I am not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I find most of them have a shelf life of about thirty days max.
I am however a pretty big fan of reflection.
In honesty I found 2016 to be a disappointment. The year started with some promise, but then kind of petered out.
I think one of my biggest disappointments was that it seems like this leadership thing still seems to elude us. We still use expressions like human capital and continue to want to minimize the human interaction in our hiring and recruitment processes.
This year I became pretty much a raving fan of Simon Sinek. His advice about starting with Why, describing how leaders eat last, and some of the issues faced by Millennials in the workforce really captured my attention.
Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage and Angela Duckworth’s Grit were also among some of the best stuff I read.
I also read things that while they resonated with me caused disappointment like a great blog that shared the dirty little secret that the vast majority of our graduate business programs don’t include anything about foundational concepts like trust and emotional intelligence and still secretly reinforce a lot of Frederick W. Taylor’s scientific management theories.
Which is where I think the idea of people as disposable assets got their roots in modern society. Prior to that we just called them serfs. I guess human capital is nicer.
I read things that said that employee engagement and emotional and social intelligence are all bullshit and hocus pocus because they can’t be properly measured. I disagree. The fact that you do a shitty job of executing on a concept doesn’t invalidate it, it just speaks to your leadership skills.
The ship has sailed on whether or not engagement is real and it can affect the performance of an organization. Organizations where employees consider themselves highly engaged outperform their competitors in every key performance indicator and engagement is a universal rather than a North American phenomenon.
I had the opportunity to work with a recently retired member of an elite military unit about his transition. We explored things like Covey’s trust model and Simon Sinek’s Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last.
His reaction is “duh”. These concepts have been embedded into the culture he spent his adult life to date in. The fact that these are an epiphany in the private sector stunned him a bit.
He shared with me that being a leader in these units is the easiest job in the world. Everyone is highly competent. Everybody is committed to the mission. The leader blocks and tackles.
Our elite military units have mastered something that in the private sector we call an employment brand.
My colleague Brad Federman very elegantly described an effective employment brand in a post a while back-
Don’t chase people. Be an example. Attract them.
Work hard and be yourself.
The people who belong in your life will come and stay.
Just do your thing.
I was pretty struck by the profound elegance of this statement both for individuals and for organizations. I wish I had of heard this before giving life and career advice to my millennial aged children.
I think organizations should have a leadership brand too, how we expect leaders to behave and what we hold them accountable to do.
Kind of like trust and respect your leadership brand should include legitimacy. I like the way Malcolm Gladwell described legitimacy in his book David and Goliath.
· Those whom are governed have a voice in the process; their input is sought and heard.
· There is a dimension of predictability and consistency in the application of the law or standards.
· The application of the law or standard has to be administered fairly and objectively, you can’t have disparate treatment without a clear and compelling reason.
When I read about what Millennials and the following generation is seeking them seem to want legitimacy from their leaders as well along with the purpose and identity based trust that Covey and Lencioni describe. I think they are right.
I enjoyed some success in 2016. We had a number of folks show up for the leadership training we do and more than a few folks read my ramblings on my blog and other posts so I guess there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
So I guess as we make the turn I will keep talking about managing whole people, relying on identity based trust as your foundational principle, and recognizing that your employment brand dictates your business brand and that your customers will never be more engaged than your employees.
We still have work to do on this leadership thing too…
See you next year.