Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
—Dale Carnegie
In the previous chapter we wrote about inspirational leaders, who in many ways resemble rock stars. They are most at home at center stage, exciting the crowd to new heights of passion and devotion. Inspirational leaders can achieve huge popularity and success. They can reach the heights, and they can also fall very fast and hard. All in all, it’s a risk they’re glad to take. In this chapter our topic is a very different kind of leadership mastery. If inspirational leaders are like rock stars, the organizational leaders we will look at now are like music company executives or theatrical agents. Organizational leaders don’t crave adulation or applause. They’re often uncomfortable in the spotlight. They are not eager to accept the scrutiny and second-guessing that comes with spectacular success or failure. For their reward, organizational leaders look inward at the solid foundation they’ve created. They let others lead the parade through the outside world.
Lou Gerstner of IBM, for example, is a superb executive and corporate turnaround specialist. When he became head of IBM (at a time when plans were already in place to break up the once-proud company), Gerstner did something that would have been taboo to many business leaders of the past. He did nothing, at least not immediately.
Although Gerstner has described himself as intense, competitive, focused, blunt, and tough, he might have added restrained and realistic. At an early press conference he refused to present his vision for the future of the company. In fact, he said he didn’t have one. Instead he quite predictably undertook some downsizing with the company, and began to reorient it toward customer service. He banned the use of projectors during meetings. While this fostered better communication, it could hardly be interpreted as a battle cry. Gerstner did, however, eventually create viable, long-term goals for IBM, and his success speaks for itself.
This is the way of the organizational leader, someone whose time has definitely come. In the past, whether fifty years ago or five hundred, large organizations were shaped like the pyramids of early civilization. There were large numbers of people on the bottom followed by layer after layer of supervisors and managers in ascending order. Each new layer had more authority than the one below.
This many-tiered structure rose even higher until it reached its pinnacle. That’s where the king, the general, the CEO, the chairman, and the board of directors got to sit, and that’s where the classic inspirational leader was also most comfortable. Was this the best way to structure an organization? Perhaps it was in many cases and at many times, especially when the leader was well suited for it. Until quite recently, however, no one really bothered to ask whether it was best. The pyramid-shaped organization was just the way things were.
In the twenty-first century, many of those pyramids have come tumbling down. Borders, ranks, and lines of demarcation are steadily evaporating. Every day new technologies are equalizing access to information and making rigid bureaucracies obsolete. You don’t have to have a deep voice and big biceps to be a leader anymore. You have to be fast, flexible, and first with a new idea.
Organization leaders are very comfortable with these changes. Their authority doesn’t depend on force or personality. Their first priority is the strength and success of the organization. Its size and shape are much less important. That’s why organizational leaders are comfortable and sometimes even ruthless about downsizing. In fact, extreme versions of the organizational leader would just as soon employ three people as three thousand if the bottom line could be improved. This could be a serious mistake, as we’ll discuss later in this chapter. However, even the most moderate organizational leader puts profitability first. If it means less glory for the leaders themselves, they see this as progress also. Rigid chains of command stifle creativity and the development of new products or services. Over time this can weaken any organization. Organizational leaders would take this development very seriously. They want their company, school, or football team to function as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. This is because it’s in their nature to create streamlined organizations.
If this is your leadership style, you welcome changes that eliminate the old rigidity. You want people to be free to do their best. You regret the many years in which their talents were forced to lie dormant. Renowned management author Peter Drucker perfectly expressed the organizational leader’s point of view when he said, “The modern organization cannot be an organization of boss and subordinate. It must be organized as a team.” The CEO of a large multinational company put it even more concisely when he declared, “The lone ranger is just no longer possible.”
As an organizational leader, you want to eliminate not only departmental rivalries, but also the departments themselves, if it will nurture success. By the same token, you want to get rid of automatic promotions, seniority-based pay scales, and other frustrating vestiges of the old days. In old pyramid companies, engineers spent all day cooped up with other engineers. Bookkeepers sat next to other bookkeepers. Middle managers rarely interacted with either the CEO or the shipping clerk.
