What real leaders really do

What leaders really do?

Once upon a time, when I thought I wanted to work in HR, I read a much reprinted article by John P Kotter, called “What leaders really do” (Havard Business Review, May-June 1990). In plain English Kotter described a step by step approach to helping people deliver the organisation’s vision e.g. involving people in decision-making, being a good role model, providing coaching and feedback, and praising people when they were successful. At the time Kotter made complete sense to me, and I was grateful to him for making leadership seem so simple.

Years later...

Twenty years later, when I read the article again, I was nearly sick. This is a good thing, because it shows how much my ideas about leadership have changed since I began working in leadership and sustainability. How could I have imagined that this mechanical approach to managing people was the real deal? 

In Praise of the Incomplete Leader

Somewhere between my first and second readings of Kotter, I came across an article co-authored by Peter Senge, called ‘In Praise of the Incomplete Leader’. It began with the words ‘No leader is perfect’. I became very excited. ‘The Incomplete Leader’ describes four leadership competencies and why they matter: making sense of the world, relating to people, communicating your vision, and inventing ways to make it happen. 

Leadership beyond organisations

What I instantly liked was the framing of leadership as way of thinking and acting, a process of being and becoming. ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is not tied to an organisational setting. It can work in teams, partnerships, networks and communities. With its strong emphasis on creating shared narratives, ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is a joint quest for the best possible way forward. It’s OK not to have all the answers, provided we keep asking questions, and telling stories to raise our spirits.

What real leaders really do

Since I discovered the ‘Incomplete Leader’, I’ve thought a lot about what we can do to provide real leadership in a complex and uncertain world. The list that follows is incomplete, but that’s OK!

Real leaders:

1. Are motivated by serving other people, their community, their organisation, their favourite cause
2. Are curious about the future           
3. Scan the horizon for opportunities, innovations, and threats 
4. Question their assumptions and beliefs           
5. Listen and observe constantly           
6. Are comfortable with complexity           
7. Gather information from multiple sources. They talk to everyone they meet. They subscribe newspapers and magazines, have a twitter account, and read blogs
8. Invest time in building diverse personal and professional networks because they know the value of diversity
9. Explore many as many options as possible before making up their minds
10. Suspend judgment on hearing about a new way of doing things
11. They like to experiment because it is fun. They have courage, and they are willing to take risks
12. Take time out to think and reflect, perhaps go for walk or swim. They may keep a diary, a journal, or a write a blog
13. Encourage different points of view and involve people in decision-making           
14. Are open and honest about making mistakes. They treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn and share what they discovered with others
15. Take responsibility for their actions           
16. Want to learn and they want other people to learn, too. They give and receive feedback freely
17. Enjoy what they do. Real leaders make a positive difference to the lives of other people. People like to work with them because they are life enhancers
18. ?

 London, 18 August 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

Something very interesting happened at Moodle Camp

We built 10 new e-learning modules

Something very interesting happened at a recent gathering of LEAD Fellows and friends from all over the LEAD network. The event, which took place in London, was called ‘Moodle Camp’. Working in teams, we designed and built 10 new E-Learning modules covering a range of leadership and sustainable development competencies. These new modules will be tested on LEAD Fellows, and then launched in June 2012 at Rio+20. We achieved our goal.This was good.

Learning to take risks
On the 3rd day of the Moodle Camp, we shared the modules with an invited group of experienced leadership and sustainability practitioners from different organisations. I felt we were taking a risk. What if we failed to produce anything worth sharing? How might this affect our reputation as a learning organisation? But succeed we did. Our guests were curious, insightful and enthusiastic. They gave us much constructive feedback that we will incorporate into the beta version of the modules. 'It was good', they said, 'that we had involved them before the modules were finished.' Everyone went home tired and happy. Knowing when to take a risk is a leadership skill.

So what?
“So what?” you might say. E-Learning is not so new. LEAD has specialised in leadership and sustainable development for almost 20 years. If you put a group of LEAD Fellows in a room for 48 hours, and they succeed in creating some E-Learning modules on leadership and sustainable development, what is so interesting or surprising about that? 

What LEAD Fellows love to do

“I agree with you, it's not particularly surprising”, I would say. But that’s not the point. We’ve all seen LEAD Fellows in action at national, regional and international sessions. LEAD Fellows love to work in teams of people from different cultures and sectors. LEAD Fellows take a systems approach; they listen and ask questions, see and think differently, share knowledge, challenge constructively, take risks, explore and uncover innovative solutions. That’s normal for LEAD. 

What was really interesting was learning together
What was really interesting at Moodle Camp was not just that we succeeded in designing and building 10 new products against a very tight deadline. What was really interesting was that we were learning all the time about what makes an engaging E-Learning module. We were learning all the time from, and with each other.

How did we do that? You’ll have to read part 2 of this blog.

To learn more about LEAD go here www.lead.org

Writing proposals: make it easy on yourself II

Part Two

What do you need to write a proposal the easy way?

Start with your objectives: It’s easy to write the paragraph about your organisation and what it does. This is the equivalent of picking the chocolate chips off the cookie. What you need to do first is write the aims and objectives. This will give you a framework for your proposal and some boundaries. If something is not covered by your objectives, don’t waste space writing about it. Or review your objectives if you think they do not cover what you want to achieve. Then describe what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and what the impact will be. When you have done all that you will be able to write an elegant proposal summary that will knock the assessors’ socks off.

Ask for feedback Ask your colleagues (Nina in my case), to read what you have written and to edit what you have written. Unless you have a particular reason for writing something in a particular way, accept the changes immediately. Nina looked surprised when I said I liked her changes to my text. Note to self: I must work harder at listening to feedback.

Lay in provisions: Just before we started to write Nina asked me if I would like anything to eat. She brought me a tasty box of baklava. ‘Honey is good for energy’, said Nina, and she was right.

Be realistic:  At 10.00 pm I said to Nina “Please read what I have written so far. If you really don’t like it, let’s give up now and have a beer”. Nina said she liked it. We decided to give it another two hours. Supposing Nina had not liked what I had written then I think I hope I would have had the good sense to say let’s stop because we don’t have time to make it better. Martyrdom when writing proposals is not required.

Take breaks: After a while Nina’s eyes hurt and my back ached. We got up, walked around. I made a cup of tea, Nina had a smoke. Each to her/his own.

Stay focused: Decide the order of the tasks and keep going. When I was worrying about not having the specified number of words for a section, Nina said wisely: “Better to have quality than padding”.

Tell each other what you enjoyed

At close to midnight Nina and were alive and fully functioning. I could not believe the energy we had created just by collaborating on something we both cared about. We told each other how much we had enjoyed working together. We sent each other e-mails congratulating ourselves on our achievement. We swopped texts till the early morning.

Can you fall in love with someone while writing a proposal in an office late at night? I bet it happens all the time...They should make a film about that, maybe Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie could play the hero and heroine...