Far from being touchy-feely concepts touted by motivational speakers, purpose and values have been identified as key drivers of high-performing organisations.

• In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras reveal that purpose- and values-driven organisations outperformed the general market and comparison companies by 15:1 and 6:1, respectively.
• In Corporate Culture and Performance, Harvard professors John Kotter and James Heskett found that firms with shared-values–based cultures enjoyed 400% higher revenues, 700% greater job growth, 1,200% higher stock prices and significantly faster profit performance, as compared to companies in similar industries.
• In Firms of Endearment, marketing professor Rajendra Sisodia and his coauthors explain how companies that put employees’ and customers’ needs ahead of shareholders’ desires outperform conventional competitors in stock-market performance by 8:1.

Leaders who have a clearly articulated purpose and are driven to make a difference can inspire people to overcome insurmountable odds, writes Roy M. Spence Jr. in It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand for.

“Life is short, so live it out doing something that you care about,” he writes. “Try to make a difference the best way you can. There’s an enormous satisfaction in seeing the cultural transformation that happens when an organisation is turned on to purpose.”

While a well-designed strategy and its effective implementation are required for business success, neither inspires followers to maintain engagement during troubled times. Purpose must tap into people’s hearts and help them give their best when the chips are down.

Don’t ever take a job— join a crusade! Find a cause that you can believe in and give yourself to it completely. ~ Colleen Barrett, president emerita of Southwest Airlines

In a company without purpose, people have only a vague idea of what they’re supposed to do. There’s always activity and busyness, but it’s often frenetic, disorganised and focused solely on short-term goals. There’s a lack of direction and commitment to purpose.

Top executives erroneously look to the competition when making decisions, rather than making up their own minds about what really matters. This lack of clarity leads to poor business decisions and failed product launches. Employees who work without purpose experience the consequences.

“Across organisations, nearly every survey suggests that the vast majority of employees don’t feel fully engaged at work, valued for their contributions, or freed and trusted to do what they do best,” reports Tony Schwartz in a recent  HBR.org blog post. “Instead, they feel weighed down by multiple demands and distractions, and they often don’t derive much meaning or satisfaction from their work. That’s a tragedy for millions of people and a huge lost opportunity for organisations.”

Lack of Full Engagement

Put simply, satisfied and engaged employees perform better. In a Towers Watson study of roughly 90,000 employees across 18 countries, companies with the most engaged employees reported a 19% increase in operating income and 28% growth in earnings per share. Companies whose employees had the lowest level of engagement had a 32% decline in operating income and an 11% drop in earnings.

People enjoy being engaged in meaningful work. Humans, by nature, are a passionate species, and most of us seek out stimulating experiences. Companies that recognise this and actively cultivate and communicate a worthwhile corporate purpose become employers of choice.

A major Gallup Organisation research study identified 12 critical elements for creating highly engaged employees. About half deal with employees’ sense of belonging. One of the key criteria is captured in the following statement: “The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.”

After basic needs are fulfilled, an employee searches for meaning in a job. People seek a higher purpose, something in which to believe. If, in your role as a leader, you aren’t articulating what you care about and how you plan to make a difference, then you probably aren’t inspiring full engagement.

Energy and Creative Flow

Having a purpose provides context for all of one’s efforts, and it’s a chief criterion for “flow”—the energy state that occurs when one’s mind, body and entire being are committed to the task at hand. Flow turns mundane work into completely absorbing experiences, allowing us to push the limits of skills and talents.

Flow and commitment also create healthier, happier employees, while driving innovative thinking. To tap into full engagement, leaders must clearly identify and articulate what truly matters to the company:

• Why are we in business?
• What difference do we want to make in the world?
• What’s our most important purpose?

On some level, everyone wants to live a purposeful life, yet we are distracted by societal pressures to achieve wealth and prestige. There are indications, however, that this is changing. Just as GNP fails to reflect the well-being and satisfaction of a country’s citizens, a person’s net worth actually has little to do with personal fulfillment.

It is difficult to impossible to truly inspire the creators of customer happiness — the employees —  with the ethic of profit maximization…It is my experience that employees can get very excited and inspired by a business that has an important business purpose. ~ John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market

Leadership starts on a personal level and permeates one’s function in a company, community and society. While countless books address the importance of finding personal purpose, how does it play out within an organisational context? How do you link your personal purpose and values to those of your company?

Finding a Business Purpose

As work evolves in the 21st century, separating our professional and personal lives proves to be an artificial divide. Your personal purpose influences your work purpose, and vice versa.

A company’s purpose starts with its leaders and works its way through the organisation. It shows up in products, services, and employee and customer experiences.

An inspirational purpose often lies hidden within an organisation. The following suggestions will help you identify and articulate key elements:

1. Revisit your organisation’s heritage (past history).
2. Review successes. At what does the business excel?
3. Start asking “why?”
4. What won’t your organisation do? Review false starts and failures.
5. Talk to employees.
6. Talk to top leaders.
7.  Talk to high performers.
8.  Talk to customers.
9. Follow your heart.

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your calling. ~ Aristotle

A purpose is informed by the world’s needs. When you build an organisation with a concrete purpose in mind — one that fills a real need in the marketplace — performance will follow.

Ask the following questions:

• Why does your organisation do what it does?
• Why is this important to the people you serve?
• Why does your organisation’s existence matter?
• What is its functional benefit to customers and constituents?
• What is the emotional benefit to them?
• What is the ultimate value to your customer?
• What are you deeply passionate about?
• At what can you excel?
• What drives your economic engine?

Mission statements used to have a purpose. The purpose was to force management to make hard decisions about what the company stood for. A hard decision means giving up one thing to get another.  ~ Seth Godin, marketing expert

When a mission statement is well written, it serves as a declaration of purpose. But corporate mission statements are often little more than a descriptive sentence about products, aspirations or desired public perceptions. They’re more powerful when they clearly and specifically articulate the difference your business strives to make in the world.

Leaders who want to succeed should straightforwardly communicate what they believe in and why they’re so passionate about their cause, according to business consultant Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Portfolio, 2010). He further articulates how great leaders inspire action in the following video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Most people know what they do and how they do it, Sinek says, but few communicate why they’re doing it.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy into why you do it,” he emphasises.

If you don’t know and cannot communicate why you take specific actions, how can you expect employees to become loyal followers who support your mission?

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. ~ James Baldwin, author

The Bridge to What Matters

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. ~ Helen Keller

Great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Walt Disney always communicated their “why”—the reasons they acted, why they cared and their future hopes. Great business leaders follow suit:

• Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, believed air travel should be fun and accessible to everyone.
• Apple’s Steve Wozniak thought everyone should have a computer and, along with Steve Jobs, set out to challenge established corporations’ status quo.
• Wal-Mart’s Sam Walton believed all people should have access to low-cost goods.
• Starbucks’ Howard Schultz wanted to create social experiences in cafés resembling those in Italy.

Once company leaders have identified and clearly articulated what they stand for, it’s up to you to build a bridge between the business’ purpose and your own values:

• In what way can you make a difference through company products and services?
• How can you express what truly matters in the work you do?
• In what ways can you make a difference in the world through the people you work for and with?

Making a Difference

When you share your greater cause and higher purpose, listeners filter the message and decide to trust you (or not). When listeners’ values and purpose resonate with your own, they are primed to become followers who will favorably perceive subsequent messages.

You cannot gain a foothold in someone’s brain by leading with what you want them to do. You must first communicate why it’s important.

Strive to be like the leaders who never lose sight of why they do what they do and why people should care. Only then will you inspire your people to attain sustainable success.

Leaders are the stewards of organisational energy. They recruit, direct, channel, renew, focus and invest energy from all the individual contributors in the service of the corporate mission. The energy of each individual contributor in the corporation must be actively recruited. This requires aligning individual and organisational purpose. ~ Authors James Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement

It’s their ability to be forward-looking and focus on the future. To become a better leader or distinguish yourself as someone primed for promotion, you’ll want to develop your capacity to envision the future.

Focusing on the future sets leaders apart. The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is a defining competency — perhaps the most important one, next to honesty.

In The Leadership Code (Harvard School of Business Press, 2009), Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman reviewed leadership theory and distilled leadership competencies into five overarching roles:

1. Strategist — Leaders shape the future.
2. Executor — Leaders make things happen.
3. Talent manager — Leaders engage today’s talent.
4. Human capital developer — Leaders build the next generation.
5. Personal proficiency — Leaders invest in their own development.