An organizational leader, however, doesn’t hesitate to bring an engineer to a group of salespeople, throwing down a challenge to make the product more attractive to the customer, or to figure out how to build it faster. Or he may ask them to use their technical expertise to get around a marketing glitch.
In eclectic groups such as these, it’s almost impossible to determine who is where on the corporate hierarchy. As Peter Drucker pointed out, the world is no longer made up of privates, officers, and drill sergeants. Modern organizational leaders thoroughly understand that. Armies were traditionally organized along a paradigm of command and control, and organizations in other fields simply copied that model.
Today, with organizational leadership leading the way, groups are structured more like soccer or tennis teams than like infantry divisions. Every team member is now empowered to act as a decision maker. Employees must see themselves as both executives and line workers. Organizational leadership masters are very comfortable with that. They don’t care about emptying their own wastebaskets and getting in the trenches as long as the strength of the team is enhanced.
These flattened organizations are turning up in every field from steel companies to educational institutions. As the principal of an East Coast elementary school pointed out, “There’s now a real incentive to build teams and lead people from a horizontal rather than a vertical perspective.” There’s much less emphasis on titles, hourly pay, or other incentives. The team’s performance and the strength of the organization are their own reward. This kind of effective teamwork doesn’t happen overnight, and the leader needs unique skills to bring it into being.
It’s a different kind of leadership than the old-fashioned pep talk in the locker room. That kind of inspirational leadership can still work in the hands of a uniquely gifted person, but fewer and fewer people are aspiring to it, and wisely so. Bill Gates in his cardigan and Steve Case in his khaki pants are the role models now. Very few of the new organizational leadership masters are comfortable in a helmet or a pair of shoulder pads.
Any organization, first and foremost, is a group of people with a shared sense of purpose. Nurturing that sense is the primary task of an organizational leader. People working together can accomplish extraordinary things. They can accomplish almost anything when they work together as part of a well-designed organization. The essence of such an organization is the unified vision of the team members. Once that vision is in place, the ideas, creativity, and innovation will come from the team itself. The leader, however, still plays an absolutely essential role.
He or she must direct and focus all that energy. Leaders must keep the team members informed about how their work affects the organization, its customers or clients, and the outside world as a whole. The president of a midsize electronics firm described what this means. “You’ve got to create the emotional and intellectual environment. You’ve got to zero in on the corporate objective. You’ve got to provide the stimulus and encouragement so that individuals and teams can truly think of themselves as world-class.”
Recognition, feedback, and shared purpose make that possible. These three elements are what the leader needs to provide. While creating a shared sense of purpose is a key element of organizational leadership, there is another way to make the same point. Leaders must make it clear that success is a group experience, as is anything short of success. Unless the whole team wins, no one wins. Individual records are fine in history books or almanacs, but they’re seriously out of place in today’s most competitive organizations.
Organizational leaders believe that what matters most—in fact, the only thing that matters at all—is the performance of the whole group. Once you get people committed to this, it is contagious. “They reinforce one another,” says one CEO. It’s more like playing for the World Cup than working on an assembly line. There’s a whole different energy level, a new kind of collective intensity.
People need to feel important. If they’re denied that feeling, they’ll give less than full effort to the project at hand. So an effective organizational leader lets as many decisions as possible pass through the entire group. As an organizational leader, let the ideas bubble up in all the members of the team. Don’t dictate solutions. Don’t insist that things be done a certain way.
A small manufacturing company in Cleveland provides a good illustration of this. The company had a problem. A very large order was being negotiated, but the buyer insisted on a seemingly impossible delivery date. The company president could have imposed a solution from the top down, but instead he asked a team of his employees to come up with a plan. Their response was, “If we shuffle some other things around, we feel we can make the delivery date,” and that’s what happened. If the president had made the decision himself, he would probably have backed away from the order. Either that or he might have angered his workers by pushing them too hard. When they made the choice themselves, however, there was a collective decision being made. With a group effort at the helm of this ship, they were steered back on course, and the outcome was totally positive.
