Leaders in the Real World

By Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq., ELI, Inc.

I’ve been a lawyer for 33 years, albeit non practicing for nearly 22. But as someone who still studies, works and “lives” in the field of employment law, I’ve been skeptical about the various workplace fads, crazes, and gimmicks I’ve seen over the past two decades that become touted as the way to make business flourish.

While I lived through Theory Z or Theory Y, TQM and other acronymic movements whose abbreviations I (and no doubt others) have long since forgotten, they didn’t mean much to me. I read about them, heard lectures, looked at charts and graphs, but in the end, they seemed to be longwinded, overwrought prescriptions for basic tenets like honesty and hard, purposeful work.
U ntil recently, I saw treatises on “leadership” in the same vein – vague, gossamer notions most usefully serving as the inspiration for scores of best-selling books and big-dollar consulting projects.

Something’s changed. It’s become clear to me that effective leadership is vital to businesses committed to operating legally, inclusively, ethically, and in compliance with applicable laws and organizational values. This would seem to be an obvious truism that I should have figured out a long time ago, but over the past year or so, I came to a sharp realization that my professional training has distracted me from recognizing not only th e significance of leadership  but more significantly that it consists of identifiable, non-Olympian skills and behaviors.

After years in the field of the workplace and business classroom, I now see leadership to be as definable in its own way as the clearest legal standard. And though I do believe organizational leadership is the most significant quality needed to build lawful, ethical and inclusive environments while producing desired business results, I’m not in agreement with the way we frequently address the topic, which assumes that we can learn to be leaders or teach others to do so by studying the successes of the most successful heroes in business, political or military history. Most often, the way we approach leadership romanticizes and mystifies it until it’s seen as a bundle of magical talents as remote from the masses as a comic book hero’s superpowers.

A fter reading a shelf full of books about prominent and iconic leaders from Lincoln to Welch, the lesson I got was  that leadership was like charisma or sex appeal – some have it, some don’t. It’s one of those things delivered at birth like straight hair, long legs, or mathematical ability. You can yearn for all of these things but in the end, having it or not is the luck of the draw and a quality too intangible and too determined by unique circumstances of the moment to quantify except, to paraphrase Potter Stewart’s famous line about pornography, you know it when it you see it. So after reading and thinking about books and essays that dissect the qualities of prominent leaders, I’ve concluded that most of us will never be a Lincoln, Washington, King, or Kennedy, nor will we be Welch, Gates, Jobs or Lafley. But do effective leaders need to be?

As it relates to my life’s efforts dealing with workplace legality, inclusion, civility, compliance and ethics, I would define
leadership in simpler and, fortunately, far more attainable terms. It is the ability to take a vision or objective and communicate it in a way that motivates and directs others to accomplish a desired result in a planned, lawful, ethical, and inclusive way. Individuals who can do this lead legal, ethical, inclusive and admired workplaces by demonstrating a few common behaviors while also employing a distinct set of skills. They’re disciplined and talented men and women of the real world, not superheroes.

As I’ve said, though, t his is contrary to the conventional wisdom that comes from looking at famous leaders and trying to figure out what they did to surmount supreme challenges. This “case” method works in terms of training students how to think like lawyers or secure advanced business degrees, but in terms of how to lead, it’s a flawed model because it views leadership from the solitary perch of the leader rather than the perspective of those being led. And that makes a huge difference. Looking at leadership by analyzing the leader and how she viewed or dealt with a problem causes us to see them as using skills unique to their specific circumstances and idiosyncrasies. Their perspectives are certainly worth knowing and evaluating, but in a sense they provide a limited picture of the issue and from the wrong point of view to help us replicate their successes.

We truly learn what leadership is about when we go to the right source: those who are led and who can say, in essence, “This is why I agreed to be led .” They will tell us what made the leader effective and why people “agreed” to follow her.

Over the years I’ve had three searing client experiences that have stuck with me and demonstrated to me how vital and tangible leadership is. They arose in separate industrial settings – nuclear energy, general manufacturing, and high-risk invasive surgery. Each involved highly competent, brilliant professionals whose destructive behaviors poisoned their workplaces and threatened legal, ethical and safety crises. In each instance, the people who worked with them told me, though often obliquely or in hushed asides, that these leaders had pushed their work groups to the edge of catastrophe. The leaders, however, believed they led effectively. They knew they got “results” and never paused to reflect about how their behavior affected others or how that behavior might be diminishing, rather than improving, effectiveness. They all seemed to believe they were widely admired and led in a way that motivated others. And if, perhaps, they inspired a healthy dose of fear or unease, that was fine, even desirable.

