Bill Fitzgerald, Principal with FitzDrake Search, is like a brother to me. Our friendship started when we partnered through Pepperdine University’s Master of Science in Organization Development degree back in the late eighties and has continued to grow from there. One of the brightest and most pragmatic people I know, Bill has a long list of writings and publications behind him. One of these is a synopsis of a recent article titled ‘What It Means To Lead’ that he has graciously allowed us to include on our blog. Enjoy!

“Now more than ever our country, our institutions and our communities yearn for exceptional leadership. Whether it’s the failing banking system, the rising cost of health care, shrinking state budgets or the fact that we are fighting two wars, the solutions we seek will require acts of leadership from many. 

This article presents a very pragmatic way to think about leadership that can empower many to lead. Everything we read in the popular press tells us that exceptional leaders are in short supply. A way to address this shortage is to have a clear picture of what we need and expect from our leaders. This will make hiring leaders easier and will also provide a road map for developing future leaders. With this as our guide, we may actually find there are more leaders among us than we realize!

To understand what it means to be a leader, it helps to define the specific tasks, or the “work” required to be successful as a leader. The “work” associated with being an effective leader can be referred to as the “7 C’s. The 7 C’s are highly interrelated and provide great insight into how effective leaders spend their time and attention.

1. Establish Clarity

Clarity of purpose is typically part of an overall strategy. An effective leader crafts a clear statement of purpose that defines a reason for existence that goes far beyond self interest or economic gain. It is a statement that speaks to a higher level calling and comes from the heart, not the head. It is a statement that resonates with customers and consumers and motivates employees to excel. 

2. Gain Commitment

Once there is clarity, the challenge facing all leaders is how to build commitment. Commitment cannot be legislated if what you seek is intellectual and emotional engagement. It involves being informed, involved, making a difference and having skin in the game.

3. Ensure Coordination

Coordination is about getting key stakeholders all pulling in the same direction. Effective leaders understand the systemic nature of organizations and know how to leverage their full potential by ensuring alignment and being “hands off”.

4. Build Capacity

Building capacity is how you create the capability to deliver results on a sustained basis. This notion of Capacity comes from the late Joel Henning and Jim Meselko. This involves building business literacy, having access to key information and resources, having choice and choosing accountability.

5. Facilitate Change

Effective leaders understand the dynamics associated with change and how to manage change to achieve their desired outcomes. They do this by building alliances and reducing resistance.

6. Demonstrate Confidence

Effective leaders demonstrate a confidence in themselves which gets expressed as respect for those around them. This is based on a set of beliefs and assumptions about people and organizations that are apparent in all of their interactions. These include a true belief in people, operate from a presumption of good will, make courageous choices, acting fully out of integrity, share enthusiasm about possibilities.

7. Apply Competence 

Competence as described here is not usually considered in discussions of leadership. Competence is the application of whatever technical or business skills are necessary to achieve results. First is context, wherein effective leaders bring or quickly acquire business, technical or industry knowledge that enables them to be effective. Second is the fuel, that is highly effective leaders also have a passion for results. 

The work associated with being an effective leader can be daunting. Being a leader is a demanding role that requires hard work and sacrifice. Stepping into a leadership role is a choice one should make with eyes wide open. Those who have already made this choice can use the 7 C’s to assess their own performance and identify areas to improve upon. Anyone in the position of needing to hire a leader can use the 7 C’s to assess potential and make a more informed decision. In either case, the 7 C’s outline a way of behaving that can lead us to the outcomes we hope to achieve.”

Thank you Bill for these powerful insights. If you truly take the foregoing to heart there is no doubt that you will be better able to lead your organization through these extremely trying times. Your people and organization are counting on you for just this! The question I want to leave with you is “What do I need to say no to in order to say yes to being an even more powerful leader?”.

Here’s a fascinating blog by one of the world’s leaders in large-scale real-time organization change, Jake Jacobs with some profound lessons for us all that I just have to share with you. Enjoy!

“My buddy and colleague Bob Benwick recently posted a blog entry about a talk he had many years ago with my mentor Kathie Dannemiller. We were at an EDS large scale event and Bob walked up to Kathie and asked her whether the group was where we expected them to be at some point during the event. As was her loveable (and point blank) style, Kathie turned to Bob and said, “…they are exactly where they should be! It’s irrelevant where we think they should be! It’s where they are now that we need to work with. They will move forward at a speed that works for them. So what’s your next question?”

Bob says he learned a valuable lesson that day. Having worked with Kathie for a while, I had learned the same lesson years earlier. There’s a joke I heard years ago. The consultant shows up at the wrong venue, works the entire day with the wrong client….and never knows the difference!

That’s an extreme case. But how often do we get caught up with whether we’re “on track” with the agenda? After 20-plus years of doing this work I can’t ever remember actually being on time. A while back I was facilitating a meeting with a colleague. We were two hours behind on the agenda with one hour left in the meeting. My colleague was a little worried. She asked, “What are we going to do to catch up?” I looked at her somewhat puzzled and responded, “What do you mean?” Now she REALLY looked worried! I imagine she was thinking, “So first this guy can’t follow an agenda. Now he can’t even tell time!”

She was looking down at the typed agenda, back at me, and then at her watch. She actually had to do this several times (I’ll admit it took me a short while to figure out what was going on), then I realized, she was measuring our progress against the written agenda, not what was happening in the group. Having learned my lesson from Kathie long ago, I wasn’t worried at all. We were two hours behind and I was able to tell time (a relief to both my colleague, me, and any other clients I’ll ever work with!). The two hours we were behind were only “real” when compared to what we had typed up as the agenda a couple of weeks earlier. The group was right on track with the work they needed to be doing. In fact (possibly miraculously) we even ended the meeting 15 minutes early.

