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Progress! First-Class Leadership - Issue No. 2/ February 2005

Dear Reader,

Are you aware of the power of an engaged workforce?

According to research done at Rutgers University and Vanderbilt University in the United States, engaged employees are a considerable financial factor of any enterprise. On average, a particularly engaged workforce leads to:

• USD 3,800 more profits per employee per year;
  
  
• USD 18,600 more market value per employee; and
  
  
• USD 27,000 more sales per employee

compared with companies with a moderately engaged workforce.

So the question is: How can you make your employees more engaged? As you may know, I am currently writing a book on first-class leadership, which will give you some answers to this important question. I am aiming to publish the book this year, in late spring. So stay tuned for further news related to this project.

The attached newsletter (scroll down to read) may also help you get insights on how you, as a leader, can get your team more engaged.

If you are interested in working on developing your leadership skills and traits, don't miss our FREE teleclasses, which you can join from wherever you are. For details and registration, please visit www.progressu.com.hk/Teleclasses.htm.

Keep Progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.

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Leadership Coaching
Serial: The Top 10 Leadership Competencies for First-Class Leadership - Part VI of VI: Developing Charisma, Leading with Integrity

To read Part I - V of this serial, please click here

Part VI

Competency No. 9: Developing Charisma

Can anyone be charismatic or is charisma an inborn quality? Why is charisma important for leaders?

It is true that a leader can be effective even without natural charisma. It is also true that many charismatic leaders cannot produce healthy results in the absence of other necessary leadership traits and skills. However, strong charisma helps a leader be more influential. Fortunately, charisma can be developed as long as a leader is ready to consider adopting the following traits common to charismatic people:

1. Fierceness - representing the Father (for easier memorization)
2. Tenderness - representing the Mother
3. Playfulness - representing the Child

1. Fierceness (Father): Radiating Energy

Fierceness in this context is defined by the following qualities:

• Congruence: being true to yourself
• Confidence: being self-certain
• Competence: being aware of what you know
• Concentration: being focused

These qualities are influenced by the status of one's body and mind. For example, if you dress appropriately for a certain event, you will feel more confident and radiate more competence. Or if you are physically tired, it might be difficult to concentrate. Likewise, if you don't feel certain, your body posture will show it.

Therefore, if you want to develop your fierceness, you will need to take these interrelated factors into consideration.

2. Tenderness (Mother): Building Rapport

Tenderness serves to build good rapport with the people you want to interact with. It is characterized by:

• Giving a good first impression
• Creating positive feelings
• Maintaining positive feelings

Giving a good first impression is influenced by your personal branding and by the image you project.

Creating good feelings is influenced by your expectations and pacing, or how much you are willing to adjust to what the other person likes.

In order to maintain positive feelings, you need to consider your "emotional bank account" with others. The concept of emotional bank accounts describes the amount of trust stored up in a person built up by good acts from other people. According to this idea, to maintain a good rapport with people, you need to keep your account in black figures. Positive feelings can also be maintained by keeping good eye contact ("friendly eyes"), by being attentive and sensitive, and by listening with empathy.

3. Playfulness (Child): Making Yourself Lovable

Many managers have the misconception that they need to display a cool and distant image to keep their boundaries intact. Successful charismatic leaders, however, manage to keep the balance between established boundaries and approachability.

Playfulness in this context is characterized by:

• Being relaxed
• Smiling
• Having fun

One way of having fun is allowing your staff to have fun in finding out your faults. They will do it anyway, so if you can respond in a relaxed and humorous way. This approach is better for both parties and will actually increase your ability to influence the group.

There are a number of other ways of being humorous. You can twist statements, make strange associations, use imagination or simplify things.

Example:

Employee: "How can we solve the problem with this difficult customer?"
Leader: "Get the troublemaker fired."

A word of caution: humor must be used carefully and in the right doses, otherwise you might suffer adverse effects.

Charismatic leaders effectively balance fierceness, tenderness and playfulness, depending on the situation they currently face. A charismatic leader is more likely to be permitted to influence the group and is therefore able to increase groupness among the organization.

The draft of the first chapters of Charlie's book "The Groupness Factor - How to Create a Success Culture through First-Class Leadership" is now online. You can read it on http://www.progressu.com.hk/Groupness-Book.htm. Feel free to give him your feedback to the email address given on that page.

Competency No. 10: Leading with Integrity

How is integrity defined? According to Merriam-Webster, integrity is1:

An uncompromising adherence to a code of moral, artistic, or other values; utter sincerity, honesty, and candor; avoidance of deception, expediency, artificiality, or shallowness of any kind

For me, leading with integrity means that the leader consistently lives up to the values he helped establish for his organization. I don't expect a leader to be a perfect human being - if such a creature exists - but I expect that a leader makes his best effort to walk his talk. And if he fails in doing so, he should openly admit it, properly apologize for it and take the necessary corrective actions.

