Leadership

Another book done - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.  Lynne picked this up over 6 months ago and the title never inspired me.  But I ran out of reading material so I gave it a try and devoured it in a day.  I'm off to B&N to buy another of her books - she's very good!  Let me know if you want to know more about the elephant book.  Her two prior books are about horses.

Today, while doing laundry (I know that you should never leave your partner home a week alone with your dirty laundry to take care of!) I spent the hour catching up with my Harvard Management Updates.  I'm about 6 months behind, but have all but one left to read - yeah!  I think that Barb K. is also a subscriber to this newsletter - we should think about splitting the annual cost and sharing or getting BBBSA to pay the cost and circulate...?

Anywho - the April 2007 edition was all about leadership, so it gave me plenty to think about while reading.  They talked about the leadership gap that will appear in about five years, as the first of the Boomers retire, as well as making the transition from manager to executive leader, retaining leadership talent, and the article that got my mind working - "Leadership ability - you either have it or you don't". 

In this article, by Marty Linsky, Cofounder of Cambridge Leadership Associates (why we don't all pool our talents and gifts and start our own leadership consulting firm is beyond me!), talks about critical leadership skills:  adaptability, tolerance for uncertainty and conflict, relationship skills and the ability to let others take the reins.

While I, personally, do ok in a couple of these areas, I realize that I still have a lot of maturing to do in others.  Mr. Linsky talks about "bearing up in the face of ambiguity and chaos."  He gave the example of coaching a CEO to tolerate conflict in his team, rather that deciding issues for them just to avoid the conflict.  I think I may have spent more time than appropriate doing that with my staff.  Beth would say I enabled them, but it's important to understand the underlying reason for that.  My lack of tolerance of conflict.  Rather than let my staff work things out on the their own, I ran in and rescued too quickly and too often.  The final few months I was at BBBSA, I was so tired and lost, I did less rescuing, but the result often was that I'd have to go back and do the work myself because the staff person couldn't (or wouldn't?) work it out. 

Mr. Linsky says in the article that "solving problems for others can too easily become part of your identity," and that you won't allow yourself time for higher-level work.  And that you prevent direct reports from developing their own leadership skills.  Did I interfere with my staff's opportunity to develop their own leadership skills by stepping in too quickly?  I go back and forth.  I don't feel that's true with Denise, whom I would always ask for her ideas and proposals on projects, then would provide feedback and help with fine-tuning.  Kathie...well.  Not so easily done.  Sharon...her solutions were never as customer-friendly as I wanted, so we played a tug-of-war.

"Leadership entails risk."  Risk for me creates anxiety.  Now...I manage my anxiety 150% times more better than even 6 years ago!  And 1,000x more better than when I first came to NYC!  Back in 1987, I was afraid to walk on subway grates in case I fell in, I was scared to deal with utilities, banks, insurance companies, etc. over the phone (I couldn't always anticipate their questions, so I couldn't prepare my answers in advance!)...I had little ability to advocate for myself in the big city!

Remember when I went to the PGA tournament up in Westchester county over a month ago.  Remember how I said I was doing my first spontaneous activity and taking a risk?  Angelia responded by asking what the heck was so risky :-)  But things like that can still may me anxious.  It was a big thing for me to go - and a real trust-building exercise with myself.  You'd be amazed!

Anyway...back to leadership.  When I come back to BBBSA, I am going to work very hard to have made some changes.  I'll need the people around me to keep me honest about what I'm trying to change.  I don't want to be as compliant about things:  I want to really use my critical thinking skills to challenge some of the thinking more.  Mind you - I pick my wars and I chose very carefully.  To me, very few things are worth battling over.  As long as what we're doing is not dragging us off the deep end, it may be different or in a different direction and I won't put up a big fight.  That's not going to change about me.  But I need to listen more deeply and hear the dissonance (which, by the way, I hate musically and even more in personal relationships!  I'm a pretty solid harmony person myself!).  I need to challenge underlying assumptions and do what that Learning and Development group is always pushing us towards:  "clarify your purpose" and identify your outcome.

The other thing I plan on doing differently if I have staff, is to not jump in to solve problems for them.  Encouraging that in others, as well as expecting it from them.  Standing back more.  And pushing myself to move out of my comfort zone into new areas of the business.  In the cover article ("When the Boomers Leave, Will Your Company Have the Leaders It Needs?"), they talked about Fidelity Investments' Accelerated Leadership Development Process.  They developed action-learning project teams, who work together to address issues of strategic importance.  The idea is that team members are exposed to areas they don't typically work in, performing in roles that take them outside of their comfort zone.  In that experience, Cynthia McCauley, from the Center for Creative Leadership says that it is important that "you reward development, not just performance." 

So...a little bit about me (hopefully not too much informaiton!) and my thoughts on Leadership as I continue to think about my return to BBBSA.  If any of you want to share some feedback with me about my leadership style, abilities, areas of development...I'd love to hear from you!