emotionally inside you and indeed around you.

Why does that matter?

Well, your values are the ideas that motivate you, so you can lose energy and momentum.  And your emotions are a source of information about what’s happening to you and other people.  So you’ll find it harder to feel empathy with others, thus it will be more difficult to connect with them and influence them.  And if you lose contact with your values and emotions, your emotional intelligence reduces.  Remember, conscious self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence.

All this explains why I said ‘yes’ in answering your question, but it’s equally correct to say ‘no’.

Awareness & Self

That’s because your power of awareness is something you can’t turn off.  Why do I say that?  Because as a Self you don’t just have the power of awareness; you are a centre of pure awareness (plus of course pure imagination and pure will).

So even if you push your painful feelings out of the conscious field of awareness into the unconscious zone of your mind, they will still be there and – here’s the crucial bit – they’ll still exert an effect.

For example, they may cause you to become irritable or angry.  Or they may cause you to avoid certain behaviours, like assertiveness – behaviours that as a leader you can’t avoid for long.  Or they may cause a build-up of unhelpful chemicals in your body, like cortisol, leading to disease or illness.  But because it’s all happening unconsciously you won’t know (in your conscious mind) what’s taking place and why.  That’s when you become a victim of your own defence mechanism.

It’s Not Straightforward

So the answer to your question isn’t straightforward.

A negative self-image can reduce what you are consciously aware of if you happen to be using a psychological defence of numbing yourself against your feelings.

But you can never switch off your most basic human faculty: the power of pure awareness.  All that happens is that the feelings go underground into the unconscious part of your mind.  But you, the Self, respond to the feelings at a deeper level (meaning that unconsciously you are still aware of them). Thus, they continue exerting an effect on your mental state and behaviour… until you expose and dissolve the limiting beliefs behind the feelings.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

Q5. You say you can experience feelings of joy while learning to be detached as you grow your leadership presence by practising self-mastery – but won’t detachment mean no feelings?

“Your assumption that if leaders practise detachment they won’t have any feelings is important… and incorrect.  So let’s start by being clear about detachment and attachment.

Attachment

‘Attachment’ means you desire certain conditions so strongly that your sense of identity, your place in the world and your mental state (especially your happiness) depends on meeting those conditions – and, indeed, avoiding the opposite of these conditions.

Thus, for example, a person can be attached to success, money, sex, power or many other objects of attachment.

Detachment

However, ‘detachment’ means being emotionally independent of conditions.  But note this next point because it’s subtle and essential: detachment is not numbness.  It’s the freedom to flow, leading to the joy of being alive without conditions.

So practising detachment in pursuit of self-mastery doesn’t mean a loss of feelings, but it will mean losing the False Self feelings that drive unhelpful interpersonal behaviour.  These feelings are fear (in its many guises) and pride (feeling superior, feeling you know it all, feeling you don’t need to grow).

Joy Isn’t The Same As Happiness

We also need to be clear on what I mean by joy.  You see, for many people the words ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’ are synonymous, but they’re not the same thing and it may be that when you say ‘joy’ you really mean ‘happiness’.

Happiness & Unhappiness

Imagine a line representing a continuum between happiness and unhappiness.  We can represent them as two opposite states like this:

Now if you regard happiness and unhappiness as a pair of opposites, as most people do, you have – probably without realising it – defined happiness as a conditional idea… meaning certain conditions have to be true before you can be happy.

For example, that you’re in a loving relationship, that you have a good job, that you have no debts, that you have $1 million in the bank, that your football team is winning trophies … and so on.  And therefore unhappiness flows when these conditions aren’t met.

Joy

But you see joy isn’t conditional.  And that’s why it’s not the same as happiness.  It has no opposite.  So building on the above diagram, you can depict the difference between happiness and joy like this:

So joy is not a position on the line between happiness and unhappiness – it’s not a compromise between the two.  Nor is it synonymous with happiness – it’s at a different level; an unconditional level.  If you’ve read any spiritual literature you may be aware that mystics have another word for joy: bliss.

My point is that self-mastery and joy go together.  The feeling of joy is an inevitable result of self-mastery.  Why?  Because self-mastery frees you from dependence on emotional conditions – or to put it another way, from the tyranny of emotional opposites.

Self-Mastery & Joy

The person who experiences joy sees and experiences life’s beauty, excitement and flow at every moment – and this is what it’s like to be in an advanced state of self-mastery.

