by Alan Willett
His father ran the company for another twenty years and continued to make all the important leadership decisions throughout that time.
His father retired and immediately moved to Florida, handing my friend the complete responsibility of running the company.
He was suddenly in charge.
In talking to people about their leadership origin stories, there are common experiences regardless of how they became leaders. They come to a point where they realize that the work of leadership is different. They come to the point where they realize that the work of leadership is all about people.
Further, they realize that even if they didn’t mean to do so, they each made a choice to be a leader. If they faced the leadership crisis referred to in the first section and continued leading, they again made a choice.
Whatever You Lead It Is All About People
This book is written for managers and leaders of all stripes. But what do they lead?
Leading a Group of Leaders Within a Company
This is a generic category that can include, for example, the COO (Chief Operating Officer) or a division leader of a cast of hundreds. Or it can include a manager of a group of thirty. The common characteristic is that they are leading other leaders.
These leaders report to at least one other person and often have a cast of stakeholders who have high expectations of results.
Leading Projects
The leader here may have a very large project team. There are teams as large as a thousand people dedicated to developing and delivering a single product to the marketplace. There are also teams as small as just two people.
The project leader must deliver results, whether anyone reports to her directly or not. She may have a single sponsor who is paying for the project. It is, however, more likely that the project has many stakeholders who care about those results, and they often have conflicting priorities they are presenting to that project leader.
Leading a Company
This can range from leading a famous company such as Apple to helming a small restaurant with a staff of three. It can also include a company the size of one person where individuals must lead themselves but also a virtual team of everyone who helps support that company, such as lawyers and accountants.
Even CEOs who are in charge of an entire company, small or large, have a number of stakeholders outside their direct lines of command. This can include the board of directors, a board of advisers, and investors in the company. It also always includes the customers of the business.
Leading a Cause
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others are examples of people who had no official position but are yet considered great leaders.
I have a number of friends who are activists. One person is specifically working to protect the fresh water in our local lakes. She has put many hours into speaking, writing, and organizing to achieve this mission. She has suddenly found herself a leader of many people, none of whom are paid. Nor does anyone officially work for her. Yet all of these people look to her for leadership.
The common thread all the examples have is that leaders are leading other people to accomplish a shared set of objectives. The objectives vary immensely across the various roles of leadership and the context within which the leaders work, but what they all have is a set of responsibilities that comes with leadership.
These responsibilities are not to just get things done, but to lead others to accomplish great tasks.
All leaders know that it is truly all about leading people, and that comes with a taxonomy of trouble.
Leadership Comes with a Host of Trouble
A friend of mine once said, “Everything was fine until there was more than just me in the room.” That evoked my laughter because he was talking about me entering the room—a great joke!
However, I often remember his quote when I find myself in a room full of discord. Yet, we absolutely need others if we wish to achieve the bigger things we desire to accomplish.
The following is a taxonomy of difficult challenges that leaders, even those with just a few years of leadership experience, are likely to encounter.
Troublesome Project Teams
If a project is truly striving for exceptional impact, there is a level of stress on the team and natural barriers in the way of success. This is normal. The problem occurs when the project’s troubles start negatively impacting the whole organization. Consider these three examples.
1. Teams that are always late and have quality issues. This occurs when the project team says they are “almost done” and then announces to management that they need another three months. When that time is almost up, they say that they need yet another three months. This delays the revenue expected from this project repeatedly and does not allow the organization to plan. Quality issues exacerbate these delays. Further, this impacts the ability of leadership to start other projects and thus delays the revenue achieved from these other projects.
2. The “firefighting” projects. These teams are constantly battling fires. They release their products to their customers, but there are always significant problems that the team must deal with. The problems are multiplicative, typically starting with phone calls from customers. Further, the team is spending so much time fighting fires that the time to build new services or features is greatly diminished.
3. The divided team. There will be stress on any team striving for excellence, and that often leads to conflict. The key is that conflict must be constructive such that arguments produce better solutions and improved trust. With the wrong chemistry, the opposite occurs, resulting in damaged trust and team drama. The worst variant of this situation is when that drama leaks from the project in trouble and divides other parts of the organization as well. The damage done has many ripple effects, as leaders have to deal with drama instead of progress.
Troublesome Individuals
Projects such as the ones just mentioned can get in trouble because of things like technology issues or incorrect requirements. However, those are often excuses. Projects are successfully completed by people—not by methodology or technology. If a project is in trouble it is most likely to be a people issue.