While leadership has evolved over time, these five areas of focus have remained constant as key functions of effective leaders, across all industries. Leaders must be able to answer the question, “Where are we going?”

We look to our leaders to envision a future, figure out where the organisation must go to succeed, evaluate ideas for pragmatism and determine if they fit the company’s core mission. Leaders focus on how people, money, resources and organisational capabilities will work together to move from the present to a desired future.

To become a strategist, your thinking must be future-oriented. You’ll need to become intensely curious about trends, both inside and outside your organisation’s field. You’ll need a systematic way of staying informed and tracking changes. This requires you to engage everyone in the organisation and collect new ideas from various sources. Invite everyone to participate in creating a better future ( D. Worrall, 2009,  A Climate for Change Ch. 1 & 2)

What People Want from Leaders

Leadership professors Barry Posner and Jim Kouzes, after surveying thousands of people on ideal leadership qualities, reveal that the ability to look forward is second only to honesty as the most admired trait.

On average, 70 percent of workers worldwide select “forward-looking” as a key leadership competency. Think about the leaders you’ve followed or admired. The great ones are visionaries who serve as custodians of the future. You want to partner with leaders who can create a better future.

As we age, gain more experience and move up the organisational hierarchy, our desire for a forward-looking leader increases, according to Posner and Kouzes. While only about one-third of undergraduate college students ranked “forward-looking” among their most important leadership attributes, more than 90 percent of senior executives had added it to their lists.

Some leaders are naturally future-oriented; many others excel as executors or talent managers.  Still others shine at getting things done and making things happen; others bring out the best in people.

While achieving great results with people is always rewarding, it’s not enough for promotion to higher levels of responsibility and leadership. To take that step, you must expand your ability to communicate a vision for the future. Forward-looking leaders can spot opportunities in their day-to-day work, and they excel at anticipatory thinking.

How Far Can You See?

Do you look beyond what’s in front of you — especially when daily tasks take up so much time and energy?

How do you become future-oriented and still handle day-to-day challenges?

While the ability to focus on the future separates leaders from the rank-and-file, many of us fail to understand and appreciate its importance. We devote almost no time to developing this vital quality, which then becomes a huge barrier to future success.

The challenge of being forward-looking escalates with each managerial level. Front-line supervisors are expected to anticipate events about three months ahead. Mid-level managers have timelines for more complex projects and need to look three to five years into the future. Those in the executive suites must focus on goals that are often 10+ years away.

How to Develop Future Focus

How do you develop your capacity to be future-focused?

Carve out some time each week to peer into the distance and imagine what may be out there.

Start with 30 minutes a day, using the time to learn about what’s going on in your industry, with customers, with the potential future of your products and services. You can read magazines, books and/or online research.

Top executives estimate they spend only about 3 percent of their time thinking about, and getting others on board with, the critical issues that will shape their business 10 or more years down the road. It’s simply not enough time.

Sparking Energy for What Really Matters

Here’s the problem: In tough economic times, everyone hunkers down on tactics. They focus on survival and results. Decisions become pragmatic. After a while, however, this short-term approach grinds us down, and we lose sight of the big picture.

In today’s difficult times, people need to be reminded of why they are doing what they do — and why it matters. This is when leaders can step up and make a difference. Leadership is more than encouraging high-performance; it’s about reminding people of what they are trying to build and why it matters.

In many ways, leadership supplies oxygen to keep the fires going. When people are mired in day-to-day work details, they can lose their bearings. An effective leader makes a difference by helping people see their role in building a better future.

3 Ways to Grow Your Future-Focus

There are three ways to expand your ability to become more future-oriented and hone your leadership effectiveness. In The Truth About Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Posner and Kouzes urge readers to spend time learning about the future through:

1. Insight
2. Outsight
3. Foresight

Insight: Explore Your Past

This exercise that follows will help you connect your past experiences and values with your current work. When you look backward, you can see farther ahead and imagine future possibilities.

Look for repeating themes in your life — the recurring messages that keep reminding you of what matters most. For younger leaders, there’s less past to recall; however, it’s still important to use the richness of your life experiences to uncover ideals.

Here are some questions to explore:

• Identify the recurring theme in your life.
• To which topic do you return again and again?
• What story do you keep telling and retelling?

Search your past to find the theme. It will probably form the basis of your core values and higher purpose. When you know more about yourself, your dreams and your purpose, it will be easier to keep this information in mind each time you visualize the future.

Outsight: Imagine the Possibilities

To be a credible leader, you need to spend more time reading, thinking and talking about long-term possibilities. Develop the discipline to spend more time studying the future.

Establish a “future committee” dedicated to collecting ideas, articles, information and resources about trends affecting your organisation. Track publications, both off- and online. Circulate these ideas to stimulate discussions and innovative thinking.

For example, The World Future Society recommends examination of six distinct business-trend categories:

1. Demographics
2. Economics
3. Government
4. Environment
5. Society
6. Technology

Improve your understanding of the world around you, not just in your industry. A game-changing product in an unrelated field could impact your customers and their need for your services. No one can afford to be short-term–oriented in a globally connected marketplace.

Foresight: Survival of the Optimists

“Optimists have a sixth sense for possibilities that realists can’t or won’t see.” ~ Warren Bennis, leadership professor

There is a dramatic difference between people who react to roadblocks with a sense of futility and pessimism and those who react with determination and optimism. Psychologist Martin Seligman has validated that the most successful business leaders are inspired by a sense of optimism.

Those who learn to be optimistic about life and work are far more likely to be successful than those who view a current event through the pessimist’s lens. Being optimistic doesn’t mean ignoring reality or the hardships required to get great results. Leaders can define a business reality, yet defy a negative verdict. By being optimists, leaders give people the hope, energy and strength needed to carry on.

The more you understand reality, the more prepared you are to endure hardships and adversity. Optimism, and a vision for what’s possible, supplies the energy to keep going, persist through challenges and come out on the other side.

One of the best ways to expand your potential leadership abilities is to work with an executive coach, who can help you see what you don’t yet see. An experienced coach will stimulate your thinking and conversations about what’s possible.

You Can See Forever

To become a better leader, or to be seen as a high-potential leader, spend more time in the future. At some point, a future focus will permeate your thinking and saturate your communications.

Everything you do and say will remind people of the future you want to create —for yourself, your colleagues, your customers and the organisation. You will draw upon your past experiences, your core values and your guiding purpose.

You will become well-read about trends as you study the future and talk with other people about the exciting possibilities. There’s no doubt that we live in interesting times, and game-changing ideas, products and services are popping up all the time.

Being part of the future allows you to contribute to its creation. You can’t do that without taking time to develop your capacity to be future-focused. And you can’t become future-focused without discipline and action.

As any fan of The Office can attest, negative managerial behaviour severely affects employees’ work lives.

Managers’ day-to-day and moment-to-moment actions also create a ripple effect, directly facilitating or impeding the organisation’s ability to function.

The best managers recognise their power to influence and strive to build teams with great inner work lives.

In The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Harvard Business Press, 2011), Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer describe how people with great inner work lives have:

• Consistently positive emotions
• Strong motivation
• Favorable perceptions of the organisation, their work and their colleagues

The worst managers undermine others’ inner work lives, often unwittingly. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees at seven companies, Amabile and Kramer found surprising results on the factors that affect performance.

What matters most is forward momentum in meaningful work—in a word, progress. Managers who recognise the need for even small wins set the stage for high performance.

But surveys of CEOs and project leaders reveal that 95 percent fundamentally misunderstand the need for this critical motivator.

What Really Motivates Us?

If you lead knowledge workers, you likely employ these conventional management practices:

• Recruit the best talent.
• Provide appropriate incentives.
• Give stretch assignments to develop talent.
• Use emotional intelligence to connect with each individual.
• Review performance carefully.

Unfortunately, you may miss the most fundamental source of leverage: managing for progress. Recognising even the smallest win has a more powerful impact than virtually anything else.

In a survey by Amabile and Kramer, 669 managers ranked five factors that could influence motivation and emotions at work:

1. Recognition
2. Incentives
3. Interpersonal support
4. Clear goals
5. Support for making progress in the work

Managers incorrectly ranked “support for making progress” dead last, with most citing “recognition for good work” as the most important motivator.

