L3 Leadership

In the last 48 hours, I’ve read through this 34 page leadership manifesto, The L3 Leadership "State of Being", twice. (It’s an easy read, trust me) Why? Because as a new department director for a new-to-me large library system I’m still working to develop and adapt my leadership style to a new environment, new community and a new set of colleagues - all 700+ of them :).

What I like about this manifesto is the three part emphasis on “leading self” first, followed by “leading with others” next. And as the manifest maintains, once you’re effective in these two leadership disciplines, you will be more effective in “leading others.”

Specifically among the many good thoughts in this document, this one on “leading self” struck a cord with me:

"Here are four important keys to L1, Leading Self. We refer to them as the Four P’s of Self-Leadership: Purpose, Performance, Planning and Problem Solving.

Let’s take them one at a time:

Purpose: Knowing what is important to you and where you are going.

Performance: Understanding how you (You, Inc.) are currently performing in all departments of work and life.

Planning: Mapping out a direction to improve, maintain, and lead all areas of work and life.

Problem Solving: Using your resources and skills to make needed changes in your life and work."

Those that know me well, probably aren’t surprise to see the “P” alliteration. All I can say is that at least they weren’t “Es” :)

NTS: Work on the P’s to support the my learning journey on the all “new” things listed in paragraph one. :)

The L Formula

Personally, I've always thought of leadership as something that is inherit to individuals and really isn't one of those skills that can be learned or taught in a management class. But Steven Covey's recent post makes me think differently... sorta.* Perhaps there is a formula for leadership -- or at least a short list of essential ingredients that are common among the most effective ones.

Covey's four imperatives of leadership:

1. The first is to inspire trust. You build relationships of trust through both your character and competence and you also extend trust to others. You show others that you believe in their capacity to live up to certain expectations, to deliver on promises, and to achieve clarity on key goals. You don’t inspire trust by micromanaging and second guessing every step people make.
   
2. The second is to clarify purpose. Great leaders involve their people in the communication process to create the goals to be achieved. If people are involved in the process, they psychologically own it and you create a situation where people are on the same page about what is really important—mission, vision, values, and goals.
   
3. The third is to align systems. This means that you don’t allow there to be conflict between what you say is important and what you measure. For instance, many times organizations claim that people are important but in fact the structures and systems, including accounting, make them an expense or cost center rather than an asset and the most significant resource.
   
4. The fourth is the fruit of the other three—unleashed talent. When you inspire trust and share a common purpose with aligned systems, you empower people. Their talent is unleashed so that their capacity, their intelligence, their creativity, and their resourcefulness is utilized.

Think of impact of reaching item #4 - unleashing talent. I've been fortunate to see this happen and it's amazing!! If you can move your organization forward to this level, there is absolutely nothing that you can't do.

* BTW: I've always thought of leadership as a thing that is nurtured (not taught) from raw talent and instinct. Confession - even after Covey, I still do. :)

[hmm... heading off to ponder items 1,2&3 and how to incorporate these in the new job]

Hiring for Management Competencies (or better titled "how to know that you've made a mistake")

At MPOW (the current one) we’re in the process of looking for several good people to head up a new CORE leadership team. The task of hiring the right people for these leaderships positions can be daunting, especially given that there are four of them.

Knowing how to hire the “best” can be difficult, especially if you haven’t had much hiring (and/or mis-hiring) experience. Which I guess is why FastCompany's recent article, Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers, seems to hit so close to home. It’s so important to hire the right people. And when you don’t, how do you know? According to the article, it’s easy to see in these top ten incompetent management warning signs:

1. Bias against action
   
2. Secrecy
   
3. Over-sensitivity
   
4. Love of procedure
   
5. Preference for weak candidates
   
6. Focus on small tasks
   
7. Allergy to deadlines
   
8. Inability to hire former employees
   
9. Addiction to consultants
   
10. Long hours

Well worth the full read.

BTW: My NPOW (new place of work) is also looking for a Regional/Divisional Manager. It also looks like a great opportunity for the right individual at a great library system. -- Disclosure: I’ll admit it, I have a biased towards this organization - but not “against action” :)

PS: Flight delays suck. But thanks to complimentary wireless at Charlotte Douglas airport, the wait time is manageable.

