Everyone...LEAD!

In our last edition of BOLD Print we wrote about the role of senior leadership in effectively leading and guiding the organization during challenging times (“Leading in a Tough Economy – Doing more with less” ).  We believe and have found that associates throughout any company look for inspiration and confidence at its’ highest levels and thus, it must begin there for these leaders set the tone for the culture within an organization.

When operating in a necessary three C’s environment - cut, consolidate and conserve - it is very easy for leaders to bombard the troupes with messages of fear and doom. The mere act of cutting, consolidating and conserving can send many powerful, and perhaps unintended, messages across the organization.

Within the many industries being impacted by the state of our country’s economy today, people are showing up to work with feelings of uncertainty, fear, and a sense of being squeeze for productivity. The natural response to tough times in business is to reduce the work force, cut spending, and figure out how to do more with less. Unfortunately, when trying to solve the problem of creating abundance both for and from the workforce is approached from a mindset of scarcity, sustainable solutions are often less possible to find. And, at best, we get band-aid solutions and limp along.

Granted, it usually starts with the top leaders. However, it does not have to. Leadership capacity can be built at any level within an organization and its impact can permeate both up and down the reporting hierarchy.

What we mean by leadership capacity is the ability for human beings to claim ownership for their work and awareness of their impact on the work environment and others. Imagine an entire company of self-actualized leaders; Leaders with a strong sense of self, a strong respect for others, and unburdened by the baggage of what the unawakened carry as their bag of limitations.

In order to unlock the potential of a company’s existing work force, new and empirical leadership truths must be adopted. The first of these is that leadership exists everywhere and within everyone in the company. In order to adopt this truth, the old paradigms of leader as boss, leader as visionary, leader as corporate demagogue, leader as hero or villain, leader as executive, and especially leader as someone other than me, must all be let go. A new definition of leader is simply put, LEADER IS ME.

The second truth is that all leaders succeed and fail. This is critical because without the permission for everyone to both succeed and fail, leaders become unsure of themselves and question their abilities and decisions in a manner that can paralyze aspects of the individual whole that are needed to create abundance-based solutions. Fear of failure is quite possibly the largest barrier to capitalizing on leadership capacity across the organization.

When we allow our leadership capacity to be diminished, we sell ourselves out as victims of situations, circumstances, or the power of others. This brings us to the third truth; No one is entitled to anything…except being a leader. The company owes no one anything, bosses do not have to “take care” of their people, and just because a person does a good job does not guarantee them a safe future within the company. Accepting rather than denying personal leadership capacity is what this truth is about. Leaders that understand this truth go to work each day with an attitude of purpose. They know what giving their best is and are dissatisfied (with themselves) when they don’t. Each leader’s best is defined by their values. The key to ending cultures of entitlement is awakening individuals to operating from a perspective that is aligned with their values. Notice the next time you are talking with a disgruntled co-worker. They are probably complaining about a situation, a person, or an event that has ‘happened to them’. Though they may have a habitual behavior of complaining, I would bet that they do not have a value of ‘Complaining” or “Being a Victim”. If they did, you would see them light up and seem strengthened by the interaction. If they seem to get more fired up, it is most likely because they are honoring a different value. Possibly a value of fairness and they feel they are being mistreated. The awakened leader will not complain for the sake of validating a negative mindset, as in the case of the unawakened leader. Instead, they will address a legitimate injustice for the sake of creating fairness. The awakened leader will use the value of fairness to work toward an abundance-based solution.

This brings us to a critical truth that even by itself can transform the culture of an organization; The practice of building leadership capacity is your job. This is what we have found to be the biggest component missing in most organizations. Actually calling out and holding as a top priority that continually improving the ability to positively impact the business is the most significant job that everyone has! This means that everyone is responsible for increasing their personal leadership capacity AND they are responsible for increasing the overall leadership capacity of the organization. This is a true shift in thinking for many people. And it does not mean that I don’t do my job servicing customers, or securing supplies, or selling product, or anything else that is in my standard job description. It means that I am responsible for all of my usual tasks and developing an understanding and practice of getting better and better at having the greatest impact on peers, reports, superiors, customers, and all others that make the company successful. This means that I have to continually work on understanding myself, others, the business, and offer all that I am to the bigger job at hand. Each individual then becomes personally responsible for the success or failure of the company. This is when a company will get the most bang for the buck invested in its workforce.

So while we are in this time of cut, consolidate, and conserve, let’s try to apply the concepts where they will serve our businesses optimally.
Cut – the ties to leading from scarcity, fear, and the old paradigms of leadership.
Consolidate – the entire organization around personal ownership of success and failure.
Conserve – the amount of fear, doubt, and uncertainty in the air to be used only as a motivator to finding abundance-based solutions

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