May 23, 2023
[0:00:00]
Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer, and today we're exploring the idea around the imperative of a leadership philosophy. Now, everything I do is through the E Three framework, and that means we're going to explore, experiment, and evolve our way into our navigating, our leadership odyssey. Now, my definition of leadership, as always, having a positive impact on the lives of those we care about. I believe this definition means that every single one of us has both the opportunity and responsibility to lead in whatever part of the world it makes the most sense for us to do so. And that if we all individually do it, we can collectively make the world a better place. And that's a pretty cool thing for all of us. All right, so let's get into leader philosophy and why it matters. Three quotes to kick us off. The first is a Japanese proverb vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. The next by Carl Jung. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes. And finally, from James Froud you cannot dream yourself into a character.
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You must hammer and forge yourself one. Now, how this came about? This conversation for me is really about the work I do with organizations and leadership development. And the reason that I believe a leadership philosophy is really, really important is because A, it's different for every organization. Every organization shouldn't have or have the same leadership philosophy because every organization has a different mission, a different vision, a different set of values. If that's the case, then the leadership has to be different, right? But typically when I walk in, when we walk in, it's like, okay, well, the struggle is normally we're not seeing the leadership we want. We want to have unified leadership, the organization or the leader saying, I'm not seeing the development I want to see. And so the first thing I'll ask somebody is, okay, well, what's your definition? What are you measuring them against? And routinely I just get kind of a shoulder shrug or a blank stare or that's a good question. And so that's the starting point, because without that, what are we doing? Because the reality is, without that, what we've done is delegated leadership, the leadership philosophy to whatever book you're suggesting, whatever training program, whatever class, whatever consultant, whatever, right? Because there's a gap and there's a void and it's going to be filled because nature hates a vacuum, right? When there's a vacuum, it gets filled.
[0:02:53]
And so if we're not intentionally creating this leadership philosophy, the it's going to be filled by somebody. Like somebody's going to say, okay, this is what a leader is. I don't know if that's the right thing for that organization. That organization, again, they have their own mission, vision, values. That means we should be able to craft what the leadership philosophy is from that they've done the hard work, they've done the heavy lifting of the mission, vision, values. And if you've done that, then the leadership philosophy is in there. We just have to define it. We have to do the hard work of writing it down and sharing it so that others understand it. Because if we're looking for leaders in our organization and what leadership is, is a set of behaviors right at the core of it. That's what it is. It's a set of behaviors, then we need to clearly define what those behaviors are so that we can develop and coach towards them. Otherwise what are we doing? It's no doubt we're not getting a consistent result because we don't have a consistent approach. We have no goal. You can't just send people to a class or have them read a book or bring somebody in to train them right?
[0:04:10]
First of all, you can't train leaders, right? Leadership is about development. So real quick to two things training and development. Training skills for your current job focus on present day. The skill has changed. It's based on efficiency, focused on the role. And there's no choice. It's just you're exhibiting a new skill or an action. To be honest, if I'm being trained, I don't even have to agree with it. It's not something I agree or disagree with. It's something I'm being taught now. Development, as opposed to skills for the current job, development is knowledge, skills and attitudes for a future job. So when I'm investing in development, I'm actually investing in helping somebody be prepared for a future job, not for the job they have now. Because my focus in development is the future, not the present day as it is in training. And I'm not focusing on changing skills like I am in training.
[0:05:02]
I'm changing behaviors. With development, I'm focused on effectiveness, not efficiency. Because as you've heard me say, for however many episodes, leadership can ever must never be efficient. And I'm focused on the person, not the role. I'm not focused on the role they have. I'm focused on the human. And then as opposed to training, where there's not really a choice or an opinion or emotional attachment, the person that I'm developing must choose to participate because it's all on them. They have to do something with what we're talking about and that's different. They have to agree to it, they have to be part of it. They have to opt in because we're not going to create cookie cutter leaders. We don't want everybody to be the same. There's diversity and strength and perspectives and style is valuable, all that. The heterogeneous groups are stronger than homogeneous groups. We need an adherence to the same values, mission and vision. But the way that exhibits in different people is going to be different because guess what?
