In this blog series we’ve been looking at contextual leadership through which our leaders to succeed in a variety of situations with the right mix of skills and characteristics.  Most recently we looked at leadership agility as the fifth core element:

1. Drive
2. Emotional Intelligence
3. Values
4. Intelligence
5. Learning Agility

Learning agility is in fact the cohesive element that allows our leaders to contextualize within our organization.  This core element allows all of the others to be used to their fullest potential, with appropriate application, and with successful outcomes.

While I will boldly assert that I possess learning agility in a great many facets of my life, I confess that reading mercury thermometers does not fall into one of those facets.  My intelligence is not lacking, but like my friend I am unable to apply my extensive knowledge on how to read that thermometer into actually seeing that little silver line.

Such is a leader who has all the right training, knowledge, and degrees, but is unable to apply that knowledge in challenging situations.  Some scenarios call for penetrating questions to achieve understanding that transcends that scenario and adds to their total knowledge and experience.  Leaders with high agility are more likely to seek out information and effectively apply that knowledge to inform future judgments.  Similar comparisons can be made for the other elements of leadership as well.

And while teaching is an incredibly noble and wonderful profession (my humble caveat to the title!), we need leaders that go beyond knowledge and intelligence and are continually learning and adapting to the challenges thrown at them day by day.

• Volatility- The nature, speed, volume, magnitude and dynamics of change
• Uncertainty – The lack of predictability of issues and events
• Complexity – The confounding of issues and the chaos that surround any organization
• Ambiguity – The haziness of reality and the mixed meaning of conditions

The best leaders and leadership pipeline candidates are those that can lead in a VUCA world.  No longer are there linear problems and solutions, rather, people connections matter at least as much as process.  Global networks are changing connections and momentum every day.  Non-profits must be flexible, sustainable, and competitive with consumer needs constantly in flux.  Leaders must be able to sense and respond to changes in the business environment with focused, fast, and flexible actions.   But how do we identify those leaders?

Horney, Pasmore, and O’Shea articulate specific questions to observe and evaluate leader agility in People & Strategy, volume 33 issue 4:

• When has the leader performed well in a work environment that featured rapid change and/or ambiguity?  Did they enjoy the challenge and what did they learn?
• When has the leader been decisive with urgency – what information did the leader consider and what was the outcome?
• How does the leader decide between more information gathering and making a decision?  Find examples of each and determine which was more comfortable for the leader and what was the outcome?
• When has the leader modified their personal style to achieve an important work objective?  How did they change and what was the outcome?

Examine your leadership pipeline, and yourself for the answers to the above questions and you should find distinct indicators of the leadership agility of that candidate.  This will give you ideas for future growth and help you select and screen candidates in the future.

What is your current strategy for screening leadership candidates?  Do you have a formal process in place?  If not, this is a great opportunity to create one.  Let us know if we can be of any help.

Learning Agility is the ultimate “X” factor for success in a dynamic and capricious business world.  This was defined by Sternberg, Wagner, Williams and Horvath as something akin to street smart, savvy, and common sense.  Eichinger & Lombardo later defined it as being able and willing to derive meaning from all kinds of experience.  Povah and Sobczak distilled their review of the research into the following traits of learning agility:

• Seek out new challenges.
• Seek feedback from others and self-reflect.
• Record “learnings” for future review.
• Evaluate their experiences and draw practical conclusions.
• Plan what they will do as a result.

These traits cannot be taught, but rather developed in those who possess the potential for agility.  There has been some interesting work in this identifying and developing of leadership agility that we will explore in our next blog.

Do you have any plan in place for examining the traits we looked at today?  Do you ask your leaders and leadership pipeline to consider and cultivate those traits?

Values centers around the character traits of integrity, honesty, sincerity, trust and respect.  We know those traits when we see them, but we must also learn to take measure of them during leadership selection.  Eight different companies with superior results when compared against similar industries and organizational characteristics were found to have approaches to leadership based on values.  In fact, the researchers O’Reilly and Pfeffer found that “the most visible characteristics that differentiate the companies we have described from others are their values and the fact that the values come first, even before stock price.”  This values-based leadership guides decision-making, crisis management, and counts for a little more than 16% of successful leadership according to Roger Pearman, 1999.

