Wagner's Law of Changing Your Beliefs: Change Your People to Change Your Beliefs

Wagner's Law of Changing Your Beliefs: Change Your People to Change Your Beliefs -- Frequently, people report they believe something about themselves or hold an opinion about their world, such as with shopping, religion, politics, or science, etc. However, these beliefs are rarely held independently of comparison with beliefs of others with whom we compare our beliefs. Others or groups with whom we compare our beliefs (or opposing beliefs) provide a social context for increases or decreases in cognitive dissonance. Feeling more comfortable with a choice between mutually exclusive beliefs or behaviors, such as buying an expensive product or supporting a religious, political or scientific belief, is a decrease in dissonance. For example, to buy an expensive car with your spouse, you have four options to reduce dissonance: 1. Imagine your spouse agrees with you; 2. Imagine your spouse's opinion is not important; 3. Imagine you agree with your spouse; 4. Compare your decision to another or group who agrees you. Change your people to change the intensity of your beliefs. Originally Published on Ideapod, March 8, 2016 https://www.ideapod.com/idea/Change-Your-People-to-Change-Your-Beliefs/56debc0e386bdf403750be8e

Leadership Effectiveness and Enabling Others to Act

Kouzes and Posner (1997) suggest a strong relationship between the effectiveness of leadership and the process of enabling of others to act. Indeed, leaders create a climate of collaboration that enables others to act.

By fostering collaboration and building spirited teams, they actively involve others under their supervision and outside their responsibility. Leaders help create an atmosphere of trust and human dignity – those who would lead must demonstrate that they understand that encouraging mutual respect sustains extraordinary efforts. Leaders strengthen others through providing followers a choice and sharing information about the tasks being pursued. Each follower feels powerful and capable through leadership responsibility that is shared throughout the organization.

Organizations that foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust can reach the goal by consuming fewer resources. Organizations with leaders who share power and information, provide options, help develop core competencies, use people to get important things done and support their efforts strengthen employees in unique and powerful ways toward self-leadership.

In sum, leadership that grows a collaborative environment and self-leadership initiative on the part of employees improves organizational performance.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Necessity of Leadership Charisma

The human quality of charisma can be best characterized as human expressiveness (Kouzes & Posner, 1993). As Kouzes and Posner (1993) suggested, the term charisma has been used to describe so many different variations of qualities expressed by leaders that it has lost a great deal of its true meaning. The whole idea of the type of leadership quality that leaders need to be attractive to followers has become a bit of an overworked cliché.

What the Kouzes and Posner (1993) discovered in their research is that leaders need an attractive human expressiveness that involves sharing, touching appropriately, smiling and making body movements that gain the attention of those being led. As to whether leaders need charisma for leadership, it is difficult to imagine that a leader could communicate effectively with followers without some form of charisma. Another situational factor may be that groups that are formed in an unstructured fashion will simply look to another person in the group that communicates in a way that gains their confidence and inspires them to act in accordance to the direction set forth by the leader. This is to say, the leader with the most influential form of charisma as defined above will rise to be the leader. In a workplace setting, where groups are formed in a structured fashion, an appointed leader may be charged with leadership and not have the strongest expressiveness tendencies or charisma within the group.

With regard to whether managers who are judged less adept at human expressiveness can lead effectively, depends a large part on the situation, the task faced by the group and whether the group was formed in a structured or unstructured context. In sum, the level of charisma required to get the job done all depends on the situation, but in general, all leaders must possess the ability to express themselves in a way that resonates with and gains the confidence of those who would follow.


Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1995). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Behaviors that Support Shared Values

Modeling the way is how to set the example through behavior that supports and is consistent with shared values. Setting the example or modeling the way is all about leaders doing what they say will do. Leaders must therefore execute the following principles that underlie the strategies in Commitment #7: "Set the Example by Behaving in Ways That are Consistent with Shared Values" (Kouzes & Posner, 1995, p. 232):

1. Clarify personal values and beliefs and those of others;
2. Unify constituents around shared values;
3. Pay attention constantly to how self and others living the values. There is a simple and time-honored religious principle that applies to this discussion: “We’d rather see a sermon than hear one, any day.”
   