[0:06:14]
All these humans are different but they're going to possess the same root, right? Vision, mission, values like where all of our leadership strives to push that forward as individuals. And that's what you want to see, but you have to provide that foundation. It's talking about theory, attitude, guiding principles, behaviors. Those are all the things that we have to think through as an organization, as a person, as a leader in order to share that with others. Because leadership philosophies are most beneficial during times of crisis change and problem solving. Right? That's when the old rubber meets the road. Saying comes in because that's what we rely back on, is they understand. My way of saying this is that the number one responsibility of a leader is teaching people how to think. Not what to think, but how to think. I want a framework because when things do get crazy, when I don't have time to be there with them, when they don't have time to call somebody, when they're relying on making that decision in the heat of the moment, I want them to have a framework to do that. I want us to have a shared framework on how we're going to do that. And I think the easiest way for organizations to do that is Mission Vision Values on one side, financials on the other. The are your guardrails.
[0:07:52]
If I'm making a decision that supports mission, Vision Values and the financial integrity of our organization, it's a win. If my decision doesn't support one of those, I better talk to somebody about it. If it doesn't support either, don't do it. But I have to offer people a framework. We have to tell them, how do we expect a leader to behave? What behaviors do we expect from all leaders in our organization? There's no wrong answer here, by the way, folks. Every organization has to do the heavy lifting of figuring out what that is for them. Please. It's specific to your organization. You want people to lead a certain way. That's awesome. Tell them. Write it down, make it visible for them. There is no right or wrong.
[0:08:44]
It's what your organization believes. It's what it requires. It's what it needs. It's what fits. And believe me, the other thing is this has to be revisited annually. Because I can tell you without a doubt the way I was taught to lead in the 90s in the early to mid 90s when I first got into the workforce, would not work. Now, nothing wrong with it. It's not, by the way, always remember, it's not better or worse, just different. Right? We're not saying that that was bad. We're saying that it's different. Things changed. So let's not judge and say that it's better or worse because that's not good for anybody. Let's talk about how it's different because the world's different. We're different.
[0:09:32]
Do the best you can until you know better, then do better. I think that was Maya Angelou. I think I edited it. But that's essentially what she said. Do the best you can until you know better. And when you know better, do better. That's all we're all doing. That's why it has to be something that's evolving. That's why I love the framework I use, which is explore, experiment, evolve. If evolution is never done, we are never through. We're never fully baked as leaders. We cannot afford to be because the world changes too quickly for that to be true. All right, so let's think about some experiments we can do. Again, as with everything, start with the process. You got to think it out.
[0:10:21]
You got to talk about it. Do some research on leadership. I mean, there is a broad spectrum of leadership widely accepted, just like there's generally accepted accounting principles. There's some generally accepted leadership principles. There's things like democratic autocratic, strategic, laissez faire transactional, transformational leadership. Tons of research out there on these kinds of leadership. Again, I'm not even saying any of those are good or bad. I'm saying if you want to start and kind of start filtering down for you and the organization, which one of these do we want to look into? Which one makes the most sense? Start there. Start with the big things. Do we believe in democratic, autocratic, strategic, laissez faire transactional, or transformational? Start there. Grab one of those and talk about it and think, okay, this sounds most like us. Let's do this.
[0:11:09]
Now, here's some other things you can go about doing with your organization, with you personally, if you're the leader or with your leadership team. Consider your role models. Who do you all hold up as examples of leaders? Right? So sit around with your leadership team, and right now, don't do this out loud, please. Do it silently. And then compare and contrast because we want to hear all the voices. Who are the role models that we're picking out? Do we have some consensus ones here? Do we have two or three people on everybody's list? Okay, let's start there. Consider the impact of everybody's life sitting at the table, the different experiences they've had. Again, diversity breeds strength. Let's make sure we're well represented in what it takes to lead. Identify leadership qualities you're proud of and determine the things that are impeding your leader development.
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What's stopping it? Reflect on what's worked in the past. Reflect on your vision of teamwork and team success. And then again, think about all those different styles of leadership. Then at that point, write it down. Like you have to write this down. It should be no more than a page, to be honest with you. It should be maybe half a page. You should be able to recite it pretty easily. Just like mission, vision, values, leadership philosophy should flow from that. If I define my leadership philosophy for you, and then I say these are our mission, vision and values, any normal human should be able to see the full integration of those things. Because quite honestly, whatever the leadership philosophy is, is simply the way you're going to bring the mission, vision and values into the world. It's the day to day. It's how are we making these embodied in a person? I've often thought about adding embodiment to my process, my framework.