Maybe that’s why masters of organizational leadership use words like we and us a lot more than I and me. Leadership masters always emphasize how everyone’s contribution fits in. If the ad man does great work, but the packaging specialist fails, that’s not success. If the marketing director hits a home run, but the production people strike out, the whole team loses. When everybody contributes to the best of their ability, from the person who answers the phones to the person who signs the checks, that’s a win for all of them.
If leaders do their jobs correctly, there’s an almost paradoxical quality to this kind of collective effort, because the individuality of the team members somehow remains intact. They still have different skills. They still have unique personalities. They still have different hopes and fears. Talented organizational leaders recognize those differences, appreciate them, and use them for the benefit of the group. Leaders believe firmly in every member of the team and are eager to express that belief whenever possible.
When mistakes occur, good organizational leaders avoid pointing the finger of blame at any one individual. If there’s a problem, they speak privately with team members about how results can be improved. They do not single people out, nor do they talk about the weak link in the chain. Whether it’s a high school classroom, a manufacturing plant, or a corporate boardroom, the organizational leader’s purpose is to optimize performance by building spirit within the group. The team is encouraged to set its own standards, and members look forward to living up to them. They feel great about themselves when they make the grade, and their efforts become even more focused.
And all this, of course, eventually expresses itself in the numbers on the balance sheet. To make this happen, the leader has to be a constant presence. In old-fashioned pyramid-style companies it was easy for the boss to remain relatively aloof. This has all changed in today’s most effective organizations. Leaders have to be there physically, and they must be intellectually and emotionally tuned in.
The president of a major hospital on Long Island says learning how to listen can take a while, but if you work hard at it, you develop a great feel for everything that is going on around you. It’s like standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with all those planes landing and taking off. Every one of those planes has to be very important to you, and at the same time the ship has to stay on course and be protected from attack. You eventually learn to factor all those considerations together.
Organizational leaders are aware of at least two objectives that must constantly be serviced with every team member. The first goal is successful performance of the job at hand. The second goal is that every job should also be a training experience leading to even better performance and greater responsibility in the future. In other words, leaders must strengthen the organization by developing new business and getting jobs done on time. They must strengthen it by honing the skills of all the organization’s members. The political columnist Walter Lippmann expressed this principle very eloquently: “The final test of leaders that they leave behind them in others the conviction and the will to carry on.” In short, organizational leaders should take genuine responsibility for the development and careers of the entire team.
“How would you like to improve?” the leader should frequently ask. “Where do you want your career to go from here? What kinds of new responsibilities would you like to be taking on?” It is the leader’s job to ask those questions, and to respond in ways that help team members achieve their goals. In other words, you need to communicate the confidence you have in their abilities. You should provide standards for the organization to meet or exceed, and publicly show your appreciation when that happens. Remember, for an effective organizational leader, team success equals personal success. Anything else is unacceptable. The greatest reward these leaders can achieve is to inspire, mentor, and model into being a group of talented, confident, motivated, and cooperating people who are themselves ready to lead.
Meetings are actually a very expensive business activity, once the cost per participant is factored in. As a result, meetings really need to be well run and well led. Poorly run meetings waste time, money, and resources—and are far worse than no meetings at all.
The need for effective, organized meetings has become even more intense with the increasing demands on people’s time, and the fact that members of an organization may not be in the same workplace or even in the same country. Fortunately, new technologies provide alternatives to conventional face-to-face meetings around a table. Phone and videoconferencing, for example, can save time and money. Still, there will always be a trade-off between the efficiencies of virtual meetings and the limitations of remote communications methods, especially when the video or audio connection is lost just as the meeting leader was about to make an important point.
Effective leaders choose meeting methods that are appropriate for the situation. Is a physical presence really necessary? Leaders should explore options such as phone and videoconferencing before deciding that a physical meeting is required.
A face-to-face meeting is the best option for conveying feelings and meanings. For very serious matters, this should always be the first choice. Meanings and feelings can be lost or confused when people are not physically sitting in the same room as each other. Trying to save time and money by holding virtual meetings for really important issues is often self-defeating. It may also be unfair to team members if the issue significantly affects their futures or well-being.
