"Leadership" became the rallying cry of the nineties in American Business. Organizations looked for great leaders to help them survive successfully the many challenges of this past decade. Yet, the very notion of leadership often degenerated into a clich, a buzz word. For example, many identify leadership simply as a manager with visionary capability who somehow empowers his or her staff. Although vision and empowerment do play an important role in the leadership process, they only scratch the surface of what an exceptional leader actually does on a day-to-day basis.

My experience, as president of two corporations and co-founder of yet another, led me to begin researching what leaders really do to make an organization work well. I found that great leaders exhibit nine different kinds of behaviors that enable them to bring out the best in their people. Some of the nine leadership behaviors listed below involve building participatory teams. Some involve the ability to see the larger picture, to chart a course for the organization. And some focus on enhancing personal resources. Listed individually, the Nine Behaviors include:

• Motivating others through Adaptive Leadership (delegating, facilitating, coaching, directing)
• Empowering others
• Encouraging teamwork
• Preparing people for change
• Having a strong, clear vision
• Using multiple options thinking
• Taking intelligent risks
• Stretching one's personal creativity
• Being passionate about work

While many people think leaders are unique, even born to that state of excellence, I have found just the opposite. With proper experiential training, it is possible for people to learn these leadership behaviors. In other words, leaders can be developed. And they should be developed at many levels in an organization because leadership development stimulates the best in leaders and their followers and thereby increases overall productivity.

This article briefly describes the essence of our training program, a program that offers clear experiences of the fundamental leadership behaviors.

In experiential training, the focus is on inner development. At the beginning of this leadership training, participants are asked for their own definitions of leadership - so they can see, hear, and explore their ideas about the real leadership qualities. Most participants do not realize that there are fundamental behaviors of exceptional leadership. Instead they tend to believe the common myths about leadership - that it is a rare skill exhibited only by those at the top, that leaders are born and always display charisma and that they are strongly authoritative "take-charge" people. The beginning of our training dispels these myths and briefly explains the nine, learnable behaviors of leaders.

In order to go beyond a cognitive understanding, participants must begin to experience these behaviors as they might occur at work. They begin to see that leaders have a strong interest in the people working for them when a team works well together they all help get an excellent job done.

The first four behaviors focus on building high functioning teams: motivating and empowering others, encouraging teamwork, and preparing people for change.

 

Motivating Others

Good leaders have a strong interest in the personal and professional development of their people. They encourage their staff to push beyond their limitations and give their personal best. One of the best ways to get this notion of encouragement and support across to people is to ask participants to remember and then write down how their best boss treated them, and how they felt about it. Then, have them share their answers with the rest of the group. Point out the common denominators in their answers so that their own experiences flesh out a composite picture of what it is like to offer people the support they need. Finally, ask them this: If their own people were to do a similar exercise, would their own names be on their people's lists? If not, why not? Where are they falling short in evoking the best from their people?

Equally important is developing ways to tap into internal motivation by taking the appropriate leadership actions that stimulate the greatest job growth in each person. One way to develop that behavior is to analyze each business task and the staff who are performing it. Sometimes, a leader can delegate the work without supervision, but more often leaders need to coach, to facilitate or to direct so that the task is accomplished well and the worker learns eventually how to become more independent. Group exercises help participants experience these different levels of situational management.

 

Empowering Others

Empowerment involves four dynamics: giving people important work to do; offering visibility and public recognition; encouraging autonomy; and helping them to establish networking skills.(IVAN) Exercises help participants feel the importance of each of the four dynamics.

 

Encouraging Teamwork

A good leader not only develops his or her people as individuals but also knows how to get the best out of people when they work on teams. Being able to handle the subtle dynamics of a whole group of people is not equivalent to dealing with the sum of its parts. By breaking participants into small groups and giving them a simple problem to solve, you can teach them about the issues that arise for teams. For example, if they work in small, separate teams on a tower building project, they will see how working together in one team accomplishes a greater product. Or, if they each have a specific task that is necessary to get the job done - being the navigator or pilot or other crew while landing the space shuttle back on earth - they see the necessity of functioning well together.

Some groups are results oriented. Some work on process, while others focus more on the relationships among the team members. Analyzing these three aspects of teamwork helps participants think about the way they work best individually and in teams.

 

Preparing People for Change

In the work place, change is pervasive. The companies that succeed prepare their people for change so that they understand how it can be used as an opportunity. Recognizing the four stages of psychological response to changedenial, resistance, adaptation, and commitment is crucial for a leader as he or she opens up communication and possibilities for the future. And using tools such as the Force-Field Exercise help people see how to make change work for them, wrapping in motivation, empowerment, and teamwork as people learn to recognize driving forces of positive change as well as resistance to it.

Motivating empowering, encouraging, and preparing for change are four ways for a leader to get honest support. The best method to accomplish all these characteristics is to be a role model of an intelligent, caring person who truly listens.

