Leadership skills - 4 metrics that matter - based on science

Jone L. Pearce, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Organization and Management at The Paul Merage School of Business put together a leadership inventory consisting of the four best-established (and in the public domain) predictors of leadership success.  

The 4 skills and scholarly reading to support them are as follows:

Self- Monitoring

Gangestad, S., and Snyder, M. 1985. ’To Carve Nature at its Joints’: On the Existence of Discrete Classes in Personality,  Psychological Review, 92, 317-349.

Ashford, S. J., and Tsui, A. S. 1991. Self-regulation for Managerial Effectiveness. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 251-280.

Political Skills

Ferris, G. R., Davidson, S. L., and Perrewé, P. L. 2005. Political Skill at Work. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black.

Harris, J. N., et al. 2015. Power, Politics, and Influence in Organizations. International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd. ed. 18, 770-775.

Emotional Intelligence 

Law, K., Wong, C. and Song, L. 2004. The Construct and Criterion Validity of Emotional Intelligence and Its Power Utility for Management Studies, Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 496

Roberts, R. D., and Barsade, S. 2008. Human Abilities: Emotional Intelligence. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 507-536.

Inspirational Leadership

Conger, J. A., and Kanungo, R. N. 1998. Charismatic Leadership in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Den Hartog, D., et al. 1999. Culture Specific and Cross-culturally Generalizable Implicit Leadership Theories. Leadership Quarterly, 10, 219-256.

She offers a leadership inventory and you can reach out to her at: https://sites.uci.edu/jlpearce/ 

Practicing Humanistic Leadership when the people around you - are not.

I recently did a talk for 7,000 people online on Humanistic Leadership.  One person asked me in the chat: I want to ask that if one person is following and practicing these all things but other colleagues are not then in that case what can we do? 

A leader is someone people - follow.  To be a leader - means - you have to be courageous.  It means - choosing to do the right thing - even when the right thing is hard. And encouraging others to do the right thing too.

Being a leader - doesn't mean - being a boss. Ordering people around - is what managers do. Leaders - inspire and encourage people to follow them.

The question of - whether you can practice humanistic leadership if others around you don't - is - yes - and you absolutely should choose to be ethical - even if and especially if - the people around you - aren't being ethical!

This is a choice you make because of who you want to be. It's the choice to courageously be authentic to yourself and to your values and to encourage others to do the same. 

You don't need anyone else's permission to be humanistic in your approach to life and work and leadership.  You just choose to be that way. 

What will happen depends when you do this - will vary. I can't guarantee success. Unethical people - if they are your bosses - probably won't respond well. It happens. But ... if the bosses are ethical - they will see you - and acknowledge you for being the ethical person you have chosen to be.

I've had both happen. I've only really lost one job and it's because I stood up to my boss and told him that he must never say racist things in front of me ever again.  I've also stood up to bullies and have the chairman of the board call me to thank me and let me know I had their full support before they fired the problem person.

To me - while I prefer to have the good things happen by being good. The benefit of being a good person and making a point to be a good person - even in difficult situations - is that I know - I've done my best. My sense of dignity has remained firmed. 

If you want to be more humanistic - no one can stop you. Just - be a good person. Live your values. Be compassionate, honest and responsible with everyone you meet. Your reputation will benefit from this choice and - while the unethical people around you won't like it - most people you meet - will be thrilled and your social status will benefit as a result - because - the number of unethical people - is actually - small when compared to the silent majority who are sick of the unethical people but don't have the courage to do anything about it.

Want to lead - truly lead - approach everything you do and every person you meet - humanistically.

Learn more:

I have a variety of online programs where I teach not only Humanism but how to apply Humanism to your daily life and decision making. Check out my course offerings here - https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

Rational, Responsible and Reasonable Ethics

 Wouldn’t it be nice if every decision we made was rational, responsible and reasonable?  Of course it would. The problem is that figuring out what the rational, responsible and reasonable thing to do isn’t always easy. And despite our good intentions, getting a group to agree on the best course of action is even harder to accomplish. 

