Theodore Roethke, United States poet and educator who lived between 1908 - 1963, wrote: "What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.” Given the challenges before society and business at this time period, I agree 100%.
“However, iIf business managed their money as carelessly as they managed their people,” write Bill Conaty and Ram Charan in their book, The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers (Crown Business, 2010), “most would be bankrupt.” As they continue, “In the fast-changing global marketplace, the half-life of core competencies grows shorter…. Only one competency lasts. It is the ability to create a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders.” And I believe those leaders need to mobilize people to work as a team that can “specialize in the impossible.”
Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize And Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (Jossey-Bass, 2016), writes “I think the problem is that we’ve failed to define what being a team player requires.… real teamwork requires tangible, specific behaviors: vulnerability-based trust, healthy conflict, active commitment, peer-to-peer accountability, and a focus on results.” As he continues, ideal team players “are humble, hungry, and smart…. Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who can not.”
Lencioni defines humble in the following manner: “Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own.” He defines hungry this way: “Hungry people are always looking for more…. a manageable and sustainable commitment to doing a job well and going above and beyond when it is truly required.” Finally, he defines smart as follows: “… smart simply refers to a person’s common sense about people… interpersonally appropriate and aware…. Smart people just have good judgement and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.”
I think the challenge for us at this time period is that we have made an assumption that most people are people smart when in reality this is not the case. In particular, we assume that people in leadership positions are people smart and thus they can develop this in others over time. The difficulty is that we use the term, but do not define it in great depth.
From my experience, leaders, who are people smart, and who create and support others to be this way too, understand that leadership is a set of beliefs and daily practices woven into the very fabric of their daily individual and communal life. It is not just getting things done. It is really about creating the capacity for people to make the right choices at the right time given the situation before them.
While there are many books written about what is the right leadership mindset to have, I want to focus on three core beliefs that I believe make a profound difference and are essential in being people smart. The first core belief is that everyone is unique. As Marcus Buckingham in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success (Free Press, 2005), wrote: “To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.”
I have shared the above quote in seminars, workshops, keynotes, and long, in-depth trainings since it was first published back in 2005. And many people have focused on the words “to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it.” While these are important components of leading and managing people, I think there is not enough focus on the words “each of your direct reports is unique.” Individuals, who are people smart, fundamentally believe in the worth and dignity of each person. They choose to never put someone’s self-worth into the equation of getting something done, i.e. belittling someone or making them feel less than because they did not perform perfectly or achieve a new level of innovation.
These same leaders also understand something that Brene’ Brown in her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (Avery 2012), writes: “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of meaningful experiences.” When we start with the belief that everyone is unique, we choose to humanize the work place, avoiding the common choice of using shame or fear to motivate people to be more engaged. Instead, we understand that work and, life in general, comes with uncertainty, risk and difficulties. We all feel vulnerable and exposed. Yet, when the work place is built upon an understanding and foundation that all people have dignity and self-worth just as they are, then what follows are healthy relationships. And healthy relationships are at the core of all successful organizations.
The second core belief is that clarity creates right action. So many leaders who struggle focus on execution and doing things to get them done. And I agree that this is important. However, the precursor to right action is clarity. As Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (Jossey-Bass, 2012), notes that creating clarity “is all about alignment…. Within the context of making an organization healthy, alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is as little room as possible for confusion, disorder, and infighting to set in. Of course, the responsibility for creating that clarity lies squarely with the leadership team.”
People smart individuals recognize that questions about WHAT are secondary to questions about WHY. As Kevin Cashman, Global Leader of CEO & Enterprise Leader Development at Korn Ferry, wrote many years ago, “Leaders get what they exhibit and what they tolerate.” When we choose to exhibit and tolerate silo thinking, politics, and turf battles, all of which reflect a high degree of confusion, we are, in essence, condoning organizational and professional misalignments. And this foundation never leads to right or effective action. However, clarity and alignment build trust and ultimately generate sustainable outcomes.
The third core belief is that compassion matters. During many years of teaching leadership, I have pointed out that words matter. As Krista Tippett in her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living (Penguin Press, 2016), wrote, “I take it as an elemental truth of life that words matter. This is so plain that we can ignore it a thousand times a day. The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. From Genesis to the aboriginal songlines of Australia, human beings have forever perceived that naming brings the essence of things into being. The ancient rabbis understood books, texts, the very letters of certain words as living, breathing entities. Words make worlds.” This is a profound and an extremely important truth in the world of leadership. Words shape understanding and they create clarity. But from my vantage point, compassion also matters, too.
“Compassion is fueled by understanding and accepting that we’re all made of strength and struggle,” writes Brene’ Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House, 2021). As she continues, “no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of ‘better than’ or ‘I can fix you’ - it’s a practice based in the beauty and pain of shared humanity.”
Individuals, who are people smart, recognize that life is the combination of strength and struggle. And that our shared humanity is a strong foundation for resilience and clarity. As Brown explains, compassion “recognizes the suffering of another as a reflection of our own pain: “I understand this; I suffer in the same way.” It is empathetic, a mutual connection with the pain and sorrow of life. Compassion is shared suffering.” When people on teams and in leadership positions understand that we all suffer, then all involved will engage and commit to a course of action from a different level of perspective. The key is to remember that all people are trying to do their best with the information and tools that are available to them. When leaders comprehend that everyone is unique and that clarity creates right action, then they will choose compassion and empathy. They understand that difficulties are a normal part of life.
FYI: to be continued on Tuesday.
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