If You Want to Be a Real Leader, Quit Being Fake

The following article is a copy of the one posted on fortune on April 29th by Steve Tobak. (http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/quit-being-fake/)

I agree with Steve that you have to be your own style ofleader.  You will have your own style that suits you best, but this does not mean that you cannot learn something from other leaders.  In a recent seminar by Tony Robbins, he clearly stated that he still engages with other world leaders to learn more.  He also once questioned Senior citizens that were exercising and very healthy in their 80's 90's and 100's just to see what they do differently. 

You can learn from anyone in any position anywhere in the world at any time!  Technology has made this even easier than ever before.

These days it seems everyone’s a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author or motivational speaker.

In a digital world full of virtual personas, authenticity is quickly becoming an endangered quality. Everyone wants to be what they’re not. That would be fine if folks would just keep their delusions to themselves. Unfortunately, they’re jumping on the “fake it ‘til you make it” hype parade en masse.
Maybe you haven’t noticed that everyone is suddenly a CEO, a serial entrepreneur, a best-selling author, a millennial millionaire, a [fill in the blank] expert, an award-winning motivational speaker or a coach who can inspire you to find happiness, greatness or your purpose in life, even though they can’t find it themselves.

Like it or not, B.S. is the new normal.

How in the world did such dysfunctional behavior become a cultural norm, practically overnight? I’m not really sure. I suppose it could have been the personal branding craze or Facebook envy that made everyone so desperate to portray themselves in a utopian light. The next thing we knew, LinkedIn profiles that once resembled resumes had turned into fanciful works of fiction.

Clearly, the architects of Web 2.0 never foresaw that social media and user-generated content would become the loudest echo chamber in the history of humankind. Reinforced by billions of blog posts, likes, updates, tweets and retweets, a trending hashtag can go viral and become a global phenomenon in a flash.
Even if this disturbing trend did start online, it certainly didn’t end there. It’s hitting the fan in leadership circles all over the offline world, as well.
It certainly doesn’t help that political leaders routinely lie through their teeth and get away with it. Why do they do it? I’m sure it hasn’t escaped any of the beltway political strategists or campaign advisors that we the people have our heads stuck so far up our smartphones we can no longer see the light of reality.

How prophetic were the words of Hillary Clinton, when she asked rhetorically, “What difference at this point does it make?” Indeed. She was referring to the terrorist attack on our Benghazi embassy in 2012, but her words highlight our growing ambivalence to truth. We’re simply too distracted to care.

Not to pick on the politicians, but you’ve got to admit, when it comes to authenticity, you simply can’t find easier targets. Perhaps a business leader like Harvard business professor and former Medtronic CEO Bill George would make a more challenging, if not intriguing, example.
After a long and successful executive career, George wrote the book Authentic Leadership in 2004.

He followed that up with True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, and turned it into a franchise. For a guy who calls authenticity “the gold standard for leaders,” I personally find George to be neither authentic nor a leader these days. Rather, he consistently spews feel-good leadership fluff that panders to the popular groupthink du jour.

While promoting yet another – I think it was the fifth – True North book last year, I saw an interview where he rattled off a dizzying array of business jargon, leadership fads, and populist sound bites that made my head spin. I don’t know how, but in the space of a few minutes, he somehow managed to praise emotional intelligence and EQ, non-hierarchical leadership, empowerment, collaboration, sustainable culture, innovation, diversity, 360-degree reviews, millennials, Steve Jobs (Act 2, not Act 1), Jeff Bezos, Jeff Immelt, Apple, Google and Facebook.

To top it off, he singled out Donald Trump as an inauthentic phony. Far be it from me to defend the Donald; he seems to do a pretty good job of standing up for himself. But here’s the thing. You can say a lot of things about the man, but he’s no phony. What you see is what you get. He is the real deal. That much I know.

Authentic leaders have the courage to speak their minds, even when their views are unpopular. They tell folks the truth, even when it’s not what they want to hear. They’re honest about who they are and don’t pretend to be who they’re not. They fight the status quo, even though it would be so easy to just follow the crowd.

Look, you can’t all be leaders in the organizational sense, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have certain leadership qualities. You can, and you should, carve your own path even when it cuts against the grain of cultural norms. You can, and you should, have the courage to be your genuine self.

   

Motivation and Rewards

In this article I am heavily referencing a book called “Drive” by Daniel H. Pink, “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”.  Pink, D., (2009), Drive, New York USA: Penguin Group; I would strongly recommend reading it.