From their point of view, they had to bring their direct reports along, these minions who lacked the skills, talent and/or knowledge to get things done. In fact, h ad I spoken just to them I would have assumed that they performed valiantly and had gotten exceptional results in light of (and in spite of) the limits of the teams around them. The rigors of their jobs and their concerns for patients or public safety demanded that they act and lead as they did.

But since I’m still a lawyer, part of my normal preparation included interviewing the “witnesses,” ­ their colleagues and co-workers. Suddenly I got a very different story, especially when I was able to credibly assure them that whatever they told me would remain in strictest confidence. What I found most striking is that I heard the same kinds of comments from each of these workplaces though the assignments occurred years apart in different regions of the country. In fact, these leaders shared a surprising number of behavioral traits, considering the varying industries, workplaces, geographies, and other specifics. To a person, they:

• Screamed or called those around them names, suggesting these people were incompetent, stupid or outright bumblers
• Used a demeaning tone of voice and/or body language when discussing projects and day-to-day assignments
• Would dictate orders rather than explain what needed to be done, even in routine, non-emergency situations
• Would not listen to or entertain questions regarding their decisions or explain why they made the decisions they made
• Demonstrated, through what they said and how they said it, that they did not want to hear any issues or concerns related to their performance or decisions, nor did they want to know about problems that could in any way slow down or affect decisions or deadlines they had already made or committed to meet
• Would never forget someone challenging their authority and, either directly or subtly, would punish those who disagreed with them
• Did not take the time to casually and routinely greet or acknowledge those whom they supervised, refusing to extend even basic common courtesies

When I asked these same ”witnesses” to identify the characteristics of leaders they respected and readily followed, they identified the exact opposit e behaviors. Take the above list and turn it into positives and you have leaders (assuming they are technically competent in terms of their job knowledge and skills) whose actions will cause people to want to follow their directions and expectations, not fear them and worry about the next put-down or threat.

These behaviors are clear and specific, but they don’t make up the stuff of leadership legends. They’re not the heroics required to win a world war; they’re the behaviors and actions that make a difference in the day-to-day workplace most of us face.

When I spoke to those being led by effective and ineffective leaders, I also heard about a few specific actions that made it clear that the behaviors are important not just for the leader to display but for others as well. What I found is that effective leaders are effective teachers – they not only act a certain way but encourage others to act in their roles with the same positive characteristics they exhibited.

Just as leaders must have a clear specific vision, they must be able to replicate their successful behaviors in others. This means that to be fully effective, they must master some very specific skills – what I’ve termed Leadership Action Stages – that correlate with the behaviors. Effective leaders:

• Are role models through their own daily behavior for these positive motivating attributes. They aren’t perfect or superhuman, but when they make mistakes, they acknowledge them, apologize and move forward.
• Speak regularly about their objectives as part of their overall responsibilities, emphasizing the importance of achieving those objectives the right way as opposed to any way.
• Recognize behaviors that support the objectives and counsel on behaviors that don’t reflect the way goals are to be achieved. This is a routine function, outside the formal disciplinary and performance process.
• Consciously welcome issues and concerns. These leaders make it clear they want to hear about problems and take the time to listen and respond when matters are brought to their attention. They thank rather than punish those who bring issues forward.

These are basic communication skills that can be learned, practiced and made routine. One need not be Odysseus, Schwartzkopf, Thatcher or Ghandi to demonstrate them. When I thought about the leaders I was hired to work with, the ones who were effective exhibited common behavioral traits and had the ability to transmit their qualities to others so that what are commonly thought of as personal characteristics would be lived and shared by others. They laid the foundation for a cultural standard for success, not just an individual one.

So let’s look at effective leadership in the workplace for what it is: an essential, workaday competency comprised of behaviors and skills that can be required, taught, and honed like any other executive skill, from financial proficiency to marketing or operational acuity. By leaving the heroics to the comic books and history books, we can adopt a leadership approach that works in the real world.

About Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq.
Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq., is President of ELI®, a training firm that helps clients translate values into behaviors, increase employee contribution, build respectful and inclusive cultures, and reduce risk. Prior to establishing ELI in 1986, he was a trial attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and partner in a management law firm.