The Contradictions of Leadership: Ten Considerations for Leaders at all Levels
by Cary Griffin, Director of Special Projects at the Rural Institute
The traditional model of management and leadership leads one to believe that the role of top administrators is to “set a course” and “stick to it.” The image of a ship’s captain as leader is archetypal: the haggard admiral standing on deck, wheel in one hand, sextant in the other, guiding the ship tirelessly through the storm. Using time-honored, and often very effective techniques— including strategic planning, performance evaluations, formal (written) inter-departmental communiques, policies and procedures that anticipate every possible corruption of the mission, and internal quality measures (rehabilitation managers know this as “accreditation”)—leaders attempt to keep the organization stable, predictable, and on course.
In practice of course, off course is where the fun begins! And yes, this very issue strikes panic into the hearts of most of us charged with assuring the sustainability of our agencies. The challenge for leaders is contradictory: manage for stability while at the same time create new opportunities and innovations. This mutually exclusive goal itself is at the heart of the best organizations —ones that invent new products and services, create multi-layered networks, and that cast off the ballast of past management practices while carefully retaining the best attributes. And, of course, since this is a largely non-linear undertaking, there is no cookbook, no one right way, no formula for success. Instead, great leaders envision the future(s) and adapt along the path(s).
The following Ten Contradictions are offered only as a starting point in re-thinking our roles as eaders—leaders at all levels of an organization, and in various circumstances including at work, in our families, our communities, and in the world at large.
1. Great leaders Know the Destination but Lose the Map
In other words, leaders are responsible for gathering broad-based support for the strategic vision, but must let go of linear work models that allow for only straight line production. Innovation, generated and nurtured through experimentation, might seem wasteful and unfruitful on the surface, but it can generate new experiences and lead to problem-solving in new ways. An organization that planfully and playfully embraces new circumstances (and a new circumstance occurs whenever a customer asks for something new, or when we ask customers if they would prefer something new) is regularly confronted with side-trips that potentially lead to new knowledge, opportunities, and customers, but can also lead to loss, political confrontation, and trouble. Good leaders are prepared for either, and take smart risks.
2. Waste Money to Make Money
Contrary to the popular cliches, there are stupid ideas, lots of them in fact. Great leaders, and their colleagues, use their intuition and experience to discourage bad ideas, but support marginal ones that just might have a chance at succeeding. A leader who allows and budgets for experimentation sends a clear signal that personnel are encouraged to find better methods and products. In the long run, profits come to those who innovate, not to those who stay the course. Various marginal projects or “skunk works” inside innovating corporations such as Canon, Xerox, and 3M have proven remarkably profitable, following short-term expenditures to generate and test new ideas.
3. The Customer Comes Second
Customer service starts internally. Appreciated and intellectually challenged staff perform better, stay longer, and earn organizations better reputations by treating their work mates better. Satisfied personnel treat external customers better, and happy customers tell their friends. Therefore, staff satisfaction should be the first concern of leaders. Job satisfaction comes from reasonable pay of course, but more so from challenging work, being provided the tools and core competencies to do the work, and from the visible respect of leadership. A 360 degree relationship develops over time where appreciation generates high performance, which generates satisfied customers, which generates profits, which generates better pay and new tools for innovation, which generates appreciation, and so on. Investing in long-term personnel recruitment and development are key to satisfying customers.
4. Lose the Job Descriptions
While we all want to know where our responsibilities begin and end, it is almost impossible to predict what every employee should be doing for every customer, in every circumstance these days, especially in a person-centered service environment. Certainly, guidelines spelling out broad categories of work duties, core tasks and competencies, and responsibilities are critical, but discretionary effort makes or breaks good companies. Rigid job descriptions are based in logic and analysis, which are good tools for managers. But, adaptive organizations need personnel who also rely on intuition, experimentation, analogy, and the ability to cope with ambiguity. Consider the airline customer with a cancelled flight who cannot get re-booked on another airline because the gate agent repeats, “I am not authorized to help you.” The situation is so much more pleasant (and eventually profitable) if gate agents have the power to fix customer problems at the point of face-to-face contact. Repeat business from paying customers is critical to even non-profit success.