The challenge is how to integrate your ethics into your decision making in a way that helps you make better decisions that will reflect your values and allow you to be the sort of ethical, compassionate and responsible leader you’ve always wanted to be without getting into arguments with others.

Step 1: Create a list of ethics you value most. You can get this list from your faith tradition or from the 10 Humanist Commitments. https://americanhumanistcenterforeducation.org/?page_id=19369

Note:  Most people regardless of backgrounds - value the same things. Just understand that in a secular workplace - you must focus on the shared common human values and not on personal religious values like - obedience to God.  Focus on the common public values and not on your personal religious specific values. The religious reasons why you value these things is a personal matter - that you value them - is a public matter as it tells others what to expect from you.

Step 2: Sort the values based on what you think is most important.  Think of this as creating a priority list on how to break ties when more than one value is in conflict with another value. Which ones win out?  Studies on global ethics find compassion is highly rated - as is personal responsibility and honesty for instance. The point is to understand which you think is most important. 

Step 3: Start actively talking about - what good outcomes are - based on your chosen public values.  Is this solution compassionate? Responsible? Honest? How can you maximize the good that comes out of a decision and minimize the harm?  This is the actual practice of using your values explicitly in your decision making. 

Step 4: The final step is to make sure- you are making your decisions based on - accurate information.  This requires humility - which is hopefully - one of your values.   If you make decisions based on bad information - your decisions will be bad - not good. To make sure your decisions are good - you have to make sure you have good accurate information - which means - accepting that what you think you know - may not be so. And being willing to correct yourself when you make a mistake.  Learning how to determine what is true and what isn't - is an important life skill.

Want to learn more:

I have online courses that will teach you how to do this better. The first is:

Reality Based Decision Making For Effective Strategy Development - https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/

Or consider taking one of my certificate courses in Applied Humanistic Leadership - https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/professionaldevelopment/certificateprograms/

Fixing a Toxic Employee Problem - a real life example

Last week I posted about how to identify and deal with a toxic employee. This week - I want to expand on it and give you a real life example.  

These are my answers to the reporters questions about dealing with a toxic volunteer and the damage that was caused. 

We keep referring to “toxic,” but not describing what it looks like. This one volunteer was toxic in what manner? What was he or she doing?

This volunteer was acting as if she was in control of the volunteers. She felt her job – and therefore the job of all the volunteers – was to spy on staff and report them for – behaving “badly” however she defined it. This created toxic staff volunteer relationships – because – no member of the staff wanted to work with a volunteer who thought it was their job to get them in trouble. No one would want to voluntarily work with someone who was out to get them fired! This – approach – her approach - killed – trust.

Also, are we saying that this one toxic volunteer affected 10 other volunteers such that they were contributing nothing to the organization? Can we describe this more specifically? Morale was low because of this person? Or something else?

Yes. This is exactly what I am saying. This one volunteer – destroyed staff volunteer relationships by acting as if – every member of the staff was a horrible person up to no good.  She was actively threatening people’s jobs if she didn’t get what she wanted. She didn’t trust anyone and her actions and “assumed authority” meant that there was no trust between the staff and the volunteers.  And that meant – the staff didn’t want to work with volunteers. The volunteers had no direction from staff. The relationship between staff and volunteers was toxic.  The volunteers weren’t being given the opportunity to contribute. Their only impact on the organization was the fear and intimidation campaign this – “head volunteer” waged. The staff that could have done something – and should have done something to stop this volunteer – were scared of her and scared of the impact she might have on donors. So – they allowed it to get out of control. They felt they needed her – because – non-profits rely on volunteers and donors. And we had so few when I arrived. Only 10 – at a major non profit in Los Angeles with a good national reputation!  They wanted it fixed – but didn’t know how to do it without making things worse – because – again – this woman was threatening to destroy everyone’s reputation and the organizations reputation.

How did you fix this?

