Ten Commandments of Leadership-Not Being a Wimp

Wimp. Wiener. Coward. Spineless. Jellyfish. And more not fit to print.

All are words used to describe someone who lacks courage. The courage to do the right thing. The courage to confront. The courage to object. The courage to take risks. The courage to take a different path. All of these are needed characteristics of effective and winning leadership.

In all types of settings and in all organizational structures, leaders need courage and, more importantly, the good judgment when to utilize courage and when to stand down. As important as courage is, the ability to not fight a battle is equally important.

Courage is not Rude or Rash

Some people confuse being courageous and speaking up with being rude. Real courage, like real confidence, is not a spoken or boisterous competency. It is quiet, thoughtful and polite. Real courage is not about interrupting others, talking over someone, using emotional fits to win a point or even using bullying tactics. It is certainly not about blind copying an email to embarrass someone.

Conversely, people who come across as polite and deliberate should not be misjudged as lacking courage. The loudest person in the room is not the one with the real courage. In fact, the cool leader will use courage more effectively and with better judgment.

Being rash is covered in detail in an upcoming commandment but suffice to say that risk must always be mitigated and analyzed. Jumping blindly off a cliff is not risk taking. It is just dumb.

Courage to Confront

The first and most used competency for leaders is the courage to confront. This becomes almost a daily function for many supervisors, managers and executives and it is a fundamental part of the coaching function. The courage to confront is simply the desire to discuss poor performance and behavior in a direct and immediate manner.

Not being rash, this is an unemotional approach to coaching team members who do not meet expectations. Most commonly, this is a leader directed coaching dialog in which an expectations for performance or behavior has not been met. Many leaders fear and avoid these interactions for a variety of reasons but the most common avoidance excuse is the loss of popularity or the risk of a full blown and ugly confrontation. Both of those lines of reasoning create a grossly ineffective leader. As a supervisor, manager or executive, you are not there to be loved. Your responsibility and accountability is to the organization and not the feelings of your team members. You are not running for homecoming queen.

The desire for popularity is an interesting dynamic. Everyone wants to be liked and loved. We humans are wired for it. Unfortunately, this becomes counter-effective and counter-productive in a leadership role. Leaders must shift their need to be liked to a need to be effective and a need to be respected. Many times a leader that makes decisions to remain popular will greatly compromise their respect quotient. More simply, the leader that fails to confront failed performance in one team member because of a desire to remain liked by that team member will loose respect and credibility with other team members.

Effective leaders make one more shift related to popularity. They move the desire to be liked out of the workplace and move it home or in other settings. This shift provides for the need to be popular and liked but keeps it from compromising important actions in the working environment.

Another obstacle to the courage to confront is performance comparatives. In it's most simple terms, a performance comparative is looking at total team member value compared to a failure or error event. It is the failure to address today's dress code violation because the team member usually looks good or because they are a star performer in other areas. It is not talking to a team member about their surly approach with the receptionist because they produce more than any of the other team members. It is the fearing the loss of good characteristics, behaviors and performance when addressing a deficiency.

This paradigm is most easily challenged by asking a real star performer wants to be a star performer in all areas. Also challenging this belief is the fact that team members want to know where they stand and how they are doing. Real star performers want an opportunity to be a star in all areas and fix anything that does not rise to star level. Remember, when providing this type of coaching to only focus on the single behavior that needs improvement and not the total value of the team member.

The final obstacle related to the courage to confront is the fear that a coaching session about poor performance or behavior will result in an explosion from the team member. Ugly, yelling explosion. Maybe even a complaint to human resources about you. Crying, denying and accusing. Unattractive stuff.

First, go back and read the skills and techniques to be used in these types of coaching sessions in the immediate preceding chapter and commandment. Coaching team members is not easy but it is a core skill needed in effective leadership.

Challenge yourself to understand why some team members explode during a coaching dialog about poor performance and behavior. They explode. You respond in kind. You may even say something you regret. You may say something that causes liability to you and your company. They win. Without exception, explosive behavior from team members are designed to derail your mission as an effective and coaching leader. We have taught these team members that if they explode, the supervisor backs off. And better still, the leader becomes leery of future conversations about performance.