Your ability to focus on progress is paramount. Video-game designers excel at this mission, hooking players on the steady pace of progress bars.

Facilitating Progress

When you focus on small wins and facilitate progress, your employees will find the energy and drive required to perform optimally.

Two key forces enable progress:

• Catalysts—Events that directly advance project work, such as:
  • Clear goals
  • Autonomy
  • Resources, including time
  • Reviewing lessons from errors and succes
• Nourishers—Interpersonal events that uplift workers, including:
  • Encouragement and support
  • Demonstrations of respect
  • Collegiality

Dealing with Setbacks

Three events undermine people’s inner work lives:

1. Setbacks—The biggest downer, yet inevitable in any sort of meaningful work
2. Inhibitors—Events that directly hinder project work
3. Toxins—Interpersonal events that undermine the people doing the work

Negative events carry a greater impact than positive ones. We pay more attention to them, remember them, and spend more time thinking and talking about them.

Example 1:

Catalyst  - Did I discuss lessons from today’s successes and problems with my team? or

Inhibitor – Did I “punish” failure, or neglect to find lessons and/or opportunities in problems and successes?

Example 2:

Nourisher – Is there a sense of personal and professional affiliation and camaraderie within the team? or

Toxin – Is there tension or antagonism among members of the team or between a team member and me?

Source: T. Amabile & S. Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Harvard Business Press, 2011)

That’s why it’s so important for managers and team leaders to counteract negative events with positive perceptions and comments. Research shows it takes three positive messages to balance a negative one.

To better manage your people:

1. Focus first on the day’s progress and setbacks.
2. Next, think about specific events: the catalysts and nourishers that affected progress.
3. Finally, prepare for action: What’s the one step you can take to best facilitate progress?

Recognising small wins is the best way to motivate your team—the key principle revealed through rigorous analysis of daily journal entries by Amabile and Kramer.

Every day events affect our inner work lives, and managers are certainly not exempt. As a leader, you must tend to your staff’s inner work lives by providing support each day. You, too, will perform best when your inner work life is positive and strong.

Review each day’s events and how much you’ve accomplished—no matter how difficult or disappointing. Even if gains seem relatively miniscule, you’ll benefit from an honest assessment. Remember: Setbacks are inevitable, but they serve as learning opportunities.

 Progress triggers a positive inner work life. To boost yours, focus on providing your people with catalysts and nourishers. Buffer them, as much as possible, from inhibitors and toxins. This sets the sta

In 1999, leadership expert Ira S. Wolfe coined the term “perfect labor storm” to describe a convergence of demographic and socioeconomic developments that would result in an unprecedented shortage of skilled workers in 2011—the year the first Baby Boomers hit 65 and start to retire.

But a severe and prolonged recession has delayed Dr. Wolfe’s predicted storm. Economic uncertainty has caused many Boomers to remain on the job. Until we see the inevitable changing of the guard over the next decade, the workplace will be inhabited by a multigenerational stew of younger and older workers.

This environment will provide real opportunities and significant technological problems, Dr. Wolfe notes in his latest book, Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization: How to Manage the Unprecedented Convergence of the Wired, the Tired, and Technology in the Workplace (Xlibris, 2009).

Eighty percent of polled adults believe Gen X and Y have a distinctly different point of view—the highest perceived disparity since 1969, when generations clashed over the Vietnam War and civil rights. Younger adults (18 to 29) report disagreements over lifestyle, views, family, relationships and dating. Older adults criticize their “sense of entitlement.” Gen X and Y tend to be more tolerant on cultural issues, while Boomers cite manners as the greatest source of conflict.

New information technologies also divide the generations. Only 40% of adults ages 65–74 use the Internet daily, while 75% of those ages 18–30 go online daily. The gap is wider when it comes to cell phones and text messages.

Older generations’ complaints about the next generation are nothing new. Conflicts replay throughout every decade. No generation is better or worse than another, and prevailing attitudes are neither right nor wrong—just decidedly different.

But learning how to work, live and play together is crucial, and every manager must master ways to bridge generational gaps. Managerial survival calls for a coordinated, collaborative strategy to leverage each generation’s strengths and neutralise its liabilities.

Who Are the Generations?

First, a quick review of how the generations are grouped in the modern workplace:

1. Veterans, born between 1922 and 1945 (52 million people). This cohort was born before or during World War II. Earliest experiences are associated with this world event. Some also remember the Great Depression.
2. The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 (77 million people). This generation was born during or after World War II and was raised in an era of extreme optimism, opportunity and progress. Boomers, for the most part, grew up in two-parent households, with safe schools, job security and post-war prosperity. They represent just under half of all U.S. workers. On the job, they value loyalty, respect the organisational hierarchy and generally wait their turn for advancement.
3. Generation X, born between 1965 and 1979 (70.1 million people). These workers  were born during a rapidly changing social climate and economic recession, including Asian competition. They grew up in two-career families with rising divorce rates, downsizing and the dawn of the high-tech/information age. On the job, they can be fiercely independent, like to be in control and want fast feedback.
4. Generation Y (the New Millennials), born between 1980 and 2000 (estimated to be 80–90 million). Born to Boomer and early Gen Xer parents into our current high-tech, neo-optimistic times, these are our youngest workers. They are the most technologically adept, fast learners and tend to be impatient.

 Gen X and Y comprise half the U.S. work force. Baby Boomers account for 45%, and the remaining 5% are veterans (many of whom are charged with motivating newer employees).

How Are They Different?

What happens when generations don’t share the same values and beliefs about workplace success?

Business consultant Cam Marston presents insights into managing across the generational divide in Motivating the “What’s in It for Me?” Workforce (2007, John Wiley & Sons).

Now, more than ever, American workers born after 1965 aren’t following in their elders’ footsteps. They have different workplace values and definitions of success.

Baby Boomers occupy most positions of power and responsibility on organisational charts. Most of today’s corporate management practices still reflect the systems and values of their predecessors, the veterans.

Gen Xers and Millennials therefore present unique challenges for Boomer managers. They aren’t interested in time-honored traditions or “the way things have always been done.” Rather, they’re single-mindedly focused on what it takes to get ahead to reach their perceived career destination.

This group shuns past definitions of success: climbing the company ladder and earning the rewards that come with greater responsibility. The company ladder, in their view, is irrelevant.

Mature workers and Boomers in managerial and leadership positions struggle with these differing values and beliefs, wondering how to motivate their younger colleagues. If promotions, raises and bonuses fail to motivate, then what does the trick?

We can identify several differences in values. The new generation of workers has:

1. A work ethic that no longer respects or values 10-hour workdays
2. An easily attained competence in new technologies and a facility to master even newer ones with little discomfort
3. Tenuous to nonexistent loyalty to any organisation
4. Changed priorities for lifetime goals achievable by employment

The most significant changes in perspective involve time, technology and loyalty. The most common clash points at work involve generational differences in the definition of work, modes of communications, meetings and learning.

Clash Point #1: How We View Work

By 2021, Gen X will be the senior members of the work force, and both Gen X and New Millennials will be in leadership positions. Big changes are already beginning to appear and, in 10 years, the world of work will be significantly different.

Older workers talk about “going to work” and have always had a specified work schedule like 9-to-5. In the manufacturing economy, everyone used to be under the same roof, at the same time, to achieve maximum productivity, but times—and jobs—change.

Younger workers view work as “something you do,” anywhere, any time. They communicate 24/7 and expect real-time responses. The rigidity of set work hours seems unnecessary and even unproductive in the information age.

To younger workers, success isn’t defined by how many hours one spends at a desk. Success is defined not by rank or seniority, but by what matters to each person individually.  Younger workers want to cut to the chase and define their true value. They don’t want to be paid for time; they want to be paid for their services and skills.

For younger employees with working spouses and children, work-life balance and flexible conditions have greater priority. Is someone who arrives at 9:30 a.m. necessarily working less hard than those who arrive at 8:30 a.m.? Differences in generational attitudes must not interfere with progress and productivity.

Clash Point #2: Communications

Ask anyone over the age of 40 about younger workers, and you’ll hear stories about texting, cell phones and ear buds. Common complaints include:

• They can’t spell or write.
• They multitask, so I’m never sure they’re paying attention.
• They’re attention-deficit kids, unable to focus for long.
• They expect instant feedback and email responses.