The way I fixed this was – 1^st – I consulted with staff to find out what volunteers could do that would be helpful. I then wrote up a job description and interviewed the volunteers to see if they wanted to do the volunteer jobs we had created. All but the toxic one were thrilled to finally have some clarity around what they were supposed to be doing and how they could be helpful and that finally – they could ignore the toxic volunteer and not have to deal with her anymore. The staff who had agreed to experiment with volunteers loved having the help and the volunteers loved being helpful – finally.  And the program took off.

The one who refused because – she thought it was her job to spy on staff and get them in trouble – was fired. And that was the end of that. Literally – one toxic volunteer – destroyed trust to the point that she was holding an entire organization hostage.  Trust was pretty easily rebuilt once we had some structure and an authority (me) who held her accountable. As much as this one volunteer tried to get back into the organization – absolutely no one wanted her back.

She was not collaborative at all. She was just – very authoritarian. Her way was the only way – and no one could be trusted – and that attitude – is what caused the toxic relationship between volunteers and staff. The fix – was to build in and reward collaboration and – to fire the toxic person so they could no longer hold anyone in the organization hostage with their threats.  

 If you want to learn how to do this - I provide online learning programs that teach behavioral based approaches to harassment and conflict situations. 

https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/ 

What I learned about management from Amnesty international

I am a trained activist. And because of that - I am a trained leader.  I was thinking about this as I have been watching the protests to end police brutality.  I am no longer active - but my heart is with the protesters.

Effective activists get trained. It's like any other project. If you want to be successful, you need knowledge of history, what has been tried, what works, and how to encourage people in power to come to the table to negotiate with you for the changes you want to see made.

I spent years involved with Amnesty International. And received so many training opportunities from them I lost count. They taught me:

• Leadership
• Volunteer management
• Public speaking
• Co-creation
• Egalitarian leadership

A big part of the reason I am able to teach these things in the world of business is because of the training Amnesty International gave to me.

What are the management lessons we can learn from social justice movements?

Passion and values is central to what you want to do. Ethics isn't secondary to organizing and management. It's central.  If what you are doing isn't going to make things better- don't do it.  We have a limited amount of time and resources and big problems that really need to be solved. Don't waste time on things that don't matter. 

What will work with the least input? We have a limited amount of time and resources, this is true of every movement. So - how do we create the most impact with the least amount of input? All conversations about strategy - take this into account.  And if you've taken my Reality Based Decision Making course - you will recognize this principle. 

Great leaders create great coalitions. No one gets anything done by themselves. There is always a coalition of people working in common cause that gets things done. Great leaders - built great coalitions. They don't care who gets credit - as long as the work gets done - and the work gets done - through coalition and that requires giving up ownership - and allowing people to co-create solutions together. 

Invest in people. The more skills your people learn - the more they can contribute. Amnesty International invests in it's volunteers. It teaches them how to be activists. How to lead, how to create and build coalitions, how to advocate for what you want and more.  I received more training from them as a volunteer than I ever have from any of the companies I ever worked for.  Most jobs I had - expected me to learn on the job. Invest in people. Teach them how to do better and be better at whatever job they have. And make this an ongoing part of the culture- learning and sharing.

Never take your eye off your goal: All activism serves a goal. I was taught to always keep that goal in mind and to take wins whenever you could.  Progress is made in small changes. Those small changes add up to big wins over time.  And yes - incremental change can be really frustrating - but there is no other real way to succeed. 

Treat people - including your adversaries - as potential allies: All activism is designed to either encourage or force people to change. If you can encourage people to change - great. If change has to be forced - ok - but try encouragement first.  When forcing change - you have to give the people you are trying to change - space to change. If you treat them as evil - you give them no space to do or be good. Always assume people will eventually choose to do the right thing. And encourage them - and accept them when they do - regardless of what went on before. Give people - a safe place to land in the new reality you are creating.

