The experiences of leaders in different countries clearly shape them.  Two researchers looking at leaders in China, India and Singapore noted difference in challenging assignments, developmental relationships, dealing with hardships, education and personal experience.  All of these influences shape individuals into the leaders they are, and gaining an appreciation for each individual’s personal biography is insightful and essential for understanding their own expression of leadership with its gaps and its strong areas.

One way of understanding leadership differences is through behavior styles.  What we need is a fully descriptive, universal language for behavioral description, one that resists the bias of assigning “good” and “bad” labels to different ways that effective leaders get things done.  Two leaders, both equally effective, can take very different paths to arrive at similar results using different behavioral strategies.  Being able to describe those differences objectively, like a scientist, and avoiding personal biases allows us to expand our appreciation of different leaders and ultimately to develop more top talent for tomorrow’s leadership positions.

Research that I did with 1200 leaders in Asia led me to see clear behavior style preferences in different cultures.  In multinational companies (MNC’s), understanding these differences allows for context-specific leadership development as well as company-wide efforts to cultivate the next generation of top talent.

Some summary observations*

Leaders in India had a strong tendency to express dominance (direct, problem->solution orientation) in their leadership styles, especially in the business world.  In Korea, compliance-steadiness (detail-orientation, careful and analytical decision-making) were strong markers shared by many in the top levels of leadership.  In China, the preferred style for leaders were dominance, compliance (detail-oriented, analytical rules-based decision-making) and dominance-compliance (directness and high standards).  In these countries and across Asia there was a noticeable preference for a factual, objective approach to persuasion and motivation methods rather than extroverted, personal and humanistic approaches.

This research showed that cultural difference do indeed show up in self-expressed behavioral preferences by leaders.  However, within each culture there is still room for a diversity of styles and approaches even where one or a cluster of styles is preferred more often than others.  This has some implications for talent management and leadership development.

First, organizations have their own culture just as nations do.  Different MNC’s doing business in the same country or markets may have very different profiles or styles of leadership.  Sometimes, the preferred style imposes its own blinders on the rest of the culture.  When it comes to behavior style, diversity is a potential strength, but it must be acknowledged and managed or else decisions (and the culture) tend to reflect arbitrariness and chaotic tendencies.

Second, good talent management practices will not focus simply on “competency models” or modeling based on traits; it will be closely connected to business results, cultural awareness and experience-based learning and development.  The good news for talent management is that there are tools and proven precedents for defining what success looks like and what kind of leadership is desired for future growth; it is not simply about luck, intuition or other subjective biases.

Third, in terms of leadership development Asian leaders have historically valued a small number of close relationships and relied on personal experiences to guide them through difficult leadership trials and challenges.  A leadership style that projects personal warmth and charisma or inspiration more broadly (as North Americans are perceived to do) has not been part of their repertoire.  This is not a shortcoming or gap; it reflects preferences, comfort level and conditioning which is part of the culture.  More leadership development in Asia needs to be individualized and respect the high-context cultural reality, rather than importing Western models of executive education.

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*The leadership and behavior styles mentioned here are based on the Marston behavioral tendencies model.  For more on this and the research results mentioned you may send me an email requesting more information:  ron(at)leadskill(dot)com or use the comments box below.

The lack of strategic focus is a leadership issue, even when the leaders of an organization “live and breathe” strategy or see themselves as very strategic (but you might be surprised how many don’t).  Such organizations also find it difficult to hang on to their talent for long.

Here are some of the symptoms:

“Tell me again:  why are we doing this?”

“Strategic plan?  I’ve never seen or heard of one around here.  I think we basically do whatever Big Ed feels like doing.”

“Our competition always seems to be one step ahead of us (or several).  We’re either playing catch-up or reacting to what they’re doing.”

“Yeah, we have a strategic plan.  It’s one of those documents framed in the hallway of executive row next to our mission, vision and values that we did last year.  Or was that two years ago?”

“Balanced scorecard???  This is probably another management fad that will go away in a few months.”

These symptoms are actually signs of some common issues (beginning with the most common):

• No formal strategic planning takes place; no strategy is ever articulated
• Strategic planning is event-centered (it happens once a year, and/or takes place at a leadership or board retreat)
• Strategic planning is static and stale once it’s completed; hardly anyone updates/revisits/revises the strategic plan before the next annual event.
• Strategic plans are not effectively communicated beyond a small group at the top
• Lack of strategic thinking as an ongoing practice across the organization.