Basically, a well-led meeting is a unique opportunity in two ways. It’s a chance to achieve an outcome that benefits the organization as a whole, and also to benefit individual team members in a variety of ways. Leaders should approach all meetings with these two different but mutually supporting aims in mind.
Regardless of the topic, at the close of a successful meeting both the leader and the team members should feel that their unique needs were met, and that the items on the agenda were covered.
As a leader, your choices of the structure and style of an effective meeting depends on a number of factors, including:
• The specific situation, including background, future concerns, and urgency
• The organizational context, including implications and needs for you, your team, and the organization
• The needs and interests of the attendees
• Your own needs and interests, as well as your authority, confidence, and other leadership qualities
Actually, meetings will always have more than one objective. Aside from the specific concerns that have brought the participants together, there are also their personal, individual agendas (and yours), as well as the need to further develop the team as a highly functioning professional entity.
Whenever you call and conduct a meeting, you are making demands on people’s time and attention. As a leader you have authority to do this, but you need to use it wisely. Whatever the explicit reason for the meeting, you have a responsibility to bring it into being as a positive and helpful experience for all who attend.
Having this overall aim, alongside the specific meeting objectives, will help you develop an ability and reputation as an effective, results-oriented leader.
Meetings that encourage participation and shared responsibility will obviously be more constructive than those in which the leader simply lectures and hands down decisions. Below are some basic guidelines that can be applied to many different sorts of meetings. They assume you have considered properly and concluded that the meeting is necessary, and also that you have decided what sort of meeting to hold.
1. Plan carefully, using an agenda format as a planning tool.
2. Circulate the meeting agenda in advance.
3. Run the meeting effectively. Keep control. Agree on outcomes and responsibilities. Take notes.
4. Write and circulate the notes, emphasizing actions and responsibilities.
5. Follow up with team members based on the notes that were circulated.
Here’s a good rule of thumb. Always have a clear purpose for a meeting. Otherwise, don’t have a meeting in the first place. Decide the issues for the meeting and their relative importance and urgency. The issues may be very different and may need to be treated in different ways. Something may be important, for example, without the need for urgent resolution. Issues that are both urgent and important are clearly serious priorities that need careful planning and immediate action.
Decide the type of outcome envisioned for each issue and put this on the agenda alongside the item heading. This is important, because team members need to know what is expected of them. Also, meetings will be more productive when the aims are clear at the outset. For each issue, typical outcomes include:
• Decision
• More discussion needed
• More information needed
• Planning sessions needed
• Feedback needed
• Team-building to begin
Put the less important issues at the top of the agenda, not at the end. If you put them at the end, you may never get to them because all your time has been spent on the big issues.
Be aware that people are most sensitive at the beginning of meetings, especially if there are attendees who are eager to make their presence felt. It can be helpful to schedule controversial issues later in the agenda, which gives people a chance to settle down and relax.
Leaders should consider the time required for various agenda items rather than habitually or arbitrarily decide the length of the meeting. Give each item a realistic time frame. Keep the timings realistic, and remember that things usually take longer than you think.
Plan plenty of breaks for long meetings. Unless people are participating and fully involved, their concentration begins to drop after just forty-five minutes. Breaks need to be twenty minutes for coffee and pastries. Ten minutes every hour for a breath of fresh air and a leg-stretch will help keep people attentive.
Unless you have a specific reason for arranging one, avoid a formal sit-down lunch break. That just makes people drowsy. Working lunches are great, but make sure you give people ten to fifteen minutes to get some fresh air and move around outside the meeting room. If the venue can only provide lunch in a restaurant, arrange a buffet. If a sit-down meal is unavoidable, save time by giving the menu choices to the restaurant earlier in the day.
It’s helpful to put planned times for each item on the agenda. What’s essential, however, is for the leader to think about and plan the meeting so that the items are addressed according to a schedule. In other words, if the delegates don’t have precise timings on their agendas, make sure you have them on yours. This is one of the biggest responsibilities of the meeting leader. Team members will generally expect you to control the agenda. They will usually respect a decision to close a discussion for the purpose of good timekeeping, even if the discussion is still in full flow.