Clearly, a leader must provide an example that matches what they are promoting. Kouzes and Posner (1995) provide the following guidance on aligning the messenger with the message:

• A. "Take a look in the mirror" (p. 232) – spend some time reflecting on who you are and what your values are in order to become more self-aware.
• B. "Write your leadership credo" (p. 233) – translate your personal values into a personal leadership credo that describes how you wish your team to proceed in your extended absence.
• C. "Write a personal tribute and a tribute to your organization" (p. 234) – draft an ideal, lofty vision of yourself and then of your organization.
• D. "Open a dialogues about personal and shared values" (p. 235) – ask your team and other important players in your organization to craft credo paragraphs and then share them, melding them into one common understanding. Go first.
• E. "Audit your actions" (p. 236) – contrast what you preach with what you do on a daily basis.
• F. "Trade places" (p. 237) – spend some time doing other jobs in the organization, especially those of your constituents, to gain a perspective of how others view your position and how you might view their positions.
• G. "Be dramatic" (p. 238) – dramatizing events is a great way of driving home points and making them memorable.
• H. "Tell stories about teachable moments" (p. 239) – look for teachable moments and then tell them as parables to instruct various constituencies; these stories will become part of the organization’s oral history.
  

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1995). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Values in Highly Successful Organizations

Kouzes and Posner (1995) adapt three central themes from management professors David Caldwell and Charles ORielly with respect to the values that are practiced in highly successful organizations: "(1) High performance standards; (2) A caring attitude toward people; (3) A sense of uniqueness and pride" (p. 216).

It is fascinating to note that while each of the organizations studied had different business strategies, they had important core values in common. The highly successful organizations exhibited many other values but three central values that were present stressed a commitment to excellence, a concern for how others were being treated, and a sense of pride in the organization. These values must be ever present and easily measurable when interacting with employees. Employees must allow the values to influence how they work. High performance, a caring attitude, and pride in the organization must be endorsed and supported throughout the organization.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1995). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Planning With Small Wins

Achieving a goal through the process of small wins requires careful planning as well motivating constituencies and building commitment into action through managing behavioral aspects (Kouzes & Posner, 1995). Attention to detail in project management is an essential aspect of writing a potentially successful plan. Here are some issues to consider:

1. Vision and values drive planning – using planning tools and theory are the means to develop a good plan but not an end;
2. The people who are responsible for executing the plan should be empowered with writing the plan;
3. Every project should be broken down into definable, manageable pieces;
4. Manage the visualization and aspirations of members by walking through planning the entire project.

Projects that have high visibility and high importance to the organization must be meticulously planned and using the principle of small wins ensures that progress is incremental toward the goal.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1995). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Motivating Through Recognizing Contributions

It is important for individual contributions to be recognized, so that constituencies feel that what they have contributed is valuable. People need encouragement when working long hours toward completion of important group goals. Kouzes and Posner noted that the ability to recognize the contributions of others is a highly desirable attribute in leaders. Here are some of the essentials for recognizing the contributions of individuals (Kouzes & Posner, 1997):

1. “Building self-confidence through high expectations” (p. 271) – help create a self-fulfilling prophecy by giving people a reputation they must then live up to;
2. “Connecting performance and rewards” (p. 275) – leaders help people know what is expected of them, provide feedback on performance and reward those who are judged to meet the standards;
3. Using a variety of rewards (p. 278) – intrinsic rewards within the context of the job such as challenge and recognition should be balanced with extrinsic rewards such as compensation packages and positional power;
4. “Being positive and hopeful” (p. 283).

Each of these techniques offers a new dimension for bolstering the worth of individuals. Although rewarding through the recognition of contributions does not preclude giving financial rewards, the thrust is to provide non-monetary recognitions due to their often-greater value in motivation.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leaders Instill Shared Values

The author cannot emphasize enough the importance of alignment between individual and organizational values. Kouzes and Posner (1997) made an excellent point about the increased effectiveness of this alignment. The author worked for a few years with an executive leader who did not share the same values, which was a frustrating waste of time. Overall, this difference in values was one of the main reasons that the initial business plan was not entirely successful and the second venture struggled. Shared values among business leaders are very important because they serve as standing orders, so to speak. When the team members or entire organization wonders how it should react to a new situation, they always refer to their perception of shared values for guidance.