Share space with others and allow others to lead.  No one knows everything. Everyone I met along the way - was able to teach me things I didn't know before. I met people from so many parts of the country and so many backgrounds and life experiences. All of them had something valuable to contribute and each and every one of them was a capable leader when given the space to lead.  It is easy to see how this lends itself to a humanistic mindset. Like Confucius - I was taught that everyone is capable of being a moral person and everyone is capable of leading. They just need to be given encouragement, teaching and opportunity. 

Learn more:

I have a 16 hour online certificate program in Humanistic Leadership - https://humanistlearning.com/certified-humanistic-leadership-professional/

 

And a new book on Applied Humanism - how to create more effective and ethical businesses - https://humanistlearning.com/new-book-applied-humanism-how-to-create-more-effective-and-ethical-businesses/

Why be engaged with the world around you?

If you don’t pay attention to where you are going, you could end up someplace you don’t want to be.

Being a Humanist is not just about trying to be a good person. It's about taking on the responsibility to actual do good things that help yourself and other people.

That means - knowing enough to make good decisions. And that means - paying attention to what is going on around you so that you don't make decisions blindly.

Pay attention to the world around you. Pay attention to people, places and things.  All this knowledge can be drawn upon when it comes time to make decisions about what sort of person you want to be and what sort of work you want to do - and even - where you want to live.

You have choices in your life. Big choices and little choices. Choosing to not choose - is itself a choice.   If you don't pay attention to those choices - the little ones and the big ones - you may just end up someplace you don't want to be.

To help- I have a 6 week online course that teaches the basics of how to make good decisions - the way a Humanist does.  Most people find having a framework to think through their problems as it makes decision making easier when you know what all you should be weighing.   

And no - you don't have to be a Humanist to benefit from this course.  The point of it is to help you clarify your values and help you learn ways to think through problem solving for yourself. 

https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/

3 skills you need to lead a cross functional team

 What top 3 skills do I believe are needed to effectively lead cross-functional teams?

1.    Listening

2.    Humility

3.    Focus

Let me explain. If you are in a cross functional team or leading a cross functional team, you are working with diverse functional experts.  This means – different people on the team have different levels of knowledge. The entire purpose of a cross functional team is to get them to use their individual expertise to create solutions to problems that take into account – the cross functional problems that arise in every solution ever created. It’s an attempt to head off – and fix before they are problems – likely problems.

Listening

To do this well – requires people to be willing to listen and to learn things they don’t know. You are bringing in experts. Listen to them.

 Humility

The next skill is humility. Humility to know that – there are indeed things you don’t know that you should and humility to understand that whatever the main thing that you are concerned about it – it has to be weighed against the main things other experts are concerned about. Finding good solutions to problems, often involves compromises that in an ideal world – would not have to be made, but in the real world – are required to get things done. Humility – helps us make those compromises so that we can create the best solution possible and so that we don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Focus

Finally – we need to be focused on effective ethical quality problem solving. The best way to get a diverse team to work well together, is to focus them on collaborative problem solving. Help them define what a good solution is – that they can all agree on – then help them collaborate to create the best solution they can. When disagreements occur – and they will occur- the role of the leader is to help refocus and reframe that disagreement into solving the problem at hand. Disagreements are natural – and healthy in effective problem solving – IF people listen and learn and have humility. Focusing on problem solving helps remind people to do the first two skills – listen and humility.

An example of each skill in practice.

It is probably easiest to provide examples of what happens when this doesn’t happen. Think politics. I live in Florida. We have water problems. And the problems are difficult. There is no one single cause to the problems and not one single solution to the problems.  We need cross functional teams with various expertise to figure out how best to protect our water ways. We need scientists, and engineers and politicians and business people – to all work together. What doesn’t happen – is that – the incentive to listen to opposing views with humility – is very low. So – it rarely happens. But if it did, a cross functional team of experts would be created and the leader – would focus them on collaborative problem solving.  The hardest part – is actually – making sure all the right experts get into the team. Often – we don’t like certain people – so they are excluded – and then – we don’t have access to all the information we need and our solution doesn’t work – or doesn’t have widespread support.