In the next few paragraphs, I would like to look at individuals and their motivation as they need to be linked to the individual, the unique workplace and other workers within it, and the geographical location of the business as well as the individual’s cultural background. Hence, one size does not fit all.

If we go back centuries and even thousands of years, human behaviour and motivation was very much based on survival.  Over time humans have learnt to live in the more complex societies and to harness this purely biological drive.  We can look at the early modern way of motivation through award and punishment, however the basic pillars of ancient times still remain.

Many of today’s leaders and employees are being put through psych evaluations before commencing new roles.  A key area of these is to look how the individual is motivated.  Are they purely extrinsically (i.e. pay, working conditions and job security) motivated or are they more intrinsically (achievement, personal growth or even just enjoying work itself). 

I believe different cultures embrace these differently.  My understanding is that Japan embraced intrinsic motivation a long time ago, while the US at that point was very much extrinsically motivated through large bonuses and incentive schemes, and I don’t see that much has changed. 

As our company specialises in Lean Six Sigma business improvement, cultural change is on the forefront of increasing productivity and efficiency, and the culture is very much influenced by how the organisation rewards and retains their staff. 

I don’t think there is one solution that fits all, as some may work on occasions, others at other times, however, the key is to understanding and determining which parts to discard and which parts to keep.

When leaders design a program to achieve certain results they need to be very careful that these do not have the opposite effect (also known as the Sawyer Effect: practices than can either turn play into work or turn work into play) which can often be the case. Understanding the organisation, its values, vision and mission go a long way to establishing the basics, and may have to be re-visted to ensure we are not losing focus and what is important.

In the end of the day we want to achieve high performance from our staff and leaders.  We want them to remain creative while sticking to “good behaviour” such as honesty and integrity.  There are plenty of examples in recent times where major corporates have collapsed.  We often hear about the extravagant amounts of money the executives were paid, the lavish lifestyles etc.  And while they all seem to have set out trying to achieve high performance, the latter part of this paragraph was forgotten.  

Unethical behaviour crept into their every-day work life and it was as if they were getting addicted to the rewards.  Their thinking became short term, ignoring any long term consequences.

Earlier in our course (and this blog) I/we discussed whether leaders were born or made, and I remember some interesting comments from many of the other students.  

It seems to be a fact that in the long term, intrinsically motivated people will often outperform extrinsically motivated people. While in the short term extrinsically motivated people can often delivery better results faster, the trouble seems to be that this approach is difficult to sustain, which leads to the addictive problems discussed earlier. 

If you remember my earlier post (http://leanimprovement.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/leadership-and-three-levels-of.html) which discussed EQ’s, CQ’s and SQ’s, I also mentioned that I felt it was important to include mind and body.  Intrinsically motivated people have been shown in many studies to generally lead healthier lifestyles, with greater physical and mental well-being.

In summary, every person is different, so is every workplace.  There will always be some people who are motivated in other ways than their co-workers.  A good leader needs to assess the situation and try and master the distribution of rewards based on the individuals.  Some of it will be by trial and error, but as long as the basics are adhered to with integrity (values, vision, mission), the outcome should be sustainable.

As for politics, whether we like it or not, they are part of every work place.  The aim is to minimise them and to lead with autonomy.  Warm and fuzzy does not work for me, it is as it is.  Although it may not always be appreciated, people know where they stand with me and hopefully respect the honesty.  Therefore I do agree with the statement by Prof. Lusk “No, there are a lot of places where no matter how hard you work, if you don’t play the politics, you lose! “, I am just glad that I work for a company where this is not the case, and in the end this is everyone’s choice to make!

Below are a couple more extracts from a presentation (Unit 1.1 - Motivation & Rewards, University of Cumbria & Robert Kennedy College, Prof. Lusk) which are interesting and fitting:

Defining Motivation

Motivation

The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.

Key Elements

1.  Intensity: how hard a person tries

2.  Direction: toward beneficial goal

3.  Persistence: how long a person tries

 Why is motivation so important to Employers?

•  Between 50% of our employees are not motivated

•  Employers want to improve efficiency and increase productivity.

•  Benefits and Rewards packages need to be designed to be motivators

Comparison of Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers

Source: Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review. An exhibit from One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? by Frederick Herzberg, September–October 1987. Copyright © 1987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College: All rights reserved.