{"id":12327,"date":"2019-04-12T17:53:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/948294437a.nxcli.io\/?p=12327"},"modified":"2019-05-08T21:13:56","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T21:13:56","slug":"the-art-and-heart-of-leadership-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/12\/the-art-and-heart-of-leadership-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art and Heart of Leadership – Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Often, the thing\u00a0we notice about great leadership is that it is the result of someone having developed \u201cwhat it takes\u201d to lead \u2013only after they have found themselves\u00a0needing to play the role of leader.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Management is often a precarious balance of art and science. Some things can or even must be managed with precision (such as maintenance or delivery schedules and budgets) \u2013 yet how we interpret and apply that reasoning is very much an art. The difference is that we can apply pure reason to things \u2013 hence we can \u201cmanage things,\u201d but people don\u2019t like being managed, and if we want to help them perform well we need to lead them instead. Leadership is an art, or more accurately a performing art. Leadership is about how well we perform as a leader \u2013 which amounts to how well the people we lead and systems we manage perform.<\/p>\n

Dr. Lee Thayer (author of \u201cThe Competent Organization\u201d and \u201cHow Executives Fail\u201d) insists that people do things for two reasons only: they can and they have to. No one has ever done anything they cannot, and people determine for themselves whether (and why) they have to do anything or not. This is true of how people become <\/em>fully competent leaders and how they perform as a competent leader.<\/p>\n

There are numerous capabilities and qualities generally attributed to leadership. Yet there are plenty of people in leadership roles that possess those characteristics and are horribly incompetent. It seems that success as a leader is not achieved by having the right ingredients, or even any particular recipe. It seems to be all about the cook. Leadership is something we make of ourselves \u2013 so we are the cook, so to speak. And making this all that much more complicated \u2013 is the fact that success is not measured by the performance of the leader, but by the performance of those she leads. Leadership is always interdependent on who is leading and who is following, and regardless of how capable a leader might appear \u2013 unless he accomplishes something worthy as a result of his efforts, he is not successful.<\/p>\n

Becoming a competent leader requires being someone who \u201ccan\u201d make yourself\u00a0competent. It must be possible, and that requires some aptitude for the tasks, for sure. But more than what we \u201ccan\u201d do \u2013 is how we make it necessary to do it. This amounts to how conscientious we are, or how our values drive the necessary behaviors and the habits that support them. A person without some sense of purpose \u2013 or of a cause larger than themselves \u2013 or even their organization \u2013 will likely fail. High performance isn\u2019t easy. And the more talented and skilled a performer becomes \u2013 the harder they tend to work. This is literally the heart of being a virtuoso. They tend to be harder on themselves than anyone else might be on them. And what they make necessary is often something others struggle to see or find. It was Antione de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry who wrote in The Little Prince<\/em> –<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is good reason to be skeptical of this perspective. You can read any one of thousands of books on leadership, each explaining how it is done. You can attend the most prestigious business schools in the world \u2013 and each has classes you can take to learn how to become a leader. Even what I am writing here seems to speak to the view that what I have to say will somehow make you a competent leader. But none of this will. At least not out in the real world.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of examples that illustrate this point. How many leaders who have been wildly successful in one position \u2013 fail precipitously in the next? Aren\u2019t personal leadership qualities and attributes portable from one organization to another? Is it a matter of leadership style? Or is it that leadership is not about knowing what to do \u2013 it\u2019s about wondering what needs to be done \u2013 and being someone who can be the kind of person who is capable of accomplishing that with whatever resources are available?<\/p>\n

Look at the stunning failure of Ron Johnson who led Apple\u2019s retail operations to astronomical growth and success \u2013 making their stores a shining example of retail potential in a world dominated by online predators and competitors. The same leader, yet a total failure at JC Penny. Why? Some say it was because the recipe that worked for Apple didn\u2019t at Penny. So is the problem the recipe? The ingredients? Or the cook?<\/p>\n

In contrast, look at Allen Mulally, who successfully and famously turned Ford Motor Company around as CEO after successfully leading Boeing as their CEO. Clearly it is possible for someone to be, in fact, a serial leader. So why is it so rare or difficult?<\/p>\n

We can look at Mulally\u2019s leadership at Ford for some insightful and interesting clues. When you study how he accomplished what he did at Ford \u2013 you see that he didn\u2019t bring a recipe or particular solution with him to the automaker. Rather than answers \u2013 he brought questions. The kind of questions a good engineer might ask. But even more so, the kinds of questions a great leader must ask \u2013 of himself and others. And its fair to say that his ability to be such a leader came about through his having risen through the ranks of leadership while at Boeing. First a project leader, then a team leader and eventually the CEO. It was the things he learned about leadership, as a leader along the way that prepared him for one of the most stunning turnarounds of all time.<\/p>\n

I am not suggesting that you learn by doing. Doing most things and virtually all complex things competently is the result of some deliberate preparation. You learn by first thinking about what you need to think about and forming yourself into the person you need to be. And that person you need to be is defined by what it is you make possible and\u00a0necessary to accomplish. Practicing, perfecting and finally doing things masterfully is a result of how well you prepare yourself and whether you become someone capable or not.<\/p>\n

You may choose to live according to the words of Popeye \u2013 \u201cI am what I am\u201d and leave it at that, or you might choose to live as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe suggests, as paraphrased, \u201cTreat (people \u2013 especially yourself) as if they were what they ought to be and they will become what they are capable of becoming.\u201d The question is, what do you need to be and are capable of becoming?<\/p>\n

In Part Two of The Heart and Art of Leadership, which will post next week, I will present<\/em> Three Critical Principles of Leadership That Can Only Be Learned by Being a Leader<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at www.ALPSLeadership.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Often, the thing\u00a0we notice about great leadership is that it is the result of someone having developed \u201cwhat it takes\u201d to lead \u2013only after they have found themselves\u00a0needing to play the role of leader. Management is often a precarious balance of art and science. Some things can or even must be managed with precision (such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12328,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions\/12328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}