A Rambling Post: Self-Leadership

The world has gone crazy. Or at least our expectations of the world. We are now officially teaching the idea that others fail us, we don’t fail ourselves. Yes, you read that correctly. In a recent conversation with a grade seven and eight teacher, I learned that the position of our local school board is that students don’t fail, teachers fail.

Yet again, our society is sending the message that it isn’t your fault if you fail, it is the fault of someone else. This conveniently ignores the fact that learning is a complex process.  Teaching is only one part of learning. Students bring their innate intelligence, their implicit beliefs about intelligence (see Carol Dweck et. al.), their intrinsic motivation, their cultural beliefs, their family context, their personal effort, persistence, resilience and a whole pile of other traits, behaviours and beliefs to the classroom.  As a teacher, I can influence very little with respect to a student. I cannot control their innate ability, their motivation, whether or not they complete homework. I can’t control whether they listen to instruction, whether they incorporate feedback into their work. All I can do is teach using methods that have been shown to be more effective to generate learning, and to coach and support students to encourage their learning.  While teachers have some accountability for the success or failure of a student, students (and their parents) still have to be responsible for their own learning. If not, we teach them that they are not accountable for their own behaviours and beliefs, and that their personal work outcomes are not their own responsibility. Not a great message for future success.

As leaders, either in a one on one relationship, or within a larger group or organization, we need to move past the cultural norm that leaders are going to solve all of our problems. The fact is that we get the leaders we want. We elect the politicians who tell us what we want to hear. Leaders have very little actual impact on outcomes. According to a classic 1985 study by James Meindl, while people attribute about 50% of the outcome of big successes or failures to the leader, in fact only about 15% of the outcome could be attributed to the actions and decisions taken by the leader. Leaders cannot magically solve our problems by waving a wand. Followers, (that’s most of us), must still do the work. Barrack Obama cannot magically improve the economy if companies do not create jobs and people do not save money, or look for jobs, or focus on productivity.

While I don’t believe that we should go back to the 1960s version of education, which we know wasn’t particularly effective for many people, I’m also not sure that we should be blaming others for the failures of ourselves (or especially our children). Perhaps we need to think more about the idea of self-leadership. Until we can take responsibility for our own behaviours, how can we expect to lead others?

#Leadership: Human Capital & Motivation

Nations prosper when every one, including the poor, believe that they will profit fairly from investment and growth. When people believe that the spoils of prosperity are unequally and unfairly distributed, they disengage from development and self-reliance, according to a recent article in the New York Times.  Greater income gaps are often a symptom of a broader problem with cultural inequity.

For those of us living in developed Western nations, income gaps are increasing and are increasingly differentiating the working class and middle class professionals.  Access to health care and education are particularly influenced by socio-economic status. The U.S. vaunted upward social mobility is now just a myth. If the research is correct, this will likely lead to reduced prosperity. Not a pretty picture.

So why does this matter to business leaders? Part of strategic leadership is the acquisition, development and retention of human capital (or people, as I like to call them). If people feel that the benefits of their work go disproportionately to others in an organization they will be de-motivated. As a result, the design of remuneration and reward and recognition programs are essential to effectively delivering on an organization’s strategy. Paul Marciano, in the Monster Inc Blog talks about ineffective reward and recognition programs:

Imagine fitting employees into one of three buckets: Top performers, average performers and poor performers. Now, when you put a program into place, who wins? The top performers! What is the impact on the poor performers? None or negative; the program is just another example of their “loser” status in your organization.

Even worse, often these programs are not well designed and reward bad behaviour or the boss’ favourite person. So employees feel that the deck is stacked against them, there is no way they are going to get a fair shake from the system. The same goes for “high potential” leadership development programs and other types of programs designed to separate the “stars” from the “average” employee.

As Henry Mintzberg noted, creating categories like “stars” and all others, “we demote” everyone else, and discourage community, collaboration and engagement.

Rather than rewarding individual performance, creating huge financial rewards for a small few, leaders need to think about how to engage all organizational citizens, ensuring that everyone gets a piece of increased prosperity, not just a select few.

Leadership Attribution Error

Our emphasis on leaders in academic, political and business circles has created a set of expectations of leaders that are both unrealistic and possibly negative.  I’ve written in the past about the Romance of Leadership, that is our tendency to attribute great successes and great failures to our leaders. This tendency causes us to also make assumptions about leaders’ responsibility for the motivation, behaviour and accomplishments of followers (Sronce and Arendt, 2009).

In their 2009 article, Sronce and Arendt suggest that our assumption that part of a leader’s role is to motivate followers could potentially result in followers blaming leaders if the follower isn’t motivated.  If leaders are the reason for a group’s success or failure, then could it be possible to ignore the contributions of followers to the outcome? Does our obsession with leaders mean that we are essentially reducing the accountability of followers for their performance?

Hackman and Wagner (in Sronce & Arendt 2009) refer to the tendency to believe that leaders have more impact on results than is the actual case as “Leadership Attribution Error”. They suggest that this error arises because followers don’t have the complete picture underestimating both situational factors and random chance.

Leadership Attribution Error has the potential to be a disaster in the workplace. Too much emphasis on the role of leader means that followers may abdicate responsibility for their motivation levels, beliefs, values and behaviours. Truly effective leadership is one that sees motivation as arising from within followers (internal motivation) that the leader taps into by aligning goals and objectives with motivation and values of the followers. In other words, motivation starts with the beliefs, values and aspirations of the followers.

Whether leader or follower, as adults we need to take responsibility for our own behaviours. Are you attributing too much to your leader? As a leader, are you assuming too much of the burden of motivation? Are your followers abdicating responsibility for their own motivation and behaviours? Are you creating passive followers?

Source: Scronce, Robin and Arendt, Lucy. (2009) Demonstrating the Interplay of Leaders and Followers. Journal of Management Education. 33 (6), 699 – 824.

Hackman, J.R., & Wageman, R. (2007). Asking the right questions about Leadership. American Psychologist. 62(1), 43 – 47.

Choking, the ego and the Canucks

Image via Wikipedia

Performance is something that is hard to predict. We’ve all choked under stress.  Which got me wondering why is it so easy to choke?

On Wednesday morning I watch an interview on Canada AM with a sports psychologist. The interviewer was asking the sports psychologist how the Vancouver Canucks could avoid choking in the crucial 7th and deciding game of the Stanley Cup. The psychologist suggested remaining task-focused, rather than ego-focused. That is, if we focus on specific activities that we must accomplish, rather than how others will see us and what they will think of our performance, we are less likely to choke under stress.

In the same way, work performance can be improved by thinking about the meaning of the work, and enjoying the experience, rather than the possible outcomes, such as a raise, promotion or increases in status. Researchers call the former an intrinsic motivation, while the latter is extrinsic motivation.

I’m at a conference today, about to present to a room full of experts. A few minutes ago I was starting to worry about what they would think of my presentation, how they would judge me, all the ego-focused stuff. In order to do my best, I need to re-focus on the tasks that I need to do to be effective.  The rest just doesn’t matter all that much.