For example, General George S. Patton, Jr. dictated this standing tactical order: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum about of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.” In many ways this single order summed Patton’s general approach to warfare and provided direction and values that must have been shared and understood by all his officers. Therefore, the same principles can be seen in other organizational contexts: values shared by all are wholly efficacious.

Specifically, the presence of shared values in an organization results in following byproducts (Kouzes & Posner, 1997):

• A. Strong feelings of member effectiveness
• B. Members are more loyal to the organization
• C. Consensus regarding key organizational goals androles of stakeholders in those goals.
• D. Ethical behavior is encouraged.
• E. Strong norms about working hard and caring about quality are encouraged.
• F. Jobs stress and tension are reduced.
• G. Organizational pride is fostered.
• H. Job performance expectancy.
• I. Feelings of belonging, cohesiveness, and cooperation are advanced.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Small Wins Lead Organizational Change

A small win is a baby step toward the goal. The individual steps to complete any large task can usually be identified by breaking down a problem into its component parts. The author is reminded of an expression often used by an acquaintance, “You can eat a whole cow one bite at a time.” While the saying is a bit unusual, it does illustrate the simple point that small, deliberate steps toward a goal, no matter how large the goal, will result in what seems impossible being achieved. Long journeys always begin with a single step and leaders can effect incredibly difficult and large organizational changes by considering the projects as a series of actionable tasks proceeding toward measurable goals and milestones. It is important for constituents to realize that persistent, organized effort over a long period can result in enormous accomplishments. “Small wins breed success and propel us down the path" (Kouzes & Posner, 1997, p. 258).

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Strategies for Facilitating Small Wins

Leaders help facilitate the small wins process by finding the small and sometimes insignificant ways that people can succeed by doing things differently. Progress is made systematically through leaders helping team members mobilizing for fast action and sustaining commitment. Consider also that these steps can be broken down in the six steps (Kouzes & Posner, 1997): (1) Fast action: continuous experimentation; (2) Fast action: reducing items to their essence; (3) Fast action: acting with a sense of urgency; (4) Commitment: providing choices; (5) Commitment: make choices visible; (6) Commitment: make choices hard to revoke.

When mobilizing the organization for fast action, one of the first strategies of the small wins process is that experimentation can take place continuously. Changes can be introduced into the system all the time and the team members are accustomed to change. A second strategy of the small wins process is that items requiring attention are broken into small chunks, which fit into the highly fragmented time available. Projects divided into small chunks also seem more doable. A third strategy of the small wins process is that the team is mobilized to move with a sense of urgency and often without explicit permission–the small wins process does not require permission but it does require urgency. A fourth strategy relates to sustaining commitment by giving team members options about joining the adventure. Following the fourth strategy is to make choices visible so that others can see the commitment and possibly offer assistance. The six strategies for facilitating the small wins process is making the choices available to participants more like ownership and less like leasing–consider what Cortez did when he burned the ships when arriving in the New World, which is a bit drastic but he suddenly had many committed volunteers to the vision of survival in the New World.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leaders Integrating Performance and Rewards

The author spent several years in a start-up company that developed software to implement variable pay and pay-for-performance systems. While it is relatively simple to conceptualize the principles of an integrated performance reward system, these systems are difficult and complex to implement with regard to information technology. Kouzes and Posner (1997, p. 276) listed three criteria for integrating performance-reward systems: (1) Make certain that people know what’s expected of them; (2) Provide feedback about contributors’ performance; and (3) Reward only those who meet the standards. Consider that it sometimes can be difficult to implement these elements.

In order to make certain that people know what is expected of them, the leader and the organization must have a clear idea of what they should be doing and communicate that message clearly – with sales personnel, this can be relatively straightforward in terms of compensating based upon closing sales. However, with other team members the goals and how to achieve them are far less straightforward, leaving some doubt about the reasonableness of the goal and the measure being applied.