These tech-immersed young workers are just as frustrated with older workers, who respond days later and think setting up a team meeting is the answer, when a few text messages could get faster results.

Older workers can’t expect the newer generation to digress into the past. Technology needs to be understood and used by everyone to improve productivity.

Communications and relationships remain essential, regardless of how technology is used. Both sides need to use and benefit from each other’s strengths in this domain.

Clash Point #3: Meetings

Older workers expect a phone call or visit on important issues and will immediately schedule and plan a meeting to involve significant stakeholders. This frustrates younger workers, who want to meet on the spur of the moment, as soon as possible.

They see nothing wrong with texting superiors and peers instead of scheduling face-to-face meetings, and they like to communicate and solve problems virtually. When faced with a need to meet, they try to contact everyone immediately and begin videoconferencing, chatting, texting, talking and tweeting—often all at the same time.

Older colleagues prefer to find a time and day that fits everyone’s schedule—which can delay meeting for days or weeks. They fit things into their routines and calendars. To Gen Y, the ritual of workplace scheduling is stifling, unproductive and a waste of time.

The younger people may have a point. But to older colleagues, a seat-of-the-pants approach is irritating. They also have a point: It doesn’t give them enough time to think things through, nor to adequately prepare for a politically influential outcome.

Clash Point #4: Learning

Older generations are linear learners, comfortable sitting in classes, reading manuals and pondering materials before beginning to implement new programs.

Newer workers learn “on demand,” which to Boomers means they just want to “wing it,” figuring things out as they go. Gen-Y learning is interactive, using the Internet, Wikipedia and blogs. They rely on Google and web searches to find answers.

Gen Y doesn’t hesitate to call a friend or send an email directly to the CEO. They ask questions and get their information instantaneously. They are easily bored by training sessions, manuals and programs that spoon-feed information over time.

Issues You Can’t Ignore

Here’s why your company can’t afford to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done, hoping people will work out the details among themselves:

Gen X is a smaller generation, almost half the size of the Boomer generation. Gen Y is large—very large. This newer generation is much larger than the 77 million Boomers. Combined, Gen X and Gen Y already outnumber the Boomers and Seniors, making the 40 and younger crowd the largest segment of the workplace. Boomers no longer hold the majority vote, although most hold positions of power and responsibility.

This transition in power and influence is not something organisations can avoid or ignore. Managers must learn to leverage each generation’s strengths for the benefit of all, or risk becoming less efficient and productive because of the inherent conflicts.

There is no room to allow tradition and convenience to hinder changes that boost performance and productivity. There’s also not much room for generational judging or complaining.

Managers must create opportunities for a multigenerational work force to share its differences. To hire and retain high performers, leaders must also provide flexible options. Look for ways to benefit from each generation’s assets to inspire understanding, collaboration and creativity.

Businesses are also becoming more intrinsically complex. It’s harder to predict outcomes because intricate systems interact in unexpected ways.

Interpreting data also proves more challenging because:

1. The degree of complexity may lie beyond our cognitive limits.
2. Past behaviour may not predict future actions.
3. In a complex system, an outlier may have a disproportionate impact.

In a September 2011 Harvard Business Review article, business professors Gökçe Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath distinguish between organisations that are merely complicated and those that are genuinely complex.

Complicated Versus Complex

Simple systems feature few—and extremely predictable—interactions. When you turn a light switch on or off, you expect the same result every time.

Complicated systems have many moving parts, and they operate in patterned ways. We can make accurate predictions about how they will behave. For example, flying a commercial airplane involves complicated, but predictable, steps. As a result, it’s reliably safe.

In contrast, complex systems may operate in patterned ways, but their interactions are continually changing. Air traffic control is a complex system that constantly changes in reaction to weather, aircraft downtimes and other critical variables. The system is predictable not because it produces the same results from the same starting conditions, but because it has been designed to continuously adjust as its components change in relation to one another.

Two problems commonly surface in complex systems: unintended consequences and difficulties in making sense of a situation. With multiple independent and interrelated parts in a system, it’s hard to predict all of the possible consequences of a change in one component. And with so many data and informational components to deal with, it’s tough for an individual decision maker to visualise and master an entire complex system.

Most executives tend to overestimate the amount of information they can process, but humans have cognitive limits. No manager can understand every aspect of a complex business, yet many refuse to acknowledge this reality.

Managerial Blindness

Focusing on only one thing can prevent us from seeing other key areas—a concept known as inattentional blindness. Furthermore, an outlier or rare event may be ignored when it doesn’t appear often enough for us to learn how it will affect the system.

Collectively, these problems may cause confusion and hinder job performance. Unfortunately, many companies deal with increasing complexity by further complicating their systems, adding new coordination procedures and structures. Extra layers of management or measurements only serve to decrease effectiveness.

In the same issue of HBR, consultant Yves Morieux reports that managers in the most complicated companies spend 40% of their time writing reports and up to 60% in coordination meetings. Today’s companies, on average, set six times as many performance requirements as they did in 1955. Back then, CEOs committed to four to seven performance imperatives; today, they commit to 25–40.

Many businesses adopt conflicting performance imperatives:

• They strive to satisfy customers with low prices and high quality.
• They seek to customise offerings for specific markets and standardise them for the greatest operating return.
• They want to innovate and be efficient.

If managers are challenged with these complexities, imagine the effect on workers. People at all levels crave clarity and simplicity. A manager must navigate murky waters and emerge with plans that inspire cooperative action. It’s not that simple.

Real Cooperation

More than ever, leaders need input from others to grasp complexities and determine how they affect other parts of the system. This requires them to ask a lot of questions. In Morieux’s words: “Real cooperation isn’t a matter of getting along well; it’s taking into account the constraints and goals of others.”

Staying on track is much easier with a guide or checklist. Michael Useem, a professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and bestselling author of The Leadership Moment, has published The Leader’s Checklist to create a clear roadmap for navigating any situation. Key questions help customise the list to fit specific needs.

A leader must be able to keep the big picture in clear view, while attending to all of the small executions that will lead to the right outcomes. Each principle should generate a set of questions that help leaders test, retest, refine and update their preparedness for any situation.

The Leader’s Checklist

Professor Useem’s list is presented here in condensed form, as space allows. Sample questions are presented with each principle.

1.       Articulate a Vision: Formulate a clear and persuasive vision, and communicate why it’s important to all members of the enterprise.

1. Do my direct reports see the forest, as well as the trees?
2. Does everyone in the firm know not only where we are going, but, most importantly, why?
3. Is the destination compelling and appealing?

2.       Think and Act Strategically: Make a practical plan for achieving this vision, including both short- and long-term strategies. Anticipate reactions and resistance before they happen by considering all stakeholders’ perspectives.

1. Do we have a realistic plan for creating short-term results, as well as mapping out the future?
2. Have we considered all stakeholders and anticipated objections?
3. Has everyone bought into, and does everyone understand, the firm’s competitive strategy and value drivers? Can they explain it to others?
   

3.       Express Confidence: Provide frequent feedback to express appreciation for the support of those who work with and for you.

1. Do the people you work with know you respect and value their talents and efforts?
2. Have you made it clear that their upward guidance is welcomed and sought?
3. Is there a sense of engagement on the frontlines, with a minimum of “us” vs. “them” mentality?
   

4.       Take Charge and Act Decisively: Embrace a bias for action by taking responsibility, even if it isn’t formally delegated. Make good and timely decisions, and ensure they are executed.

1. Are you prepared to take charge, even when you are not in charge?
2. If so, do you have the capacity and position to embrace responsibility?
3. For technical decisions, are you ready to delegate, but not abdicate?
4. Are most of your decisions both good and timely?
5. Do you convey your strategic intent and then let others reach their own decisions?

5.       Communicate Persuasively: Communicate in ways that people will not forget, through use of personal stories and examples that back up ideas. Simplicity and clarity are critical.

1. Are messages about vision, strategy and character crystal-clear and indelible?
2. Have you mobilised all communication channels, from purely personal to social media?
3. Can you deliver a compelling speech before the elevator reaches the 10th floor?

6.       Motivate the Troops, and Honour the Front Lines: Appreciate the distinctive intentions that people bring to their work; build on diversity to bring out the best in people. Delegate authority except for strategic decisions. Stay close to those who are most directly engaged with the enterprise’s work.