In other words, the person who is well on the way to mastering her mind experiences joy regardless of outer conditions because her mental state doesn’t depend on them – she is detached.  She isn’t caught in the drive towards – or the flight away from – the pair of opposites.  There may be occasional exceptions, like the death of someone close to you, but they’ll be temporary.

So when you practise detachment on the way to self-mastery it leads to joy, flow and a sense of emotional freedom… not the absence of feelings.”

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

The Problem

Now leaving aside the question of whether leaders are born or made, which I’ve addressed in this blog article – “Are Leaders Born or Made?” – there’s a problem with this line of thinking on leadership traits: research shows there is no universal, common set of leadership qualities.

Ralph Stogdill’s Work

The idea of researching leadership traits has been around for at least 150 years.  However it was after Ralph Stogdill wrote his 1948 paper, “Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: a Survey of the Literature”, that people began to doubt the leadership traits theory.

He looked at the data from more than 100 studies and analysed their conclusions across 27 groups of factors.  They included leadership qualities like: dominance, responsibility, integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, adaptability, social mobility, popularity and many more.

What did he find?  That there wasn’t much agreement on the key qualities of a leader.

Indeed, it’s now clear that if you combine everyone’s findings over the decades, the list of leadership qualities has become so long it’s unusable as a guide to selecting future leaders.

Leadership Qualities & The Leader’s Context

Interestingly, Stogdill was one of the first to point out that a person doesn’t become an effective leader just because he or she has certain leadership qualities.

He argued that the qualities of successful leaders must be relevant to the circumstances they are in.  That is, to the specific challenges they face and the abilities, hopes, values and concerns of their followers.

This, of course, paved the way for what became known as situational theories of leadership.

Leadership Qualities & Leadership Presence

Despite the leadership traits-based approach falling out of favour among academics, it’s still around today in popular literature.  Why?  Perhaps because it’s still true to say that the best leaders do have distinct leadership qualities that enable them to lead well.

After all, if you consider the best leaders you’ve worked with, did they not have a certain intangible “something” about them that was crucial to their leadership – what many people call leadership presence?   I’ve found that for most of us the answer is, “Yes.”

So perhaps although distinctive leadership qualities are indeed part of the best leaders’ make up, there’s no one set of winning leadership traits underlying leadership presence.

Thus, every successful leader has his or her own unique combination of leadership qualities.  Which would explain why researchers have found so many leadership traits.

So perhaps we should be focusing on the keys to leadership presence rather than hunting for common traits.

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

So is it really lonely at the top?  No, I don’t think it is.  In my view, the leader doesn’t have to be lonely.

Loneliness versus Aloneness

About 15 years ago, when I was a managing director, someone said to me, “Of course, it’s lonely being MD isn’t it?”  I replied, “No, it’s not. Sometimes it’s true, I do feel alone in my responsibilities, but I never feel lonely.”

Let me explain why I said that…

The Leader’s Unique Responsibility

In chapter 1 of The Three Levels of Leadership I pointed out that there’s a difference between “leadership” and the role of “leader”.

I described “leadership” as a process of paying attention to four dimensions simultaneously:

• Motivating Purpose: agreeing a purpose or vision or goal that everyone in the group cares about and wants to achieve.
• Task, Progress & Results: paying attention to the steps needed to making the motivating purpose happen (planning, solving problems, following up, delegating responsibilities and so on).
• Group Unity: making sure everyone feels a sense of togetherness, a team spirit, where they are ready to subordinate their selfish interests for the sake of the group’s goal.
• Individuals: recognising that although no individual is more important than the group, every group comprises individuals and they differ in their confidence, motivation and ability to do their jobs.  So the fourth part of leadership is paying attention to individuals to make sure they feel included, recognised, ready, able and eager to play their part.

I made the point too that leadership is shared in every successful group or organisation.  In other words, members of every successful group each contribute to the behaviours needed to achieve the common purpose.  For example, think of a football team, where several players will usually play their part in scoring a goal.

Now this of course raises the question: if leadership is shared, what’s the leader’s purpose?  My answer was that the purpose of the leader is to make sure there is leadership.  In other words, to make sure all four dimensions of leadership are being addressed.

Thus, the leader can ask colleagues to take the lead on certain challenges facing the group if they are better qualified to lead in those circumstances, but he or she cannot delegate the responsibility to make sure there is leadership.