Providing feedback about contributors’ performance is another challenging but important concern. Leaders must give clear and fair feedback on the shortest time schedule possible. The author has been in organizations that give formal performance and salary reviews every year–this process has little positive value and some negative value. The feedback as well as the reward for the outcome must be far closer to the actual performance. Suppose that the team member does something that requires instructive feedback on Day 22 and then the performance review is conducted on Day 365–the team member could have been working on improvement throughout the year–the team member may be hostile and defensive about receiving feedback so far separated from the action. Leaders need to give informal feedback (good and bad) on at least a weekly basis, if not sooner.

Rewarding only those who meet the standards is also fraught with challenges. There is often the need to motivate the individual and the team, instead of just the individual. Rewarding the team can sometimes run counter to the need to reward the individual for their contribution. Recall the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario: if one works in a team, one expects to be rewarded as a team to receive an appropriate but not maximum payoff. However, if one works as an individual, the payoff is greater to each person. This edgy conflict and symbiosis between group and individual rewards is difficult to manage fairly. Consider also that the information technology challenges of rewarding multiple teams financially for achieving goals can get very expensive unless the entire reward is diluted among the teams. Finally, the blending of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards is not a simple process.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership in Competitive Settings

Perhaps the reason that competition was not cited as a part of anyone’s personal best leadership experience is because it can be an exhausting, frustrating situation (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). There are myths here in Silicon Valley about companies and teams achieving superior performance by competing against one another with precisely the same mission–I have rarely witnessed this effect–in fact, I have observed quite the opposite. When executive leaders give two teams similar tasks and encourage them to compete for resources within the organization, the outcome is usually conflict and inefficiency. Obviously, competition has its place in the marketplace but it is often a suboptimal way of managing and leading in the organizational setting; groups should have small and defined overlap in mission and responsibilities.

In organizational settings, there is a subtle difference between collaboration and cooperation. Collaboration is active participation with others to achieve a common goal, while cooperation may be passive participation in the process. Contrast collaboration and cooperation with competition. In competitive environments, teams are not supporting a vision as we see in neither cooperation nor working toward completing a common goal as we see in collaborative efforts. The essence of competition is that there can be only one winner, which is a zero sum game that is not advantageous in organizations where a persistent relationship between groups and group members must be maintained. The persistent relationship of team members within the context of the organizational boundaries sets up the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario, which limits the payoff. Otherwise, that is, absent the boundaries of the organization and limited resources, competition might provide a reasonable alternative, as it does in the marketplace.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership and Empowerment

The paradox of power diffusion and expansion is a fascinating topic. The lesson that Arnold Tannenbaum published in his research is that constituencies that perceive greater power within their field of influence, especially over the organization, tend to have higher satisfaction (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). Power sharing with group members demonstrates trust and respect. Tannenbaum also found that organizational effectiveness tended to be higher when members perceived that they possessed greater power. Obviously, the leaders most closely associated with these group members had created a climate of empowerment, where each member felt as if they could act as they saw fit on behalf of the organization. The author has experienced delegation of significant amounts of power, when working for a past manager who made each team member the “CEO” of each functional marketing area. There seems to be a certain gestalt in this type of situation with regard to total amount of power being wielded exceeding the leaders own formal organizational power – this may be that the reference, expert, etc. power of other members is exercised in addition to the positional power of the leader.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leaders Effecting Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards

Intrinsic rewards are those rewards that are built into and incidental to performance of the job. Intrinsic rewards are within the context of the job and are strongly correlated with leaders and constituents performing at their best. Recognition is an example of an intrinsic reward. The challenge of the job and satisfaction of doing a good job can be an intrinsic reward. Praise and other alternative rewards outside the company’s formal reward system are other forms of intrinsic compensation.

On the other hand, extrinsic rewards are those rewards that are supplied from outside of the performance of the job. Financial rewards such as salary, stock options, bonus, and benefits of the job, prestige and title are examples of extrinsic rewards. Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that intrinsic motivation must be a part of the entire perceived reward package for the team member to perform at their personal best. Moreover, Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that extrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards might negate one another instead of being additive.

