A leader always wants their people to perform at their optimum level. It’s good for every one involved in the team and drives organisational performance. Regardless of the leader’s personal intentions – whether they want to look good as a leader or they want to drive their business forward, all a leader wants is for their people to do their best at work.

As team members start to under perform, start to let the leader down, the leader’s initial impulse is to take back some control. Decrease team members responsibilities, control some of the project, or even micro manage them with a long screw driver just a little in order to make the leader feel more comfortable. This is human nature.  After all a successful outcome is being threatened, so the leader naturally re-assumes control. Good leadership some would say and in certain circumstances that is the right thing to do for the task although it may damage the individual team member.

But stop a moment lets reflect on how this impacts upon the under performer doing the work?

You lead top performers very differently from those under performers and perhaps that may contribute to their lack of success.  Two completely different approaches which achieve different results appear logical on the surface; however, it seems ludicrous when you think you are applying methods that inhibit under performers from learning and developing. Let’s break down the logic:

You do something new – and someone performs really well you give them control and let them get on with it with the belief and freedom that delivers success.

However you have someone that isn’t performing well doing the same new thing – and you really want them to do well – so you do something totally different, you take back control pressurising them and hindering their opportunity for learning and development

In other words, we manage high performers like high performers. And we manage underachievers like underachievers – even though we want everyone to become a high performer for the sake of the team and the outcome.

And a big component of this is the leader feeling in control. When we take control away from people, their ability to think critically, to problem solve and to control emotions and behaviours is compromised. As leaders, we tend to give our high performers a lot of control and our underachievers a little. We are imposing our way upon someone who may have a better but different way. Someone who may just need to learn how to do it and the best way of learning is experimentally. Hence our imposition of control might end up driving a self-fulfilling cycle.

In a recent study a group of people were given a problem solving test and their scores were recorded. Each of the participants was then asked to describe a person in their lives that they thought was controlling. For 15 minutes, they were asked to describe the person, their actions and specific situations. After this interview, they were given another (equivalent) problem-solving test and each and every one of them performed about 30% worse.

Interesting that just the thought of someone controlling us decreases our ability to problem-solve by 30%!

But it turns out actual control by the incumbent isn’t completely necessary. In many research experiments using computer tasks, just the feeling of control can reignite someone’s performance. As with most things, perception is more important than reality. We call this ownership and its all about feeling ownership of an outcome. Effective communication by a leader should leave a team member in no doubt about the expected outcome to be delivered and the boundaries beyond which they have to seek permission to pass in pursuit of that outcome. This creates the impression of control although a good leader will monitor unobtrusively until they have total confidence in that team member.

So as leaders how do we develop our under performers through empowerment through the feeling of more control.

1)    Be more organized in your delegation

To delegate well and give people control, you have to be more organized than when you simply do it yourself. You must clearly communicate expectations (the outcome) and boundaries. Give yourself and your direct reports realistic lead times, which allow them to get their work done, get some feedback and then redo it if necessary. When your direct report gets it wrong too close to the deadline, you have very little choice but to take it back and do it yourself but remember, if you can always, exploit a learning opportunity!

2) Delegate pieces of projects, rather than the whole thing

Remember people do things better if they like doing it.  So you’re bound to find things that people are more proficient at. The most effective leader develops their team members using challenge and support – too much of either is a poor recipe for learning. If you do not have total confidence  in someone give them pieces of the project that you are happy for them to control, rather than setting them up to fail by being over ambitious asking them to do too much. Time spent building trust and understanding is never wasted.

3) Create the perception of control

Ownership is important as people always need to feel like they control something. There are always things that we have no control over – such as deadlines. But there are also things that we can make sure people do have control over – that contribute to the way in which the outcome is achieved. Delivery of a small contributing piece of an outcome such as the provision of refreshments or even the colour of the binding for the final report without interference can afford a perception of ownership. These small things can actually make a big difference in the way team members perform whilst enhancing trust and cohesion.

People do their best work when they feel they are trusted; when they have a sense of control. Not when they are operating on fear or over worried about making little mistakes that make them appear stupid. They need to understand what they own and the expectations and boundaries and then be left to get on with it.