This, in my view, is where the buck stops with the leader.  It’s where the leader has a unique responsibility and, therefore, may occasionally feel alone.

But this doesn’t mean the leader has to feel lonely.  As leaders we may sometimes feel alone in our unique responsibility, but that doesn’t mean we have to feel isolated from our colleagues.

In my view, this difference between a leader sometimes feeling alone and feeling lonely is like the difference between pain and suffering.

Pain versus Suffering

You see, it’s possible for us to have a pain in our body without experiencing it as suffering.

That’s because suffering is the mental and emotional evaluation we place on the physical experience of pain.  In other words, it’s the meaning we give to it.

My point is that whereas pain is something produced by the body, suffering is a psychological overlay created by us.

So it doesn’t automatically follow that if we experience pain, we’ll feel we’re suffering.  It might follow, but it doesn’t automatically follow.

So What?

As an executive coach, if a Managing Director or CEO client says, “My leadership role is lonely”, my ears prick up.

That’s often when I help the client surface, question and let go of the limiting beliefs causing them to experience loneliness rather than the occasional aloneness that can come with holding the unique responsibility of being the overall leader.

When we work on these limiting beliefs, clients don’t just become more resilient, they can feel more connected with those around them and enjoy their job more.

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

It’s the name given to a particular leadership style – in other words, it describes the behaviour of a certain category of leaders.

The term “charismatic leadership” draws on the word “charisma”, which comes from the Greek language and means “gift”.

Thus, charismatic leadership relies on a leader’s personality gifts to influence others and shape their future.  Such gifts can include great wisdom or insight, heroism, extraordinary certainty about the future and perhaps even the claim of a direct link to God.

However, charismatic leadership demands more than just an exceptional personality.

Followers & Charismatic Leadership

You see, those who follow the charismatic leader must also project an image of specialness and authority on to him and give him power over them.

Therefore charismatic leadership relies on the twin effect of a leader’s personality and a strong belief by followers that this special person is the one to lead them in their hour of need.

This is why the sociologist Max Weber saw charismatic leadership as a relationship between leader and followers.

Charismatic Leadership & The Moral Dimension

In Weber’s view, charismatic leadership had no moral dimension – it could be a force for good or evil.

Using his definition, the only question is: do the followers grant authority to the leader based on their view of his or her special gifts?  If the answer is yes, this is charismatic leadership.

So although this may horrify many, in Weber’s eyes, Adolf Hitler was as much a charismatic leader as Jesus Christ.

Dangers of Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leadership can be effective in the sense that it can cause swift change.  However it has dangers.

• It can be used for evil ends.
• It can create dependency among followers – causing them to take less responsibility for themselves.
• It can encourage a belief in the leader’s infallibility to the point where the leader is allowed to make foolish decisions.
• And it can take followers down a blind alley if the seemingly charismatic leader proves to have more style than substance.

Charismatic Leadership, Instability & Personality Cults

Despite these dangers, charismatic leadership can be unstable and short lived.

This is because charismatic leaders can only stay in power while their followers continue to believe in their specialness.  If they disappoint their followers in some way, perhaps because they reveal previously hidden flaws or fail to deliver, this belief can fade – draining charismatic leaders of their authority.

To guard against this risk, charismatic leadership may involve a cult of personality to stop followers realising that their leader is less impressive than they think.

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.

Background

If you’re not British or living in the UK you might not know what the NHS is or why it’s hitting the headlines right now.  So let me explain.  The National Health Service (NHS) – launched in the UK in 1948 and funded by taxation – offers free medical treatment at the point of delivery.  So for example if you go to a NHS hospital for surgery, you won’t have to pay.  But the NHS is caught in a scandal that’s hitting the headlines and isn’t going away.

At a mid-Staffordshire hospital, investigators found there’d been hundreds more patient deaths than there should have been.  Behind this, they uncovered a disturbing lack of patient care.  This led to a public enquiry.  Its report came out earlier last month:

• It described years of abuse and neglect by hospital staff which, it said, caused the unnecessary deaths.
• It found that hospitals had ignored patients’ complaints and that doctors, nurses and managers knew there were problems, but hadn’t spoken up.  We now know the few who tried to speak up were kept quiet by gagging orders.
• It said corporate self-interest and cost control had been more important than patients and their safety.
• Finally, it called for “fundamental culture change” and made 290 recommendations.

