Executive Coaching

courageous

Full Participation Requires Courageous Followership

By

by Ira Chaleff

A company chartered to provide insurance to physicians had a new president and CEO. He was energetic, bright, respectful of others and attuned to organizational development needs. The management team and staff saw him as a boon to their company which was struggling to retain its footing in a niche market. Unfortunately, the CEO had a blind spot.

He had hired a college buddy as VP of Marketing. This buddy turned out to be a slacker; it soon became apparent to the other executives and many staff that he was not pulling his weight. He was rarely available, taking off for the golf course at every available opportunity, and was slow to respond to requests when he was present.

It was clear to the staff that the CEO and VP Marketing were very tight, socially and professionally. The instinct for self-preservation restrained the other executives and marketing staff from raising the issue of the VP’s non-performance with the CEO. They filled the gap his physical and mental absence left as best they could. A couple of VPs, braver in these matters, did raise the issue with the CEO and were told in no uncertain terms the CEO was not going to turn on his friend. From this, they too reached the conclusion it would be best to not raise this issue again.

It took a year and a half before the CEO realized how much damage his buddy was causing. Though it pained him greatly, he fired his friend, tempering the act with the usual obfuscating language used in the public announcement.

Reading this you can say, what POOR judgment for a CEO and it took him FAR too long to correct the situation. Of course, you’d be right on both counts. But, let me suggest, this would not be the primary critique to make about the situation. We could just as justifiably, and more productively say what TIMID and IRRESPONSIBLE behavior on the part of the executives and staff to let the CEO make this error for so long.

What I am suggesting is that viewing the primary failure here as a failure of followership rather than a failure of leadership is potentially more productive. Why? For the simple reason that all leaders, being human, have frailties and blind spots. To leave the onus on the leader to detect, own up to and remedy the blind spot is as unreasonable as asking you to scratch your back with your elbow. You can’t reach there. Leaders can’t reach their blind spots. So in both cases, outside help is needed.

Now we could say that this is a function for the Board to take up with the CEO. That’s a reasonable argument. But how does the board detect the need? Most boards don’t see very deeply into an organization. If one of the CEO’s reports brought the matter to the board’s attention they might address it. But going to the Board without first raising the issue with the CEO and giving the CEO a chance to correct it smacks strongly of disloyalty. Even if done out of a higher loyalty to the organization, approaching the board without first approaching the CEO and letting him know how strongly you feel about the situation has a high chance of backfiring and the CEO would find the action virtually unforgivable. Therefore, boards rarely are the first line of help with these matters.

Who does that leave to help the CEO see his or her blind spots? It leaves the people who report to the CEO, directly or indirectly. Now as we know, it is a very tall order asking these individuals to confront the CEO on matters that in all probability will generate significant defensiveness, if not retribution. So what is the ingredient needed to do so? Let me suggest that it is that old fashioned ingredient called COURAGE which Aristotle deemed the highest virtue because it was needed to exercise all the other virtues.

Lack of courage by those serving senior leaders has contributed to the downfall of many once powerful leaders. But even in the absence of dramatic topplings, the price organizations or groups pay for lacking the courage and skill to address dysfunctional behavior by leaders is high. You can’t have a truly participatory workplace environment if the tough issues get swept under the rug and are only discussed cynically behind the backs of the group’s leaders.

Let’s take another, more common scenario. A young analyst recently went to work for a mid-sized energy company. Within a few weeks he made an observation. Regardless of what staff were working on and the importance of that work to internal or external customers, if a line superior made a request it was always put at the top of the priority list while other matters were delayed. The executives making the request (read: order) were in the all-too-typical fire-fighting mode and asked for everything on a more or less rush basis. They rarely enquired what the impact of their request would be on other priorities.

