The Warm-Up: Questions for Stretching Your Mind
Who is your Leadership Hero? __________________________________
What three traits do you admire most about your Leadership Hero?
1. _________________ 2. _________________ 3. _________________
In 1986 Lieutenant General Dave Palmer arrived at West Point to serve as the Superintendent of the Military Academy. I was a professor and a member of the Academic Board. I remember that at one of the early Academic Board meetings in the fall of 1986, LTG Palmer asked us this question: “What is the purpose of the United States Military Academy?” The members of the board began spouting off their views. I did not say anything because I remembered that he had asked me that same question while I was visiting him that summer before it was announced that he would become the new Superintendent. After listening for a while, he asked us to go back to our offices and prepare a one-page paper in response to his question.
At future meetings we continued wrestling with our views and eventually came up with this statement of “The Purpose of USMA”: “The purpose of the United States Military Academy is to provide the nation with leaders of character to serve the common defense.”
I recall that after that meeting when the new purpose statement was accepted, I returned to my office and began writing it on the top of a sheet of paper. When I got to the word “character” I had to stop. I began to question myself about the meaning of that word. I did not have a good definition.
My search led me to Plato and Aristotle. They had wrestled with the definition of character a long time ago. Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, focused on ideas and ideals, while Aristotle believed that “Good character is the life of good conduct, right conduct in relation to other persons and in relation to one’s self.”
Prior to LTG Dave Palmer challenging the members of the Academic Board to develop the purpose of West Point, I had used the word character many times, but I had never given careful consideration to what the word really means. I have also found that most people who use the word have not given prior consideration to its meaning.
In my twenty-four years at West Point as a professor and member of the Academic Board, the development of that purpose statement was the most significant accomplishment of any of the twelve superintendents I served under. That purpose statement put the entire West Point training program into perspective. If something we were doing did not move our young men and women to become Leaders of Character, then there was no reason for us to be doing it.
For every audience I speak to, I have an audience participation portion. With each group, whether it is a group of 15 or 1,500, I ask them to think about their leadership hero. That person may be in history, in the movies, or someone for whom they have worked or played sports. Then I ask them these questions:
Who is your leadership hero? What is it you admire most about that leader?
We will touch on some of the answers from these groups in a moment, but first we want you to answer these questions for yourself. Who would you say is your leadership hero? And what are the top three traits you admire most about that person?
Your Leadership Hero: ____________________________________
Leadership Hero Top 3:
1. _________________ 2. _________________ 3. ________________
With a live audience, the answers to these questions always come fast and furious. I usually scribble the answers on a flip chart or white board. Here is an example from a recent group regarding the most admired traits:
| Engaged | Trusts | Leads by example |
| Passionate | Builds trust | Empowers others |
| Optimistic | Work ethic | Unafraid |
| Open | Determined | Decisive |
| Respects others | Honest | |
| We posed those same two questions in a separate survey that included an online portion getting over six hundred responses. The top ten answers from the survey included: | ||
| Caring | Honesty | Listener |
| Compassionate | Humility | Passionate |
| Courage | Inspirational | Servant |
| Faith | Integrity | Wisdom |
Now, look over these three lists: your Top 3, the list from my recent class, and the survey results. What do they show us? People follow character. In fact, the survey results found 87 percent of the answers listed character traits and not skills or competencies. No matter how many people I ask, no matter where in the business world I am, when people list what they admire most in great leaders, they describe character traits. Character more than competence is why people follow leaders. Who a leader is at his or her core is more important to followers than the skills that person brings to the table.
“Character is higher than intellect.”
Leadership speaker and author John Maxwell jump-started the trend of defining leadership as influence. We agree with him and the leadership experts (such as Oswald Sanders) whom Maxwell cites as his inspiration. But does that definition go far enough? Does just having influence make someone a leader?
Along with influence, the direction we lead another person toward is important. Hitler had influence, but what he led people to do was horrific. Stalin had influence. Bin Ladin had influence too. But the goals of each of these leaders were immoral and incredibly damaging to generations upon generations of people. We believe that motives, among other things, separate the Leaders of Character from the rest.
We also maintain that there should be some level of achievement involved in leading. Leaders of Character are different than people who just wield influence. Who cares if I have influence on others, but the influence is not used to accomplish any concrete, beneficial goals?
A movie critic has influence, but whom are they leading? A talking head on CNN or Fox News has influence, but are they leading anyone towards something positive? Do they help others accomplish any goals?
No one would deny that Hitler and Jesus, Stalin and Ghandi, and Bin Ladin and Abraham Lincoln were leaders. They all had influence. But not all of them were Leaders of Character. Leadership—at least any leadership of genuine value—must be more than mere influence. It matters for what purpose that leadership is used, what goals are being pursued.
Andersons’ 12-Word (or less) Definition of a Leader of Character
Someone who uses influence to achieve a moral or ethical goal
The type of goal a leader is aiming at defines whether he is a Leader of Character or just a person of influence. The bottom-line is this: when you try to differentiate a Leader of Character from the rest of the so-called leaders out there, look at their motives.