Employees cannot be expected to work for free, but if the job is intrinsically rewarding, then the addition of external rewards may not make that much difference. Why is this the case? I am reminded of a mentor’s stance on variable pay (paraphrased): “If I have to pay someone extra to do the job as best as they can, then I’ve hired the wrong person for the job.” He definitely has a point, when one considers positions outside of sales, where the control over outcomes is often limited. If a person is well-suited and motivated to do a job, should they do less than their absolute best if we pay them less? No, and many professionals would still uphold professional standards even if they were paid minimum wage, because they are professionals. Of course, their professional job status and economic contribution often warrants more than minimum wage though. In some positions, altering the extrinsic rewards may have some effect but not a considerable amount because the job has professional standards of performance. However, if you increase intrinsic rewards for professionals, the quality of output may increase because the team member feels subconsciously that they are doing a better job and, therefore, are more closely adhering to professional standards.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Strategies for Recognizing Accomplishments

Leaders should have expectations for their own performance and for their followers. I am reminded of the true story of the Soviet submarine K-19 that was recently made into a movie. One of the problems faced by the crew was that they were not completely trained and the officers were not doing much about the issue, presumably due to the lack of proper equipment. The Captain of the submarine called all the officers together and told them that they (i.e., the officers) had failed the crew for not setting high standards. They could have built a stronger crew by recognizing accomplishments that met the requirements communicated by their expectations. According,to Kouzes and Posner (2002), here are some of the ways that leaders can recognize accomplishments:

• Be creative about rewards and give them to team members personally – constituents respond to many different intrinsic rewards and do not necessarily need or always want extrinsic rewards.
• Make recognition of employees public – the conventional wisdom has been that building up people in public may cause jealousy but a more common reaction is that others wish to emulate those who receive the rewards and increase their performance accordingly.
• Design the reward and recognition system in a participatory fashion – let people have a say in how they want to be recognized and rewarded, within reason, of course.
• Provide feedback en route – the author believes this is one of the most powerful principles discussed by Kouzes and Posner (2002): give people timely, nurturing feedback and you can turbocharge the performance of your team. Yearly performance reviews are not timed close enough with good or bad behavior to be anything but perfunctory paper pushing.
• Create Pygmalions – feedback can be observation alone but feedback can also be treatment, meaning that if we honestly treat people like winners; there is a high probability that they will attempt to live up to that image.
• Find people who are doing things right – leaders actually should be looking for people to reward for exhibiting behaviors consistent with the vision of the organization. In effect, they are looking for “poster children” to build up and promote as positive examples for the organization.
• Coach – coaching expands upon the notion of providing feedback en route and in real time. Leaders need to provide feedback in a way that incorporates input from those being coached, which includes talking and strategizing about how to move forward toward the goal day by day.
  

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leading Through Organizational Celebrations

Every society must mark milestones and “bury its dead” – we must celebrate and wish people well in their new endeavors. Still, there are many reasons to celebrate both inside and outside the organizational context, but I have noted in my career that it is important to maintain continuity and regularity without making the celebrations seem tired and worn out. Setting aside a standard time for celebration such as the first Friday of the month or second Thursday of the month helps facilitate celebrations at regular intervals. Regardless of the time allocated for celebrating all the various events, there should be a person tasked with responsibility and a budget to host the events. Some might argue that you can celebrate too much, but there is important information sharing and acknowledgement of effort that takes place at these meetings.

Here are some of the reasons for spontaneous celebrations catalogued by Kouzes and Posner (2002), including some additional thoughts:

• Stages of organization change – the company is expanding, opening new offices, reorganizing the management structure, closing/altering capacity, merging with another company/operation, the sun setting of old technology, the dawning of new technology and occupying new office space, etc.
• Successes – financial, promotions, individual awards, company awards, new customers, new strategic partnerships, product extensions and market expansions, etc.
• Losses – old practices/procedures are retired, financial opportunities, contracts, retiring/resigning employees, job changes, status changes, death of a colleague and recap of an experiment that failed.
• People – teamwork, team success, founders’ contribution, winners of sales contests, President’s/100% club, employee of the month/quarter/year awards, individual birthdays, marriages, and group reunions.
• Events – a company’s anniversary, grand opening days, holidays, new company vision or mission, change in company vision or mission, etc.
• “The Unknown” – paradox, ambiguity in the marketplace, or just simply to rally the troops because they seem to need it, etc.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Elements of Giving Life to Vision