How do effective leaders address the need for strategy?  I’d like to hear some of your ideas, and then I’ll share some solutions for these common problems in an upcoming post.

I’ll get to that question in a minute, but first let me share a personal story.  I continue to be surprised by some of the misconceptions that people have about flying.  This past weekend I was in a conversation with a man who had a friend that was a pilot of a small plane.  This man’s friend took off on a trip cross country and not too far along he had an instrument failure.  The plane did not crash, but the man who told me about it obviously felt some dire anxiety for his friend and his “close call”.  I mentioned to the man that I was a pilot and that about half of all pilots do not have an instrument rating.  Even those who do don’t always choose to file an instrument flight plan, especially if they don’t plan to fly through clouds or in bad weather.

The majority of flying in small planes takes place under what are called visual flight rules:  the pilot is responsible to stay clear of clouds and to see and avoid other traffic–any other planes, helicopters, gliders or balloons that share the skies.  In fact, a competent, well-trained pilot of small planes should be able to fly their plane safely without ever having to look at the instruments.

If that’s the case, why do planes have instruments?  In a word: options.  Instruments (or other measurement systems) give us more options, and usually they offer greater accuracy.

Let’s continue our lesson from flying planes.  When a pilot receives flight training in flying by instruments, one of the first things an instructor will do is demonstrate how easy it is to trick or disorient a pilot once you remove visual cues.  Every pilot must face the humbling lesson that they are not the exception to the rule: disorientation can happen pretty easily, and if you fly in clouds or fog or at night in the mountains in a fairly short amount of time you will lose your way and get yourself in a position you don’t want to be in.  Flying by the seat of your pants, or gut instinct may sound macho or reasonable, but it’s not going to keep you alive in bad weather or when visual references are gone.

When you’re responsible for running an organization (or even a division or large team), the same rules apply.  Through years of experience you may have developed pretty good instincts or a seat-of-the-pants intuitive feel for making decisions and exercising leadership.  But what happens when the external environment suddenly changes, or a new generation with different expectations joins the workforce (and your organization), or a game-changing technology threatens your market space?  The old familiar references are gone or obscured, and if you don’t have instruments, measures or a backup system…a happy outcome is NOT very likely.

Let’s deal with another misconception here.  Any non-pilot who has looked in on a cockpit has probably been overwhelmed by the amount of instruments, dials, levers and buttons they see there.  An airliner is the extreme case, but even a small plane cockpit is daunting or mysterious to the non-pilot.  The truth is, even inexperienced pilots get overwhelmed or transfixed by the instruments in the cockpit until they develop some discipline.  There are a few primary instruments that you must use, and the rest give you additional information or other options if you need them.  The most basic–and essential, or useful–flight instruments are a compass, a clock, and your engine gauges.  A compass tells you direction and warns of drift; it is an underrated instrument.  A clock allows you to keep from running out of fuel (more predictably than fuel gauges!), make time/distance/fuel calculations, and time turns (which is important if you get into bad weather).  Engine gauges indicate engine health and performance; they give you warnings of when your plane is about to become a glider (an extremely useful piece of information).

Think about your business.  What metric/measurement helps you stay oriented the right direction?  Which metric/measurement gives the most useful information about performance, telling you you’re making good progress or warning you that you’re running out of gas?  How do you measure and keep time in your business?  Every good manager knows their three critical numbers and the other numbers that give more accuracy and specialized information.

Leaders also have a backup system for when the game suddenly changes.  Being clear on your own vision and values is the essential first step.  A well-considered strategic plan is the next step.  If these are clear, your judgment and decision making in stressful situations will be much better.  Backup systems anticipate contingencies or emergencies:  scenario planning, disaster recovery plans, succession planning, risk management plans and systems, leadership development and employee training are some of the best examples of ways to be prepared when the ground shifts underneath you and taking the right action is critical.

Flying an airplane and running a business or leading a team are not overly complex, though we can certainly make the task more complicated than it needs to be.  With the right orientation, measures and backup systems in place, these can be enjoyable and fulfilling endeavors.

