Last week, I wrote that “leaders, by definition, have followers.  The question for you to consider is why they are following.”

Based on the feedback I received from “followers” of all sorts, it became clear that many leaders are abusing their roles.  They are really dictators, not leaders.  So, I decided that we needed to continue on this theme.

So, I’d like to challenge all leaders to examine themselves and ponder another question: “Why should people follow me?”

And the answer needs to be something more compelling than, “because I’m the boss.”

Drop me a line with what you come up with.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.

Growing up, one of my favorite movies was The Gumball Rally, a 1976 comedy inspired by the actual Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash held by Brock Yates.

In the movie, the Ferrari team hires a professional driver, played by Raul Julia, to give them a competitive advantage. The first thing he does is tear off the rear view mirror, and utters a line with many leadership implications.

“The first rule of Italian driving … what’s behind me is not important.”

And having driven in Italy, I can tell you first-hand that many Italian drivers take this lesson to heart.

The corollary for leaders is not what’s behind you, but who.

Leaders, by definition, have followers.  The question for you to consider is why they are following.

Are they following because they have to?  After all, you’re the boss.  They have no choice.

Or, are they following because they want to.  Because they believe in you and in your vision.  Because they are convinced that your strategy is the right one.  Because they have deemed your mission to be worth the investment of their life?

So, leaders, take a look in the rear view mirror … because who’s behind you is really important.

You can watch the trailer for The Gumball Rally on YouTube here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-8Cq7wib8

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.

Have you ever tried to follow someone to a party who didn’t know where they were going?  27 U-turns and a few near-misses later, you finally arrive at your destination.

Far too many employees are trying to follow leaders who don’t know where they are going.  The employees are willing to follow, even willing to go the extra mile, but eventually give up because it is too frustrating.

To be fair, in these turbulent times, it can be difficult to know what to do and where to go.  But as they say, “that’s why they pay you the big bucks.”

The most important thing a leader needs to do is be clear.  High-performance leaders see things that others don’t, and see them before others do.  So, get your executive teams together and take a long, hard look out the windshield and read the signs.

• How clear is your windshield?  Is it all buggy and grimy, preventing you from seeing clearly?
• How is your direction?  Are you heading the right way … or the wrong way?
• How are the road conditions?  Any potholes ahead?  Any detours?
• How is the traffic?  Any competitors passing you like you are standing still?  Are there open lanes that you can pull into?  Any slow-poke competitors that you can pass?
• What is out on the horizon?  A long straight autobahn with no speed limits … or a windy mountain road with no guardrails?

And if you aren’t really sure where to go, perhaps it is time to stop and ask for directions.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.

Jean-Baptiste Karr, the French journalist and satirist first penned the phrase, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” which is loosely translated as “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

In organizations, the phenomenon I observe most is executives who give lip service to change, but in reality, never really change.  Thus, the more the senior executives stay the same, the more the rest of the organization will stay the same as well.

Senior executives bear a disproportionate share of the responsibility for the culture and performance of an organization.

Why?  Because the senior executives actions (good or bad) are magnified disproportionately – maybe 10X –by the rest of the organization.

• If the senior executives work well together as a team, the organization will be a consistent top performer.

• If the senior executives have a common vision, the entire organization will align behind it.

• If the senior executives articulate a clear and compelling strategy, every department will do their part to execute and deliver it.

• However, if the senior executive team is a little dysfunctional, the organization will be very dysfunctional.

• If they are very dysfunctional, the organization will be a disaster.

Unfortunately, many senior executive teams have been highly dysfunctional for years … and wonder why their organizations are not performing up to their potential.  Step one is to confront reality and take responsibility.   Perhaps the CEO needs a reality check.  Perhaps a few of the executives need to go.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.

Perhaps one of the greatest management lessons ever written was The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen.

You all know the story.  The King buys a new, custom-made suit from two swindlers posing as weavers.  The suit was to be made of a material that “possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.”

Although it is a sham, everyone is afraid to admit it, for fear that they themselves would look stupid.  Even worse, they are afraid to tell the king.  Only a little child breaks the chain of self-deception, and even then, the King refuses to listen.

Many organizations suffer from exactly this problem.  The CEO loves himself more than anything else.  He chases fanciful new ideas, convinced of their brilliance.  He hires only yes-men who will tell him what he wants to hear.  And he creates an environment where everyone is afraid to tell them the truth.

Often, like the king, they even refuse to listen to the wisdom of an outsider, who like the little child, has no reason to lie.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins admonishes us to “confront the brutal facts.”

Maybe now would be a good time to reexamine your organization.  Have you created an environment of self-deception?  Are people afraid to tell you the truth?  Do you “shoot the messenger?”

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.

For those who want to read the whole story, you can find it here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

Over the course of my career, both as a consultant and as an executive, I have worked with dozens of smart leaders who failed.

Some of these executives drove their organizations into the ground, some created massive morale problems, others simply failed to face reality. Most simply refused to listen.

A great book, Why Smart Executives Fail, by Sydney Finkelstein, is a fantastic, fact-based look at this problem. I highly recommend it for the rare leader who is serious about building a high-performance organization. (In my experience, most executives simply don’t care about their organizations, they only care about themselves.)

Here is a great quote that nets it out:

“We discovered that precipitous business failures are caused by four destructive patterns of behavior that set in, without anyone noticing them, well before a business goes under. These four syndromes involve (1) flawed executive mind-sets that throw off a company’s perception of reality, (2) delusional attitudes that keep this attitude in place, (3) breakdowns in communications systems developed to handle potentially urgent information, and (4) leadership qualities that keep a company’s executives from correcting their course.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins speaks of the “mirror and the window” when describing the behavior of Level 4 leaders.

Maybe it is time for all of you to take a long, hard, and brutally honest look in the mirror.

Most organizations suffer from a “trust gap.”

When asked, “I trust my manager,” 72% of employees answered “strongly agree.” When asked, “I trust the senior leaders of the organization,” only 24% answered “strongly agree.”

This 48% difference is a serious indictment of most senior executive teams.

In today’s economy, many companies have taken the perspective that “our employees are lucky to even have a job.” They have cut training, stopped communicating, and used the bad economy as an excuse for lots of misguided management actions.

In contrast, high-performance organizations do just the opposite. They recognize that employees are “running on empty,” and work extra hard to keep their tanks filled. Anxiety about the future can be paralyzing, so high-performers communicate clearly and often, both in word and deed.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

High-performance organizations are led by high-performance teams.

Fast Lane CEOs must shift their priority from building the business to developing the leadership team.  Developing the #One Team in the industry will take an investment of both time and money, but it will yield an incredible return.

Jay Lorsch and Tom Tierney capture this thought well, “Outstanding firms are consistently able to identify, attract, and retain star performers; to get stars committed to the firm’s strategy; to manage stars across geographic distance, business lines, and generations; to govern and lead so that both the organization and the stars prosper and feel rewarded.  These capabilities are what give great firms their competitive advantage.”

In high-performance organizations, the CEO sets the bar for development.  The CEO’s unwavering commitment to developing the executives into the #One Team let’s everyone know that “we are in the people business.”  They invest a significant percentage of their time developing, coaching, and aligning their leaders.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.