1. Have you identified each person’s “hot button” and focused on it?
2. Do you work personal pride and shared purpose into most communications?
3. Are you keeping some ammunition dry for those urgent moments when you need it?
4. Have you made your intent clear and empowered those around you to act?
5. Do you regularly meet with those in direct contact with customers?
6. Can your people communicate their ideas and concerns to you?

7.       Build Leadership in Others, and Plan for Succession: Develop leadership throughout the organisation, giving people opportunities to make decisions, manage others and obtain coaching.

1. Are all managers expected to build leadership among their subordinates?
2. Does the company culture foster the effective exercise of leadership?
3. Are leadership development opportunities available to most, if not all, managers?

8.       Manage Relations, and Identify Personal Implications: Build enduring personal ties with those who work with you, and engage the feelings and passions of the workplace. Help people appreciate the impact that the vision and strategy are likely to have on their own work and the firm’s future.

1. Is the hierarchy reduced to a minimum, and does bad news travel up?
2. Are managers self-aware and empathetic?
3. Are autocratic, egocentric and irritable behaviours censured?
4. Do employees appreciate how the firm’s vision and strategy affect them individually?
5. What private sacrifices will be necessary for achieving the common cause?
6. How will the plan affect people’s personal livelihood and the quality of their work lives?

9.       Convey Your Character: Through storytelling, gestures and genuine sharing, ensure that others appreciate that you are a person of integrity.

1. Have you communicated your commitment to performance with integrity?
2. Do others know you as a person? Do they know your aspirations and hopes?
    

10.   Dampen Over-Optimism: To balance the hubris of success, focus attention on latent threats and unresolved problems. Protect against managers’ tendency to engage in unwarranted risk.

1. Have you prepared the organisation for unlikely, but extremely consequential, events?
2. Do you celebrate success, but also guard against the byproduct of excess confidence?
3. Have you paved the way not only for quarterly results, but for long-term performance?

11.   Build a Diverse Top Team: Although leaders take final responsibility, leadership is most effective when there is a team of capable people who can collectively work together to resolve key challenges. Diversity of thinking ensures better decisions.

1. Have you drawn quality performers into your inner circle?
2. Are they diverse in expertise, but united in purpose?
3. Are they as engaged and energised as you?

12.   Place Common Interest First: In setting strategy, communicating vision and reaching decisions, common purpose comes first and personal self-interest last.

1. In all decisions, have you placed shared purpose ahead of private gain?
2. Do the firm’s vision and strategy embody the organisation’s mission?
3. Are you thinking like a chief executive, even if you are not one?

Not all of these questions are applicable to every situation, but it is the questioning that counts. Whether you are facing a typical day at the office or walking into a crisis, ask yourself and others these questions to inspire correct actions. Only then can you make sense of the complexities you encounter.

Leaders learn to manage complexities not by prescribing specific behaviours, but by creating an environment for optimal behaviours to occur—even though “optimal” cannot be defined in advance.

Problems are solved when you leverage others’ cooperation, skills and ingenuity. Employee satisfaction and performance will concurrently improve. There’s less need for complicated layers of management, with more energy available to manage situations wisely and effectively.

How we respond to failures and bounce back from our mistakes can make or break our careers. The wisdom of learning from failure is undeniable, yet individuals and organisations rarely seize opportunities to embrace these hard-earned lessons.

Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter is unequivocal: “One difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing.” Even for the best companies and most accomplished professionals, long track records of success are inevitably marred by slips and fumbles.

Our response to failure is often counterproductive: Behaviours become bad habits that set the stage for continued losses. Just as success creates positive momentum, failure can feed on itself. Add uncertainty and rapidly fluctuating economics to the mix, and one’s ability to get back on track is sorely tested.

Long-term winners and losers face the same problems, but they respond differently. Attitudes help determine whether problem-ridden businesses will ultimately recover.

Luckily, most of us can learn to become more resilient with training and coaching.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Take the example of two typical MBA graduates who were laid off from their positions during the recession. Both were distraught. Being fired provoked feelings of sadness, listlessness, indecisiveness and anxiety about the future.

For one, the mood was transient. Within two weeks he was telling himself, “It’s not my fault; it’s the economy. I’m good at what I do, and there’s a market for my skills.” He updated his resume and, after several failed attempts, finally landed a position.

The other spiraled further into hopelessness. “I got fired because I can’t perform well under pressure,” he lamented. “I’m not cut out for finance; the economy will take years to recover.” Even after the market improved, he was reluctant to apply for positions and feared rejection.

How these individuals handled failure illustrates opposite ends of the spectrum. Some people bounce back after a brief period of malaise and grow from their experiences. Others go from sadness to depression to crippling fear of failure—and in business, inertia and fear of risk invite collapse.

Optimism and Resilience

Research clearly demonstrates that people who are naturally resilient have an optimistic explanatory style—that is, they explain adversity in optimistic terms to avoid falling into helplessness.

Those who refuse to give up routinely interpret setbacks as temporary, local and changeable:

• “The problem will resolve quickly…”
• “It’s just this one situation…”
• “I can do something about it…”

In contrast, individuals who have a pessimistic explanatory style respond to failure differently. They habitually think setbacks are permanent, universal and immutable:

• “Things are never going to be any different…”
• “This always happens to me…”
• “I can’t change things, no matter what…”

The Team Management Systems (TMS) suite of psychometric tools offers a sophisticated assessment that can help you understand your habitual approach to interpreting events, whether they tend to be more optimistic or more pessimistic, and  how you can more effectively approach change, setback  and uncertainty.

University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Martin P. Seligman believes most people can be immunized against the negative thinking habits that may tempt them to give up after failure. In fact, 30 years of research suggests that we can learn to be optimistic and resilient—often by changing our explanatory style.

Seligman is currently testing this premise with the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, a large-scale effort to make soldiers as psychologically fit as they are physically fit. One key component is the Master Resilience Training course for drill sergeants and other leaders, which emphasises positive psychology, mental toughness, use of existing strengths and building strong relationships.

This military program will no doubt provide insights for civilians who wish to become more effective within their workplaces and organisations.

Learning from Mistakes

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Failure is one of life’s most common traumas, yet people’s responses to it vary widely. Many managers have learned to reframe personal and departmental setbacks by stating: “There are no mistakes, only learning opportunities”—and it’s a great sentiment. In practice, however, their companies often continue to view failures in the most negative light.

Part of the problem lies in our natural tendency to blame. We perceive and react to failure inappropriately. How can we learn anything if our energy is tied up in either assigning or avoiding blame? Still others overreact with self-criticism, which leads to stagnation and fears of taking future risks.

In the 1930s, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig proposed three broad personality categories for how we experience anger and frustration:

1. Extrapunitive: Prone to unfairly blame others
2. Impunitive: Denies that failure has occurred or one’s own role in it
3. Intropunitive: Judges self too harshly and imagines failures where none exist

Extrapunitive responses are common in the business world  (Worrall 2009, A Climate for Change, P 152). Because of socialisation and other gender influences, women are more likely to be intropunitive.

Fortunately, managers at all organisational levels can repair their flawed responses to failure. Business consultants Ben Dattner and Robert Hogan suggest three highly effective steps in “Can You Handle Failure?” (Harvard Business Review, April 2011):

1. Cultivate Self-Awareness

First, identify which of the three blaming styles you use. (Note: They occur automatically and immediately, so they are unconscious emotional responses.) Do you look to blame others? Deny blame? Blame yourself?

It’s hard for us to see our personalities clearly, let alone our flaws. It’s harder still to learn from our mistakes if we’re caught up in the blame game.

Next, take at least one self-assessment test to help broaden your view of your interaction style. Two popular assessments are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Big Five Personality Test. (You can take a free version online at personal.psu.edu/j5j/IPIP/ipipneo120.htm.) 

Finally, work with a coach or mentor to improve your level of self-awareness. While it takes some time to shine a light on our attitudes with respect to failure and blame, each of us can benefit from such reflection and discussion.

For example, think about challenging events or jobs in your career, and consider how you handled them. What could you have done better? Ask trusted colleagues, mentors or coaches to evaluate your reactions to, and explanations for, failures.

Pay close attention to the subtleties of how people respond to you in common workplace situations. Ask for informal feedback. If you’re in a managerial position, you may underestimate how what you say may be perceived as criticism, due to the hierarchical nature of your job.