Other reports have said the mid-Staffordshire events aren’t isolated, that “there’s a pervasive culture of fear in the NHS”; that “virtually everyone is looking up (to satisfy an inspector or manager) rather than looking out (to satisfy patients and their families)”.

Media commentators had a field day:

• Most couldn’t understand why no one had lost their job.
• Two high-profile politicians on the radio expressed their amazement that senior managers, doctors and nurses hadn’t recognised “the demands of professional integrity”, realised it was “their duty to act as whistleblowers” and spoken up.
• The UK Health Secretary said there’d been a culture of celebrating success in the NHS while not being open about failure.
• Newspapers referred to NHS managers’ obsession with chasing targets set by the government at the expense of patient care and openness.  One memorable quote was “a culture of hitting the target but missing the point”.
• And one previously gagged whistleblower (a former hospital CEO) said he was forced out because he put patient safety ahead of government targets.

Articles continue to appear most days in British newspapers calling for the central CEO’s removal and an NHS culture that (1) puts the interests of patients first (2) allows NHS staff to flag up mistakes and failures while (3) becoming ever more efficient.

But the question is, does anyone in power know how to achieve such culture change?  So far, I’m not sure they do.

Catch-22

Just as important, isn’t the latest report creating a Catch-22?

You see, UK governments have tried for years to improve NHS performance by setting nationwide targets.  The targets are so ingrained that meeting them is now the NHS’s priority.

But everyone’s saying they want a culture that encourages whistleblowing.  Yet hospital staff still believe that if they speak out about failures or question the targets they’ll lose their job and get a bad reference.  So while the top-down target setting approach continues and the fear of losing their job if they speak up remains, calling for a more open culture is like asking people to plunge into a pool full of crocodiles.

Thoughts

I’m not suggesting I have a ready-made solution to what’s a complex problem, but here are six thoughts that may point a way forward:

Thought #1

Every organisation (including a hospital) needs a sense of direction, of destination, if it’s to perform well year after year.  Why?  Because most people respond to a vision of what together they’re trying to become or achieve; one that motivates or – better still – inspires them.  After all, who wants to work for long in an organisation that’s got no drive to become more (whether that’s better or different) than it is today?

If people know what they’re aiming to accomplish together and why it’s important – and they feel it matters to them – they’ll give everything they’ve got.  But organisations lacking a shared motivating vision aren’t going to inspire people to give their best.  High performing organisations therefore start with an inspiring – or at least a motivating – vision and then set targets as short-term markers on the way to the destination.  Note that: vision comes before targets.

Now ask yourself, who decides whether the vision is motivating or even inspirational?  The answer is the people who have to achieve it.

With these insights we’re now perhaps getting a glimpse of what’s going wrong.

First, an outside organisation (the government in this case) is imposing targets without a compelling, inspirational vision.  So they’re just targets.  Worse, they are targets set by people who don’t have to achieve them, which means there’s no guarantee the NHS staff agree with them and find them inspiring.  Remember, the people who decide whether targets are motivating are the ones who have to achieve them – not the people who set them.

So in my view, the British government is overreaching.  It’s assumed that if it imposes performance targets from the centre it will give every hospital the all-important sense of purpose and vision it needs.  But although an inspiring vision can drive effective target setting, target setting doesn’t necessarily create a motivating sense of direction.  In other words, the government has put the cart before the horse.

The solution?  Why not put the horse back in front of the cart (vision first, targets after) and let the people who have to deliver decide what they should be?

Thus, you could allow the local operating units to decide their vision of their future and then set their own performance goals.  After all, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries are there to care for their patients, so surely their leaders can create a vision that’s not just inspirational, but downright noble.

Thought #2

Some might react to what I’m suggesting by saying, “But surely that means the standard of patient care will vary around the country depending on what each hospital or NHS trust is emphasising.”  My answer to that would be yes, but so what if the standards of patient care are demonstrably rising?

The fact is that organisations are run by people – and people differ.  You are not going to have uniformity.  Yes, you can impose certain minimum standards, but you don’t have to insist on sameness.  The attempt to drive sameness only stifles initiative, creativity and individuality.

Thought #3

Does my suggestion of local vision and target setting mean the NHS central staff or the government have no role?  No.

But in my view they shouldn’t be setting specific targets.  They can certainly suggest broad areas of emphasis.  Perhaps they should also set certain minimum standards of performance and make sure the local leaders are equipped to lead.  But that should be it.

