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.

That presents its own problems.  Because the market is growing and the activity level is high, there is plenty of competition among companies for scarce resources.  Attracting and retaining talent in the form of qualified employees and managers is a top concern.  Maintaining morale and high productivity is clearly another.  The competition for raw materials or inputs for the business challenges the ability to maintain healthy margins, while all of the uncertainty makes forecasting results very difficult, if not impossible.  Inaccurate forecasting causes inefficiencies and hits productivity and morale, which shows the interconnected nature of today’s challenges.

Organizations that are able to attract the best talent and that have the culture to retain and develop this talent will clearly be the winners over time.  Those that manage in a reactive mode or who focus on the short-term and neglect their people/talent practices will suffer from self-inflicted injuries.  Talent is fairly mobile in China.  Top talent is very mobile, and capable leaders will go where there are both opportunities and their own contributions are valued.

Good talent management and leadership development practices are in their early stages in China, so capitalizing on this area will create a competitive advantage for firms that get it right.  Leaders that can shift from reactive to proactive management will integrate this into their strategic vision and execute relentlessly until they get it right.  The competition for talent in China is already hot, and the temperature is only going to climb in the coming days.

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.

Is that too bleak?  I’m not a pessimist even while I try to stay realistic.  Since the worldwide “reset” (recession, currency devaluation, drop in trade–whatever you want to call it) that began in 2008, the signs are clear that we’re looking for direction and the old order has passed.  We’re not too sure what the new order is, while many act confused, some put their heads down and soldier on while the true entrepreneurs smell opportunity and are moving aggressively into action.  You’re going to hear their stories become public in the coming years, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

What are some signs of the times?  First, lackluster performance in the markets.  Investors continue to seek places to put capital to work and get a good return, but the old rules no longer apply.  Stock markets gyrate up and down.  Currency markets are in a frothy turmoil (euro, yen or dollars anyone?).  Property prices are stagnant except for some bubbles in Asia.  After big bailouts in the US private sector in 2008-2009 (financials and autos particularly), now it’s Europe’s turn with sovereign debt (the PIIGS are ready for slaughter).

Second, geopolitical unrest.  Voter disenchantment in the US and now in the UK brought about regime change, but the “changers” have brought little that is new or innovative, just more of the same old.  The tone may be different, but the substance is the same.  The Middle East is no closer to peace and in fact destabilization in the region seems certain with Iran playing the spoiler.  Pakistan remains the premier jihadi training ground.  The brightest spot is the economic vitality of Asia as the faster developing nations (China and India principally) expand their realm of influence.  Even in Asia the picture is not all bright as Thailand finds it hard to shake it’s political unrest and Japan enters its third “lost decade”.

Third, there is the unsettling feeling that the earth itself is not resting easy.  Whether it is natural or manmade events–major earthquakes (Haiti, Chile and China), a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a lack of consensus and will to act on climate change–the planet itself seems more restless and also vulnerable.

A real defining sign of our times is the lack of leadership.  Name 3 great leaders today.  Not famous people or inspirational people, but real leaders.  It’s tough, isn’t it?  Those in power are either disappointing us or making people madder.  Ineffective leaders linger on instead of making way for those who are more competent and able to step up and lead.  Executive pay continues to rise even as performance plateaus or declines.  Those in charge seem very capable of growing their personal power, their budget and their spending, but unable to make the tough decisions.  Even as Asia leads economically, the lack of leadership is felt acutely.  The experience and “bench strength” is just not there, so today’s leaders resort to trial and error–a slow and inefficient way to learn.

What is most needed in these uncertain times is true leadership, great leadership.  A clear mark of great leadership is looking out first for the people you lead.  This is not simply a high-minded ideal; it is essentially what all effective leaders in any time period do.  Shaun Rein recently wrote about this in Forbes, and he came to same conclusion.  Make the work, the life of those around you better, and people will follow.  Take from people, steal from them (either legally or illegally, there is little real difference), tell them untruths or half-truths, and the real truth will eventually come out.  Truly serve and you are on the path to leadership.  Take that path long enough and you’ll find yourself at the head of a line of people willingly taking the same path and following as their own lives improve.  This mark of great leadership is not complex or hidden, but it is in short supply in these times.  May more true leaders emerge soon!

But I think it’s important to look at the fuller context of this speech which I’ll show with some select quotations and my own comments as they relate to personal development.  Roosevelt addressed an educated French audience and his topic was about the kind of citizenship that makes a republic strong.

“In the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues.”

Roosevelt knew he was addressing an audience of privileged listeners, and he warns them against an aloof attitude or being out of touch with the concerns of common people.  This is a danger for our “talking head” pundits on tv, but even more so for our CEO’s and leaders of organizations.

“A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness.”

Next comes the famous quote about the man in the arena:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Beyond this inspirational passage is another part of the speech that never gets quoted, yet I believe it holds the key to the kind of character that Roosevelt praises.  For me, it is the center of gravity of the speech, and it speaks to the personal development and mastery that are necessary for good leadership.  It really paints a picture of what it takes to develop top talent.

“There is need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character – the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man’s force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in exercise for the body, always provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self restraint, self mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution – these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside.”

Roosevelt goes on to emphasize the need of a strong moral sense, the inner compass that must guide the true leader:

“Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man’s own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly.”

Finally, to keep all of this grounded and practical, Roosevelt reminds us that:

“The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize.  Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized.”

What do you think about the qualities Roosevelt praises and how practical it is to develop top talent?

