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.

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).

We learn some of the truths of leadership by listening to people who are great practitioners of the art of leading people.  

1.  Leadership is not about the leader. There are plenty of narcissistic “leaders” who have a strong personality cult.  As much as we find this mesmerizing, if you look at what these leaders actually use their celebrity or influence for, you learn a lot about how genuine or real their leadership is.  The truth is, leadership is not about the leader at all.  Instead it is much more about a shared vision or mission, and when a leader is possessed by a captivating or enrolling vision, it tends to infect and inspire others in a similar fashion.  In their passionate embodiment of a vision, they often display confidence and charisma and other desirable personality traits, which is one reason we often confuse those very traits with leadership.  It’s the genuine leadership that lies at the source of the traits, not vice versa.

2.  There are many paths to leadership.  When you begin to study a large number of leaders, it is striking how little they have in common in terms of their background.  Some were born to privilege, some in poverty.  Some people have lots of raw ability, others appear to have no natural gifts or advantages.  Some face great adversity, others have few bumps along the road.  For some leaders a window of opportunity opens, while others have to create their own opportunities from nothing.  The various combination of factors in different leaders is truly staggering.  The bottom line is that leadership can be learned and developed over time, and natural talent by itself is not enough to lead people effectively.  Despite where people begin, leaders end up embracing a larger vision or mission and leading others to do the same.

3.  Leadership is really about developing others. Combined with the first truth (it’s not about the leader), true leaders know that it is imperative that the vision or mission not die with them.  They must intentionally attract, hire and cultivate talented people.  Leaders are not concerned about grabbing all the attention or credit themselves; instead they generously promote their team’s accomplishments.  This builds loyalty and confidence in those they lead.  Talk to a leader about what they’ve accomplished and usually they will bring up various people around them who made it happen.  Real leaders know how to work with and through other talented people.

4.  Leadership is shown by full-spectrum communication.  Many bosses try to lead with their words.  Strong leaders know that they communicate by their own example, their actions and non-verbal behavior, how they speak, and by the decisions they make.  This full-spectrum communication is personally challenging to master, but it is the key to ensuring an entire organization is aligned and working toward a common goal.  Although leadership is not about the leader, they do become a living embodiment of the vision and higher mission that is their reason for being.  Leaders realize that they communicate in many ways besides their words, and they take this reality very seriously.

There are other truths of leadership, but these are some of the key ones I’ve observed and heard from those who are great leaders.  Have you seen these exhibited in the leaders you know?  How do these truths speak to you?

Here are six common myths of leadership that I’ve seen.

1.  Leadership is personality driven. When we describe the qualities of great leaders we often focus on their confidence, or charisma, or their outgoing personality.  Some leaders do have strong, outgoing personalities, or a sense of confidence and certainty that we admire.  However, there have been mesmerizing, magnetic and attractive tyrants, con-artists and fraudsters who had these qualities too, but we wouldn’t consider them true leaders.  In fact, false leaders are much more personality driven than true leaders.  Leadership is much more about a shared vision or mission, and when a leader is possessed by a captivating or enrolling vision, they often display confidence and charisma and other desirable personality traits.  Personality without vision is an attractive package wrapped around an empty box.

2.  Leadership is a position. How many Presidents have failed as leaders?  What about CEO’s or Executive Directors, Chief Surgeons or Chairmen?  Does being a general make someone a good leader?  If holding a position, office or title conferred leadership, why do we often see such poor leadership from those in office?  Leadership is not role-driven.  My work in organizations has often pointed me to leaders outside of the expected places and positions of power.  Position confers responsibility, but not leadership ability!  Real leadership is often demonstrated before or even in spite of having positional authority, office, or a leadership title.

3.  Leadership is a demonstration of control and dominance. Strong or effective leadership is often equated with the exercise of control, including reversion to the use of force or power if necessary.  Machiavelli wrote in The Prince (ch. XVII) that a leader should seek to be both loved and feared, but if a tradeoff is required, a leader must be feared.  “Command and control” has long been one way of practicing leadership, and leaders sometimes pride themselves on being feared or intimidating.  Control and dominance can be very effective in getting things done, especially in a crisis.  This is one leadership style, but not the only one, and not the one most effective in the majority of situations.  Deming, the father of the modern quality movement, had 14 principles for management in transforming business, one of which was “Drive out fear” (#8).  Control and dominance can be effective in some situations, but ultimately it is limiting and self-defeating in leaders.