Drive is often thought of as achievement, ambition, tenacity and energy.  For the purposes of this research they looked at drive defined by the engagement aspect of leadership that inspires people to action and more involves passion, self-motivations and resilience.  Pearman found this quality accounts for a little more than 13% of effective leadership.

We will look at our final element of leadership – learning agility – in our next blog.  These elements are surely not new to you, but to examine them within leadership potentials and then to analyze the cultural context is another step forward in ensuring your organization is prepared for the future.  We will put it all together within this series on contextual leadership.

Have you evaluated your leadership pipeline for values and drive?  We hope that the quantifiable payoff we looked at above will encourage you to make a concrete plan for evaluating those traits in your talent search.

Sadly, she was right.  He didn’t have a lick of sense or ambition beyond his textbooks while she had networking skills that would serve her career forever.  Have you ever known anyone like these two? Are those you know currently in your leadership pipeline?

In our last blog we looked at the fundamental of intelligence.  But that alone is not enough.  In fact, D.P. Goleman found that those high IQ leaders often fail to understand their employees and he asserted that leaders must also have emotional intelligence. In Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, he defines emotional intelligence as the ability to analyze and understand relationships, see someone else’s perspective, resolve conflict, and even control their own emotions.

Povah and Sobczak go on to say that leaders with lower level EQ are more likely to derail from senior positions according to Higgs and Dulewicz and quotes another study that found “the emotional intelligence of the team leaders is important to the effective functioning of the team; the leader serves as a motivator toward collective action, and facilitates supportive relationships among team members.”

Do you have any high EQ employees in your pipeline?  Do you know how to spot them?  But wait, we have 3 more core elements of leadership to cover before we start spotting your talent.  In our next blog we will talk about values and drive.

We know that individual organizations require their own unique skills and character traits to be successful.  It is imperative that we examine, define, and articulate those attributes in order to assess our leadership requirements and determine those we lack.

But it is the combination of this internal culture along with external conditions, business strategy, and competencies that allow us to define, cultivate, and hire the right leader for the job.  This moves us beyond a leader’s past success and winning personality.

Povah and Sobczak start with the five core elements of leadership they found through surveying numerous leadership theories.  The first of these is intelligence.

Cognitive ability is the single best predictor of job performance and IQ accounts for nearly 24% of successful leadership.  Also of great importance are the analytical, practical, and creative pieces of intellect.  However, there is strong evidence that suggests that high IQ leaders often fail to understand and motivate employees while struggling to work with those less intelligent.  This requires a very different type of intelligence which we will examine in our next blog.

What are the unique cultural traits required within your workplace for leadership success?  Have you considered mapping them out, evaluating the missing pieces, and assessed your current leaders and development programs for these traits?

Lucy Povah and Kate Sobczak construct a contextual leadership model in People & Strategy that examines learning agility and how successful leaders successfully learn and adapt.  We will examine their research as they use context and organizational culture to assess leadership candidates and examine leadership agility.

“It seems the more that is written about leadership, the less we seem to know.”

Warren Bennis

While Bennis is sadly accurate, Povah and Sobczak have found some consistent themes in current leadership theory.  One of the most significant is the ability to change and adapt.  We have all seen leaders who have powered an organization to stratospheric success and have failed miserably at their next company –   see Bob Nardelli.

Change.  Either a company change, or change from within can derail success if a leader is unable to adapt to the changing context.  We must take a more holistic view of leader selection to include how an individual fits into the broader organizational, cultural, and socio-economic context.

Does your leadership selection process focus on past career success and accomplishments?  We must assess agility as a vital competency as we identify new leaders.  Do you have a leadership selection process in place?  Have you examined the criteria lately?  We will continue to look at this process in our next blog with culture and context.