Four elements that leaders should be employing while trying to give life to a vision are (Kouzes & Posner, 2002):

• Powerful Language
• Powerful Communication Style
• Non-verbal Expressiveness
• Positive Attitude

A positive attitude is extremely important to giving a life to a vision. In many ways, a positive attitude comes from really believing in the vision to the very core of your being. Many leaders try to lead people or inspire a vision without really believing in the vision. This is especially true when it comes to start-up companies. Instead, in which case, many so-called leaders just want to get rich quickly and are cynical about a pure vision. The vision in that respect is just a horse that is ridden for a while. A positive attitude is not just upbeat, but healthy and beneficial for the company and for society. A positive attitude toward the vision and how meaning can be created from it is important.

Another important element is breathing life into visions with a powerful language. Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that using all manner of figures of speech, metaphors, stories and quotations, etc., helps to communicate a shared identity to constituencies that mobilizes them toward pursuing the vision. A number clichés could also evoke the proper mental imagery necessary to bring the abstraction to the concrete form. Language is a powerful tool for driving home to employees what the company stands for. Professor Hart’s list of four categories of words used by leaders (Kouzes & Posner, 2002) provides some guidance to those would like to improve their ability to lead through language: (1) Words that convey realism; (2) Words that convey optimism; (3) Words that show motion; (4) Words that express certainty.

Related to possessing a positive attitude is the adoption of a positive communication style. Leaders need to communicate in an enthusiastic style that tells people they can and should participate to complete the goal. If followers do not get the impression that the leaders think it can be done, they will not believe it either. Followers need to see a high-energy, can-do attitude in everything we do at work.

Nonverbal expressiveness is a way of communicating without directly using words. Some followers might think of this personality trait of being simply charismatic. Certainly, charisma is part of nonverbal expressiveness in terms of having a strong, magnetic, and inspiring personality. Note that expressiveness is not aggressiveness per se but a strong display of warmth and friendship. One can certainly have an impact on people without explicitly saying what you want or need to have done in the organization. The answer to the following question extends the discussion of what human expressiveness is and how it relates to charisma.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Leadership Processes to Share Vision

In order to share their vision with others, leaders should engage in the following processes (Kouzes & Posner, 2002):

• Discover and appeal to a common purpose.
• Communicate expressively, thereby bringing the vision to life in such a way that people can see themselves in it.
• Sincerely believe in what they are saying and demonstrate their personal conviction.

To discover a common purpose we must start by asking our constituents what it is they seek. If those we would like to motivate are seeking something that we cannot provide or seem to move them toward, they will be less likely to follow. The author’s view is that members of the organization will follow even though they do not see a common purpose. The real question is of degree in which they will follow without seeing their aspirations fulfilled within the leader’s dream. For example, if one thinks it would really nice to build a startup organization and get really rich doing it, then those that buy into that common purpose would be willing to give up vast portions of their personal life in pursuit of that dream, while those who didn’t aspire to be rich, would only work for a paycheck and not put in the extra time to really follow the leader’s dream. Leaders who can sense the purpose in followers and develop a shared sense of direction are more likely to be successful. Leaders should be able to structure the opportunities within the organization in such a way that a meaning beyond financial reward is created.

Giving life to a vision is another critical element in enlisting others. Kouzes and Posner (2002) provide interesting commentary when they state that a leader makes the vision tangible “so that others can see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, feel it.” Leaders can give life to a vision by employing powerful language, a positive communication style, and nonverbal expressiveness. Powerful language employs metaphors, figures of speech, and action-oriented vocabulary to paint word pictures in followers’ minds. By using a positive communications style, leaders convey the possibility of unleashing the power within to “accomplish whatever they desire.” Non-verbal expressiveness is that magnetic quality that draws people near and provides them with strong incentives to follow through application of warmth and friendship.