4.  Leadership is hard-wired. The belief is still strong among many that leaders are born, or they have innate leadership ability.   If that is true, the attempt to cultivate, train or develop leaders must be futile or a hugely expensive pursuit.   Some people do have more aptitude, raw talent, or desire to lead.  I’m not disputing that.  However, these people don’t always turn out to be the best leaders.  At the same time, there are others with less aptitude, more disadvantages and adversity, or who get a late start that actually turn out to be better leaders than the “natural” leaders that we spot at an early stage.  The truth is there are many paths to leadership–raw ability, adversity, motivational drive, a window of opportunity opens– and any or several these can be exhibited in one person.

5.  Leadership is automatic. The scenario has been played out many times.  A strong, proven candidate has been screened and vetted.  A great performer has earned this promotion.  Once they are in their leadership position, the results just aren’t there.  Big disappointment ensues.  Committees or boards often make the mistake of taking people who look promising or who proved themselves in other situations and placing them in a leadership position only to see them fail.  We assume that leadership is automatic.   If you’re a great doctor, engineer, banker, policy-maker, manager, military officer, etc., you’ll be a great leader.  The same thinking is often applied to management trainees or “high potentials”: we assume advanced education or superior smarts make you a great leader, only to discover that’s not necessarily the case!  We can’t assume that leadership comes automatically or that it is always a transferable skillset.

6.  Leadership is about the Great Leader. You know who the great leaders are.  We usually identify them by one name or their initials:  Caesar, Confucius, Elizabeth, Washington, Lincoln, Gandhi, (Mother) Teresa, JFK, MLK.  As beloved as these leaders are, there is a strong human tendency to lift up leaders through hero worship or the cult of personality.  We see this in the corporate world too when the “Great Leader” is often deferred to, rarely challenged, and a personal fiefdom of loyalty emerges around them.  The myth of the “Great Leader” is coupled with the idea that leadership is rare, mystical and unquestionable.  At least it is until fashions change, the leader dies (or resigns) or the resulting conditions become intolerable.  Without fail, another leader emerges, proving there really was no leadership shortage.

These myths aren’t hard to take apart when we take time to think about it.  The problem is we don’t usually stop and examine the myth.  Exposing the myths isn’t enough, though.  I’ve been interviewing effective leaders for some time and I’ve noticed certain common principles emerge.  Stay tuned for more about the truths of leadership.

CEO pay at 18 financial companies was down 30%.  No surprises there–they are under lots of pressure from the public and the media.  At the same time, 38 financial service firms on Wall Street paid a collective $140 billion in compensation and benefits, a record number, and up from $123 billion in 2008 and the previous high-water mark of $137 billion in 2007.  What does this all tell us?

Two things:  Wall Street’s approach to compensating top talent has not changed, even as headlines seem to imply that executive compensation is down.  CEO pay may be down, but the all-out effort to retain top talent among traders, money managers and top analysts is still calculated in the simple formula of  more dollars=stay for another day.  The other point is a reflection on leadership.  The top leader (CEO) is a lightning rod for criticism, and they have to take the hit when emotions are stirred.  I expect that these CEO’s are still not going to be hurt too much.  Make-up compensation and deferred bonuses can be paid out at other times and in other ways once the public glare focuses elsewhere.

A real sign of leadership would be finding innovative ways to reward performance, manage risk and produce sustainable results.  Without leadership, you’re simply managing mercenaries and the only obvious solution is to throw ever-increasing amounts of money to the troops.

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!

I watched a lot of the games and was inspired and energized by the displays of dedication, hard work and concentration.

Training and preparation are the obvious ticket to get a participant to the games.  Some trained harder than others.  But on gameday itself, in the hour of competition, at the exact minute and second when fractions count, that’s when the small things become really big.  Leaning too far this direction, and the favored front-runner takes a fall.  A moment of hesitation on the short track and you don’t get to pass the person in front of you and qualify for the medal round.  It was clear that the mental game is a really big part of top performance.

What inspires so many is the all-out effort and dedication that these athletes show.  For those of us in the working world, how often do we push up against limitations and our own desire to stop, to move on to something else instead of taking the time to get it right?  Developing top talent isn’t done in days, or through a short training program.  It requires dedication, investment, going the second and the third mile, revising and honing performance, review and feedback, great coaching and a coachable spirit.

I’m glad we have the Olympics to show us these things.   There are too few places dedicated to producing top talent, champions and world-record results.  It’s time to bring the Olympic spirit, ethos and training regimen inside of more organizations.

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.

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.