These simple things might just help your underachievers become high achievers and valued team members in the future. The value of experiential learning should never be missed!

Some of us deliberately create or imagine barriers for fear of possibly failing and yet failure should be viewed more positively as it is often the closest bedfellow to success. Like love and hate they are extremes and yet they can be in very close proximity. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure”. – Napoleon Hill. It’s having the guts to try and to continue trying, to believe beyond anything in eventual success. “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” – Christopher Reeve. But a hero is an ordinary person who has become extraordinary through sheer will and determination. Failure brings with it shame, a stigma many of us are unprepared to go through.  The shame barrier is self imposed and even though breaking through it may lead to great eventual success it is all too often the end of our endeavours.  Yet we admire others who have overcome shame, we admire others who are prepared to admit weakness and failure and yet we are often unprepared to tolerate it in ourselves. Shame hurts, shame humiliates, shame is a weakness that we would rather not be part of.   And yet shame is the mother of great invention the soul of great conquests and the source of great courage.

Humans are naturally lazy they get away with as little as possible. It is after all a natural phenomenon. Preserving resources and energy for survival purposes and yet “Laziness is the greatest assassin of talent” Pele. We need to think beyond instinct, think about goals and desired outcomes to motivate ourselves through our laziness to success. People who shy away from challenge and possible failure will never stand out; theirs is the greyness of obscurity. To quote two US Presidents “If you run you stand the chance of losing, if you don’t you have already lost” Barrack Obama and “Only one who dares to fail greatly can achieve greatness” Robert F Kennedy. Both men have lead the Western World!

Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success before they gave up.” And this is the challenge that today’s leaders who are destined to break barriers must overcome. Success is hard won. It comes to those who stick to their goals longer than others. Those who do not give up but press through their personal barriers and motivate their teams to press through their personal and group barriers stand a better chance than those who don’t; for success comes to those who learn from and respect their failures and shame rather than just attributing the blame.

The key challenge for modern leaders in whatever position or role they occupy is ensuring their response to their barriers, failures, challenges and shame they meet in their leadership positions matches the environment and reinforces their desire for success. They must overcome self doubt, they must create an ethos of success but they must also understand and respect the benefits and lessons that failure delivers. After all when Galileo called self-doubt “the father of all invention” he understood the inevitable challenges on the leadership journey to success.

When we plan to succeed there are automatic built in components of overcome failure because nothing worthwhile in life comes easy we are all more robust if we have and maintain a vision of eventual success.  Failure is not our enemy; but it is our friend. As a race we don’t always like adversity because it hurts. However, think of what adversity has delivered to our society in terms of a hunger and drive for success. It is not adversity that kills businesses. What kills businesses is a lack of understanding and education as to how things such as adversity and failure are actually assets, and not liabilities.  Every organisation if it is to exploit its opportunities should look for the positive in each situation. I like the old Chinese saying “I complained because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no legs” makes real sense. Often it is only our lack of perspective that allows the fear of failure to control our thinking.  If we maintain perspective in terms of our real situation we can learn as much from failure as we can success.

Failure is not something to be avoided but something to be encouraged, all creative ventures yield to the maximum when failure is embraced rather than shunned.  Failure is often seen perceived as a weakness and yet we all have weaknesses as we are all flawed as humans that is in our nature! It is the strong man that knows his weaknesses. It is only when the limits of anything are known through it breaking or failing that we are we able to understand its flaws and  develop something new, it is only then that we have a  real need to change. That is as Donald Rumsfeld would say when an “unknown unknown” is possible because an “unknown known” has become a “known known”. Failure brings us knowledge and development and should always be viewed positively as long as it is not repeated too often because that only exposes an inability to learn the lessons of failure. If you keep on doing the same things you will always get the same results. As Albert Einstein said “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and expecting a different result”.