What does this look like when it’s done right?  Movies are a good example of this. To make a movie – you have to bring in – story tellers, artists, actors, stage management, costuming, props etc. If they don’t work together – the end product isn’t good. Movie making is probably one of the best examples of leading cross functional teams successfully.  People have to listen,  and have humility and put themselves in service of the vision and that happens – by focusing everyone on the vision.

I am a Humanistic leadership expert – I run Humanist Learning Systems and provide online and in person training on how to be a better leader.  My newest program is a 2 hour course on Principles of Humanistic Leadership. I also teach how to de-escalate conflicts using behavioral science.

•  https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-leadership/
• https://humanistlearning.com/de-escalate-conflicts/

Important Leadership Skills for Workplace Success

People are more critical than ever to the success of a business. But to get people to perform, they need to be inspired by a leader. But what are the skills that every great leader possesses? Are they different now than they used to be? And, can these skills be taught and learned?

Hi – I teach humanistic leadership and management skills through my company – Humanist LearningSystems.

I think there are 7 principles of humanistic leadership – and yes – they can be learned and practice. In fact, practicing these skills is key to success.

These principles are:

•             Dignity – carry yourself with dignity – treat everyone you meet with dignity

•             Compassion – for yourself and others. Compassion – actively practiced – acts as a moral compass and helps us to not only determine what is right and wrong, it helps remind us – to act with dignity and to treat people with dignity.

•             Ethics – Leaders who act ethically are leaders people want to follow.  Ethics based in human compassion yields the best results.

•             Responsibility – the role of a leader is to help a teach coordinate the work. Not to dictate the work, but to encourage staff to collaborate effectively to get the work done.  The manager can also step in to make decisions when the team is having trouble reaching consensus.  They act as a tie breaker for the team so the team can keep moving forward.  This is a philosophic tweak to how we think of our role as leaders and can be practiced.

•             Reason – a leader who does not understand how to think through difficult problems and help their teams use reason and science to solve their problems, is worthless to the team.  The leader should be the person asking for information and using reason and logic to help the team come to the best most effective decisions possible.

•             Strategic Thinking – understanding how small actions impact the larger bigger picture – is also something a good leader does.

•             Service to Others – the role of leader is of lead collaborator.  If you are not oriented to being of service to your team, you won’t be leading them.  You will instate be acting as a dictator. Dictating to them what they should be doing. Leaders – encourage, enable and support. They serve their team – not the other way around.

All of these are mindsets – that have to be actively practiced in order to become habits of mind.  As people start approaching their work with dignity, compassion, ethics, responsibility, reason, strategic thinking as a way to be of service to their team – they will naturally emerge as a leader.

If you want to learn more - consider taking my online course:
https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-management/

What does it mean to be a leader: A humanist perspective

What does it mean to be a good leader? What are the mistakes people often make thinking they're acting like leaders. How can individuals assert leadership skills without coming off as too aggressive,
cocky, or a jerk?

A leader is a coordinator.  A group of people have a task to accomplish. Different people are assigned different task. The work has to be coordinated. The leader is the person who helps coordinate the work.  Leadership is a servant position.

A leader can also be a person who shared a vision of the future and the work that needs to be done to get to that future. Again, this is about problem solving and motivating people to solve problems in a cooperative way.

A big mistake people make when they become leaders is they think that means they get to dictate to people what work needs to be done and how to do it. That makes someone a dictator, not a leader.

Another mistake people make is that they assume that their way is the right way and it may not be. A leader wants a solution to a problem. If their proposed solution turns out to not work, they listen to their team and take advance and adjust course. Again – this is about focusing on making sure the problem is solved. Not – being the person in charge.

The final mistake people who try to be leaders make is that their strategy for how to get things done and what needs to get done is not reality based. If you don’t have a reality based strategy – you don’t have a solution to the problem you are trying to fix.