But leaders also have to lead. They are expected to have a vision and to know problem situations and how to handle them appropriately. Using multiple options thinking and intelligent risk-taking are two ways to move beyond traditional management techniques that focus on single solutions and avoidance of any risk.

 

Articulating Vision and Mission

Having a clear sense of vision is important. But equally important is the ability to articulate it so that others get excited about the future direction and want to contribute to it as part of their mission. A number of graphic exercises can contribute to the group sense of being part of the vision: Leadership Posters or Coat of Arms, both of which give visual expression to each person's idea.

 

Multiple Options Thinking

Exceptional leaders don't stop at the obvious. They know that the first answer they get may not always be the best answer, and even the "right" answer may not be appropriate for a particular situation. There are two kinds of multiple options thinking for the long-term strategies and for the short-term task. Scenario planning helps leaders envision different possible futures and plan for any one of them. And habitually considering at least four options for any given situation, helps develop the skill of searching for new solutions rather than going with the familiar, single way of past performance.

The skill of exploring multiple options is demonstrated in two exercises: 1) In Scenario Planning, participants plan three possible futures, given the most essential drivers of change. Detailing the plot of each and the consequences helps them envision different possibilities. 2) To stimulate day-to-day multiple options thinking, participants take a 3x5 card and write on the card at least five problems they are currently facing with their employees such as reprimanding a difficult employee or asking someone to take a pay cut. The cards are shuffled, and someone picks three or four of them. Ask the person whose problem is selected what he or she believes is the best answer to that specific problem. Then ask the rest of the group to brainstorm a number of other answers to the problem. Even if the first answer seems to be the best one, perhaps the only viable solution, it is critical to push beyond the tendency to get the one, right answer immediately.

Taking the time to discuss the various answers with them usually offers the seed of an innovative response, and this response is often one of the answers most people ignore. Or two answers may be combined into a third option that would work better. Multiple options thinking should be the first approach of exceptional leaders.

 

Intelligent Risk Taking

Good leaders know how to analyze the risks inherent in a particular course of action. They know when an action is high-risk or low-risk. Even more importantly, they know how to gain consensus from their staff about the level of risk for particular actions, so that their people do not treat high-risk activities as low-risk or vice versa.

In the training, you can start to deal with this issue by making the participants more aware of the criteria they use for analyzing risks. Put together small groups of people who work with each other on a regular basis. Ask them to come up with the criteria they normally use when they're deciding how risky a particular action is. Have them report back to you with a number of specific criteria, such as time factors, cost resources, and acceptability to upper management.

Next, ask each group to look at three or four current actions they're exploring and analyze the level of risk, even when they all use the same criteria, almost invariably there will be differences of opinion about the level of risk. Some people will habitually view most actions as high-risk, while others will normally do the opposite, regardless of the actual action they're analyzing. It is important for them to discuss the nature of the risk until they come to consensus about the various actions.

Personal resources are equally important to the development of an exceptional leader. And having a Passion for the Work which relates closely to a strong, clear Vision. In fact, these last two behaviors are most often noted when people are asked to describe leaders they admire.

 

Stretching One's Personal Creativity

When a leader is able to stretch personal creativity continually, it pulls together all the other behaviors. We sense that exceptional leaders are always learning something new. They are willing to stretch out into new arenas and discover things they didn't know before.

In the training, participants are asked to write down a few work-related areas that they've wanted to know more about but haven't taken the time to explore. They then pick one of these areas and devote a certain amount of time each week (ten minutes a day, for example) to learning about it. By taking the time to expand their own horizons, they will also be demonstrating to their people that the process of discovery matters. Being a role model here encourages others to do the same.

 

Passion for the Work

The leader's ability to inspire and project into the future helps others feel worthwhile in their own work and have a sense of purpose. Most important is the combination of words that work with actions so that others trust the vision and feel confident about its possibility. Small group exercises, including videotaping, help develop these concepts experientially.

After reviewing the Nine Behaviors , the experiential exercises, and participant's own definitions, each person should write out a contract in which he or she agrees to work on one or two of the nine behaviors on a daily basis. We have an action plan that is called IGOA for Issue, Goal, Obstacles, and Action Steps. Doing an IGOA helps make an action plan that is as specific as possible, especially by listing the obstacles that you must deal with in your action steps.

Monthly follow-ups for at least a year allow them to review basic concepts and help them integrate what they've learned in the training with what they actually do on a regular basis.

Leadership is not a mysterious process. It can be clearly defined and its component parts can be taught to your people. Take the time to train your people in the NINE BEHAVIORS of LEADERSHIP. Your organization's ability to survive and thrive during the next century may well depend on it.

Leadership Article Graphics

 

Exceptional Leadership at a Glance, a graphic representation of the Nine Behaviors.

Robert E. Brown is the Managing Partner of R.E.Brown Co. and Associates at El Cerrito, a California-based management consulting firm that specializes in teaching upper and mid-level management the nine behaviors of leadership.