It’s often obvious who should attend, but sometimes it isn’t. Consider inviting representatives from other departments to your own department meetings. The “outsiders” will often appreciate being asked. It will help their understanding of your issues, and your understanding of theirs. Having guests from internal and external suppliers also helps build relationships and they can often shed new light on difficult issues.
Avoid and resist senior managers and directors of your own company attending your meetings unless you can be sure that their presence will be positive, and certainly not intimidating. Senior people may be quick to criticize without knowing the facts.
Be sure the date and time you choose causes minimum disruption for all concerned. It’s increasingly difficult to gather people for meetings, particularly from different departments or organizations. So take care when finding the best date. That’s a very important part of the process, particularly if senior people are involved.
For ongoing meetings that take place on a regular basis, the easiest way to set dates is to agree on them in advance at the first meeting. Everyone can commit there and then. Try to schedule a year’s worth of meetings if possible. Then you can circulate and publish the dates, which keeps people aware of them so that no other priorities encroach.
Preplanning meeting dates is one of the keys to controlled, well-organized meetings. Conversely, leaving the dates until later will almost certainly cause inconvenience and confusion. You may need to be firm. Use the inertia method: that is, suggest a date and invite alternative suggestions, rather than initially asking for possibilities
The best times to start and finish depend on the type and length of the meeting and the attendees’ availability. Generally, try to start early, and to finish at the end of the working day. Two-hour meetings in the middle of the day waste a lot of time. Breakfast meetings are often a good idea.
As with other aspects of the meeting arrangements, if in doubt, always ask people what they prefer. Why guess when you can find out what people actually want, especially if the team is mature and prefers to be consulted anyway?
Many meetings are relatively informal, held in rooms on-site. But important meetings held off-site at unfamiliar venues very definitely require careful planning of the layout and facilities. Plan the venue according to the situation. Leave nothing to chance.
Certain preparations are essential and should never be left to a hotel staff or event planner unless you trust them completely. As the leader, you must make certain that the venue is correctly prepared. Some aspects of the meeting that you will need to check—or even set up personally—are the following:
• Seating layout
• Dais
• Tables for demonstration items, paperwork, or handouts
• Electricity outlets and extensions
• Heating and lighting controls
• Projection and flip chart equipment and operation
• Reception and catering arrangements
• Backup equipment availability
All of the above and much more can and will go wrong unless you check and confirm. Clarify your needs when you book the venue and then again a few days before the meeting.
For an important meeting, you should also arrive very early to check that everything is in order. Major meetings are difficult enough without having to deal with emergencies. Remember: If anything goes wrong, it’s your credibility and reputation that’s at stake.
Positioning of seating and tables is important, and for certain types of meetings it’s crucial. Make sure the layout is appropriate for the occasion:
• For formal presentations to large groups, seat the audience in rows, preferably with tables, facing the dais.
• For medium-size participative meetings, use a horseshoe seating layout with the chairs facing the leaders’ table.
• For small meetings involving debate and discussion, use a rectangular table with the leader at one end.
• Relaxed team meetings for planning and creative sessions can be held lounge style, with sofas and coffee tables.
As the leader of the meeting, your position in relation to the group is important. If you are confident and comfortable and your authority is beyond doubt, you should sit close to the team members or even sit among them. But if you expect challenge or need to control the group, position yourself farther away and clearly at the head of things.
Be sure everyone can see screens and flip charts properly. Actually sit in the chairs to check this. You’ll be surprised how poor the view is from certain positions.
Setting up of projectors and screens is important. Try for the perfect rectangular image, which gives a professional, controlled impression, as soon as you start. Experiment with the adjustment of the projector and the screens. For smaller meetings, a plain white wall is often better than a poor screen.
Position screens and flip charts where they can be used comfortably without obscuring the audience’s view. Ensure that the speaker’s position is to the side of the screen, not in front of it. Supply plenty of additional flip chart easels and paper, or whiteboard acetates and pens.