Once again, however, the blame dear Brutus lies not with the organizational stars but with ourselves. The analyst observed that virtually no one paused to do any of the following:

  • seek to understand the context of the order and its true priority;
  • clarify further what was wanted in order to gauge the appropriate amount of time to spend on implementing the request and to avoid future rework;
  • inform the executive issuing the order what would be delayed as a result and getting either additional resources or a ruling on the relative priorities.

Is this the quality of participation that will make a difference? Will such behavior lead to better customer service? To faster cycle time? No, no and no. Yet you see this type of behavior occurring all the time in organizations. Unless you address this aspect of the culture — orientation to authority rather than to the mission, the customer and the processes and projects that produce and improve service to the customer — all other efforts you make to improve participation and quality will fall short. The question for the practitioner is who will address this aspect of the culture and how will they do so?

In my book, The Courageous Follower:Standing Up To and For Our Leaders (Berrett-Koehler) I posit that this change in culture can occur at any point in the organization where an individual can understand his or her own power to effect change, tap into the courage to take the stand required, and display or develop the skills to effectively reflect back to the positional leaders the consequences of their policies and behaviors. Clearly, this is a very tall order. But short of this, creative, energetic and committed individuals who see their leaders falling short of the actions needed to create such a culture become somewhat cynical and alienated, depriving the organization of the vitality it needs to continually improve or reinvent itself.

Of course, you can also affect the culture by training the leaders to fully understand the imperatives that comprise quality as a few organizations have managed to do. But any practitioner in the field knows that in many organizations leaders only pay lip service to change efforts and don’t engage in the training, self-examination and discipline required to actually make these changes. Do you just give up in this case? Not necessarily. You still can work with the followers.

A primary question is how does a follower find the strength to do what does not come naturally to most people – act from conviction rather than from a desire to stay in with favor those in authority? This strength comes from a combination of courage and power. Productive staff have more power than they realize and courage flows from a variety of influences. Since few of us are entirely altruistic, the corollary question is why should a follower act from conviction and risk disfavor? Aside from the obvious higher reasons, paradoxically it is often just this willingness to risk that singles one out for future leadership roles.

Take the example of a young editor with two small children who worked for a publishing house in the days when many publishing houses were privately held and run by the founder. The editor was bright, committed and a hard worker. He soon became the publisher’s fair haired boy and a rising star. But as he rose in the organization, the editor gained more access to the publisher and began to observe his method of operating more closely. Unhappily, he found serious instances of the publisher mistreating authors. Rather than remain quiet about these, the editor drew on the courage of his religious convictions which were unusually strong, and began speaking out though no one else dared to do so. At first the publisher became apoplectic and repeatedly threatened to fire the editor. After awhile he began seeking the editor out when he had a problem as he knew he would be forthcoming in his views. The screaming abated. When the publisher retired, he named the editor as his successor. Of course, not all situations work out as happily as this which is why it really does require courage to take a stand.

A second question is, how does a follower develop a relationship with a leader that permits him or her to effectively engage the leader? While on rare occasions a brave soul from down in the ranks of an organization can reach a CEO about a troubling issue affecting the organization, the executives one or two echelons below a CEO have far more opportunity to do so. The degree to which these executives can effectively engage the leader on issues that may be uncomfortable to raise is directly proportional to how well they are serving the leader and the organization and how fully they have won the leader’s trust.

The president of a national trade association hired a woman to run the association’s for-profit subsidiary which provided specialized products and services to member organizations. He hired her based on her strong track record but with some trepidation about her equally strong reputation for outspokenness. Within three months the president listened to and sought out her opinion on many difficult issues. What had happened? Trust had gelled.

The bedrock of the trust was the woman’s business acumen – her ability to get results. Equally important, she took pains to keep the president well informed so he was never blindsided in his dealings with member organizations or his board. She alerted him to potential pitfalls and to shortfalls and how they were being dealt with. When she made recommendations she alerted him to who would not be pleased with that course of action and suggested how to minimize the fallout. In short, she served her leader well and he knew it. As a result, when she took the occasional position that countered his own he did not interpret it as an act of disloyalty; he paid very serious attention to her.