Let’s just take three types of problem and assess the characteristics a leader may need to possess to be effective in delivering progress or a solution to each problem type. Keith Grint in Problems Problems Problems defines three categories of problem. The first is a Critical problem one that needs a solution now; they are problems that require a rapid solution to prevent further escalation. Here a leader needs to be both decisive and considerate in their actions; decisive to prevent the problem from running out of control instantly and yet considerate to all those involved with a view to a longer term solution. The London Riots are a fine example of a critical problem escalating. A wicked problem is more ambiguous in its boundaries or very complex where time may not be a consideration. Here a leader needs to understand and recognise the root causes of the issue and manage all those parties and agendas involved in the problem. Patience, intellect, emotional intelligence and understanding are key attributes required of a leader as they try to construct a collaborative solution. An example of a wicked problem is teenage pregnancy.  Now the third type of problem is the tame problem where the issue can be quickly and easily resolved although time may not be a consideration. In an efficient organisation these are dealt with relatively simply through process and operating procedures. They are the province of management and only become significant when they are raised at too high a level where they can quickly become disruptive. A leader needs courage and confidence to enable the organisation to deal with tame problems whilst maintaining them at the correct level. Courage to trust and teach followers, confidence to delegate and empower followers. Leaders need to establish organisations that understand of each member’s responsibilities, allocated boundaries and expectations. They therefore instil an ethos of ownership and responsibility that ensures problems are resolved quickly and effectively.

Control is the conundrum that confuses many in leadership roles, who has it, when should it be relinquished or delegated and how is it perceived? A leader is generally in a pre-ordained position of control at the start of a critical problem but has to work hard to maintain that control to engineer and sustain the long term solution. With a wicked problem the work begins in earnest straight away as the potential leader wrestles with the problem in order to generate the required understanding and environment to enable them to become a permissive leader. The third tame problem requires an ethos and culture of understanding and empowerment to exist so that responsibility is easily shouldered at the appropriate level. This requires a hierarchy enabling the delegation of control and trust from the leader downwards to the appropriate level. This is where the true potential of servant leadership shines through as the leader becomes the enabler rather than the controller or owner of the issue or the enforcer of a solution.

The skill sets and attributes required of the various leaders for each of the problems are different. This is why a leader needs the right circumstances and environment to become a lauded leader. A great leader’s skill sets and personal attributes have to match the moment. The old English proverb still rings true “opportunity makes the man”

The modern world where life is fast, communication is fast and technological advantage short lived, amplifies the requirement for flexibility and creates the need for an extended range of attributes from a leader. This can be achieved either by a group of leaders or a chameleon like flexible leader who has the innate qualities to lead and influence for an extended period of time. The current business environment is not the time for autocracy, and it is not the time for ponderous committees- the modern leader must be equipped with a toolbox of varied attributes that are suited to different environs and situations, but like anything in life it is the ability to recognise and understand the issue and produce the right tool to influence and lead at the right time that will make a leader stand out. Leaders need to comprehend the challenge that the modern pace of life imposes on their own leadership longevity and hence their utility as leaders. Leaders need to comprehend every situation in terms of scale and risk and they need to constantly be aware of both in order to apply the right style or model to the situation. Historically continuity and stability has helped leaders to prosper and yet modern life is about change. The one continuum in modern life is change itself – it is just quicker than it has ever been!

A leader enables followers to follow and but followers make leaders. Both Churchill and Hitler were adored by their followers and loathed by each other’s followers. There is no single set of attributes which make one individual a greater leader than another, just great leadership opportunities to match a leader’s characteristics to a particular situation or environment. Both Hitler and Churchill served a tough apprenticeship of failure until the right opportunities arose. Both were extremely successful for just a relatively short period of time. How many leaders are truly successful for an extended period of time? What apprenticeship did they serve and how did they lead? Questions that are worthy of pondering as the answers are key to the argument that leaders in today’s world need to be far more flexible and adaptable than their predecessors. They cannot just be selected they have to be developed so that they have the full range of qualities and attributes to meet their particular environment. Leadership is as much about learning as it is about knowing and a leader has to be flexible to provide the appropriate response.

An effective team has to trust its leader and trust each other if they are going to be cohesive in their disposition. How does a leader earn the teams trust without developing  that trust through experience. Team members must identify their leader as trustworthy before they will trust them. It is the same with other team members. Trust has to be earned and it has to be earned through experience it cannot appear on order.