Do you know how hard your online employees are working?  Did you say you don’t have any employees?  If you have a website, blog, Facebook page, eBay store or any other kind of online commercial presence, I suggest you do have online employees, and it would be in your interest to think of them that way.

I was coaching another consultant today who does not have a website but who said she wanted one and knew she needed one.  She’s not super-savvy on web technology, nor does she care to be.  I suggested that she think of building a website/blog as if she were hiring an employee.  Here’s how the logic works…Most businesses of a certain size have a website already.  Larger businesses also employ one or more full-time people to maintain the website and other forms of online presence.  Several years ago I coached a manager who was on the web team for Avaya, the telephone equipment maker.  They had multiple people on the web team, spending multi-millions every year, using all kinds of outside vendors to run analytics on their site and to implement specific projects.  For large enterprises, it makes sense to think of their web team as a business in its own right.

Smaller businesses, and even solo professionals, don’t have the same kind of resources as a large corporation, but if their business has any reason to be online I recommend that they think of their website, blog, online store, Facebook page, or Twitter account as if they are employees.  Adopting that kind of mindset allows them to make better decisions about their online presence.

First, what’s the job to be done?  Employees are usually hired to perform a job–or several jobs if it’s a small business.  I find that far too many employers don’t think enough about defining the job.  Even written job descriptions are usually inadequate at communicating what the job is; they usually are a listing of tasks and basic qualifications.   For an online presence, what is the job that needs to be done?  Is it essentially marketing, or is there also some selling (e-commerce or online store)?  Do you need your website to perform customer service by giving customers an avenue to communicate with you, ask questions, make complaints, get answers or additional information?  Some websites actually deliver a product or service online via training, webinars, surveys or assessments.  What job do you need your online presence to do for you now and in the next year or two?  Define the job first.

Second, conduct a talent search.  Think of a website or blog as an employee.  You could start with an infant (a blank page in an editor), then by using html, css and php you could create the personality and behavior of your kid-employee.  You could dress up your growing teenager with the right colors, design and site structure.  Then you could train your entry-level employee in the basic courtesies of answering questions (through forms) and check their performance monthly through an analytics package.  Do you get the picture?  This is an apparently “cheap” way to go, but it requires massive work and training on your part and lots of hands-on maintenance.

Maybe you’d like to rent-an-employee.  You can do that through Yahoo, GoDaddy, 1and1, Sitebuilder, or any number of online services that promise an easy website within hours for merely $10-20 a month.  You use their templates, and besides the content (words you provide) it all belongs to the webhost.  If you decide their rent-an-employee doesn’t represent your company well or you outgrow them, there’s not much that you can carry with you except your content (if you kept a good backup copy).  You could also get a smart, self-sustaining employee who will easily assume your look, feel, personality and do lots of small mindless but essential chores in the background (because a smart designer wrote it into their code) and pay a lot, if you want lots of interaction and handholding by a human web designer, or pay a little, if you pick one of the newer platforms with a customized theme or design that you manage and fill in with content.

Third and finally, be willing to state your expectations and to make a reasonable up-front investment in your new employee.  You’re going to have to do some amount of work on the front end getting this employee up to speed, providing content, making decisions about how your online presence will work.  Do you want a one page, long copy sales page?  You have to write (or hire someone to write) the copy.  Do you want an interactive, information rich blog/website?  You still have to provide the content and the decisions about what a typical viewer will do on your site (yes, provide links and instructions that show people where to go next or what to do).  Personally, I want a smart, efficient employee who looks like me and who needs a minimum of supervision.  This ultra-low maintenance online employee still needs me to show up occasionally, to provide some new content for the store, to handle those few difficult customers whose needs are not the routine and predictable ones that I’ve anticipated already.  I also want an employee who provides a minimum 5X ROI (return on investment) within the first six months.  If I’m going to spend $500 on this employee, they need to help generate at least $2500 in additional revenue in the first six months.  I don’t consider that unreasonable.  Some people may expect more, some are willing to settle for less, but I suggest you do consider what ROI you are expecting.  It will help you in your decision-making process.

If you’ll think of your online presence as an asset, or better, as an employee, I think you’ll be more realistic and also happier with the results from your online efforts.  And remember, don’t settle for just any employee; aim to attract, hire and develop top talent!