Another example is when a team member breaks down and even cries. They cry. Your empathy turns to sympathy. You back away from the performance or behavior dialog. They win. Lesson learned and it will be used again and again.

More common is the false belief that these types of dialogs always result in ugliness. In fact arguing, crying and fussing are relatively rare. Much more common is the desire for the team member to know where they have erred and how they can remedy it.

The "No Surprise Principle" tells us that team members would much rather have a conversation about their performance that read it as a surprise on their annual performance review. That is almost guaranteed to get a nasty response. Team members need to know how they are doing and effective leaders tell them.

As a final note in this section, also consider how this skills translates into other areas of your life. If you had a dog that was digging up your backyard and did nothing to confront the behavior, would the dog continue to dig? Would your other dog be encouraged to also dig? Your child has a tantrum and you back off from your dialog, what has she learned? Will your other kids mimic that behavior?

Courage to Protect Team Members and Confront Higher Levels

Your boss storms into your office demand to talk to one of your team members immediately. She has received another complaint and demands to speak to your person about it now.

An epiphany moment in your leadership credibility.

Do you immediately summon your team member and turn him over to your boss? After all, that is following a direct order.

Or do you choose a different course of action? Maybe you inquire about the nature of the complaint. Maybe you request to talk to the team member yourself. Maybe you ratchet up the assertion and insist that the team member works for you and you work for your boss. Maybe you even suggest that the boss hold you accountable for the complaint and you will hold the team member accountable. This relatively small interaction is indeed a crossroad for your leadership credibility. If you cave early and summon the team member, your credibility as a leader with all team members will forever be harmed. You are obviously not the decision maker with your group.

The effective leader stands up for and protects his or her team and sometimes that means taking the heat from your boss and shielding your team from those types of influences. Is there a potential price to pay? Absolutely, but it is far less than the long term price of your total loss of leadership credibility with your team.

A Note About Fear

Before we move into more applications of leadership courage, a little note about fear. Fear is the belief that something bad will happen and acts as the primary dampener of courage.

Fears, for the most part, are unreasonably crafted thoughts that have very little to do with actual risk of harm. Fear of height on the top of a building that is surrounded by guard rails and safety fencing is unreasonable because there is no chance you will fall off the edge.

As a representation, consider False Evidence Appearing Real as an acronym for fear. This will serve to visualize the unreasonable nature of most fears. To further illustrate this consider you at age three. If offered an opportunity to pet a green garden snake, would you? If at age 10 someone offered you the chance to run and jump into the swimming pool, would you? At age 6, if someone gave you a microphone and spotlight at school and told you to entertain the audience for a while, would you leap at the chance?

Certainly you would. All three. Pet the snake. Jump in the pool and sing to the crowd.

Now fast forward to your current age. How would your react? With most people the reactions are greatly different. They pass on touching the snake, check the water temperature and balk at standing up in front of any group.

What has changed? The stimuli that causes the fear is the same now as it was then. What changed is how you choose to see those events. False Evidence Appearing Real. You have concocted the fear reaction.

The same holds true for the common uses of courage in the working environment. The fear of a poor team member reaction, the fear of losing your job, the fear of loss of favor with your boss, the fear of making a mistake and the fear of loss of popularity are largely made up. Made up by you.

Courage to Make Decisions

One of the more interesting organizational dynamics that we have witnessed in the past few years is upward delegation. This really has nothing to do with sending your boss a box of your filing that needs to be done or forwarding your overflow email to your manager. Upward delegation is the hesitancy, reluctance and avoidance of making a decision at the appropriate level and rolling it up to the higher organizational level.

As a symptom of a company's toxicity, this is pretty predictive. When pervasive, this indicates an organization has not supported past decisions, hyper-criticized decisions, not provided positive feedback when decisions were good and not created leaders that are encouraged to make decisions. This bottlenecked approach will lead to dramatically reduced results and extremely poor morale.

Sometimes upward delegation is dressed in the form of "just wanted you to know" or "just wanted to see what you think." Benign in presentation, these are just labels for "please make the decision for me" and if it goes bad, I can always come back and say that is what you suggested.