Thought #4

There are many articles in the newspapers and discussions on TV and radio about the culture of the NHS and how it’s got to change following this scandal.  But how do you change an organisation’s culture?

Well, once you know what you want your organisation to become (the vision), you first have to understand what its existing culture is.  At its root, it’s simply the beliefs shared by the people in that organisation around what’s important there to survive and do well career-wise.  These beliefs then shape norms of behaviour, which is why you will often hear culture defined as “the way we do things round here”.

So if you want to change an organisation’s culture you have to change what people believe matters most if they are to survive, prosper and feel good about the work they’re doing.

Thought #5

How do you get that culture change – that change of beliefs and behavioural norms?

Well, I’d start by understanding what the current culture is.

In other words, I’d want to understand what beliefs and values are truly driving people’s behaviour in that hospital or surgery.  I don’t mean the beliefs and values they’d like to hold or they say they hold; I mean the beliefs and values they really hold – the ones controlling the behavioural norms.  And to do that I think you’ve got to get among the employees, ask questions and listen until you’ve understood what you’re dealing with.  The key is to understand your starting point.

Okay, so let’s assume you know the starting point.  What now?  How do you begin changing the prevailing beliefs so they support the vision you and your colleagues have set for your organisation?

Where does any culture change begin?  It starts with a few people (probably less than 10) expressing new beliefs and then it ripples outward.  This is where leadership is so important.  You need a small group of leaders who understand the importance of an inspirational vision and who, through their example, can cause others to join them in creating the first wave of change.

To be clear, you don’t have to change everyone’s beliefs at the start.  You just have to change a critical mass of people’s beliefs.  What’s a “critical mass”?  How long is a piece of string?  It depends.  It’s whatever’s enough to get change going.  It could be 5%, 10% of the people or 25%. But it’s not 100%.

So if you haven’t got a few senior people in a hospital or an NHS trust who can do this, you will either have to help them change – and as an executive coach I’d suggest coaching is probably the most powerful means of change, but then I would, wouldn’t I? – or you’ll have to replace them with people who can.

After that, the key is to have this “hard core” group find others in the organisation of like mind and together they can start to positively change the organisation’s DNA.  That way, gradually, change ripples outwards.

However, if the new beliefs are to translate into performance and results, it’s essential that members of the leadership group don’t just talk a good game, but demonstrate the behaviours and values they say are important to achieving the vision in their everyday actions.

This includes facing facts and recognising what’s not working; regarding “failure” and “mistakes” not as a mortal blows to their self-esteem, but as signs they need to change something.   It’s no good telling themselves everything is okay when it isn’t – for if this group of wayshowers can’t admit the emperor has nothing on when he’s stark naked, everyone else in the organisation will get the message.  And guess what?  They’ll start covering up the truth all over again.

Thought #6

If local NHS hospitals concentrate on creating a new culture founded on an inspiring vision with targets to match – and an attitude that candour comes before pride – imagine what will happen.  You won’t have to do what the NHS report recommends and create rules making it easier for whistleblowers to speak up and threatening punishment if they don’t.

Why?  Because whistleblowing won’t be “whistleblowing” any more as it won’t run against the grain and won’t demand extraordinary acts of courage.  Telling the truth will now be part of the culture – a culture of facing facts because everyone at the hospital will know what they want to become and what they want to achieve.  So speaking up will be as natural as, well, speaking.

In Conclusion…

So where does this leave us?

In my view, it means government has to stop overreaching and let local hospitals and NHS trusts define their visions of the future based on what they judge is important to them and their patients… and then set targets.

And it means we need people who know how to lead change in the local hospitals, who will set their egos aside, work together for a cause bigger than themselves and share leadership by setting the right example in their daily behaviour.

To be clear, this isn’t about having single heroic leaders to act as the catalyst for change.

Yes, of course you need capable CEOs.  But in my view the key at each hospital will always be a small group of influential like-minded people – perhaps orchestrated at first by one of them – deciding together that they want change and then figuring out what that change looks like.  And from there, inspiring others to care as much about the vision and targets as they do by their actions.  In other words, not “top-down” but “small group outwards”.

And the role of the centre?  It would still be crucial, but different to what it is today.  For me, it’s to set the context for such change, perhaps by insisting on certain minimum standards, but no more than that.  Its other role is to make sure the trusts and hospitals have people who know how to lead – whether they’re managers, doctors or nurses – and are willing to cooperate as leaders.

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.