A third question is, what options are open to a follower if the leader is unresponsive? This immediately begs the question How skillfully is the follower giving the leader feedback about his or her policies or behavior? Some people do so intuitively, others need models for providing feedback effectively so they minimize the leader’s tendency to become defensive.

Assuming that feedback is being given effectively, the next single most important strategy is persistence. Telling a leader something once does not absolve us from responsibility if the leader doesn’t immediately change his or her counterproductive behavior or policy. The hard part is being willing to persist in our feedback to the leader over time. It raises the risk of the leader viewing us as a nuisance and finding ways to consciously or unconsciously marginalize us. But it is precisely this persistence that is needed to effect a transformation.

In order to help a leader transform (often viewed as a requisite to organizational transformation) we sometimes must first go through our own transformation. If it has been our pattern to shut up when a leader ignores or rejects our feedback, then we need to work on transforming this behavior in ourselves before we can influence the leader’s behavior. The chief of staff to a political figure was accustomed to the politician setting the office agenda. When the politician moved on to head up a private sector organization he brought the chief of staff along to be director of a critical set of functions. The new director was dismayed at times at the former-politician-turned CEO’s inability to stay focused on the large issues rather than on the small political touches which still absorbed a lot of his energy. But he could not help the politician grow into his new executive role until he himself unlearned the habits of a political chief of staff and became willing to articulate and operationalize an agenda for his unit without waiting for the CEO to do so. Using this agenda, he was now in a stronger position to help the CEO stay focused on the strategic priorities.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we do not have sufficient influence to help the leader or organization make the changes needed in order to do well. At a hydraulic manufacturing plant in the mid-west the purchasing manager was on contract from the parent company in Scandinavia. He had lots of ideas about how to improve operations and repeatedly tried and failed to get his American boss, the VP for Operations, to support or champion these ideas. Eventually, the purchasing manager realized that the combination of cross-cultural factors, interpersonal dynamics and conflicting business models would not permit any real change to occur. Though he had the option to renew his contract which would have been desirable from his family’s perspective, he chose leaving rather than continuing in a situation in which he would only become embittered at the road blocks to meaningful change. This, too, requires a form of courage.

A final question is how in our role as leader (and many positional followers are simultaneously positional leaders) can we create the conditions that foster courageous followership among the people who report to us? There are many strategies we can employ but at their core they all recognize that people are easily discouraged from true participation and especially from speaking unpopular truths. Therefore, we must treat every instance in which we are given critical feedback as a vitally important opportunity to send a message throughout the organization that we really do value this, despite our natural tendency to feel defensive. And we need to supplement these spontaneous learning moments with structured anonymous vehicles for eliciting honest feedback, such as 360% evaluations which have become popular. But heed this caveat: don’t ask for this feedback even anonymously unless you intend to pay careful attention to it. Otherwise, the effect will be to only heighten cynicism and reduce future participation.

To summarize, the quality of participation in an organization is directly related to the degree of courage and skill in interpersonal dynamics existing or developed in those who surround the organization’s formal leaders. While leaders can and should work to create the conditions that bring out these characteristics, organization’s can’t always rely on leaders to do so. Those who care for that organization or have an interest in its success do not have to shrug their shoulders in despair at this. We can each be the author of these characteristics within ourselves and, by doing so, be models our colleagues and even our leaders can emulate.

Ira Chaleff is president of Executive Coaching and Consulting Associates in Washington, D.C.

Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders

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NEW RELATIONSHIPS FOR LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE – Ideas for Leaders

by IRA CHALEFF

How many times have you worked in an organization in which bright, mid-level managers were frustrated by the difficulty of influencing senior executives whose leadership style was impeding organizational growth, productivity or morale?

‘Young Turks’, as they are sometimes called, are often brimming with energy to innovate and test new ways of meeting organizational challenges. The senior executives, who cultural myth holds to be the change agents, are often mired in old ways of doing things with which they are comfortable. They are the roadblock, not the road, to innovation.