The ability of the leader to demonstrate personal conviction is vital to recruiting and motivating people to join your program. The attribute being described goes far beyond doing a good job because it was simply required. A leader must both internalize conviction and exude unabashedly the support/belief and that can truly move others toward common goals. A leader both inspires and motivates.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Outsight and Effective Leadership

Leaders need to be in touch with what is going on outside the organization and not be isolated by institutional boundaries. Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that changes can come from either outside or inside the organization. Successful innovation rarely comes from within. While the bulk of new product and product improvement ideas come from customers through salespeople and executives, this input should be rationalized by the marketing function before entering the product plan. However, this market research filtering mechanism is not precisely the outsight that leaders need. Outsight can be thought of as sensitivity to external realities presented by all constituents regardless of the context. Just as the metaphor presented in the textbook of turning our back on the ocean, we cannot let ourselves be swept away by not looking at the changes going on outside our companies. Leaders need to stay in touch with contacts in the marketplace and those with different social, political, technological, economic, and artistic backgrounds. Experienced managers can sometimes be at a real disadvantage when it comes to effective use of outsight – they fall into the trap of thinking that they have heard about that issue before. One of the keys to understanding outsight can be found in one of my Grandfather’s sayings, “Remember, the book of what you DO NOT know is a lot bigger that the book of what you DO know.” In sum, successful leaders work to tear down the walls that confine the organization, boundaries that are often self-imposed.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Enhancing Leadership Capacity to Envision the Future

Here are some action items for leaders to envision a bright future for their organizations (Kouzes & Posner, 2002):

• Think first about your past—by examining the history of the organization, including accomplishments and failures the leader can better understand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and trends relative to visionary thinking.
• Determine what you want—the leader’s organization needs to determine what needs to be accomplished in the next five years from now and beyond. This process will help identify some of the basic values that drive the leader’s philosophy of leadership. What do we want to do? What are we passionate about? What do we want to prove by building this organization? And so on and so forth.
• Write an article about how you have made a difference—the article describing a future flashback of one’s accomplishments would be a very useful way of fleshing out what things the leader is most proud of and what things could potentially provide the greatest contribution to the surrounding community or the community’s growth. Showing the article to one’s colleagues and peers might be uncomfortable but also very instructive.
• Write a short vision statement—the vision statement is a more comprehensive version of the time-honored process of writing a mission statement. In the vision statement, the leader would write about the ideal vision of his career and the business success of the organization. A related process is to write a short slogan that captures the essence of the vision. The short slogan is a great way of communicating the fundamental reason for the organization’s existence to all constituencies. The author has personally found that such slogans are especially useful for developing short sales pitches for field sales people to learn how to describe concisely the company.
• Act on your intuition—if one has an idea that brings life to a vision, then a great way of testing the realism is to go try something that validates the vision. Try it. Model it. Prototype it. For example, if the vision is to build a company that is more closely in touch with customers, then a good way to test out that notion is to start trying to be closer in communication with customers.
• Test your assumptions—it is often instructive to look at the reasons why you have formulated a certain vision. The assumptions underlying our visions may make sense or they may not make sense. Kouzes and Posner (2002) suggest that our visions may be based on faulty assumptions, so it seems prudent to test out a few of our ideas before committing to a certain vision.
• Become a futurist—whose view of the future does the organization have? There are a number of popular books on future trends as well as organizations that prognosticate about future trends. A committee or group of individuals in the organization should be designated with the responsibility to examine the horizon for future trends, which goes beyond just staying current. Organizations must develop visions within the context of what might be possible in the future, instead of what might probably happen.
• Rehearse with visualizations and affirmations—rehearsing with visualization is a common practice in athletics, but it is surprising that we do not practice the technique more in organizational settings. Managers can practice the skill of visualizing the future by choosing a reference organization and brainstorming about what an appropriate vision for the future would be. The more leaders spend time imagining what it will be like for the organization to attain its vision, the more likely they are going to identify potential obstacles that can be resolved and also be mentally hardened to accept stumbling blocks along the way.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2002). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.