2. Cultivate Political Awareness.

Whereas self-awareness helps you understand the messages you’re sending, political awareness helps you understand the messages others are receiving. It requires you to know how your organisation defines, explains and assigns responsibility for failure, as well as how the system allows for remedial attempts.

Political awareness involves finding the right way to approach mistakes within your specific organisation, department and role.

3. Develop New Strategies.

Once you’ve become more aware of your failure response style (and your bad habits), you can move toward more open and adaptive behaviours.

Practice these strategies the next time mistakes and failures present challenges:

Listen and communicate. Most of us forget to gather enough feedback and information before reacting, especially when it comes to bad news. Never assume you know what others are thinking or that you understand them until you ask good questions.

Reflect on both the situation and the people. We’re good at picking up patterns and making assumptions. Remember, however, that each situation is unique and has context.

Think before you act. You don’t have to respond immediately or impulsively. You can always make things worse by overreacting in a highly charged situation. 

Search for a lesson. Look for nuance and context. Sometimes a colleague or a group is at fault, sometimes you are, and sometimes no one is to blame. Create and test hypotheses about why the failure occurred to prevent it from happening again.

Admittedly, some mistakes are more blameworthy than others. As a manager, how do you make it safe for people to report and admit to mistakes?

How many of the failures in your business are truly blameworthy? Compare this to how many are treated as blameworthy, and you’ll have a better understanding of why so many failures go unreported.

You cannot learn from your mistakes when the emphasis is on blaming. You cannot learn to become more resilient when your energy is tied up in assigning or avoiding blame.

Perhaps Procter & Gamble’s Lafley said it best in his Harvard Business Review interview: “I think I learned more from my failures than from my successes in all my years as a CEO. I think of my failures as a gift. Unless you view them that way, you won’t learn from failure, you won’t get better—and the company won’t get better.”

Every person in an executive role is expected to exercise wisdom in their decisions. However, senior leaders are often more concerned with meeting the numbers and therefore fail to come close to being astute over the long term.

Defining Wisdom

The Oxford English Dictionary (1998) states that wisdom is “the capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice between means and ends; sometimes less strictly, sound sense in practical affairs; opposite to folly.” One must apply a combination of judgement, decisions, and actions.

Robert J. Sternberg, former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, sees wisdom as the application of tacit knowledge in pursuing the goal of a common good. In the case of executives, their decisions must consider the needs of customers, suppliers, employees, the organisation, financial profits, shareholders and the environment, often globally.

According to Sternberg (2005), “Effective leadership is, in large part, a function of creativity in generating ideas, analytical intelligence in evaluating the quality of these ideas, practical intelligence in implementing the ideas, and convincing others to value and follow the ideas, and wisdom to ensure that the decisions and their implementation are for the common good of all stakeholders.”

Finding Wisdom

Wisdom in the workplace typically implies two distinct areas of wise behavior:

1. The wisdom of corporate decision-making:
   1. Knowing what information to use in decision-making
   2. Creating a culture of knowledge in order to acquire that information in a timely fashion
   3. Assessing it in both short- and long-term frameworks
2. Reaping the financial rewards that come with shrewd financial choices.

Wisdom in Action

In order to make a smart decision, a wise leader must draw upon intellectual, emotional, and social comprehension. One must:

• Gather information
• Discern reality from artifice
• Evaluate and edit the accumulating knowledge
• Listen with both heart and mind
• Consider what is morally right
• Weigh what is socially just
• Consider others as much as self
• Think about the here and now
• Consider future impact

In times of crisis, however, wisdom sometimes demands the paradoxical decision to resist action or judgement.

When called upon in any challenging situation, no matter how trivial, if you slow down long enough to ask yourself the question, “What would be the wisest thing to do?” you will already be moving closer to making a more appropriate and apt decision.

The Contradictions of Wisdom

There are recurrent themes and qualities that comprise wisdom:

• Humility
• Patience
• Clear-eyed, dispassionate view of human nature
• Emotional resilience
• Ability to cope with adversity
• A philosophical acknowledgement of ambiguity
• Recognising the limitations of knowledge

Action is important, as well as inaction, at times. Compassion is central to wisdom, but so is emotional detachment. Knowledge is crucial, but often wisdom deals with uncertainty and complexity. These inherent contradictions are embedded in any definition of wisdom. In fact, they are the essence of what makes wisdom so critical to leaders.

Business Intelligence

“Business intelligence is the systematic use of information about your business to understand, report on and predict different aspects of performance,” according to Professor Tom Davenport of Babson College in Massachusetts.

His examples of current sage leaders include Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Warren Buffet, the investor. Buffet is known for his financial wisdom built upon a foundation of expert accounting knowledge, however, his true brilliance stems from a deep understanding of people and human nature.

Social Intelligence

A less appreciated dimension of wisdom is social wisdom which is critical for understanding and incorporating the diversity of “people factors” into business decisions to create a greater common goal.

Exercising social wisdom in the workplace, promotes performance, goal alignment and social unity by:

• Decreasing stress and conflicts in the workplace
• Improving Job satisfaction
• Promoting Quality in the workplace
• Nurturing the sense of personal fulfillment
• Providing for more Innovative and creative opportunities

Developing Your Wisdom

Psychologist and author Richard R. Kilburg presents questions for improving leadership wisdom that can be reviewed in coaching sessions (Executive Wisdom: Coaching and the Emergence of Virtuous Leaders, APA, 2006).

1. Take a moment to relax, then ask yourself the following questions:
   1. What is the stupidest thing you have ever done as a person or as a professional?
   2. If you are a leader in an organisation, what is the stupidest decision or action you have ever taken?
   3. What made the decision or action stupid? When and how did you know it was stupid? What criteria did you use to judge its merits?
2. Now, ask yourself,
   1. What is the wisest thing you have ever done as a person or as a professional?
   2. If you are a leader in an organisation, what is the wisest decision or action you have ever taken?
   3. What made the decision or action wise? When and how did you know it was wise? What criteria did you use to judge its merits?
3. Can you develop any internal sense of how you created, accessed, and used a sense of rightness in the situations in which you believe you acted wisely as opposed to stupidly? If so, jot down and reflect on what you think and feel went into the emergence of that sense of rightness.
4. Take a few minutes to talk to someone out loud about what you have explored or, if you are reluctant to share it with another person, dictate some notes onto a voice recorder and then listen to yourself afterward. The experience of giving voice to inner work can often provide additional insight and learning.

Discussing these issues with your coach will help you develop a powerful link to leading with wisdom.

A New York Times headline April 27, 2011 claims a culture of complicity was tied to Japan’s stricken nuclear plant disaster. NASA’s 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster is another tragic example of what happens when cultural norms fail.  Six months after the shuttle disintegrated upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members, NASA investigators found that “organisational culture and structure had as much to do with the accident as the [shuttle’s damaged] foam.”

In Change the Culture, Change the Game, Tom Smith and Roger Connors write: “Either you manage your culture, or it will manage you.”

In simple terms, culture defines “the shared values, beliefs and behaviours  of people in social groups”  (Worrall, 2009,  A Climate for Change). It  refers to how people think, act and get things done in your company and is comprised of three components:

1. Experiences, which foster beliefs
2. Beliefs, which influence actions
3. Actions, which produce results

Few managers excel at optimising culture. While they’re aware of surveys that reveal two-thirds of employees are disengaged, they don’t know how to break down culture into readily identifiable components. They get lost in emotions, feelings, beliefs, soft skills and fuzzy thinking. Optimising your culture should command as much attention as performance metrics, operations, finances, sales and every other organisational discipline.

Research shows that the right culture champions high levels of performance and ethical behaviour. When organisations design and support a culture that encourages outstanding individual and team contribution, they achieve amazing bottom-line results.

Employee accountability and engagement are the driving forces behind achieving great results. As a manager, it’s your job to help employees see how their participation contributes to your organisation’s success. Employees become engaged when they can describe their role in outcomes and desired results.

How People Experience Work

As a manager or team leader, you create experiences every minute of the day that help shape your organisation’s culture. These experiences include:

• Promoting someone
• Firing someone
• Announcing a new policy
• Interacting in meetings
• Providing feedback
• Communicating through conversation, email or presentations

Such interactions shape beliefs about “how we do things around here.” These beliefs, in turn, drive people’s actions, which collectively produce results.

