BOOK REVIEW: Why Should Anyone Be Led by YOU? What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader (By Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones. Harvard Business School Press, 2006, ISBN #1-57851-971-3)
BOOK REVIEW: Why Should Anyone Be Led by YOU? What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader (By Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones. Harvard Business School Press, 2006, ISBN #1-57851-971-3)
This is an intriguing point-of-view and one with which I agree. If you, as a leader, accept it too, it raises for you a question: how much of your true self should you reveal to your staff? Should you be an open book, or should there be an element of mystery about you? As General Charles DeGaulle said, “There must always be something about the leader which others cannot fathom.”
Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones, two Brits who offer a number of European stories and examples in their book, essentially agree with the French President: you should self disclose but not too much, making yourself “interestingly enigmatic.” They say that it all comes down to three key areas for leaders as they craft the nature of that space between themselves and their employees:
Knowing Yourself
Obviously, in order to self-disclose, you need to know about yourself. Not surprisingly, the research on effective leaders identifies self-awareness as a core competency. To begin with, you should be clear on your strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes this calls for you to take a look back at your earlier, formative years. Simon Guilford, Marketing Director at Barclay’s Bank, takes a golfing vacation every year with a group of long-standing friends from the small Welsh town of Pontypridd, where he grew up. That is how he reconnects with his roots.
But, more specifically, the writers say you need to figure out what it is about you that causes others to be influenced by you and choose to follow you. What works for you when you are leading at your best? Is it part of your personality, for example, your ability to put people at ease? Or is it perhaps your ability to stay focused and composed when under pressure? For Virgin’s Richard Branson, it is his nonconformity and informality, for Bill Clinton, his engaging speaking ability and his personal charm.
Finally, you must know what you want, what your purpose is, what you intend to create in your current leadership role. Again not surprisingly, a clear vision is another research-supported hallmark of effective leaders.
Managing the Balance
Leading others has been likened to an ongoing dance and this book really demonstrates how this is so. It lists three natural, inherent tensions that leaders must manage well if they are to be effective.
Situational Sensing
So many new leaders, the authors say, start out from day one like a wild west sheriff, riding into town with guns blazing and imposing their law and authority with little interest in the context of the situation, the history of the town, or what the people want.
So then, how should our latter day “sheriff” come into a new leadership situation? Goffee and Jones recommend a low key entry. Timing is everything. As a newly appointed leader, especially if coming in from outside the department or organization, you are advised to delay imposing your standards right away and instead do some situational sensing:
When Greg Dyke became Director General of the BBC, he toured the local offices across Britain to get a first hand read, vs. just accepting the established view from head office. What he found was a professional staff who possessed innovative ideas and a strong commitment to public-service broadcasting but who were afraid to buck the formality of the hierarchy. Then Dyke began by, to use the authors’ term, “rewriting the context.” He phased out limos and chauffeurs, cut the budgets for external consultants, and even showed up for a presentation to regional employees the day after his own home had tragically burned down.
This whole idea about new managers or CEO’s not rushing to impose their “new order around here” is probably the most useful message from this book. Again, because timing is everything, you must not wait too long to begin moving on your own agenda and ways of operating. There are no hard and fast guidelines for when to start asserting yourself. Essentially, it is your intuitive judgment call as leader.
Situational sensing requires you to operate outside of your comfort zone for at least awhile. Most leaders are action-oriented. To the extent this is true of you, this front-end waiting and observing phase will be uncomfortable for you. It will demand patience and self-confidence as you immerse yourself in the culture you are inheriting.
I have just two caveats about this book. First, it covers essentially only three elements, a much narrower treatment than the title seems to promise. Second, how “authentic” are you being when you consciously measure out your display of openness and closeness/distance and when you delay overtly modeling your own style and values? That said, the authors offer some important contributions to the art of leading.
BOOK REVIEW Why Should Anyone Be Led by YOU What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader By Rob Goffee Gareth Jones Harvard Business School Press 2006 ISBN 1578519713 - To learn more about this author, visit Ian Cook's Website.
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People want to be led by a person, the authors contend, not by someone with a fancy job title or a manager who has amassed a vast chunk of organizational turf. Employees will choose to follow only a real, live, breathing human being who reveals at least some of their humanity, values, personality and, yes, vulnerability.
This is an intriguing point-of-view and one with which I agree. If you, as a leader, accept it too, it raises for you a question: how much of your true self should you reveal to your staff? Should you be an open book, or should there be an element of mystery about you? As General Charles DeGaulle said, “There must always be something about the leader which others cannot fathom.”
Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones, two Brits who offer a number of European stories and examples in their book, essentially agree with the French President: you should self disclose but not too much, making yourself “interestingly enigmatic.” They say that it all comes down to three key areas for leaders as they craft the nature of that space between themselves and their employees:
- Knowing yourself
- Managing the balance in a number of aspects of your relationships
- Engaging in what they call “Situational Sensing”
Knowing Yourself
Obviously, in order to self-disclose, you need to know about yourself. Not surprisingly, the research on effective leaders identifies self-awareness as a core competency. To begin with, you should be clear on your strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes this calls for you to take a look back at your earlier, formative years. Simon Guilford, Marketing Director at Barclay’s Bank, takes a golfing vacation every year with a group of long-standing friends from the small Welsh town of Pontypridd, where he grew up. That is how he reconnects with his roots.
But, more specifically, the writers say you need to figure out what it is about you that causes others to be influenced by you and choose to follow you. What works for you when you are leading at your best? Is it part of your personality, for example, your ability to put people at ease? Or is it perhaps your ability to stay focused and composed when under pressure? For Virgin’s Richard Branson, it is his nonconformity and informality, for Bill Clinton, his engaging speaking ability and his personal charm.
Finally, you must know what you want, what your purpose is, what you intend to create in your current leadership role. Again not surprisingly, a clear vision is another research-supported hallmark of effective leaders.
Managing the Balance
Leading others has been likened to an ongoing dance and this book really demonstrates how this is so. It lists three natural, inherent tensions that leaders must manage well if they are to be effective.
- How much do I reveal and should it be just my strengths or also some weaknesses and areas where I’m not so knowledgeable? Your employees need to know enough about you to be able to relate to and come to trust your human side. They don’t, however, want to be privy to too many weaknesses because that will detract from the strong leader they want to see in you.
- How personally close should I be with my direct reports? This involves what is known as “social distance” and you want to use it skillfully. Establish a sufficiently personal connection to process the emotional elements in your working relationships but not so close that you can’t impose and, if necessary, enforce the challenging performance expectations you have of your staff.
The book recounts the story of Karel Vuursteen who took over a rather complacent Heineken Brewery in the early 1990’s. Knowing how much he needed to shake up the culture there, he remained (uncharacteristically for him) distant with his executives until he had sufficiently scared them with the reality of how vulnerable they were to losing market share to the competition. Once his top team demonstrated that they were performing with the requisite competitive sense of urgency, Vuursteen was able to shift to his more natural closer style of relating. - How hard do I push my own performance standards and insist that my people conform to the values I have articulated and modeled in my unit or in the organization as a whole? For a response to this question see “situational sensing,” below.
Situational Sensing
So many new leaders, the authors say, start out from day one like a wild west sheriff, riding into town with guns blazing and imposing their law and authority with little interest in the context of the situation, the history of the town, or what the people want.
So then, how should our latter day “sheriff” come into a new leadership situation? Goffee and Jones recommend a low key entry. Timing is everything. As a newly appointed leader, especially if coming in from outside the department or organization, you are advised to delay imposing your standards right away and instead do some situational sensing:
- Spend time early on observing, asking questions, and listening, with a goal to understanding the current status quo, your direct reports, other key players and the employee group, their skills, perspectives and needs.
- As much as possible, adapt your behavior in the short run to fit in with the existing culture.
- Once you have determined what needs to be changed and how best to change it, you can begin to assert your own values and expectations.
When Greg Dyke became Director General of the BBC, he toured the local offices across Britain to get a first hand read, vs. just accepting the established view from head office. What he found was a professional staff who possessed innovative ideas and a strong commitment to public-service broadcasting but who were afraid to buck the formality of the hierarchy. Then Dyke began by, to use the authors’ term, “rewriting the context.” He phased out limos and chauffeurs, cut the budgets for external consultants, and even showed up for a presentation to regional employees the day after his own home had tragically burned down.
This whole idea about new managers or CEO’s not rushing to impose their “new order around here” is probably the most useful message from this book. Again, because timing is everything, you must not wait too long to begin moving on your own agenda and ways of operating. There are no hard and fast guidelines for when to start asserting yourself. Essentially, it is your intuitive judgment call as leader.
Situational sensing requires you to operate outside of your comfort zone for at least awhile. Most leaders are action-oriented. To the extent this is true of you, this front-end waiting and observing phase will be uncomfortable for you. It will demand patience and self-confidence as you immerse yourself in the culture you are inheriting.
I have just two caveats about this book. First, it covers essentially only three elements, a much narrower treatment than the title seems to promise. Second, how “authentic” are you being when you consciously measure out your display of openness and closeness/distance and when you delay overtly modeling your own style and values? That said, the authors offer some important contributions to the art of leading.
BOOK REVIEW Why Should Anyone Be Led by YOU What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader By Rob Goffee Gareth Jones Harvard Business School Press 2006 ISBN 1578519713 - To learn more about this author, visit Ian Cook's Website.
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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