The following is a sample of people issues that leaders commonly must address.
The cynic. Sarcasm, cynicism, pessimism, whining, and general sniping are all common negative attitudes that, when delivered in the right-sized doses, can provide relief to difficult situations. However, many leaders have faced situations where individuals bring too much of that attitude to the team and it breaks down the fabric of the team culture.
The slacker. Many times, managers face the problem of an individual not living up to teamwork standards. There can be many causes for this, but the main problem facing the leader is that there is a team member who is not contributing sufficient value. This is sometimes a competence problem, sometimes a bad fit of skill to task, and sometimes an attitude problem where someone just doesn’t seem to care. The appearance may be “slacking,” but the causes behind it are often hidden.
The diva. Some people are experts at narcissism. It appears that they believe that everything that is going on is all about them. In fact, with the most extreme divas, if things happen that distract from the diva being the center, the diva will raise enough trouble to bring the spotlight firmly back to his or her own personal center-stage performance. This is often a difficult leadership challenge, as most people develop their diva personalities because they are actually very good at what they do.
The pebble in the shoe. These people are the teammates who provide persistent annoyance to other teammates. The types of annoyances vary. Sometimes a person has a ready excuse that is actually plausible, but it seems there is always an excuse. Another example is the person who is a little critical of other teammates, with comments ranging from their clothes to how the work is done. It isn’t quite enough to challenge them on it; it is the persistence of it. These slights observed by an outsider for one day would seem to be
just mildly annoying if noticed at all. Yet these little “bug bites” being repeated daily have a cumulative negative effect.
Troublesome Leaders
If you are a leader of leaders, you may have all the troubles previously listed. You are also likely at some point to face any of these additional situations.
Clash of the titans. People in leadership positions are generally very ambitious, which means there will be conflicts over such things as direction of the group, desire for the same resources, or who gets which set of offices. People in leadership positions are also likely to be collaborative, however, so these conflicts should be manageable. Nevertheless, at some point you will be faced with a leadership group composed of people actively trying to make each other fail. They are engaged in destructive conflict, which if not addressed will adversely affect the whole company.
The maverick. Many executives consistently try to push themselves and their organizations to higher levels. Thus, they often seek managers who will bring fresh ideas to the organizations to push past the status quo. This backfires when the new leader is a maverick who is ready to throw away all of the status quo. The leader is suddenly faced with a culture clash between the maverick and the rest of the organization. In these situations, the leader has many people saying, “If the maverick is staying, I am leaving.”
Leaders facing their own leadership crises. The other challenge leaders of leaders must be aware of is that the leaders they lead are feeling the burdens of responsibility. An individual team member who suddenly quits has an impact. When a manager suddenly departs, there is a much larger and longer-term impact. As leaders, we must watch for these moments and be ready to help those leaders across their own crises.
Troublesome Stakeholders
As a leader at any level, you have responsibilities to the people you are leading, as well as the people who are stakeholders. This is even true for chief executives who report to a board of directors, and if not to the board of directors then to their customers. Here are three examples of that kind of trouble.
1. Too many bosses with conflicting priorities. As a leader, it is likely you have many stakeholders and that your direct manager, if you have one, is just one of them. When you have multiple stakeholders, it is rare for those stakeholders to agree on what your top priority is. Leaders who do not know how to handle the problem of multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities have trouble brewing every morning before they even start their own coffee brewing.
2. The wrong level of involvement from your stakeholders. The trouble here can be when your stakeholders want to micromanage not just you but also the people who work for you. Just as damaging can be the invisible stakeholders. You need their attention and they are nowhere to be found. It is not just that the stakeholders are invisible to you; you are also invisible to them. When you have critical needs, they won’t hear you. Yet when you don’t deliver, the trouble is still yours.
3. Irrational pressure from above. I once talked to a project manager who was in charge of a large software development project of over 100 people. I asked her when the first major deliverable would be made. When she answered June 15, which was four months away, her voice was tense. I asked her if it could possibly be delivered earlier. She looked stricken and said very loudly, “no!” I asked her if there was a chance it could be delivered later, and she again answered “no!”
It is not possible to plan significant projects with that much precision. Her reaction was because the management above her was putting great pressure on making that date.
Bright-light projects bring lots of pressure. Much of it does come from above. However, much of it is also self-imposed. This pressure leads to bad decisions and late surprises.
