Showing the Way

John Baldoni, author of Lead By Example, tells HRM why leading from the frontline is so intrinsic to business success.

In my field of leadership development you become aware of certain skills and attributes that make leaders successful and keep them in control, and given the current climate there is an even greater amount of pressure being placed upon business leaders. Subsequently, what leaders need to do is assert themselves enough so that they become ‘true’ leaders.

But what does this mean? Well, it means that leaders need to maintain their vision, maintain their mission and strive for alignment, while at the same time pushing for innovation and risk. The other part that goes in hand with this is the human element, where you have to work overtime to keep the team together. That really calls into something that my book is about, which are the issues around whether leaders are being seen, being heard and being present in the workplace. Leadership about letting people see you out there, meeting and mingling with your people and listening to what they are saying; yes, leaders need to stay on message for themselves, but they also need to ensure that they are listening to their people.

Leaders have to be prepared to be available to do whatever the organization needs. So if you’re in a small enterprise or a small publishing firm for example, this might mean helping pack boxes to get the orders out. Leaders have to understand that they need to be there for the organization and do whatever it asks of them.

In truth, every executive probably knows this already, but there is a backside to a recession that says that as things slow down this is the optimum time to develop your people. Leaders need to be thinking about things like coaching, mentoring, career development, job rotations and cross-functioning roles.

These things don’t have to cost money either, which is of course a huge concern given the current state of the economy. Every manager should be doing these things anyway, but there are other career development opportunities out there that leaders need to explore. Some of these may involve going back to school, and that does provide a financial consideration, but things like job rotations aren't going to cost any money, cost-functional training isn't going to cost money, and pairing people up in senior/junior-teams requires no extra funding. Leadership is about having the assertiveness to make these things happen.

The real cost of leading
Regardless of this though, sometimes the only way to save on dollars is to cut back on labor costs, and that’s a really terrible thing for a manager to have to face. No manager likes having to do that, and if you do you’re probably shouldn’t be working with people in the long-term, but sometimes you do have to make these though decisions. For me, a definition of leadership is, knowing to do what is good for the organization – even if what you really want to do is what’s good for the people. As a manager and a leader, the other thing that you have to do is focus on what is left behind after the layoffs. You need to really shore up the morale of the people who are left behind, because they'll be struggling with the dual emotions of fearing that they’ll be next and the sense of guilt over why it wasn’t them getting laid off in the first place. All that is then mixed with the sense of relief they feel when they don’t also become victims of further layoffs and are still in a job.

Some organizations are currently looking to get rid of non-value adding activities, such as preparing reports for senior management or an excessive numbers of meetings, so that job roles can ultimately run more efficiently, but the push for leadership development is still strong. In fact, it was recently reported in the Wall Street Journal that while many training programs are being cut to save on costs, leadership development is not, and this is because companies now realize how critical leadership development is to the future of the enterprise. Again, leadership development does not always mean spending money. There is often a misconception that leadership development programs have to be formalized for them to matter, and I don’t think that is necessarily true. For example, you can coalesce a team, give them special projects which relate to furthering the enterprise and then you come back and work on that: How are we doing? What have we learned? Those aren't cost intensive, but they still add value and give people greater levels of responsibility, which in turn prepares your people for greater roles of leadership as they progress in the company.

The other thing that organizations need to understand is that you can actually teach leadership. It is true that you can’t just make someone a leader – it has to be earned, but you can teach it. In other words, while you can teach someone the principles of it, actually becoming a leader has to be a personal decision. That said, most leaders in our world never went to any sort of a leadership development institution and never will, nor should they need to. I like to define personal leadership as the sense of autonomy, initiative and responsibility, that sense of willingness to step forward and make positive things happen – and that has to come from within us.

What’s more, with the economy we’re experiencing right now, we could be seeing the emergence of new leaders because people often to have to step up and really show their worth during difficult times. In fact, in many ways, crisis is the crucible of leadership. It generates something in people. If we look back at history – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill – these are all people who step forward in moments of crisis and society has always benefited from that. I expect we'll see that same mentality happening within our corporate environment as we continue through this recession.

A shining light
One person’s story that I really like is Anne Mulcahy at Xerox. She was someone from within Human Resources who is now running the company, and when she was given the job, I remember all the financial people saying, “You’ve got to break up the company and bring about some drastic changes,” and there was a remarkable amount of pressure.

Of course, the thing is, Mulcahy is a Xerox-lifer – she had grown up with the company, and she said, “I know the values of our organization, I know what we are capable of doing,” and while there was a significant amount of downsizing that Xerox went through, Mulcahy really helped to right the ship.

She’s a wonderful communicator, she went out and listened and she asked,  “What can we do here? What can't we do?” and she focused on core competencies. It’s a wonderful story of someone who worked – and I’m a great admirer of her leadership ability.

Leadership development isn’t always easy. Sometimes people need to have the door opened for them, or they need permission to do those kinds of leadership things, especially within a large corporate infrastructure. “Oh, you mean I can do that?” That’s leadership. And we have to go and do it, we have to make it happen.

John Baldoni is a recognized thought leader in leadership and communications, as well as a popular motivational speaker, executive coach, and communications consultant. John's work is designed to help managers create, plan, manage, recognize, motivate and lead more effectively.