April 2017 – Compelling Leadership

Monthly Archives: April 2017

Leaders view life through the lens of opportunity

How long have I been a leader? Probably for as long as I can remember. Starting back when I took a leadership role at the local youth group, coaching a soccer team, to becoming a teacher, and finally a Head of School. All of us experience leadership when we seek to influence others (Blanchard).

Along the way I have had to face enormous challenges. Being a Head of School you would think that the biggest challenge would be dealing with a naughty student. I have had to face vexatious complaints, death threats, and conspiracy. I’ve uncovered murder plots and had to be involved in the investigation of crimes committed long before my time. As a result I’ve had police protection more than once. When you seek to serve people in a position of leadership you see will the darker side of life.

Each challenge brought new levels of stress and anxiety. Just when I thought I had dealt with everything possible, along would come something out of the blue that I would never have thought possible.

There have been many times that I have thought about giving up. It was all too hard.

There are two ways you can view these experiences. You can look at a tough situation as a victim, seeking empathy from others, or you can see it as an opportunity for growth.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

Leadership is hard. If it isn’t it probably means you aren’t doing much. It takes courage, and when you get started you will come up against challenges, some predictable, but others you can never plan for.

A leader can never turn up to work having their day planned out, knowing exactly what they are going to achieve. Your work as a leader is the unknown.

Leadership is a bit like rock climbing (my son took me indoor climbing over Easter). When you look up the cliff face looks formidable, unachieveable. Half way up your arms begin to shake, particularly if you are using the wrong technique. If you look down your courage can falter and you think you can’t push on any further.

But like rock climbing, leadership is a skill, that with practise, can be improved. You only get better at it when you are faced with a new over-hang, new hold, or new rock face.

Good leaders will assess each challenge. Have I seen this before? What did I learn last time? Should I tackle this a bit differently? Who can I ask for advice? And if I make a mistake, what is the worst that is going to happen? I’ll have to apologise, adjust my strategy and give it another go.

Rock climbers, like leaders never get any better by looking at the cliff. They can learn by watching others, but the real learning happens when you hook on and give it a go.

And if your courage does falter? There is nothing wrong in knowing and accepting your limits. Every climber needs a good person to belay.

Is reputation everything?

When threatened our instinctive response is ‘fight or flight’. The emotion we experience is fear. This instinct not only kicks in when we are personally threatened, but when the organisation we work for is threatened. The default position is to ‘protect reputation at all costs’. This is because we perceive reputation, both personal and organisational, to be our most important asset.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it. If you think about that you’ll do things differently. Warren Buffett

However, what happens if you are faced with a choice between protecting reputation or doing the right thing?

There are plenty of examples of the tension between doing the right thing and reputational protection. Volkswagen didn’t do the right thing when it made the conscious decision to cheat the emissions test on its diesel cars. Instead, it wanted to build its reputation as the world’s biggest car company.

Samsung is another example with its recent recall of the Galaxy 7 notebook. At enormous financial and perhaps reputational cost, they chose the right thing by recalling all the phones it had sold.

However, with the advent of social media companies are finding themselves forced to do the right thing. Would Samsung have recalled all those phones if there wasn’t such a public outcry? Up until the point of the recall a mere 35 phones out of the 1million+ sold had exploded into flames. Had they done sufficient testing to begin with, or were they, like Volkswagen, hoping to get away with it?

There are plenty of examples where people and organisations have done wrong and tried (successfully or otherwise) to ‘sweep it under the carpet’ in order to protect their reputation. This is done out of fear; fear that if they don’t protect reputation there will be loss of face, loss of business, and consequences that will have to be borne. In these instances protection of reputation more often than not involves deceit.

We have seen examples of this played out in the way institutions in Australia (and across the world) responded to allegations of sexual abuse towards children. When a young person did have the courage to speak out they were beaten into submission for the protection of the organisation’s reputation. The loss of an individual’s potential (and sometimes life) seemed inconsequential to those in leadership roles.

It takes enormous courage when faced with the choice between doing the right thing or protecting reputation, particularly if it means admitting that you were wrong. But great leaders are more interested in integrity than reputation. They are more interested in the other person than themselves.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not. Oprah Winfrey

Nelson Mandela said, “I have learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”.

When faced with the choice, to do the right thing or protect reputation, what would you do? Would you allow your natural fight or flight instinct to rule you, or will you conquer your fear and do the right thing, even if it may mean reputational damage? Great leaders hold integrity far above reputation.