Achieving True Accountability

Accountability is often viewed as something negative that happens to you when things go wrong. True accountability is achieved through a step-by-step process that makes things go right.

Accountability should not be defined as punishment for mistakes. It’s a powerful, positive and enabling principle that provides a foundation to build both individual and company success.

The way we hold one another accountable defines the nature of our working relationships, how we interact and what we expect from one another. With positive accountability, people embrace their role in facilitating change and take ownership for making progress.

When people adopt a sense of accountability, they recognise that their participation can and will make a big difference. They go the extra mile because they know what to do, and they know how their job and their actions will drive results. This adds energy to their work, as most people crave meaning and fulfillment.

Accountability is the single biggest issue confronting organisations today, especially for those engaged in big change initiatives. When you build a culture of accountability, you have people who can and will achieve game-changing results.

Accountability steps include:

• See it: In order to see what needs to be done, you must take responsibility for reality. Because reality frequently changes, you need to stay alert and be flexible. There’s no hiding behind what used to work. When you see something, you must rise to a new challenge. This means obtaining others’ perspectives and candidly asking for and offering feedback. You must be courageous and relentless in your pursuit of acknowledging reality.
• Own it: Accept being personally invested in outcomes. Be willing to take risks and learn from successes and failures. Align your work with what the company needs. Link where you are and what you’ve done with where you want to be and what you’re going to do.
• Solve it: Obstacles can always get in the way of achieving results, so apply persistent effort. When thwarted, find another way. Keep asking, “What else can I do so this gets resolved?” You must learn to overcome cross-functional boundaries, limitations and “no” responses.
• Do it: Focus on top priorities, overcome obstacles, do what you promise to achieve, and avoid blaming others. Work to sustain an environment of trust for all participants, even those who are unwilling to help.

In a culture of accountability, people step forward to become part of the solution—often when they begin to see others doing it. Managers should seise every opportunity to model this behaviour with their own attitudes and actions, which will create a trickle-down effect.

The payoffs for positive accountability are better performance metrics, but perhaps more significant is what people report internally. When people participate more fully in their jobs, they create meaning and fulfillment. Work becomes more pleasurable. And when people start achieving better results, they are most likely rewarded in tangible ways, as well.

When to Change the Culture

Connors and Smith point out that, by definition, your culture produces your results. You cannot expect your current culture to produce new results. It may not be a bad culture; it simply isn’t what’s needed if you want different results.

Shifts in culture are required anytime you want people to think and act in new ways to achieve new outcomes. Most of the time, they don’t involve a total transformation, but rather a transition to new cultural norms.

Remember that cultures are powerful, and persistent, and that people are entrenched in their habits and work routines. If you want to achieve new or different results, you will need to create a new culture. To do so, you must define the needed shifts in the way people think and act so they can create new experiences that will translate into new beliefs and actions.

To accelerate a change in the culture, start by defining the new results you wish to achieve. Everyone in the organisation needs to be focused on and aligned with the desired new outcomes. Culture changes one person at a time.

Your people must believe that new results are obtainable. Only then can they change their thinking and actions.

What’s needed, specifically?

Hire more executive coaches, step up sessions, and implement more training and development programs.

In tough times, you cannot rely on talent and luck. Even when you have a talented team at the top, people need help in stretching their capabilities to meet the overwhelming demands of a 21^st century marketplace.

 Scientific research on great performance has persuasively shown that key abilities are developed. They don’t occur naturally. Great leaders aren’t born; they’re made—and the research to support this is overwhelming. What we previously thought of as innate can often be taught. Leadership capabilities are acquired through constructive practice and developmental opportunities, and today’s business volatility calls for both.

“The key to this development is pushing people—or people pushing themselves—just beyond their current abilities, forcing them to do things that they can’t quite do,” according to Fortune Senior  Editor Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else (Portfolio, 2008).

In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before their subjects began intensive training. Similar findings have turned up in studies of musicians, tennis players, artists, swimmers, mathematicians and chess players.

Is Talent Irrelevant?

In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before their subjects began intensive training. Similar findings have turned up in studies of musicians, tennis players, artists, swimmers, mathematicians and chess players.

Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist, but they do suggest it may be irrelevant.

The concept of talent is especially troublesome in business. We label people and then assign expectations, some of which are unrealistic. When people are fast-tracked or deemed executive material, we assume they have special gifts. Worse, we fail to adequately emphasise the importance of continuous training and coaching. Instead, we rely on their “natural gifts.”

Identifying these gifts has been extremely elusive. In fact, some business giants actually gave little early indication that they would become great.

Jack Welch, named by Fortune as the 20th century’s manager of the century, showed no particular passion for business, even into his mid-20s.

Steve Ballmer and Jeffrey Immelt were average employees at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s, with little evidence they would go on to become CEOs of Microsoft and GE before age 50.

In this age of genomic research, there should no longer be any question as to what is—and isn’t—innate. If a talent is innate, scientists should be able to identify the gene for it, and no progress has been made on this front.

Talent or Hard Work?

We can safely draw the conclusion that there’s plenty of opportunity for everyone. Many high-performing executives will tell you they don’t rely on their innate talents as much as their hard-earned skills. 

CEOs like A.G. Lafley of P&G and GE’s Immelt have said that being forced to manage through crises early in their careers enhanced their abilities in ways that were critical to becoming CEOs. They wouldn’t have achieved their status without surviving the storms that gave them hands-on practice.

Certain practices can make our experiences especially productive:

• Coaching helps.
• Receiving feedback allows us to fine-tune our skills.
• Working in a safe learning environment is essential.
• A work environment which is closely aligned with our professional goals, personal preferences and values is conducive to greater personal achievement.

Workplaces that encourage practice and development, and mistakes should be viewed as learning opportunities. You also need to clearly define and develop a plan for achieving the abilities you wish to hone, including a measurable time frame. This will turbo-charge your performance and improve your chances of success.

10,000 Hours or 10 Years

Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for 10,000 hours of practice to attain expertise in his book Outliers (Little, Brown & Co., 2008):

“The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly 10 years, if you think about four hours a day.”

Almost all child prodigies in music, sports, chess and the arts seem to put in 10,000 hours before they attain expertise and produce significant results.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, edited by Anders Ericsson, Charness and Feltovich, et al, compiles scientific studies to prove the point in a wide variety of fields. The trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers “whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming” are nearly always made, not born.

Many of us have already put in more than a decade of doing what we do. The question is whether we’re practicing the right things, in the right way. Practice does not make perfect. Rather, perfect practice make perfect.

What Is Deliberate Practice?

Anders Ericsson and his scientific colleagues emphasise the importance of deliberate practice, which is characterised by several elements:

• It is an activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with the help of a teacher, coach or expert.
• It can be repeated frequently.
• Feedback on results is continuously available.
• It’s highly demanding mentally.
• It isn’t much fun and entails hard work.

If you think you’ve outgrown the need for a teacher or coach, it’s time to challenge this assumption. A business coach can see things a manager cannot and is trained to deliver feedback in a way that’s inaccessible to most managers.

Without a clear, unbiased view of your performance, you cannot choose the best practice activities.  Hire a coach who can properly stretch you beyond your current abilities and help you move out of your comfort zones. Otherwise, human nature dictates that you’re likely to spend your time practicing what you already know how to do instead of new behaviours which are difficult and uncomfortable.

According to Noel Tichy, PhD, a professor of organizational  behaviour and human resources management at the University of Michigan School of Business, our progress depends on leaving our comfort zone to enter the learning zone, where skills and abilities are just out of reach.

What About Passion?

Talent is not the overarching driver of successfully developing high level capabilities. Those who care the most will rise to the top. Exceptional performance depends on what we decide to do with our lives and the passion that drives us.

One of the most purchased articles from the Harvard Business Review is a 1968 piece on motivation that explains our three main drives:

1. Achievement
2. Power
3. A sense of community and desire to help others

No matter your driving force, you have to care deeply enough to work hard to become exceptional.

Nothing can make you endure the pain and sacrifice of deliberate practice for decades unless you’re carried by an intrinsic compulsion to do so.