Graham managed a chemical development company trying to invent a new product.  Unfortunately, shifting priorities from the top, conflict, and vacillating commitments as well as a tight budget and possible job losses challenged the project.  Even worse, an early iteration of the product infuriated an important customer and the project ground to a halt.  Graham turned the entire project around with 4 important steps:

1.     Analyze instead of attack– no blame for the angry test product instead identify the problem and coordinate solutions

2.     Track daily progress – in the absence of judgment team members were eager to give frequent updates allowing for continuous communication and progress

3.     Used the checklists – this allowed him to daily customize and target the support his team members needed the most

4.     Be a resource not a micromanager – give goals and team members room to accomplish them, help analyze problems and allow them to solve them, and share all information pertinent to progress

These steps may be difficult to implement in the real time of crises and deadlines within your workplace. But instilling a healthy management approach through examining your daily habits will go a long way towards shaping your employees’ engagement, job satisfaction and overall productivity.  Basic respect and consideration go a long way towards allowing your employees to enjoy their workplace and their work.  Manage the progress instead of managing the people and you will likely find superior work habits forming throughout your organization.

Perhaps you need some assistance analyzing where you are in this process and the overall health of your team culture?  Perhaps you have been driving your employees stark, raving mad and didn’t even know it?  Let us know if you’d like a fresh perspective, we are always happy to help.

We have been looking at Amabile and Kramer’s research on how to give workers a vision for the meaning in their work.  In our last blog we looked at catalysts and nourishers – methods that we as managers can use to help our employees see the contributions they make in our organizations.  We also looked at a daily checklist to use as a guideline as we infuse our employees with a sense of purpose, engagement, and productivity.

However, we would be remiss if we didn’t look at the inhibitors to that meaning and progress.   Inhibitors fail to support or even interfere with the work our employees are engaged in.  Toxins are those acts that interfere with interpersonal support.  Both inhibitors and toxins affect inner work life directly and immediately.  See the following Setbacks Checklist below for examples of inhibitors and toxins and questions to ask yourself at the end of the workday:

INHIBITORS

• Was there any confusion regarding long- or short-term goals?
• Were team members constrained in problem solving or ownership?
• Did team members lack resources?
• Did they lack sufficient time to focus on meaningful work?
• Did others or I fail to provide necessary or requested assistance?
• Did I punish failure or neglect to find learning opportunities?
• Did others or I cut off the flow of ideas prematurely?

TOXINS

• Did I disrespect anyone’s ideas, contributions, or abilities?
• Did I discourage a member of the team in any way?
• Did I neglect a personal or professional problem of a team member?
• Is there tension or antagonism among our team and/or me?

Adapted from The Daily Progress Checklist

HBR, May 2011

Along with our last checklist – this thinking process will grow your management skills to the point where you can avoid these inhibitors and toxins before they even occur, or you can recognize and address them immediately before greater damage is done.  When these setbacks between team members and you are minimized, you will foster a more engaged and satisfied workforce.

In our next blog we will examine what this checklist process might look like in your workplace.

Describe 1 or 2 events today that indicated either a small win or a possible breakthrough.

Catalysts:

• Did the team have clear short- and long-term goals for meaningful work?
• Did team members have sufficient autonomy to problem solve and take ownership?
• Did they have all the resources they needed?
• Did they have sufficient time to focus on meaningful work?
• Did I give them help when needed and encourage them to help one another?
• Did I discuss lessons from today’s successes and problems with my team?
• Did I help ideas flow freely within the group?

Nourishers:

• Did I respect team members by recognizing their contributions to progress, attending to their ideas and treating them as trusted professionals?
• Did I encourage team members who faced difficult challenges?
• Did I support team members who had a personal or professional problem?
• Is there a sense of personal and professional affiliation and camaraderie within the team?

Adapted from The Daily Progress Checklist

HBR, May 2011

Upon answering this checklist you should see an obvious action plan forming that will strengthen the catalysts and nourishers identified and provide ones that are lacking.  This process will become more streamlined as you get familiar with your goals for the day, the patterns you find in what you lack, and by cementing the catalysts and nourishers in your head and being able to provide them in the moment during the day.

In our next blog we will look at the setbacks that you should avoid and how to do a daily checklist to prevent them from occurring.

How do you currently provide catalysts and nourishers?  Are there some that are not included on this list?  Did any of these surprise you?  Let us know and we can create more expansive lists together.