Andersons’ Leadership Philosophy
Leadership is a blend of competence and character
The General: Good Question
My friend and West Point classmate General Norman Schwartzkopf helped me solidify my leadership philosophy. I was preparing to leave the military and was telling Norm about my plans to start my own leadership consulting business. That was when he asked me, “Jim, what’s your niche?”
I told him my philosophy was that leadership was a blend of competence and character. He thought for a second and then added, “Jim, I agree. But did you ever stop to think that most failures in leadership are failures in character and not failures in competence?”
The bottom line is character is why people follow leaders. Another way to see this is to look at the biggest leadership failures we know. These could be people featured in the news, people from history, or people we personally know. When you think about those failures, were those failures in competence or as a result of character flaws?
Fear, arrogance, lapses in integrity, selfishness, poor work ethic, bad attitudes—these are the causes of most leadership failures. Rarely is it a case that someone couldn’t do the job due to competence issues. Usually it is a result of that leader having a character issue that caused their downfall.
• Did Nazi Germany collapse because Hitler and his party did not know how to run an efficient government or war machine? Or was it because Hitler was one of the most amoral and evil men of the twentieth century?
• Did Bernie Madoff’s investment empire collapse because he didn’t know how to manage money, or was it an issue of Integrity?
• Did Enron implode because the company leaders did not know how to run an energy trading company, or was it an Integrity issue? Or was it a Courage issue on the part of some leaders?
• Did FIFA not know how to promote soccer worldwide and how to generate an enormous fan base? Or was it the selfishness of the people indicted for fraud and corruption that put the whole organization in jeopardy?
Are we saying competence is not important? Absolutely not! Incompetence in a leader is incredibly damaging. Competency is a hugely important part of the leadership equation. Hiring, developing, and reinforcing leadership competence are critical for organizations and individuals to remain competitive. Leaders must be competent in certain management skills.
In fact, over and over again—in big and small businesses, in for-profits and non-profits, in the government and in the private sector—the search for and almost exclusive emphasis on competence reigns. We continue to hire, train, and evaluate people based on competencies. But, as we have repeatedly found, the inability to do the job is rarely why leaders fail—character is!
In many organizations, the terms manager and leader are used interchangeably. Maybe that is because management skills seem to be the focus of those organizations. Maybe these companies focus on management skills because they are easier to measure. But Leaders of Character know there is more to their jobs than just management.
Here are a few observations about Leaders of Character and managers.
• Leaders of Character lead people, while management is about managing resources. Leaders of Character know leadership is about people! The people make things happen. The people will have a larger impact on the bottom-line than will more money, better equipment, or shorter production cycles.
• Leaders of Character grow leaders, while management is about maintaining processes. Again, Leaders of Character know leadership is about people. If we are not developing people, we are not leading. The growth of the individuals on our team will ensure the long-term success of the team more than any well-managed and maintained process.
A Leader of Character never places resources, projects, or administrative tasks before people. Such leaders know that the work has to get done. But they know that people do the work and that people are more important than the work itself.
As important as people are, the majority of the leadership training that companies invest in focuses on the competencies of being a manager without regard for the character component that is critical to achieving individual and organizational excellence. These companies continue to give leaders the latest and greatest personality or strengths assessments, new coaching models, time management training, and many other topics related to managing and competency.
| Leadership/Management Training Topics from Three Prominent Companies |
|
| Setting Vision | Connecting with Team Members |
| Goal Setting | Coaching, Developing and Mentoring |
| Culture | Communication |
| Motivating Teams | Building Trust |
| Time Management | Generations in the Workplace |
| Recruiting and Hiring | Coaching for Performance |
| Conflict Resolution | Making Meetings Productive |
| Public Speaking | Finance for Non-Financial Managers |
| Increasing Team Productivity | Building Strong Teams |
The training topics above can provide fantastic tools, but great tools do not necessarily make people great carpenters.
Good tools in the hands of the wrong people often result in manipulation, not leadership.
If we want to be average, focusing on management development may be enough. But if we want to go beyond average and achieve excellence, then we must focus on becoming Leaders of Character. The same can be said for companies that focus on developing competencies without regard to the character component. Greatness will not be achieved through good management skills alone.
Which do you want to be: a proficient manager or a Leader of Character? The first creates compliant employees. The second leads committed followers!
In his groundbreaking book Return on Character, Fred Kiel studied CEOs who were rated high on employee-based character evaluations. The Leaders of Character, whom Kiel calls Virtuoso Leaders, led their companies to five times the return on assets than the leaders with lower character ratings.
Character is the determining factor in whether a team at work, an individual, or even a family will or will not follow you.
Which do you want to be: a proficient manager or a Leader of Character?
The first creates compliant employees. The second leads committed followers!
The downfall of many leaders is not their ability to do the job, but who they are as a person. Who do their followers believe their leaders are at their core? Do the people see their leader as a Leader of Character?
To become a Leader of Character we must strengthen the critical Habits of Character so we are prepared for the challenges of leading. But what exactly is our character and how do we develop it? Read on and we will show you.
“Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good—habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action.”
Character Assessment: http://alslead.com/character-test