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To learn more about the humanistic approach - consider taking the course - Principles of Humanistic Management.

https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-management/

When we are in a leadership position, we have even more responsibility to do good, not just for ourselves, but for our team as well. Humanistic management or leadership is a philosophic approach that is at once: compassionate, ethical, reasonable and strategic. To be an effective ethical leader requires a variety of different interrelated skills.

The goal of this program is to help you, as a leader, make better decisions so you can be more effective with the interpersonal relationships involved in managing people and hopefully help you feel more fulfilled in your work at the same time.

Self care as a leadership skill

Good leaders lead to help others.  In order to help others, you first have to take care of yourself.

Leaders lead to help groups of people coordinate their activities to a common cause. That common cause is some sort of problem solving. Leaders have more responsibility than other members of the team because, in addition to the work everyone is doing, the leader has to spend extra time thinking about and organizing the work that needs to be done, training people to do the work and securing the resources necessary.  To do this well, leaders give up their time, energy and resources.

The problem is – giving up time and energy and resources is draining. What happens to a leader who no longer has time, energy or resources?  They cease to be leaders.

In order to lead well and for the long haul, leaders HAVE to take care of themselves. They must find a balance and a way to replenish themselves so that they can continue to give themselves to the service of others. In this context, self-care is an essential leadership skill.  So don’t neglect yourself.

Take my planning for personal success course or Gleb Tipurskey’s finding meaning and purpose in the workplace program

Overcoming cynicism.

I have a friend who is cynical. He’s a wonderful person and I like him a lot, but he’s scared of a LOT of things.  He hides his fear behind cynicism.

Cynicism allows him to hide. He assumes that the world is full of bad things and bad people and uses that as an excuse to not engage with the world.  He stays off the internet. He doesn’t walk around his neighborhood to meet the neighbors.

Sure, there are bad things on the internet, but there are also wonderful things. There may be bad people in his neighborhood, but there are also a lot of wonderful people.

His cynicism is not based on experience. It’s based on assumption. Assumptions based on the things he has read that scare him. He gets his information and his fears from the media he is consuming, a media that is filled with fear mongering.

The irony is that if he chose to consume media that wasn’t feeding his fears, he would realize how much fear mongered non-sense he has actually been consuming and how much real harm this fear mongering is doing to him.

Critical Thinking Can Help

One of the reasons I teach critical thinking as a leadership skills is because a cynical person makes for a lousy leader. Cynical leaders don’t lead anyone anywhere except into a hiding hole. That’s not leadership. That’s more like the dad in the movie The Croods!

Cynicism is faulty reasoning.  It leads you to make decisions, not on reality, but on your fears that you are too fearful to question.  It’s a mental short cut that tells your brain, you don’t have to look too deeply into whatever is frightening you. Everything is awful and whatever the fear-monger is selling just confirms it. Heck the fact fear mongers exist confirms the  everything and everyone is awful bias that is cynicism. This is confirmation bias in action.

In order to make things better. In order to solve problems, you can’t just hide from them. You have to take constructive action to solve them.  All a cynic will do is complain and that isn’t leadership.

A leader learns how to put their fear away so that they can think clearly about the problem they face. They question their assumptions. Perhaps everything is awful. But that doesn’t mean we should hide. Maybe they can find a solution to the problem and make what was awful awesome!

And if that doesn’t convince you to challenge your own cynicism, consider this: what if you are wrong and things aren’t awful, they are awesome and you’ve been missing out on all that awesomeness. You won’t know until your change your thinking and take a chance.

Cynicism doesn’t make you smart. It makes you an idiot. 

And I mean that in the nicest possible way. (Note: my idiot comment does not apply to people who have PTSD and avoid things because they’ve actually had bad personal experiences with them. It only applies to people who assume things will be bad without actually having firsthand experience with it. Not everything is awesome and some things really are quite awful. Just don’t assume you know which is which until you’ve tried it.)

PS – if you want to learn how to more effectively evaluate the pros and cons of any given situation – consider taking Planning for Personal Success which is about how to more effectively make reality based decisions. And yes, you can self certify this course.