Integrity is a crucial factor in getting permission to lead a group. Additionally, the level of integrity is a factor that determines the degree to which group members will follow the direction established by their leader.

Let me give you an example of a rare degree of integrity displayed by the management of one of the Best Employers in Asia-Pacific, the Australian Brewery Lion Nathan2:

Making "the world a more sociable place" is a purpose that appeals to employees both intellectually and emotionally.

[…]

But however compelling the picture that Lion Nathan's leaders have created, there is no credibility to the statement unless they practice what they preach. So, at Lion Nathan, socializing is built into the DNA of the organization.

[…]

Lion Nathan, like many other organizations, also attests to acting with integrity as part of its values. What differentiates Lion Nathan from The Rest is that its values determine the policies and strategies of the organization. Lion Nathan's leaders strive to treat employees with the trust that a value of integrity demands. Previously, expense reports were thoroughly examined which took up a lot of time. Also, the message it sent to employees was, "We don't trust you." Now, reports submitted are assumed to be correct. This doesn't mean to say there are no rules or guidelines. An internal audit is conducted on a random basis at the end of the year. By operating under an honor code system, leaders at Lion Nathan have sent out an immediate signal to the organization that says, "We trust you," which makes employees feel that they are being treated with respect and dignity.

[…]

The role that Lion Nathan plays in highlighting the importance of physical interaction and making the world more sociable allows employees to personally relate to the organization and gives meaning to the work they do. This is evidenced in the very real decisions that the business has made - for example, to not participate in the poker machine industry despite the obvious synergy with their core business. While not an easy decision to make on financial terms, Lion's leaders came to believe, after some debate, that poker machines detract from, rather than contribute to, making the world a more sociable place.

Unfortunately, I rarely come across leaders who make their very business decisions based on the values they proclaim. Frequently, such considerations are thrown overboard for the benefit of short-term profits, not realizing that other stakeholders will be aware of this lack of integrity.

From my experience of coaching senior executives, I learned that it is mostly due to a lack of awareness that leaders display a low level of integrity when making decisions. These managers do not say to themselves, "I am aware that this is against what I claim to be our values, but never mind, I will still go ahead with it." They are simply not aware that they are in breach of their own values and don't realize what they are creating for themselves in the longer run.

One of the reasons why this happens often at top management level is the lack of effective feedback and feed-forward processes for senior executives. First-class leaders are aware of this pitfall and therefore engage competent executive coaches to assure a higher quality of the decisions they make. The coach doesn't make the decision for the executive - in fact, that could be quite fatal. What the coach can do is to help the executive expand his view on people and business issues, which can lead to more clarity and a wider range of options for decision making. That, in return, leads to higher-quality decisions.

The effects of lack of integrity on groupness are two-fold:

1) Reduced permission to lead
2) Risk of increased unwanted groupness

If a group of employees believes in values opposite to the values displayed by its leader, this might increase the groupness among this group, subsequently making true leadership very difficult, if not impossible.

Are you aware of the level of integrity you display? How do you assure a high quality of your decisions?

Is first-class leadership possible?

Aside from these crucial skills and traits, there are a number of other skills that are useful and necessary in becoming a first-class leader. These include public speaking and presentation skills, intercultural skills, financial knowledge, and so on.

First-class leadership not easy to achieve, but I know that it is possible. Like a first-class tennis player who needs to continuously improve his serving skills, volleys, and mental and physical constitution, a leader is required to continuously develop his traits and skills to become and remain first-class. Unfortunately, many managers believe that once they reach a senior position, they would have "made it" and just need to act as the boss, not realizing that they have actually just arrived at the starting point of an entirely new journey.

I encourage you to keep progressing yourself, thus helping me in my mission to improve leadership across all corporations.

End of this Serial

In a few weeks, we will create an e-book with the content of this serial, enriched with more details and explanations about the groupness factor. Please contact us at if you are interested.

Endnotes

1) Merriam-Webster Unabridged: http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=integrity

2) Leadership & Talent in Asia: Bennett & Bell, 2004, p. 40, 41, 38

NOTE:The Top 10 Leadership Skills are also part of Progress-U's 2-day First-Class Leadership Seminar. Charlie will facilitate this interactive seminar in collaboration with VISTEX Ltd. on March 01 + 02, 2005. For details and registration visit www.progressu.com.hk/Seminars.htm or call +852-9199 2019.

For more information related to Progress-U Leadership Coaching please visit click here.

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Charlie Lang is an Executive Coach and Trainer who founded Progress-U Limited in 2002. His mission is to develop his clients to become First-Class Leaders. He is a passionate and professional Executive Coach, Mentor Coach, Trainer, Public Speaker and Author of articles related to leadership, change management and innovative sales. In 2004, he initiated the Master Coach Alliance in Hong Kong, a network of professional Life, Business and Corporate Coaches. End of 2004, he started authoring a book on First-Class Leadership which is due to be published in mid-2005. Copyright 2002-2005 Progress-U Limited