E-Newsletter
Issue 2

In This Issue

• 'A leaders is a dealer in hope'
• Execution is key; ask the operators
• Avoiding CFIT
• Pocket Leader

'A leader is a dealer in hope'

At the Leaders in London Summit in October I was surrounded by some of the best brains in the business of leadership� and that was just the delegates.

At London Barbican, with 1200 business people, I waited for pearls of wisdom to drop from the mouths of an eclectic mix of professional and political leaders. Speakers included Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton, Tom Peters and Spencer Johnson, IBM's Lou Gerstner and Royal Mail's Allan Leighton, Ultimo Bra founder Michelle Mone and explorer Ranulph Fiennes.

Was I disappointed? Of course not! I am pleased to share with you my thoughts.

From my many conversations, delegates were looking for inspiration, new thinking, something to jolt them out of their normal patterns of behaviour. Undoubtedly, they had the opportunity to look at their own challenges through the experiences of people who have overcome extreme obstacles and opposition to succeed as leaders of note.

Leadership wisdom came in all sizes, from nuggets to brain-bending fundamentals. Tom Peters said succinctly: "A leader is a dealer in hope".

And Kjell Nordstrum talked about the difficulty of being a leader when today people have so much freedom to go, know, do and be. "To be a leader for people who have this freedom is difficult and demanding; the old tools don't function any more. The pressure is on companies because this applies to customers too," he said.

Ranulph Fiennes made us laugh. Given his job, it's not surprising that this man's leadership style is decisive and fast. He deals quickly when he realises that there's a 'bad apple' in one of his expedition teams. Fiennes' decision is always to 'release the apple from the barrel', but as he explained, "unfortunately in Antarctica you can sack someone - but you can't get rid of them".

I could write much more on my thoughts on Leaders in London� And in fact I have. I hope these first articles are of interest to you, and would welcome your opinion, so feel free to respond and challenge my thinking. My email address is lyn.bicker@tsoconsulting.co.uk

With warm regards,

Lyn Bicker
Managing Director

Please feel at liberty to forward this newsletter to an interested colleague or friend and invite them to subscribe. We will never share subscriber contact details and you can unsubscribe at any time.

^ Back to top

Execution is key; ask the operators

Who'd have thought I'd find myself arguing with the legendary Lou Gerstner, the man who turned around IBM? But I found myself doing just that last week - mentally, at least - when he asserted that although people can work on their leadership skills, "you can't be a great leader without some genetic input".

Hmmm, so why was he speaking at Leaders in London, then? On the basis the audience didn't comprise 1200 people genetically born to lead, what was the point of Gerstner's wisdom if we couldn't each take heart, build and benefit from his message?

Execution, he said, was the key. A leader needs to make the connection for people, to explain the need for change. "Some leaders', he said, 'think that a vision statement is all that transformation is about, but there's a tremendous amount of hard work to be done to get people to change and achieve that transformation. It's execution that separates leaders from pretenders."

Well, I can't argue with that. Work we've recently done with a transport company demonstrated very clearly that execution doesn't happen without the glare of the spotlight upon it. Our bespoke process was one of intensive coaching for the top three operational management layers, against well-defined organisational needs. The company achieved their best results in seven years, and though we certainly can't claim all the glory in such a complex and inter-related system, it's very clear that such focused attention had a major impact.

Gerstner says the job of transformation is never over. His definition of a leader is someone who has the personal capacity to get people to do things they don't really want to. He insists that it's necessary to constantly be on the edge, flexing, responsive, changing.

Context is crucial, maintains Gerstner. Leaders need to be fully aware, to know the world in which they operate, to have a sense of what needs doing, to be able to create goals that people can get behind. In Gerstner's industry, dealing with information technology and its impact, the pace is so fast it's exhausting - and it demands that leaders make the effort to keep up.

Finding new ways of increasing our knowledge is clearly important - that's why we were all at the conference, after all. Rapidly becoming aware of how much we don't know creates the thirst for appropriate knowledge. At LiL, book sales were high, and certainly a number of windows and doors in my mind were opened by the stimulating calibre of the sessions.

But isn't it interesting that so often we need an outsider - coach, consultant, teacher - to help us see things more clearly? Allan Leighton's delightful story about his early experience in a Maltesers sweet factory (don't try to sweep up many tiny, uncontrollable balls; squash them first!) emphasised the need to know what's the better way to do things. Ask the operators, he said. Think about the basics, don't try to be too clever, and keep 'strategy' to only 20% of the firm's business.