Leadership is about recognising risk and mitigating it as far as is possible. But like most things in life managing risk comes from experiencing life and experiencing risks. What risks are worth taking and what are not? Leadership  and the management of risk are about the future they are therefore more of an art than a science as they cannot be prescribed. Risk management is about experience and the gut feel developed through the hard knocks of life.

Risk is exercising judgement and making the right calls comes from learned wisdom which is a combination of classroom and book aided learning and experiential learning and it is this rich combination that informs the great leaders. The combination and the ability to associate current circumstances with knowledge that allows the great leader the wisdom and judgement to effect change within an organisation in the right way at the right time.

Leadership can be learned from a book but it is  a brave leader who reaches judgements based solely on non experiential learning. Most great leaders I have met and come across stretch their leadership through the combination of   non experiential and experiential learning mixed with the ability to hone their leadership through reflection and pre emption of the issues that will challenge their leadership.  You can’t be a leader without feeling it! You can’t be a leader without learning as you experience it!

Any organisation must be fit for purpose in terms of the present but it must also become fit for purpose in the future and that requires strategic sense and leadership. It must be flexible and able to adapt to the  prevailing market conditions.

An organisation has to be able to grow and develop both intrinsically and extrinsically. For growth does not necessarily require real estate it may be just in influence. An organisation that does not learn does not grow and that requires courage for it is the inevitable failures that generate eventual success. Therefore a healthy organisation must be prepared to fail and learn from that failure. A blame culture restricts learning!

Willpower and the ability to keep going even in the most arduous of times is key to a healthy organisation, providing the will is informed and monitored and the lessons valuable and it is not obsessive.

A healthy organisation needs to have a stretch capability and redundance that allows it to rest and regenerate when it can whilst being able to generate power and surge when it needs to. The margins must not be too large that they become unaffordable yet an over lean organisation is an inflexible, one paced organisation that has little time for learning and initiative.

A healthy organisation is one that looks ahead, one that takes the lessons from the past to inform the future whist recognising the changes in its market environment. Strategically it is not entrapped in the present yet it is garnering, processing relevant information and imagining the future in order to adapt to it and shape it where it can.

Is your organisation strategically healthy?

Organisations are all different and all have leaders who serve them in differing ways  but success and leadership are linked and here are a few leadership aspects that ensure the maintenance of success within an organisation.

Key to any successful organisation is understanding of its current position. How many organisations truly know where there current position vis a vis competition, product life span and commercial risk. Without a leader focused on understanding the bigger picture in terms of risk, succession and positioning an organisation can only have a short lifespan.

All businesses have an ethos/culture  and it is important that if relevant that culture is preserved after all it is what got you there in the first place. Organisations that have a successful and relevant culture need to preserve it through induction procedures for new employees,  succession plans to ensure those who have grown up within the organisation who understand its doctrine are its future leaders as they preserve the continuous inspiration afforded by that ethos/culture.

Every organisation needs a vision and the vision must be owned by all within the organisation. Vision is not the sole province of senior executives they are the custodians but for vision to be effective it must be owned by the people within. If it is it will generate self sustaining pulling power to drive the organisation to the achievement  of its vision.

Within the vision  are objectives which whist being aligned to the overall vision they must also be challenging and rewarding to those who are responsible to achieve them. They must be timely and measurable and they must be clearly understood.

Goals  within  objectives are simply tasks to fulfil and as tasks they also need to be inspiring and achievable. They also need clear boundaries and controls to keep them on track and the desired end state of the task  must be easily recognised.

Now risk and leadership are particularly closely linked particularly in the more frugal times. A leader needs to know what are the true risks the organisation is taking; what are the warning signs and what are the implications should the worst case come to fruition. There are plenty of  recent examples of when this did not happen Zavi, Woolworths, RBS and then lets look at the US banking collapse in 2010 with 20 banks closing in two months with well over 100 closing in the year. Risk has moved up the leadership agenda and needs to be considered and understood at the highest levels.