Motto

Since I’ve been finding myself talking about the notion of “leadership” a lot lately (both inside my library and in many of my recent talks to others), I thought I’d go out on a limb and share with you my personal philosophy on leadership. I penned this nearly 17 years ago after four years in the hotel management field and still believe it today...



What's your idea of leader? As you can tell, this is a topic that I've always been very interested in.

UPDATE: This seems ironic, but I just had to share. I just went to Slideshare to upload the presentation that I'm giving tomorrow at NCLA and guess what is the Slidecast of the day? ... "The Little Book of Leadership" :)

Good thoughts here as well.

Jack Welch on Leadership

From It's Not About You, Stanford Graduate School of Business:

“The day you become a leader, it becomes about them,” Welch said. “Your job is to walk around with a can of water in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other hand. Think of your team as seeds and try to build a garden. It’s about building these people,” he insisted. “Only you will know the team.”

That’s right. The minute you move from being a task-oriented professional to being a manager of people, it stops being about your individual talents, your successes, and starts being all about coaching, motivating, teaching, supporting, removing roadblocks, and finding resources for your employees. Leadership is about celebrating their victories and rewarding them; helping them analyze when things don’t go to plan."

Great food for thought and it makes me wonder, do we emphasize nuturing talent enough in libraries?

On a related note, here's a few other thoughts on management vs leadership.

Leadership Skills: Moving beyond Management

The parallels between libraries and newsrooms are many. This preview (on PressThink) of a new book from Michelle McLellan and Tim Porter, News, Improved: How America’s Newsrooms are Learning to Change, offers up some great thoughts on leadership, culture and change.

Here's short list of key skills shared by successful leaders:

• Developing vision: Setting a course for the newsroom and keeping it on track (or, changing course as internal and external conditions change.)
  
• Communication: Reinforcing direction through continual conversation. Saying over and over and over - in as many ways as possible - “this is where we’re going.”
  
• Putting muscle behind the mouth: Backing up vision and communication with resources; putting enough money and enough bodies in place to give goals a fair chance of being achieved.
  
• Letting go: Empowering staff, involving them in both strategic and operational decisions, such as setting direction, providing training, and implementing innovation.

Yup, this title is definitely going on my must read list.

Is your iceberg melting?

Thanks to a recommendation I picked up Our Iceberg is Melting this afternoon and just as George had said, it was an interesting & easy read. (you can read it in an hour)

When a colony of penguins discovers their beloved home is melting, a sense of urgency is created. But how does a colony that’s never know anything but their comfortable frozen turf move forward when presented with this problem? The parable is interesting.

In reading the story, it’s easy to see similarities in every field and profession. Change happens, it’s inevitable. But it’s how people as a group react to it that makes the cultural shift either a success or a failure.

Within MOPW, we’re undergoing a lot of unknown change right now in the form of a pending reorganization. No one knows what the outcome will be, but after reading this short story, I’m beginning to feel a little like Fred (the penguin scanning the horizon) and a lot like one of the “scouts.” (helping the clan search for icebergs that offer something better).

Anyway, for those who are interested in the story in nutshell, here’s the 8 Steps of Leading Change:



PS: Yeah! I earned my Hero of Change medal on my first try - and mastered both levels of the game in only 49 seconds. :)

On Growing Talent ...

If you get beyond the opening paragraphs which focus on company and market information, this article* on developing talent & creating innovative organizations has a lot of great ideas. Among my take-a-ways, are:

• Make Talent a priority: "Mussallem's priority for the position was to nurture talent, so we sat down immediately to take stock of the company's talent, assess the corporate structure, and begin to build a culture that prized innovation, risk taking, and development."
  
  
• Build Talent Management into your culture & nurture it from the top; "His first actions as CEO highlighted the importance of talent management. First, he put talent on the agenda of every board of directors meeting, as well as monthly meetings of Edwards' executive leadership team"
  
  
• Set expectation that developing talent is the primary role of leadership: "Next, he decided that talent management would be a leadership competency that every company manager is evaluated on annually."
  
  
• Involve employees in their own development process: "At the individual level, employees are asked to create personal management objectives, which are mapped to the key operating drivers by managers and directors"
  
  
• Continually evaluate those jobs in your organization which are "critical" to your strategic priorities for the year: "Identification of critical jobs is driven by position, not personality."
  