Effective leaders have two distinct responsibilities related to decision making. First, when the decision is appropriate for you and your level in the organization; make it. Think about it, review options and make the decision. Support and defend it if necessary but make the decision.

A special note to the over-thinkers in the group. There will never be all of the information needed to make a decision. You will have to utilize courage and select the most comfortable amount of information available to avoid delay and loss of opportunity. Delayed decisions from leaders also contribute to a significant loss in credibility.

A special note to the gunslinger types. Even though the best decision is often your first decision, take a little time and process consequences and outcomes. You don't have to be the universal expert that has immediate responses to all situations. Take a little time to avoid pitfalls and unintended consequences and gather some information to support your decision.

Every leader has a little bit different tolerance for decision making, the time required for a decision and the information needed for a proper and correct decision. As a rule of thumb, the decision should come with less information than you are comfortable with but more than just your gut reaction. Timing in decision making is important as well. With delay and deferral, your credibility is lost in the eyes of subordinates and peer team members.

The best decision is the right decision. The next best decision is the wrong decision and the worst decision is no decision.

Courage to Stretch

The 110% myth is just that. A myth.

You are not giving 110%. You are probably giving somewhere around 30% to 40% of your capacity both intellectually and in energy.

Self-challenge is one of the more difficult leadership and work related hurdles you will face. Effective leaders are in a constant mode of self-challenge and self-push and gets them close to true capacity. They are looking for ways to accomplish more, produce more and achieve more. They are looking to kill off unproductive and unrelated behaviors that often derail this effort.

The leader that engages in self-challenge will need some courage to defer unproductive behaviors, avoid idle activities and really extend themselves beyond what they think they could produce.

The courage to stretch also has another side related to management of the status quo compared to true leadership. Many people in a leadership position see themselves as caretakers of the system and guardians of the way we do it now. Effective leaders stretch beyond the boundaries of what is occurring today, no matter how successful it might be, and focus on what the organization can become. This requires the courage to constantly ask questions and push the envelope of performance and innovation that is not always popular or welcome.

Courage to Do the Right Thing

A couple of times in each leader's career they are faced with a choice about doing the right thing or doing the expedient thing. Thankfully, these types of choices only occur infrequently but they do happen.

Often these types of choices involve dealing with team members or how a team member situation is handled. Many times these choices also involve ethical dilemmas.

You are aware that your boss is harassing a new team member in another department. You have seen it and the team member has confided in you that the harassment is occurring but she needs this job and fears retaliation if she says anything. If you report it, you could face retaliation, up to and including the loss of your job. The easy answer is the put the burden on the team member being harassed but the harder answer is for you to stand up and do the right thing. Could there be consequences? Absolutely. Is reporting the harassment the right thing? Equally absolutely.

Betty is a long term team member in the twilight of her career. She is set to retire in a year but has become increasingly sloppy with her punctuality and is tardy two and three times a week. You have coached her and provided corrective feedback but she scoffed at the interaction and openly talks about her tenure with the company and how you really cannot do anything about it. You know that when you send paperwork to human resources, they are not going to let you discipline her formally. Do you write her up or do you just wait out the retirement party? Is there risks associated with attempting to discipline her at this stage in her career? The effective leader does what is right for the company and the team without deference to individual team member comfort or status. Will this require courage on your part? Yes and a healthy dose of stamina as well.

Some principles are going to be more important that your current job. The effective leader faces these obstacles directly and in a courageous and forthright manner.

Courage to Speak Up and Object

Objecting often requires great courage. It is far easier to go with the flow and seek cover with the masses.

Modern working environments are full of silent objectors. Arm chair quarterbacks that question play calling and decisions in the comfort and safety of their home on a Saturday or Sunday. They are all about pointing out what is wrong with choices, direction and decision but will only do it in the safest of all environments. These type of team members, and especially those in leadership positions, add no value to the organization.