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The full text of the speech is at http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html

If you want more of the back-story to this quote, you can find it here

This speech, along with his earlier one on “The Strenuous Life”, are some of Roosevelt’s most memorable words.  (Full text of the Strenuous Life speech can be found here).

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!

Every day we size up talent by observation, through conversation and based on our own personal experience.  Imagine that you are hiring someone for a job.  When a person is sloppy, cocky or self-centered, it tends to diminish our assessment of them.  When they are confident, open to learning and focused on others, we tend to give them higher marks.  We have just measured talent.  It may not be the best way to do it or the most accurate or fair, but it is a rough and ready tactic that most everyone adopts.

Can we get beyond the gut instinct?  It is the subjective judgments that get in the way of good talent assessment.  Humans have a lot of predictable biases.   We have terms for them like “the halo effect”,”ingroup bias”, “projection” bias, “herd instinct”, the illusion of transparency, the illusion of superiority, the “self-fulfilling prophecy”–there are over 20 social biases.  Even when we’re aware of them, which isn’t often, biases still affect our sound judgment.

The fact is that talent can be measured objectively and we can override the prevailing bias that skews our judgment.  However, it takes effort, and it helps if you have some good tools.  One such tool is a well-designed process to follow so that you don’t develop tunnel vision and become trapped in one or several of the predictable biases.  Another tool that can work well in some contexts is the wisdom of crowds, or crowd-sourcing.  A well-known example of this is the American Idol series where millions of people get to vote on the top talent.  The crowd can often be better than the “expert” panel.  When you can get true experts, some variation of the Delphi method can be useful.  There needs to be some rigor in the process, and Delphi experts tend to be better at prediction and problem-solving than talent-related issues.  Another effective tool  is well-designed objective assessments or tests that demonstrates ability, tendencies or judgment patterns.   When these are correlated to the task that needs to be done, they can have a real objective value at separating the talented from those less-so.

One of the best ways to measure talent is to look at performance over time and in a wide set of circumstances.  How well does a person perform?  How consistently?  What is the trendline–is it improving or deteriorating?  Performance is one of the best indicators of talent, and ultimately talent that is applied is what we are interested in anyway, rather than mere potential or raw talent that has not been or will not be applied and put to the task.

I was also intrigued by an article last month in the Wall Street Journal about marathoners and the impact on personal fitness.  If you have run a marathon, my congratulations to you.  If you’re a serial marathoner like the optometrist I met on the plane last month between Boise and Denver, you’ve got my respect.  For those who have run a marathon (and those who never will) and who struggle now to stay fit, read on.

How do you stay fit?  Through practice and regularity.  You continue exercising, eating healthy, and finding enjoyable and emotionally satisfying ways to keep doing both.  For one-time marathoners, they train for the event, alter their lifestyle in the short-term to run the marathon, but after the peak event, they return to their previous routine and habits.

I have found the best way for me to stay fit and keep exercising and eating healthy is to use variety and a nudge of motivation/accountability.  I track my exercise routine in a small spiral-bound memo pad.  I time my exercise and try to improve on my previous performance, even by a few seconds, or a few repetitions, or a few pounds of weight.  I practice a martial art in which I help teach others to practice techniques,  which lets me see how well I have really learned the art.   I also measure progress there as well by testing for belts/ranks.  In eating, I keep track of how much energy I have and what foods affect me in a good way or a bad way.  Of course I weigh myself and check body fat percentage.  These different actions don’t take up a lot of time nor do I center my life around them.  I simply see them as necessary for keeping my body and physical health in good condition.  I also consider physical conditioning to be a key necessity to staying mentally sharp and on top of my game.

Top talent keeps working hard and practicing while measuring progress toward a worthy goal.  If fitness is one of your personal battles, I encourage you to get yourself back on the path to improved health and well-being.

‘The Irrational Side of Change Management’

Let people write their own story

Employees are what they think and believe in

How can this be?  Productivity is supposed to be a good thing.  Productivity is the measure of how much a business produces divided by the number of workers, so if productivity goes up a business should make more money.  How can this be a talent killer?

Think about the definition again.  One way to “juice” productivity is to lay off workers.  In the short term, productivity goes up (and investors usually cheer as the stock price rises) until the burden of producing weighs too heavily on a workforce that is too lean.  Another way to increase productivity is to sell more, take on big orders, without fully staffing for the increased demand.  This will also lift productivity–for a a short while.  You can cheapen the brand, cut development or innovation, or manage by dictate:  management declares a super-stretch result that leaves everyone scrambling to “hit the number.”

All of these examples (which are far too common) involve a focus on the short-term, some degree of manipulation, and a failure to deal with longer-term consequences.  And those are what is killing good talent practices in business.  How?  By treating people like human resources, not people who can contribute to the company if given the opportunity.  By failing to invest in sustainable gains in revenue, growth and productivity.  By stressing out workers, you give them an incentive to go to your competition.

The path to illusory productivity involves short-term thinking, shifting the burden to workers, or some kind of management shell game that hides the real dynamics–for a while.  These kinds of productivity gains are what is killing good talent in American business.

Not all productivity has to come with these tradeoffs.  There are other ways to grow productivity that promote good talent management:  through more employee engagement; by investing in training and skill development; through analyzing business processes and cutting out the waste and rework; by building a valued brand and unique culture that is hard or impossible to duplicate elsewhere.  The productivity that results from these kinds of practices is sustainable for the business and it tends to engender more loyalty and trust in the workforce.

Which kind of productivity is your company focused on ?  Let me know by leaving a comment.

I owe inspiration for the headline and article to Henry Mintzberg, management professor and contrarian thinker at McGill University in Montreal (see his article in Harvard Business Review July 2007).