5. Pay Attention to 20 Percent of your Customers
While it is true that all customers are critical and important, and want to feel that way, in most circumstances Pareto’s 80/20 Principle holds true. Roughly eighty percent of an organization’s business (profit) is generated from twenty percent of its customers. Paying attention to those critical customers keeps the organization focused on critical innovations, problem-solving, and opportunities to nurture these select few assures a solid future. Of course, innovation happens on the fringes, so the other customers are important too, and may very well lead the organization into new service territory. Contradiction at its best!
6. Challenge the Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is made up of all the unwritten and written rules of behavior in an organization. There is comfort and stability in learning, knowing, and practicing the rites and rituals of the corporation. And as humans, and good managers, we seek consistency and predictability because it allows us to move forward without distraction. However, a stable corporate culture also breeds complacency and discourages invention. Bending company procedures, not abolishing them, especially by leaders, begins the process of blurring the lines of conformity and allows experimentation to improve traditional processes. Creating new ideas and concepts necessitates that teams of people create a culture of questioning and positive conflict. From the edges of conflict and anxiety comes innovation. Furthermore, making changes or subtly standing in contradiction to the culture makes the past visible and may reveal fears and traditions that stifle creativity. As someone once said, “if you want to understand the corporate culture, make a change.” Understanding is the first step in making and managing change.
7. Play Politics
Politics is almost always cast in a negative light. Political relationships bring up images of corruption, favoritism, power plays, and dishonesty. In reality, politics is the interaction of any two human beings. Being politically savvy means thinking about the future and how each action may cause a reaction. Playing politics means managers are considering the impact of their actions on others; that they are using insider information to position the company into a stronger market position; that they are creating alliances and partnerships that offer protection to their organization and enhanced service and value to their customers. Politics keep organizations alive.
8. It’s Business; It’s Personal
In western society, people are identified in the community by what they do for a living. Thinking that professional and community/family lives are separate is a strange business school notion. Imagine if the director of an environmental group, say Green Peace, did not recycle at home. Is that person not guilty, at the very least, of hypocrisy? Leaders are leaders twenty four hours a day, and business relationships are simply human relationships with a profit motive (or perhaps a non-profit motive!). As leaders at all levels, especially in the rehabilitation field, we need to make our passions for economic justice visible and credible by voting for supportive candidates, by shopping in stores that hire people with disabilities, by keeping our money in accessible banks, and by making certain our friends, our Boards of Directors, and our neighborhoods are representative of the people we claim to be at work. One can only be as good a leader as one is a person.
9. Both/and, Not Either/or
Our society is built on the notion of one God, one President, one Director, etc. So, sometimes it is difficult for us to imagine more than one route to a solution, or more than one solution to a problem, or even that no solution is possible and that we are faced with managing ambiguity for long stretches. In most American schools the teacher has all the answers and disapproves of anything but the one right answer. As students, we are expected to keep quiet, focus our eyes on our own work, and keep our desks in a straight line. The real world is not a linear, controllable environment, so managers are constantly challenged by complex circumstances that do not lend themselves well to the educational rules students are taught, which inhibit team work and experimentation. There are unlimited wealth, knowledge, answers, approaches, and options in the world. Great leaders see this circumstance as invigorating and liberating, while more linear thinkers see these options as terrifying and uncontrollable.
10. Move Toward Your Anxiety
Most of us attempt to ignore conflict or discomforting situations hoping they will go away or resolve themselves. Of course, conflict rarely evaporates. Conflict does, however, fester, manifest itself in other behavioral or organizational aberrations, and eventually grow into a big pile of time and resource wasting goo. True, not every conflict or hiccup in the organization is worthy of attention, but too often gossip, high degrees of expressed emotion, staff turnover, and over-emphasis on internal processes result from values, mission, communication, and goal disconnections. Leaders, again at all levels, have to tune in to these disruptions, address their causes, seek solutions, and build consensus on new ways of working and thinking, all the while running the risk of making the trivial seem important.
Managing and leading is hard work, which is probably why so many of us turn to the latest best-seller for canned answers. The truth is that hard work demands approaches that allow each action to solve multiple problems. This is accomplished through networks of allies and capable employees, using some of the tried and true tools of management. Much of the time our actions are contradictory, which is the way it should be in a complex, evolving world.
Ten Contradictions of Leadership
- Great leaders know the destination but lose the map
- Waste money to make money
- The customer comes second
- Lose the job descriptions
- Pay attention to 20 percent of your customers
- Challenge the corporate culture
- Play politics
- It’s business; it’s personal
- Both/and not either/or
- Move toward your anxiety