Alternatively, these bright, mid-level people, may be dismayed to watch a new senior executive who does not fully appreciate how the company works, start reorganizing, downsizing, outsourcing or merging in ways that will not be viable. Anyone daring to question the new broom is quickly earmarked as someone who needs to go. Silence reigns. A year or two later, the board and the investors are left to clean up the mess resulting from the leader’s high-handed style.

It is the quality of the relationship of leaders and followers, all the way up and down the organization chart, that makes or breaks organizations. Those lower down in the organization have more direct experience with its people, processes and customers and need to be able to influence the leaders’ thinking on which way the organization should go. They cannot be intimidated by the power and trappings of office of the leaders to whom they report. Yet, as we know, they often are intimidated.

Traditional leadership theory puts the responsibility for the leader-follower relationship with the leader. In my observation, it often works the other way around. Those who work most closely with the leader, the senior ‘followers’ if you will, need to assume responsibility for keeping their relationship with the leader honest, authentic and courageous. ‘Yes men’ need not apply.

There are two distinct roles that executives and managers are called upon to play. One is the role of leader in their own right. The other is the role of courageous follower. Endless attention is paid to leadership qualities, selection, training, development and evaluation. Who ever pays attention to how well these same individuals perform their role as courageous followers? Virtually no one. Why is this?

We are a society in love with leadership and uncomfortable with followership, though the subjects are inseparable. We don’t honor followership. We talk pejoratively of followers being weak individuals. And we certainly don’t train staff how to be strong followers who are not only capable of brilliantly supporting their leaders, but can also effectively stand up to them when their actions or policies are detrimental and need rethinking.

As a result, the orientation of those around the leader often becomes personal survival instead of group optimization. Optimum group performance requires that both leaders and followers place the organization’s welfare at least on par with protecting their personal interests. As Chris Argyris of Harvard observes, in most groups the individuals are so concerned with avoiding embarrassment or personal threat, they shy away from the conversations that need to occur to fundamentally improve performance. This is the antithesis of the vaunted ‘Learning Organization’. Important issues become undiscussable.

Where thinly disguised authoritarian relationships still prevail (leader dictates, follower complies or else) team members are driven down Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of motivation. Their needs for physical security and social acceptance outweigh pride in organizational achievement. Instead of risking the conversations that are needed to address leadership’s own contributions to mediocre performance, they “play the game” and conform, regardless of the cost to the organization.

If leaders are exceptionally smart, they create environments in which such honest communication is the norm and rewarded. But, human nature seems to conspire against this and, most of the time, few speak truth to power. If they do so, and they get rebuffed, they don’t do it again. Instead, they complain to each other and to their spouses, but no longer to the person who needs to hear the message and do something about it.

How many times have you found yourself in this position in an organization? How much do you think this type of behavior costs organizations? But if you find yourself in a follower role with a leader who is not using his or her power well, why should you risk your job by seeking to change the status quo? The simplest answer is because it is a better way to live. Win or lose, you’ve carried yourself with integrity and self-respect.

The more complex answer is that, if you aspire to senior leadership positions yourself, you’d better learn to take risks. Leaders who can’t risk, can’t lead. Here’s a chance to get in practice.

How do you go about this? I believe that there is a two part answer to transforming leader-follower relations and creating the conditions in which a learning organization can emerge. The first part has to do with ourselves, the second with “the other.”

At the heart of all transformation of relationships lies transformation of ourselves. This is both where we have the most power to create change and the most reluctance to confront the need for it. In this instance, the process starts with an honest examination of how we have learned to cope with authority relationships. Do we tend to be subservient? Cynical? Prickly and rebellious? Functional, but always playing it safe?