[0:13:08]
It's another e, obviously, but it's important because evolution, part of that is embodiment. Because when you come up with this leadership philosophy, here's the thing. Just like your mission and your values, I would argue that I don't need your vision and mission and values on your wall. I want to walk in here's the litmus test. If somebody walked into your office and was just watching everybody act for the day, they could be a fly on the wall. Nobody knew they were there. They could attend meetings, they could listen to private conversations, they could listen to phone calls, they could read emails. After all of that, after all that observation, do I write down the values of the organization that fit what's on your wall? Are we the person and the organization we profess to be? Pretty simple. We don't need it written on the wall, do we embody it? And that's what leadership philosophy is. I don't want you to tell me what kind of leader you are. I want to see it in action. I want you to embody that philosophy.
[0:14:21]
I want you to be that person. It should be apparent to me by watching and listening to you what your leadership philosophy is. You shouldn't have to tell me. If you have to tell me, you're doing it wrong. And once you get this down, use it every day. Just like your mission and vision and values, this one even more explicitly. When you're developing others, when you're talking to the other leaders on your team, routinely go back to it. When you're talking about challenges and decisions that are being done, difficult decisions that you have to make, those things should be reflective of your leadership philosophy and tied directly to it. The more you use it, the more you embody it, the more you make it a living, breathing thing. The more people will adhere to it, the more they'll see that, and the more they'll understand and learn it. And then don't be afraid to revise it as needed. Like I said, I think this is just like anything else annually. You have to revisit it. You have to make sure it's still meaningful. You have to make sure it's still productive.
[0:15:26]
You have to make sure that it still fits in the world again. Not good, not bad, but different, right? It's evolving. We're always evolving. And so we have to be. We're never done. Like we can't ever do anything. Mission, vision, values, leadership, philosophy, none of that stuff can just be done. Put it aside. Never have to think about it again. It evolves with us. It evolves as you grow, as your organization grows. All of those things matter. And I forget who said the quote, but it's an awesome quote that if you're not embarrassed by who you were twelve months ago, you're not paying close enough attention. All right?
[0:16:10]
So remember, it's got to be written down, and it should support your mission and vision and value. Start there. Start with your mission and vision and values, and then get with your leadership team. Or if you're the leader, think about it on your own. How do I embody this? How do I share with people what we expect leaders to behave like? What are the behaviors that are important here? What do we need to see from somebody? How do we talk to each other? How do we talk to clients? What is our focus? All of those things that needs to be written down into a nice, succinct document that you can share with people and use every day to develop those within the organization. And please, please have that before you develop leadership, before you have leadership development discussions. Because however you want to go about that, make sure that whoever you're getting to do that with you and for you is creating something that supports what you're wanting to get to. Again, nature hates a vacuum.
[0:17:12]
If you don't provide that, you're getting whatever they're bringing. And it may or may not fit. It's not good or bad, but it may not be the best fit for you and the organization because, again, your organization is clear. Mission, vision, values, that's going to give you the starting point to develop that leadership philosophy. It's how do we embody that in the world? You've already done the heavy lifting. Just take it one step further. All right, so three thoughts to get us out of here. Ralph Waldo Emerson, our chief want, is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. That's a leader. Napoleon Bonaparte said, A leader is a dealer in hope. And I love this one. John Buchanan said, the task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it for the greatness is already there. The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it for the greatness is already there. And it's real similar to what I believe about leadership.
[0:18:26]
I want to help people become the leader that's already inside of them. I believe it's already there. We just need to tap into it and clear out all the trash, all the head trash, all the stories you've been told, and let that thing come forward, because we need that, and everybody can. Most people won't. Very few do. Are you going to be one of those few? Will you do the work? Will you explore, experiment, evolve, and embody what you believe to have a positive impact on those you care about? That's what leadership is. Every day, the people around you who do you care about? Are you having a positive impact on them? Are you through your exploring, experimenting and evolving and embodying. That what you believe in the world? Are you having that positive impact? And if the answer is yes, you're already leading.
[0:19:16]
And I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because the world needs better leaders and it needs what you have to offer. It deserves it, and it needs it. Now. Take care of yourself and take care of each other. And I hope to see you back in the lab soon.
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