September 2006
Dear Readers: A version of this article was printed in Executive Excellence Magazine last year. A number of our readers have asked for the full original version which they had earlier seen to be re-presented. Here it is!
LEADERS BATTLE RESISTANCE
The biggest lament is NOT that we don't know what to do. It is simply that we don't in fact do it. As the famous saying reminds us 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions'.
A leader takes personal responsibility for delivering results. If any of us have ever let exercise shoes languish in the closet, an important book lie unopened, a breakthrough conversation be consistently avoided, a comfort zone left unchallenged, then we know what 'Resistance' is. Resistance is entropy, it is the force of Anti-Leadership. It is the downward pull of abdication, lethargy and capitulation.
Leaders know resistance when they encounter it within themselves. They expect to battle it in their team and allies as well. When we face the demoralising gap between who we currently are and the vision we had of the contribution we yearn to make, when we look sadly at the work we hoped to accomplish or all that we want our organisation to become, we are experiencing the debris of 'resistance'.
Resistance is fear in essence. The fear of engagement, the fear of accountability, the fear of the energy required for real creativity, the fear of personal growth, the fear of the ultimate leadership challenge: to re-invent what's possible.
To be a true leader one must 'turn pro'. That phrase implies that 'leadership pros' contrast with leadership 'amateurs'. Leadership amateurs rise to the leadership challenge occasionally, when they 'feel like it', when crisis hits, when they are obliged to, or sometimes in desperate frustration. Leadership 'professionals' SHOW UP consistently to experience the growth pangs and wrenching uncertainties but also the uphill glory of the leadership moments that define both who we and our organisations are and are becoming.
There are a number of strategies for becoming such a leadership 'pro' and helping to send resistance and frustration packing.
- HAVE AN ADAMANTINE SENSE OF PRIORITY
We all succumb 'somewhere'. Know what REALLY COUNTS, and ensure there, resistance just gives up, because it has no chance. Get the critical things DONE, and your leadership character will get forged.
- MAKE PEACE WITH OCCASIONAL MISERY
Leadership is an agonising opportunity. Lives are at stake. People's fortunes are at stake. The direction of markets can be influenced, entire economies can be impacted. There are times of loneliness, times of uncertainty, times of just not knowing. Duck them and you diminish the realities that caused them which are inviting you to the NEXT REINVENTION you need to manifest. Face them, agonise your way to the other side, grow right through them, and you will know what a real 'breakthrough' is.
- BE LUSTY FOR FEEDBACK
Leaders understand that feedback is what professionals get. Great efforts inspire powerful reactions. Even disappointing feedback lets you know your leadership is REAL, its making an impact. You are facing the challenges of significance. Having a real failure is better than being neutral and/or abdicating. Not being on the side-lines, learning to make an increasing difference in and through the feedback we inspire, that's the source from which true leadership mastery and wisdom emanate.
- LOVE WHAT YOU DO
The only way to really anchor and 'excite' discipline is through love. We have an easy time being disciplined regarding anything we truly love. To put ourselves through the gauntlet, to face the ultimate 'dark side of the Force' which resistance is, we need love on our side. Leaders LOVE their chosen arena of contribution, they love their teams, they love the potential that together they have to endow the great achievements that beckon. Until we have that love equation straight, we're unlikely to make it.
If you want to know the likelihood of someone facing both success and failure and in Kipling's words, 'treating both those imposters the same', check out their love of and passion for their field, their industry, their vision, their allies, the contribution they can make. If there's enough love, leadership can be built. With such love and dedication, comes the all-critical patience to live past the obstacles and into the craftsmanship, insights and possibilities that are waiting to be realised.Otherwise, beware! It's just a matter of time...
- YOU NEED TO FOCUS AND DEMYSTIFY
Resistance will gain power from our lack of focus, from our frittering our energy, from our constant digressions, from our confusions, from our firing in all directions. We then get overwhelmed, progress is stunted, quick wins are elusive, enthusiasm begins to evaporate and confidence soon follows suit.
Resistance also marshals its forces through obfuscation, bureaucracy, unnecessary complexity, endless administration, and other 'clouding' and delaying tactics.
Leadership is about 'boring consistency' as James McNerney of 3M says. It's about crystal clear passionate focus that allows us to dispel the fog. It is also about essential simplicity, so that energy is preserved, amplified and channeled for maximum impact, value and FUN.
- FACE WHAT YOU FIND, THEN TRANSFORM IT
Leaders realise that fear fades when we face it, not when we deny it. We understand we can diminish trepidation through the gold mine of imaginative preparation and mental and emotional rehearsal.