All of this has one significant common attribute. That attribute brings us to the last place trouble can come from: you.
The Trouble Is Your Fault, Even When It Is Not
“It was my responsibility. Thus, as far as anybody was concerned, it was my fault.” Watts told me this one day on our morning run.
When I worked with Watts Humphrey, recipient of the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush, he often told stories about his challenges in leadership, especially during our morning runs before we started our workdays.
During this run, Watts was telling the story about taking over responsibility for a very large project at IBM. He took over a project where he became the leader of leaders of a project involving over a thousand people.
On the first day, he found out how seriously behind schedule the project was. He told me that he thought hard about the problem and then, laughing, he said “I asked who was to blame, and I realized that really there was only one person to blame and that was me. It didn’t matter to anyone that it was only my first day. On that first day it became my responsibility. Thus, as far as anybody was concerned, it was my fault.”
Watts was partially kidding about the problem being his fault. His real point was that blame has nothing to do with troublesome situations. If you are the leader responsible for making sure the mission is accomplished, if it is not accomplished, it is still your responsibility.
This may seem obvious, but the following common behaviors demonstrate that too many are slow to reach this acceptance of responsibility. Which of these have you seen or perhaps even can identify with?
It is not really a problem. When confronted with a schedule problem, the quick reaction is “We are not really that far behind.” When seeing a serious quality issue, the quick response is “Well, it only happened in this one place, this one instance.”
It is not our problem. The excuses come quickly when the leader can point to others. “The third-party vendor was late with the deliverable” or “The customer provided us with unachievable conflicts in the requirements.”
We need time to put into place this new set of tools. It could be a new set of tools. It could be a new magic methodology such as rapid prototyping or “lean agile.” If we have these things everything will be better (we hope).
This is an especially hard problem and it takes time. To be most annoying, this must be said in a whiny voice.
Anyone of these excuses can be absolutely valid. However, these are simply excuses and when said in those ways it is done to deflect responsibility. Further, it absolutely delays the most effective solutions to the problems at hand.
Note that these excuses are common even among good managers. Those managers do get the work done, eventually, except when they don’t. It is also these good managers who often face the leadership crisis we mentioned at the start of the chapter.
They haven’t yet crossed the Rubicon to know that to become an exceptional leader it is about more than seeing to things getting done. It is a choice to accept that leadership is all about leading people to achieve more than they believed was possible. It is about accepting that all high-impact projects come with troublesome project teams, people, leaders, and stakeholders.
You must accept that those troubles are your responsibility.
One of the keys that made Watts an exceptional leader was his ready acceptance of this fact followed by his willingness to directly deal with the trouble. He had to bring his various team leaders and management above into the solution, but the solution started with accepting responsibility for it.
To successfully lead the unleadable, we must accept that leadership is a choice. Further, we can choose the kind of leaders we desire to be.
REFLECTION POINTS
For maximum personal benefit, take a few minutes to answer these questions out loud or to write your answers down.
1. What was your pathway to leadership? Did you set out to lead people?
2. How often with how much impact have you encountered the taxonomy of trouble?
3. Are you facing any of that trouble now or see it coming soon?
• Troublesome project teams?
• Troublesome individuals?
• Troublesome leaders?
• Troub
lesome stakeholders?
4. Which of the following phrases have you recently used? Which one did you use most often?
• It is not really a problem.
• It is not our problem.
• We need time to put into place this new set of tools.
• This is an especially hard problem and it takes time.
• It is my responsibility. I will ensure we remedy the situation and put in measures to prevent this in the future.
Accept the Call of Exceptional Leadership
I had my leadership crisis about twenty-five years ago.
It occurred when I was a leader in a division of Xerox at the height of its powers. The pressures on me were enormous, both from the managers and stakeholders above and around me and from my team of people, who expected my guidance, protection, and help with their own advancements.
In addition to working to help my team achieve a large list of goals and deadlines, I was also leading multiple cross-organizational task forces. The days were long. I accomplished much, but the list of things that I believed should have been accomplished on any one day felt like it always overwhelmed any of those victories.
On top of this, I found that I did not value the work I was doing. I did not find joy in it. I once ran an ultramarathon on trails in the spring. It was a long, cold slog through creeks that went up to my waist, crawling up mud hills and sliding down the other sides, hitting rocks on the way down. In some ways this was similar to work with two big differences. I enjoyed all the challenges of the ultramarathon and, unlike work, that actually did have a finish line.