Top performers focus attention on their habits of thought.  They already know and have learned well the actions and skills needed for good performance.  They focus instead on what makes the difference between good, solid performance and top performance.  In short, the difference is the mental game.

James Allen wrote a short book in 1902 titled “As a Man Thinketh”.  His main point is that we choose our thoughts, and our habits of thought show up in our circumstances.  Interview top performers and poor performers and you will see this demonstrated vividly.

An article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal on the neurobiology of cognition suggests that each person has a neuron (or cluster of neurons) that fire in recognition and response to specific stimuli.  Researches found that, yes, you actually have a neuron that responds specifically to Homer Simpson, the fictional cartoon character (or you don’t, as the case may be).

As intriguing as this discovery is, the real point that has practical usefulness is that by thinking of certain things repeatedly, by training ourselves in certain habits of thought, we can grown neurons that respond specifically to that stimulus.  Create a goal, then repeat it to yourself, focus on it enough, and you will have neurons firing anytime you encounter something that your brain recognizes as bringing you closer to that goal.  This is one of the keys to developing the mindset (and results) of a top performer.

We also have to guard against mistaking our measurements and our models with the whole picture.  There’s always more than what we can see or measure, and we need to avoid wearing self-made blinders.  It’s in the hidden spaces that wild and chaotic forces lurk.

Peter Bernstein was a remarkable example of intellectual humility and having a healthy respect for risk and uncertainty.  He warned us about trying to quantify the unquantifiable. I remember reading his bestseller Against the Gods in 1996 and gaining a deeper grasp of risk, hazard and management in the process.  We lost Peter last week at the age of 90, but he left behind some sound advice for the rest of us.

In my work with companies I urge them to set up measurement systems, or to better use the data and measurements they already have at hand.  These can be remarkably useful for making better decisions and keeping a lively inquiry that challenges lazy thinking or sloppy habits.

And I also see much value in heeding G.K. Chesterton’s advice:

“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor that it is a reasonable  one.  The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.  Life is not an illogicality, yet is is a trap for logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.”

New discoveries in brain science seem to greet us almost every day.  How the mind and brain work is a fascinating field that just gets more interesting with each new discovery. 

We’re learning about different types of memory, the different regions of the brain where they are stored or accessed, how we process information both consciously and subconsciously, and how personality differences are reflected in distinct brain functions.

Some people seem born or endowed with special gifts or talents.  For them, applying their talents in a way that contributes is what makes them into top talent.  Can top talent be developed through sheer diligence in the absence of a special endowment?  It appears so.  Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers looked at research done on outstanding people and concluded that anyone could become an expert in anything by practicing for 10,000 hours.  What some would brand “obsession” may actually be one of the paths to learning something so well that you truly own it with a high level of mastery.

Everyone’s brain has an “executive function” that helps us to plan, organize and prioritize our actions.  Part of prioritizing is being able to shift our attention from one item to another or to keep from getting distracted or acting out habitual responses that would be counter-productive.  It appears that those people who we would call “top talent” are better able to exercise this executive function.  One interesting correlation to this is that bilingual or multilingual people seem to have more highly developed executive functioning in their brains.  They can monitor languages and keep them separate (part of the executive function), and they are better able to switch their attention when it’s necessary to learn something new.  I have witnessed this firsthand, first as a child in South America being exposed to Spanish, and as an adult in Asia learning Chinese.  Language learning seems to be one clear path to developing the executive function of the brain.

How do people arrive at the solution to knotty, complex problems without an obvious solution?  It seems very difficult to engineer or stage one of those “Eureka!” moments that leads to a breakthrough insight.  New research by Joydeep Bhattacharya and Bhavin Sheth makes the case that a person has to be in a particular state for insights to occur.  The processing of complex problems seems to occur most efficiently at a subconscious level, and Drs. Bhattacharya and Sheth showed that a flurry of subconscious brain activity often telegraphed a breakthrough even before a person became consciously aware of their breakthrough insights in a “light-bulb moment.”   The talent of solving complex or intractable problems seems to lie with those who stay with the problem and can fruitfully turn it over to their subconscious processing to arrive at a productive answer.

For some practical insights, look at the following resource:

John Medina has a great book out called Brain Rules.  I recommend you get a copy.  The free DVD that comes with the hardcover book is humorous and helps you really get the principles (he has 12 of them, some seem obvious, but others are really insightful).