These and other patterns exert a price on the relationship. Ideally we would have mature relationships between self-confident, mutually respectful, emotionally and intellectually honest peers, each operating from a prescribed role for the common good. Often this is no more easily achieved between managers and subordinates than it is between forty year old adults and their overbearing parents. Focusing on our own end of the relationship, rather than on what is being done to us, is usually the best place to start.

Some of the key points to examine and reflect on include:

  • Am I energetically pursuing the group’s purpose and aligning my self- interests with it? Or, am I holding back my full contribution, including my willingness to take risks?
  • Do I need to take more initiative to ensure that the group is effectively pursuing its mission? Will the way I am behaving in this relationship, or in authority relationships generally, permit me to do that, or do I need to try new behaviors?
  • What is my power based on in this situation that would enable me to take greater initiative? What combination of knowledge, skills, reputation, positional authority, networks and communication channels can I bring to bear? Who do I need to align myself with to effectively create the needed change?
  • Why am I hesitant to act? Have I given up hope? Become cynical? Do I think that someone else will take the first step? Have I let myself off the hook because I raised my concern once and it wasn’t acted on? Doesn’t mature, responsible behavior require persistence?
  • Do the perceived risks of taking the initiative require courage in order to act? If so, what are my personal sources of courage on which I can draw? If I don’t know, how can I find out? Living effectively requires courage.
  • Have I earned the leader’s trust so that I have a platform from which to speak? If not, why not? Is my own performance not up to what it needs to be? If so, how will I remedy that?
  • Do I have the skills to effectively confront the leader without making him or her defensive? Can I convey that what I am saying is in his or her interest to hear? If not, how will I develop those skills?

The clearer we become about our end of the relationship with a leader, the more effectively we can approach “the other” end. This is the second part of the answer. We can make several mistakes in this regard to which we must be alert.

One error is to rationalize away the leader’s behavior. We can genuinely like the leader as an individual and admire many of his or her character traits. Because, overall, we like the leader, we tolerate the counterproductive or dysfunctional behavior. But in doing so, we let the organization go on paying a steep price for this behavior. Moreover, we are placing this leader, whom we like, at risk because sooner or later, the behavior will catch up with him and the consequences are often regrettable.

An opposite, and even greater error we can make is to lose our respect for the leader. In a leader-follower relationship that has deteriorated, much like in a deteriorated marriage, we are so painfully aware of the other’s shortcomings that we lose sight of the other’s strengths, struggles and value.

To be an effective change agent or partner, we need to reconnect with what is right about the leader’s behavior. It is only from a platform of respect for the other that we can initiate transformation efforts without being perceived and treated as a threat. In this case, it is helpful to reflect on such questions as:

  • What skills and attributes enabled the leader to attain the current leadership position? How were these adaptive in the environment in which the leader developed?
  • Are there ways, with a little modification, that these skills and attributes can be better utilized to help accomplish the organization’s mission? What specifically would make a difference and how can I effectively communicate that?
  • What pressures and challenges is the leader under now? Are those challenges pushing the leader to rely on old ‘proven’ habits rather than risk new, potentially more productive behaviors?
  • If the group gave the leader greater support, or a different type of support in dealing with those challenges, might there be less reliance on the dysfunctional behaviors? How can we do this?
  • What in the leader’s self-interest can I appeal to that would make the leader more receptive to making changes?

Answering these questions in relation to ourselves and our leaders begins a process of transformation. Barriers to organizational performance can then get discussed. Learning and growth can occur.

We can apply the same strategy towards peers whose style or performance is holding back the team. When we are receptive to both receiving and initiating honest and respectful feedback, to having difficult but necessary conversations, we can help our team break unproductive patterns and learn new, healthy ways of communicating and working together.

We spend so much of our lives with the people with whom we work. We may as well do so with elan, with a forthright style that meets the world head on. If we are willing to risk having our efforts rejected, we may be surprised at how well they work. There is great satisfaction in positively influencing a leader or an organization so that its performance and morale improves.

It is also the best training for becoming a leader who knows how to create such organizations. When will you start?