Talent Is Never Enough

In Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent, (Thomas Nelson, 2007), leadership expert John C. Maxwell suggests talent is “often overrated and frequently misunderstood.” He advises readers to build their strengths to become a “talent-plus person,” defined by the following tenets:

• Belief lifts your talent.
• Initiative activates your talent.
• Focus directs your talent.
• Preparation positions your talent.
• Practice sharpens your talent.
• Perseverance sustains your talent.
• Character protects your talent.

Even if you hold onto the notion that you’ll always survive because of your innate talent, you must still prepare, practice and persist. The scientific research is in, and it’s conclusive. Hard work—not talent—contributes to high performance.

As often happens in judging one candidate over another, the decision most likely came down to degrees of “executive presence.”

Presence: Often referred to as “bearing,” presence incorporates a range of verbal and nonverbal patterns (one’s appearance, posture, vocal quality, subtle movements)—a whole collection of signals that others process into an evaluative impression of a person.

The concept of presence raises serious questions for anyone with ambitions of career advancement. If, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book Blink, decisions are made intuitively, what do we need to know about “executive presence”?

As it turns out, everyone’s definition of the term seems to differ. But planning your career and determining your leadership development needs shouldn’t be left to guesswork.

Searching for Executive Presence

An Internet search on executive presence reveals definitions and advice on everything from dressing for success and patterns of speech to more fundamental issues of emotional and social intelligence.

Some conclude that executive presence has little to do with polish, poise, sophistication or even use of body language and gestures. In many cases, executives with presence are just as likely to lack these qualities.

In this day and age, executive presence comes in all shapes and sizes, including some you wouldn’t normally recognise. Who would have thought, 30 years ago, that Bill Gates would command it? Would Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook, have stood out as a high-potential CEO? But as one of the youngest men ever to be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, he certainly has presence—albeit a “Gen Y” version of it.

If you want to be promoted to the C-suites, you must learn how to acquire or improve your level of executive presence. If you are already in senior management, you must recognise your current potential and help nurture executive presence in the people you want to groom for succession.

11 Qualities of Executive Presence

“We need leaders who model high social intelligence…who appeal to our higher selves and invite us to grow as individuals and as a society, rather than leaders who pander to our primal fears and selfish greed.”

—Karl Albrecht, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (Pfeiffer, 2009)

The qualities associated with executive presence can be difficult to learn and practice. It may prove impossible to develop them without the help of qualified coaches and mentors. You can work on and improve some of these competencies, but they may evade certain personalities.

Most people aren’t born with executive presence. They develop the requisite skills with experience, maturity and a great deal of effort.

One important caveat: Don’t confuse executive presence with speaking or presentation skills. They’re part of the total package, but presence is what you project wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Your challenge lies in managing others’ perceptions of you, which is no small task.

Foundational to executive presence is integrity defined by the capacity to have your authentic personal values present and visible in your day to day interactions.

The following additional 11 qualities contribute to executive presence:

1. Transparency: Genuine, open, straightforward, comfortable in one’s skin. Aims for truth and clarity, even when difficult issues arise. Doesn’t try to please or cover up with spin.
2. Passion: Loves and feels strongly about the profession, job, industry and life in general. Sees and believes in optimism.
3. Clarity: Communicates thoughts, feelings and insights with crystal clarity and simplicity. Master of metaphors and stories that make an impact.
4. Intelligence: The ability to process, retain and apply information, whether it’s academic or street-worthy.
5. Pattern Recognition: The ability to boil down complex factors and mounds of data to rare conclusions. Offers insights others may not see.
6. Results-Oriented: Driven and full of purpose; determined to achieve and succeed. Able to discern dichotomies, unravel paradoxes and work with uncertainties. Flexible and willing to adjust goals. Decisive under pressure. A bias toward action. An attitude of giving, rather than getting. Works in the service of common goals for the organisation’s and society’s higher values.
7. Confidence: Not overconfident; has enough self-doubt to be objective. Asks questions and listens.
8. Humility: Willing to admit mistakes, misjudgements, fears and uncertainties in ways that are endearing. Seeks answers and advice; listens to others.
9. Courage: Willing to take risks and positions against considerable odds. May be seen as a maverick. Able to perceive possibilities and innovations.
10. Humour: Not over-the-top, but in the right measure to disarm others’ defenses.
11. Social: Genuinely cares about others; sees both strengths and weaknesses in people. Allows for people to learn from mistakes. Promotes healthy self-esteem in others. Respects others and shows a real—not manufactured or superficial—interest in them.

No single leader possesses all of these qualities in abundance. For example, many successful CEOs with strong executive presence lack one or more of the likeability factors, such as humour and humility, but they make up for it in other domains.

Storytelling for Professional Success

The art of crafting and telling a good story is a key element in leadership communication skills and a vital part of building executive presence. Cold, hard facts don’t inspire people to change. Straightforward analysis won’t excite anyone about a goal.

Effective leadership requires stories that fire others’ imaginations and stir their souls. Our brains are wired to pay attention to stories. We quickly process information when it’s delivered in the form of a story, and we personalise it when we relate it to our own similar experiences.

General Electric’s Jack Welch excelled at this skill, as do Apple’s Steve Jobs and many other successful leaders. They know how to motivate by engaging people’s emotions through storytelling.

A narrative magnetically and biochemically draws audiences into the process, compelling them to visualise the picture you’re painting with your words. Stories help your staff make the connections among theory, facts, real life and real people.

Consider the following story options:

• A negative story, a failure, a lesson learned
• A success story, especially in the face of difficulties
• A case study
• History and mythology
• A deeply personal story (a tragedy or rags-to-riches example)

When crafting a story, include as many specific details as possible to make it real to your audience. Be brief, and get to the point. Understatement often carries a bigger impact. Transport the listener by describing events in emotional terms. Keep it simple. Learn to use metaphors and analogies to summarise. Personalise your story with names, even if they need to be altered.

The more authentic your examples are, the more your stories will resonate with people. In real life, nothing is black or white. Real life is full of paradoxes and uncertainties. Tell your stories to make a point and deliver a lesson that has true value.

What Really Matters

While your physical bearing is important, your core values and the way you communicate them are even more significant.

Your executive presence is reflected in the energy and image you convey, along with your understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Leaders with a strong presence intuitively know what will cultivate loyalty and approval. They also recognise how to avoid coming off as egotistical, insecure and insensitive.

Your emotional demeanour influences others’ perceptions. You must be able to balance your own needs with those of others and the organisation’s. This requires keenly honed emotional awareness—being in tune with the situation, the context and other people.

When your personal values resonate and are aligned with others’, you have an opportunity to lead in meaningful ways. This will attract others to you and command the respect of peers and superiors. An infectious grin and authentic sense of camaraderie will open doors, but the ability to communicate sincerely and connect with core values is what inspires people to respond.

Your presence communicates your self-worth and confidence, as well as the level of respect you have for others and the situation at hand.

6 Steps for Building Executive Presence

In Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (Pfeiffer, 2009), management consultant Karl Albrecht encourages readers to work on the following dimensions of executive presence:

1. Don’t mimic a CEO you’ve read about, admired or conceptualised in your mind. Personal authenticity is critical, so find your most natural way of walking, talking, dressing and interacting with others. Find and express your own voice. If you try to act important, you will come across as arrogant. Think about how you want to be perceived, and aim for these qualities in everything you do.
2. Identify your core strengths and values. Write a brief description of yourself from the perspective of someone who has just met you. What would you like people to say about you? Start working on specific aspects of this ideal description to ensure they’re real. If you’re not expressing your values in the things you say, then maybe you’re fooling yourself about them.
3. Leave a long message on your voice-mail, and play it back in a few days to get an idea of how you sound to a stranger. Note any aspects of your speech that you would like to change. You may not be aware of your vocal intonations and tics, which can add to or detract from how others perceive you.
4. Record a conversation with a friend on audio or video. Make sure it’s long enough so that you and your pal forget you’re being recorded. Study yourself and your friend’s reactions to jot down any habits or behaviours that contribute to or inhibit empathy, clarity and/or authenticity.
5. Ask one or more close friends to share their impressions about meeting you for the first time. Remind them to be brutally honest, and encourage them to offer insights into other aspects of your interactions—especially the areas that could be improved.
6. Review your discoveries with your coach or mentor. Ask for help. Practice. Change will take time, as personal habits in interacting with others are ingrained. After a while, however, you and your inner circle should begin to notice improvements. Never forget that polishing your interpersonal skills and executive presence is a lifelong journey.