Leadership is about the art of the possible it is not the science that management is as it is far more futuristic in its doctrine. It is about the use of experiential learning to influence and motivate people for the future and the challenges that brings. Management is a science and therefore based in the present and based on sound evidence. Lets take targets as an example managers set targets to motivate and control performance. Leaders understand where the organisation is and ensure  continuous improvement through effective inspiration, motivation and judgement.  Both are required in an organisation but for me the manager is the policeman for the leader, the person who keeps people on the successful track set by the leader.

Change is all about leadership it is about vision and it is about the unknown. Managers deal in the real world of today and not the inspired  and virtual one of tomorrow. Managers deal in targets and targets are difficult to set for an unknown in the future.  Change cannot be managed it has to be led!

So how can a leader measure their effectiveness? Leadership cannot  be easily quantified as there are so many variables that need to be brought into the equation and as leadership is about motivating and inspiring many of the calls are qualitative rather than quantifiable in their measurement.

As leaders generally have some form of control over those they lead few people are rarely honest about their boss. I think David Ogilvy’s quote on market research is never more true than when asking about someone’s boss.

“The trouble ………….is that people don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.”

People seem to develop an allegiance to their leader and this allegiance is often achieved in the early days of a leadership relationship when a group accepts a leader. However, once the leader is established the group begins to follow the leader unquestioningly and that is why so many strong and good intentioned leaders so often inadvertently stray from the path of righteousness.

Leaders need challenge if they are to be at the peak of their game and that challenge has to test their mettle.  The problem is most of us find challenge uncomfortable and we normally rid ourselves of those who challenge us for fear of being usurped.

So leaders have difficulty with challenge from within the team; therefore perhaps self challenge is the answer? Well it is if you are able to keep it up, but we all know from our physical training that we are generally much more effective when we are encouraged and cajoled to greater effort. So perhaps a challenging mentor is the answer, but a mentor can be expensive and some are better than others. They also need to really understand the issues if they are to challenge effectively.

Leaders need to be able to be challenged and the safest challenge is an inanimate challenge that can be achieved through an effective means of measuring leadership efficacy.  A measurement that includes objective and subjective data and one that assesses a leader and their effect.

We at Sampson Hall have developed such a tool that is non-judgemental, a tool that identifies opportunities within an organisation, a tool that measures and tracks progress, a tool that enables the diagnoses of the causes of a situation rather that just treating the symptoms that manifest themselves.

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules. – J. D. Salinger

Leadership and leaders have to fit an organisation and  hence unfortunately it is very difficult to exercise true change leadership from within. The tempo and the requirement generally come from without either as a new senior leader joins or a set of circumstances force change. It is here that leaders experience real challenge and it is here that true leaders who are original thinkers stand out. Unfortunately conformism is not required when leading change particularly if that change is significant.

In large organisations leaders are in competition with their peers for promotion, monetary rewards and status. Most of those recognised and rewarded for their leadership are identified by superiors who have already conformed to achieve their position and use their own values to select potential followers hence they are looking for ‘mini me’s’.  So how does a large organisation change to preserve its position vis a vis  its competitors without outside influence?- ask Woolworths, ask Zavi ask some of the Government supported  Banks after the Credit Crisis.

For me true empowerment and a drive for continuous improvement are key. Leaders have to learn to be brave, they have to learn to trust their staff and to empower their staff to maintain continuous improvement. After all in the information age it is not so much the big that eat the small as it is the quick that eat the slow. Large autocratic organisations become ponderous as control is exercised from the top with decisions being referred up and decisions promulgated down; where conformism is rewarded as traditions are maintained and change challenged and beaten off as hastily as possible.

Successful organisations allow and empower people to develop and implement their ideas. They allow individuals to grow within the organisation. They encourage diversity and challenge stagnation. They share power and prevent the weed that first entwines then suffocates progress known as bureaucracy from taking root within the organisation. Bureaucracy lives in large autocratic organisations because it has to but when it feeds on itself it destroys the organisation it lives in.

Large organisations need to learn to truly empower if they are going to have longevity as unforeseen targets are very difficult to set.