The effective leader must seek to provide feedback and object appropriately when the organization is heading down the wrong path. Using a respectful and most often private approach, the leader must express their objection, the reasoning and offer solutions. In the best case, the leader has some quantifiable evidence of unintended consequences or past experience to offer. Also in the best case, the leader offers alternatives and other ideas and is not objecting to be objectionable.

The same effective leader also needs to remove emotion from any objection and remove any feelings about who is presenting ideas or changes. This is not about them or you but about what may happen if the change or idea is implemented. The leader that stands up and says "I feel like this is a bad direction" will harm their credibility. The leader that provides evidence and suggestions and removes emotion will keep their credibility intact.

In working with emerging leaders and executives, one point of coaching that we use is the contrast between critical thinking and being a critic. Critical thinking is a valuable commodity within any company or organization. Becoming a critic, the person that objects just to object, will find themselves isolated and being worked around and not work with. Critical and systems thinking bring value but being a critic brings scorn.

Courage to Take Risks

The catch words of the 80's and 90's was that leaders needed to be risk takers.

True enough but they also have to be smart enough to mitigate risk and understand risk tolerances.

Lemmings are small fury creatures that live in Nova Scotia. Every spring they awaken from their burrows and throw themselves over the cliffs and into the ocean. Lemmings are risk takers. Not horribly smart but risk takers.

And so it goes. Risk taking and risk tolerance are important leadership characteristics and skills. Being rash and taking risk for risk's sake is dumb.

Effective leaders must challenge paradigms, confront difficult situations and take risks on a daily basis. Calculated risks. With each action, the leader must determine the desired outcome, identify the potential negative consequences of the action and then choose if the risk justifies the reward.

In financial terms, taking all of your life savings out of treasury bills and investing in an Australian gold mine could yield great results and returns. This is the desired outcome. This investment strategy could also leave you completely without savings. That is the potential negative consequence. If you are okay with the consequence, take the risk. If you are not okay with the consequence, do not take the risk.

With more of an organizational angle, you could suggest a bonus plan for all customer service team members. The desired outcome is greater levels of customer service, higher team member satisfaction, greater work commitment and quality and reduced turnover. The risk is that the bonus plan will not return the positive results estimated. You could loose credibility and standing with your company.

Risk taking is not about flying in the face of consequences but rather a calculated approach, done quickly, that understands the consequences and makes good solid decisions.

Courage to Deliver an Honest No

Yes. Sure. You bet.

The easiest words to say in the English language. Makes sure that you remain popular. People come to you and you become the "go to person" in the organization. You take on all things asked.

Unfortunately, this is also a very self defeating leadership behavior. What happens when you can't, don't have the capacity or should not? Do you still say yes or do you deliver a honest no?

In the simplest form, the honest no needs courage when the boss asks you to take on something that you simply do not have the capacity to handle. In your attempt to please, you take on the project, move around other strategically important tasks to satisfy the boss or do a poor job on everything to just get things done. The better approach would be an honest no delivered to the boss with the explanation why. If the boss persists, you need to make the value decisions to move other things around to do a good job on what you were just given.

More complicated no responses are those delivered to team members. It is easy to grant a little time off, allow a deadline to be moved or accommodate other requests. What takes significantly more leadership courage is to say no and deny the requests when needed. It will harm your short term credibility but it will maintain your long term effectiveness and respect.

The Good Sense to Walk Away

More important that courage is the judgment to use it wisely. Courage without judgment is simply rash and obnoxious.

Effective leaders understand that all applications for courage need to be considered in a broader and more global perspective. Simply put, there are times to fight and times to keep quiet and acquiesce. Giving ground tactically on a single issue or event is not a sign of weakness. Rather it is a sign that the leader has exercised the good judgment to maintain power and credibility to use courage another day.

Imagine your pet training project was cancelled for budgetary reasons. The training project is solid and needs to continue for organizational effectiveness. The boss is stuck in budget cuts. Is it wise to press the issue or temporarily regroup and address the subject another time? This is not lack of courage but the good judgment to not kill the project entirely.

Those leaders that utilize courage without good judgment often get labeled in their organization. They are the contrarians, arguers and critics and most people do not want to work with. They become isolated and ineffective. Good judgment on the use of courage will keep you from that fate.