What qualifies as a “strategic” meeting?  When we are talking about or deciding on a substantive direction or outcome.  When we are discussing our own identity.  When the stakes are very high, either for us personally or for the organization.  All of these fit my definition of strategy. 

I was in a strategy meeting back in January a few months ago.  I remember a series of strategy meetings I chaired during a series of months over fifteen years ago.   I have learned to identify strategy in meetings even when I expected the predominant focus to be on operational or tactical issues.  That’s really an important point.  Ask yourself:  what is the purpose of this meeting?  Are we dealing mostly with strategy or with tactics?

Patrick Lencioni has written a powerful book about meetings called Death by Meeting.  I highly recommend it.  It applies more generally to different kinds of meetings, but it warrants a close reading anyway.  Lencioni says instead of avoiding conflict, we should seek out the right kind of conflict in meetings that matter.  He distinguishes between destructive interpersonal conflict where people are focused on personal hurts, sensitivities or hidden agendas and healthy, constructive ideological conflict where we disagree over assumptions or approaches and we discuss these openly. 

Dan Bobinski shares three key questions you can ask to keep things on track in a strategy meeting:  1. What results do we want from this action?  2. What must we do to achieve those results?  3. What knowledge, skills, or attitudes must we have/acquire to do those things?

Here’s a tip for you to consider about the next meeting you are part of:  Look for whether there is a connection to something you care deeply about.  Ask more questions about “what” is the aim or objective until it is clear to everyone before allowing the conversation to steer toward questions of “how” to get to the desired end goal.  If you find that you really don’t belong at this meeting, as soon as possible create a way to delegate, disengage or dismiss yourself from the meeting and choose to focus on something that is a higher priority for you and the organizaiton.

You own the business and so all the problems that can’t be solved by others end up in front of you.  You have someone who handles personnel matters, but that means the transactional side of HR.  The personal issues, interpersonal conflict, lack of performance, all of the soft, squishy (but really difficult) stuff comes to you.  And you wish you could make it go away without needing to fire someone.  Maybe you can…

When you are dealing with recurring people problems, the first thing to do is to get some perspective.  When you are frustrated or emotions are high, you aren’t going to be happy with the outcome most of the time.  Here’s something that really works (it usually works best if you do this in private, so get some space for a second and do this):  breath out and empty your lungs.  Take a deep breath as you count to five, then slowly release it.  As you do, release the tension and heightened emotion too.  Repeat two more times.  It sounds so easy, but it really does shift you physically, mentally and emotionally.

Next, do not avoid the problem.  Instead, face it head-on.  But don’t be too quick to “solve” it.  Have you identified the real problem?  Nineteen out of twenty times, it’s not the problem that it appears to be on the surface.  To get at the root of the problem, you have to ask questions and really listen to the answers. 

• “How long has this been going on?”
• “What is the cost of the problem?” (think of costs broadly)
• “What, if anything, have we done to address it?”
• “What is the real source of the problem?”
• “What would happen if the problem went away?” (do not dismiss this question)

Third, are you trying to fix something that really belongs to someone else?  Owners and bosses often assume responsibility for things that rightfully belong to others.  It’s one of the hazards of the job.  It also disempowers your people.  What if your people were charged with finding and solving the real source of the problem, and they knew for sure you were not going to “bail them out” again?  How would that change things?  Are you willing to give it an honest try? 

Share your comments and experience-we can all learn together.

Our task was to determine what the organization needed from this job for superior performance (in our case it was the job of President of the company).  We discussed key results that the person filling the role of President was accountable for producing.  When we agreed on the five key results, our assignment next was to “let the job speak”.  Essentially, we were defining the talent profile of this job without thinking about people currently in the job, top performers or average workers.  If the job were done excellently in a way to produce the key results, what would that look like? 

We went online and completed a profile that automatically joined our responses so we had a composite picture of what our group thought about the talent needed to do this job well.  We analyzed and scrutinized the report so that we weren’t surrendering our collective wisdom to some kind of artificial intelligence system. 

In the end, we were very satisfied with the picture of talent needed to deliver top performance in this job.  We had worked to eliminate (or at least mitigate bias) and subjectivity in the process.   There was openness and transparency  in the process, and we had a standard for accountability.  In short, we had a repeatable practice for effective top talent management.