In older venues, lighting may be problematic. If there are strong lights above the screen that cannot be switched off independently, these may need to be temporarily disconnected. If you’re in a hotel, always ask for help from the maintenance staff rather doing this yourself. And always show your appreciation for the staff. You need them on your side.
The agenda is the tool with which you control the meeting. Include all relevant information. You can avoid the pressure for “any other business” at the end of the meeting if you circulate a draft agenda in advance of the meeting, and ask for any other items for consideration. (“Any other business” often creates a free-for-all session that wastes time and gives rise to new tricky expectations, which if not managed properly will close the meeting on a negative note.)
Formal agendas for board meetings and committees will normally have an established, fixed format that will apply to every meeting. For less formal meetings, concentrate on practicality. Explain the purpose of each item on the agenda. Assign a time frame for all the items. If you have guest speakers or presenters, name them on the agenda. Plan coffee breaks and a lunch break if relevant, and be sure the caterers are informed. In addition to these formal times off, you should allow breaks every hour so that team members can maintain their concentration.
The key to success is keeping control. You can exert this control by sticking to the agenda, managing the relationships and personalities, and concentrating on outcomes. Meetings must have a purpose, and every item covered must have a purpose. Remind yourself and the group of the required outcomes and steer the proceedings toward generating progress, not hot air.
Politely restrain overenthusiastic team members and encourage hesitant ones. Take notes as you go, recording decisions and agreed actions. Include names, measurable outcomes, and deadlines. Do not try to record everything word for word, and if you find yourself leading a particularly talkative group that produces reams of notes and very little else, then change things. Concentrate on achieving the outcomes you set for the meeting when you drew up the agenda. Avoid hurrying decisions if your aim was simply discussion and involvement of team members. But also avoid hours of discussion if you simply need a decision.
Defer new issues to a later time. Simply say, “You may have a point, but it’s not for this meeting—we’ll discuss it another time.”
If you don’t know the answer to a question, be honest about this. Don’t waffle. State that you’ll get back to everyone with the answer at the next meeting, or append it to the meeting notes.
If someone persistently insists on a specific issue that is not on the agenda, bounce it back to him or her with a deadline to report back any findings and recommendations to you.
Look for signs of fatigue, exasperation, confusion, or boredom in attendees and take the necessary action.
As the leader, you should take the notes yourself unless the meeting format dictates a formal secretary. When you are seen taking the notes, two things happen. First, people respect you for not forcing them to do it. Second, they see you are recording agreed upon actions, so there’s no denying or escaping them.
Meeting notes are essential for managing actions and outcomes. They also cement agreements and clarify confusions. A meeting without notes is almost always a waste of time. Actions that go unrecorded are soon forgotten because there’s no published record.
After the meeting, copy the notes to all attendees and to anyone else who should have them. The notes should be brief but also precise and clear. Include relevant facts, figures, accountabilities, actions, and time frames. Any planned actions must be clearly described, naming the person or persons responsible, with a deadline. Use the acronym SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results oriented, Time phased.
A crucial final element is following up on the agreed actions—your own included. If you run a great meeting, issue great notes, and then fail to see that the actions are completed, your credibility is lost. You must follow up agreed actions and hold people to them. If you don’t, if they learn that they can ignore their agreements, your leadership will be fundamentally undermined. By following up, on the other hand, you will encourage team members to respond and perform. Future meetings will benefit, and so will your organization as a whole.
1. Organizational leaders generally have a subtler presence than inspirational leaders do. Are you more of an organizational leader or an inspirational one? On a scale from one to ten, rate your need to be acknowledged and in the spotlight (one is “very little need,” and ten is “I have a great need to be in the spotlight”).
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Very little | A great need | ||||||||
2. Describe three specific steps that you can take toward creating a greater sense of unity among your colleagues (or even among your family and friends). This may involve planning a group event, such as a picnic or a trip to an educational or inspirational location. It may be putting your logo on some T-shirts and caps. Be creative!
3. Are there individuals in your organization who are not team players and need to be personally singled out for their efforts? What steps could you take to acknowledge them for the work that they do, while encouraging them to integrate themselves more as part of the team? Write down three options, and then act upon them.