We have to face whatever we find. In a blustery wind we have to play that wind as we golf. In a market downturn our creativity has to mutate and evolve our value proposition in a way that is most compelling and meaningful to our customers. As key talent is being wooed away, we have to learn to make talent the first job of what we as leaders look after, nurture, discern, coach and develop. We have to become 'success coaches' par excellence for our organisation and perhaps even our allies, in all kinds of situations.
In choppy waters, we have to first ensure the vessel is sea-worthy. We have to steady the vessel, calm the passengers...and perhaps even the sea.
- BE COMMITTED TO THE CRAFT, ASK FOR HELP, DON'T SHOW OFF
The craft comes first. Leadership is an art form. Yet leadership needs to manifest itself in interaction with something we are trying to achieve. That value trumps our ego or preening.
If we are REALLY committed to an enlivening larger cause and vision, we'll ask for help from EVERYONE we can, at all levels. We'll want ALL possible intelligence and talent and energy galvanised to make our aspiration real. Resistance-junkies instead make themselves the point, and seek to cast themselves as 'the hero' in every moment. Hence they don't listen, hence they shut passion down in others. It's stomach-turning, it's off-putting, it's distracting, and we will always get outperformed by those whose energy is going into the performance...and the possibilities that glow, all around such performances.
- GIVE YOURSELF AWAY
Leadership is fundamentally the ultimate contribution and act of service. This is why criticism matters. It lets us know when resistance has interfered, when we have settled for too little, when our ego got in the way, when we didn't prepare fully, in what ways we're not yet ready.
But we are not any one performance. Many performances percolate inside us, many future contributions are currently being chiseled. This one prepares us for the next. Good or bad, leaders have one perennial commitment. To make it better, to add more value. Either way, the real 'pros' will be back tomorrow, ready to move us all forward with them.
As we dial down the ego and give ourselves away to mastery, fear fades, excellence crescendoes and we create at new levels of power and meaning.
- DESPITE THE ADVERSITY, DO THE JOB AT HAND
The only way to improve tomorrow, leaders know, is to do today's work superbly well.
Someone lets us down, a team-member doesn't perform, a boss undervalues us, the market spasms due to factors totally outside our control, there is a camera flash just as we are making that critical golf shot.
Fury, exasperation, anger, momentary despair are human and perhaps even inevitable. Vent them, express them, but then draw that energy elsewhere.
With compassion, with grace, we realise there's still a job at hand. THAT'S how we recover...job by job, result by result, commitment by commitment, insight by insight, fresh innovation by fresh innovation.
An amateur may jump up and down in impotent fury, while a Tiger Woods recomposes himself and maintains sovereignty of the moment by mastering his own sense of self and purpose.
In the performance we find healing, emotional intelligence, perhaps even salvation. Hence leaders 'save' themselves from futility and model the way for others to also transcend those challenging intersections in their contribution career. As we 'save' ourselves in this way as leaders by seeking to fully live AS a contribution in each performance, we also help save the future we want to realise and sustain togehter.
- RE-INVENT YOURSELF CONSTANTLY
Goldie Hawn once quipped that for Hollywood actresses there are basically three ages: Babe, D.A., and Driving Miss Daisy!
While an amusing observation, a leader's life is abundant with multi-faceted roles. We serve 'value', we serve the spirit of growth, all of which convert into shareholder value and profits. That spirit, that inspiration, that value, may call us to many roles and many opportunities in our leadership life. Each role helps us become someone new, integrating our past but making room for our future.
Leaders 'make the ceiling the floor' and create openings for adventure and for exploring the mysterious and eternally beguiling fascination of a fulfilling leadership life. We cannot 'solve' this mystery, we can just LIVE its resolution...each of us for ourselves.
By embodying these ten commitments and 'practises', a leader liberates themselves so as to put their energy into creativity and connection rather than endlessly battling resistance in vicious circles of deadening futility.
When this happens, deprived of kindling, deprived of energy now redirected to passionate innovation, resistance essentially surrenders...at least in the larger areas of that leader's life. That liberated energy can then help the leader re-imagine, re-invent and recreate in powerfully transformational ways that can redefine value for EVERYONE.
Let's join this leadership crusade!
Omar Khan,
Senior Partner, Sensei International
Phone: 1 (212) 295 2191, Fax: 1 (212) 295 2121
e mail: omar@sensei-international.com
Omar Khan is a globally acknowledged leadership development innovator and success coach. He is a sought after change catalyst and a pioneer in transformational learning. He is the author of the acclaimed book SYNERGY as well as the newly released and much awaited, TIMELESS LEADERSHIP.
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