Barbara Bunker, another mentor of mine, put this same lesson a different way. She used to say, “Structure is helpful. It gives you something to deviate from.” The lesson in all of this? Make sure you have a solid structure for any meeting you’re leading. At the same time remember the purpose you’re aiming to achieve. And most of all, pay attention to the group you’re working with. As Kathie said, “….they (always) are where they should be!”

Thank you Jake. Clearly Kathy and Barbara have had a profound impact on all those who have had the wonderful opportunity to connect with these two giants in the field of organization development, be they clients or OD consultants. A simple question I’ll leave with you is “Do you know the difference?”

“You’ve got to watch out for those organizational antibodies!” said the former Head of Pathology for the Vancouver General Hospital and the British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital, Dr. David Hardwick, who I was sitting down with at the time. Dave had been instrumental in leading the establishment of the BC Children’s Hospital and we had built a strong relationship in furthering the organization’s mandate as the leading pediatric tertiary care facility on Canada’s west coast. I was then the Vice President – Human Resources and Strategic Management and Dave was a key internal organization client. Whenever possible we tried to get together and have one of those rare but powerful conversations over a cup of coffee about ‘life and times’. This was one of those get togethers that I’ll never forget.

Dave had made the ‘organizational antibody’ comment in a discussion around a number of joint-venture innovative initiatives in support of the physician community within the facility, and in particular the pathologists. In our discussion, we had come to a  blinding glimpse of the obvious that innovation in fact was a particularly powerful form of change. Dave, who was the Head of Pathology and the President of a world-wide organization of pathologists at the time, felt that not only were we being highly innovative with a number of initiatives we were leading, but it also had a unique dark side. Innovation also creates a considerable threat to some groups within the organization. Many of these groups simply felt they never received enough care, attention and resources to support their medical practice areas. Not an unusual disposition. For innovation to effectively take hold and to be sustained requires additional resources. Where do these resources (funding, people, space, capital equipment, etc) come from? Yes, from others within the organization. Thus the threat innovation unexpectedly creates even though it is so often promoted. Dave felt strongly (directly reflecting his professional background) that ‘organizational antibodies’ can always be expected to surface when something new is interjected into the system and ‘organizational antibodies’ will, not if, attempt to ‘remove or extricate’ anyone leading or anything related to the innovation itself – the foreign intervention – that are perceived as direct threats to their own existence and sustainability. This is what’s often referred to as a ‘blinding glimpse of the obvious’.

It was clear from our discussion that if you are attempting to create and lead innovation (pro-active change), not only do you need to address managing normal resistance to change, one needs to thoughtfully and planfully address ‘organizational antibodies’ that will (again, not if) surface. Thank you Dave for co-creating this very powerful leadership and organizational change concept.

Of course the foregoing is not unique to Health Care organizations. I’ve seen it in every private and public sector organization operating domestically and globally that we have had the pleasure to coach within. So, where do ‘organizational antibodies’ show up in your organization? What change are you currently leading within your organization (small or big) and where are ‘organizational antibodies’ surfacing? What are  the possibilities for turning this into an opportunity in disguise and creating a successful win-win approach? We would enjoy hearing your insights and observations.

I’m quite excited to share a recent newletter created by Jake Jacobs, a global leader in the field of organization development, specifically in the area of large-scale, real-time system change. It’s a pleasure to share with you his comments on ‘Collaborating to Create More Value: Leadership Coaching and Large Scale Change’. Enjoy!

“Given my focus on collaboration, I wanted to share with you one way in which my clients and I have benefited from partnering with others. I have known Bob Benwick for 15 years. We first worked together on a Real Time Strategic Change effort at a bank where he was the senior HR executive. Now he and his wife Bev have a global corporate coaching practice based out of Vancouver.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bob and Bev to talk about synergies between their coaching practice and my large-scale change work.  Bob, Bev and I share the same goal: people and organizations achieving their full potential. The difference is in how we do it.  Bob and Bev (and other coaches) focus on individual leaders’ development. I (and other large-scale change consultants) focus on the overall organization’s development. When we partner, our clients get the best of both worlds.

Bob explains, “I had exposure to the RTSC approach many years ago. It helps businesses that need to turn on a dime (competitively) like the bank I worked at. It is absolutely crystal clear to me how much coaching and large-scale change complement each other.”

Bev continues, “A goal of our coaching is for leaders to bring greater depth to their relationships. Organizations that use us a lot want to make big changes and make them fast. We often get asked to help leaders work together across departments.”

It’s tough to tell whether Bev is talking about her coaching practice or my large-scale change work.

Bob adds, “We contract with leaders for a minimum of six months. There has to be serious commitment or it won’t work. Leaders (and all of us) have taken years to develop our current habits. It will take time to change them. The more people change, the easier and faster it is for the system they work in to change.”

My take on Bob’s comment: the more the system changes, the easier and faster it is for the people in it to change.

Putting leadership coaching and large-scale change together is a “win-win-win.” Leaders can make big changes happen faster – and sustain them over time. And we do a better job for them than either of us could do  alone. “

Jake Jacobs is co-founder and partner of Winds of Change Group — a consulting firm specializing in fast and lasting change.

What are your feelings about change and coaching? What intrigues you the most about Jake’s comments?  What are the possibilities?