  
• Build the bench to match your critical positions: “Once the job is identified as critical, then we ensure that there is A talent in the position and create a pool of potential successors. For each critical position that exists at Edwards, I identify two or three successors.”
  
  
• Provide options that challenge staff and allow them to move around and experience the business from different perspectives: “For the youngest, most promising talent—often engineers—the company’s technical development program offers four different professional rotations during a two-year period.”
  
  
• Continuously evaluate the approach: “Every 18 months, Mussallem invites employees to participate in an engagement survey that measures employees’ attitudes regarding workplace conditions, functional management, corporate leadership, learning opportunities, and more.”
  

From Growing Talent at Edwards Lifesciences (exec summary)*, T&D Feb 07

*NOTE: Only the Executive summary is available to non-ASTD members through the website. But you can access the full version in either Ebsco Academic Search Elite or MasterFile Premiere. Gotta luv library databases :)

Just my thoughts - Leadership

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about leadership, specially around the idea of “leadership potential”, for a small side project that I'm working on.

So how do you recognize a potential leader in your organization? In most cases I think it’s easy. Here are some of my thoughts …

A leader seeks support … not permission
A leader presents ideas as well prepared proposals … not unfinished thoughts
A leader champions projects … they don't just plan

What are your thoughts? How do you recognize leadership potential?

On management & leadership (Part 2)

Like most people I've often thought that Donald Trump needed to get a new stylist, but I've never faulted him for his approach to management & leadership. Here's a great slide I discovered via Checking out and checking in ...

focus on energizing people
Originally uploaded by circulating.

Post #1 on the M vs L (or Control vs Power)

And on a side note, I thought I'd share my personal favorite quote about leadership.

"A leader brings out the best in themselves by bringing out the best in others." -HBlowers

Yup, I wrote this myself nearly 20 years ago when I started my first job as a hotel rooms manager for Hyatt. I think it's funny how I've kept this thought rumbling around in my brain for so long... and yes, in case you're wondering, I'll be the first to admit that even on my good days I still find myself striving to achieve this "best."

On control & empowerment ...

Lately it seems that a week doesn’t go by where I don't find myself in some discussion with a colleague over the topic of leadership vs. management. Part of the reason for this is two recent initiatives our library has launched to help provide management training for staff and to "build the bench" as part of succession planning. But the other part is that I think with all the changes happening today in society and with user expectations, there is great need to shift our libraries to a new model of service which more fully empowers the user.

For me this shift is analogous to the management vs. leadership question that I have been talking about with several staff members. And in looking at library services I think you can transform the question several different ways…

• Are our services designed control? Or to empower the user with options?
  
• Are our services designed to manage processes? Or provide our users with a rewarding experience?
  
• Are our facilities built to contain the user’s use of areas? Or provide users with flexibility and options to collaborate and multitask?
  
• Are our collections built on a formula to fill shelf space? Or designed to keep our shelves empty and ideas and thoughts circulating within our communities?

The bottom to all these questions seems to come down to the distinction between the foundations of management and leadership. Management for the most part is based upon the principle of control (managing people, managing processes, etc). Leadership on the other hand is based upon the principle of “guidance” and empowering others.

It’s hard to select one over the other for you need both management (control of well managed processes) and leadership (guidance and the means to empower) to build and provide excellent library services. Therefore it's not a choice that needs to made, it's a balancing act. And as libraries continue to transform and evolve, the goal should not be to weight the scales evenly, but rather to ensure that we favor the side that empowers the user as much as we can - without falling over. :)

PS: Thanks Michael Stephens for your excellent reply to my thoughts last week. You Rock! I hope this post sheds some more light on my thoughts about control vs. empowerment. and, if you’re thinking at all that I can be a semantics freak, you’re right! Just ask anyone from PLCMC’s management team that was involved in developing our library's mission statement and they'll tell you I was among the adamant supporters for having the verb be in the active tense (empowering vs. empowers). :)

“PLCMC: Expanding minds, empowering individuals, enriching the community”

PS: I bet you can guess which is my favorite “e” in our mission statement? :)