I'm still inclined to argue with Mr Gerstner. If leadership relies on genetics, how come such a lot of my work has been successful, helping individuals reach a stage where not only they are high performing, but also their management teams, and the people working for them? An inclination to lead is, perhaps, something we're born with. But the ability to use that inclination can be brought about by focused attention. 'When the pupil is ready, the teacher will arrive', is how the old saying goes. Just genes? I don't think so.

For more information TSOC Leadership development, click here .

^ Back to top

Avoiding 'CFIT'

Leaders in London speaker Professor Marvin Zonas' revealed a frightening statistic - in the US, 40% of all commercial flight crashes are caused by 'CFIT' - Controlled Flying Into Terrain. So two out of every five crashes occur when pilots deny the information they are being presented with - that there's a mountain up ahead, or their instruments aren't registering a problem. And they just keep on flying, in a controlled manner, into the ground.

Most of us are familiar with the 'change curve' (anger, denial, sorrow, acceptance, internalisation, progress), but it's scary to think that our lives might be in danger because of a pilot's denial� but then pilots, too, are merely human.

Maybe flying a plane into terrain is an extreme example of change resistance. Personal change is not, generally, easy. We've all grown into habits of behaviour, no matter how good our intentions are. Received wisdom says that it takes just 30 days to instil a habit - and possibly a lifetime to remove it.

Many of the speakers at LiL spoke about change: personal, business and organisational. It's a challenge each of us has: move forward and make progress; stand still and decline. President Gorbachev said it very precisely: 'Perestroika happened when we realised we couldn't go on living the way we were'.

And Spencer Johnson, author of 'Who Moved My Cheese?', made it clear that it's often a painful situation, or the need to escape from it, that prompts change.

It's interesting to think about our role as change leaders. If like me, you're very comfortable at initiating change - whether it's your idea or one you've bought into - you have a clear view of the end point or purpose. All you have to do now is get people to do what you need them to do. But when change is imposed, it's a different story. Whoever said, 'when faced with the need to change, most people get busy on the proof for why it doesn't apply to them', got it about right! We get resistant, we find at least 22 ways to kill off the idea, we stall, ask for more data � and in the end, with a not very good grace, we maybe, just maybe, give in.

Today I started coaching a new client - a successful and ambitious man who has achieved a lot, and will achieve even more. There's a particular topic he wants to work on, and I know he'll move forward because he's entirely open to personal change; it's something he wants to do, and with a little help to see the wood from the trees, he'll get there.

A senior executive's job is often a lonely one, with few people to rely on who don't have an axe to grind, and for whom the habits of behaviour are very comfortable, thank you. Our clients find coaching very effective as a confidential resource with no other objective than to see the executive achieve his or her goals - and inevitably, these imply leading people in a direction they find unattractive. Perhaps personal change is perestroika for the beleaguered spirit?

Lots of TSOC's work when coaching senior people is to help them find a route to change, or cope with personal transition. Most of us tend to make things much more complicated than they need to be, in order to protect the status quo - so the coach's job is to ask the simple, 'dumb' questions. What we are doing, again in Marvin Zonas' words, is finding a way to 'bend the mind frame'.

A bit like the occasion when, on a long-haul flight, that had been boarded but then severely delayed, the passenger next to me called over the attendant. We were all getting very fed up with waiting, and anticipated a tetchy conversation, which would have reflected everyone's frustrations. In a very calm Southern drawl, this gentleman asked: 'Excuse me ma'am, is this delay technical or administrative?' The attendant replied that it was technical. While all around him there were sighs and tutting, my fellow passenger nodded, and said: 'Then please take all the time you need, ma'am!'

For information on TSOC Executive Coaching, click here .

^ Back to top

Pocket Leader

We have added Pocket Leader to our popular and effective Pocket Coach tool. This self-help pack helps address some leadership challenges. Pocket Leader is not a solution; it does provide simple first steps and the opportunity to help yourself become a more effective leader. To receive a copy with our compliments, please email lindsey.baker@tsoconsulting.co.uk

For more details on TSOC Leadership Development, click here , or contact Cathy Collins (cathy.collins@tsoconsulting.co.uk).