by Dennis Adsit
In the introduction to this series on Leadership mastery, I asked the question, Why Isn’t It You? Why aren’t you your favorite leader?
I talked about an approach a music teacher friend uses to nudge his students away from fixating on their guitar heroes and stealing their licks towards finding and mastering their own unique sound. Then I drew the parallel between taking a mastery orientation to leadership rather than worrying about what you have to do to get promoted.
At a high level, my friend’s approach was to move his students from stealing licks to 1) improvising from concepts, 2) recording, listening, and transcribing their own music, 3) working on what they can control, and gradually 4) uncovering and iterating, one-step-at-a-time, towards their own sound.
Could an approach like this be applied to mastering your way of leading?
The short answer is Yes!
Five Ways to Get On and Stay on the Leadership Mastery Road
Obviously, there is no one way to do this… Jensen isn’t Jobs… Nooyi isn’t Nadella.
There are many ways to be a great guitar player, but all of them are founded on music fundamentals, combined in different ways. It’s the same with leadership.
While you can combine leadership fundamentals in different ways to find your unique style, you still have to know what those fundamentals are.
Therefore, if you don’t have a model of what Effective Executive Leadership actually is, get one.
Without a model, you’re just bowling through a blanket with no target.
The good news is there are plenty of models out there.
Your coach should have one. (Sotto voce: If they don’t, ask them what they are steering you towards.)
Without a model, you’re just bowling through a blanket with no target.
And please don’t settle for the models that are “ways of being” generalities. That’s not what made Nooyi, Nadella, Jensen, or Jobs highly effective leaders.
At a minimum, leaders have to scan the environment and set the strategic context for how the organization is going to win. These often involve gut-churning choices about scuppering efforts with huge sunk costs followed by bet-the-farm new investments. (See how Jensen scans the environment with his T5T approach).
They have to evangelize that vision and maintain sustained effort and focus…over time…quarter in and quarter out…to ensure the organization executes effectively.
And they also often have to make very tough choices about the people they put on the field, sometimes parting with long-standing, loved leaders that can’t scale. And they have to know how to build individuals into high-performing teams.
And yes, of course, they also have to be able to manage themselves…as “ways of being” models focus on…and minimize the drama around them so they don’t become a distraction.
But getting good at Feeling Feelings and Practicing Integrity are not the fundamentals of effective executive leadership, they won’t be enough for you to get sustained results for all stakeholders, and therefore they won’t lead to leadership mastery.
Find a model of what an Effective Executive does, one that has been studied and validated for predicting successful outcomes.
Then, determine your strong suits and biggest gaps and begin to chart a course towards your unique combination of those fundamentals.
If you want to be on the road towards mastering your way of leading, take the leaders you look up to, not as the answer, but as a clue, an input, a sign of what is already in you and a part of the unique way you may end up leading.
If you want to be on the road towards mastering your way of leading, take the leaders you look up to, not as the answer but as a clue, an input, a sign of what is already in you and a part of the unique way you may end up leading.
Then, go further and study the leaders you admire in action…in the wild. Take what you admire about them, then watch them closely and, as specifically as possible, note what do they do. Not what results do they get, nor lofty position they hold, nor the accolades they get from others, what do they actually do?
Do you look up to someone’s courage? How does that courage manifest? Their empathy and ability to connect with others? What do you see them doing and saying? Their knowledge of finance? What in particular? The way they influence, collaborate, or invite and honor diverse perspectives? How do they do that? The edge they bring to their negotiations? Is it “all edge, all the time?” When do they apply edge and when do they move towards win-win, collaboration and closing?
Get others help you see any ways in which you are already doing aspects of what you admire in other leaders.
What are the edge conditions for this skill? Meaning are there places you can do it, but edge places where you can’t?
A marketing VP I am working with wants to get better at influencing stakeholders, presenting a clear POV, and working towards win-win solutions.
Turns out, she is great with her team and already quite good with her peers. It’s in the context of senior leaders and large audiences where she struggles.
That’s a very different change challenge.
The guitar teacher got his students to record themselves in action. You often can’t record yourself, but after meetings, approach people and ask them what, specifically, they noticed and liked about how you showed empathy, how you got your point across and influenced, how you presented, how you negotiated.
If you have a coach, a great practice is to get your coach to role play with you before you do the presentation or have the conversation or conduct the negotiation. Ask them to reflect back what they see that you doing well and where you might be leaking.
[Aside: I talked about the importance of targeted skills coaches in my series on Behavior Change In Real Life, particularly in the section Behavior Change IRL: Focus on Both the Journey and the Destination.]
If you are really serious about getting good at a particular skill, find someone who makes their living teaching what you want to learn.
Another solid mastery step is to consider bypassing the dime-a-dozen what-do-you-think coaches and get a targeted skills coach.
And like the guitar example, if you want to, say, develop more executive presence, don’t focus on specific things you should say or specific ways to stand or gesture to make you look poised and powerful. That’s stealing licks.
Get that skills coach to help you understand the concepts behind what you see your favorite leader doing in the wild from suggestion #2 above that you think is so powerful. Tell the skills coach what others see you doing already from suggestion #3 above and ask them to help you build on that.
But look for opportunities “in the wild” to get extra reps in:
- Ask for a discount. Asking for a discount on your coffee drink is a popular, readily available, and stone-simple way to practice courage and negotiation and get used to being uncomfortable.
- Practice Your Elevator Pitch Waiting for the Shower. Turn the shower on and put your hand under the water. Try to delver your strategic change agenda before the water gets hot. Your strategic change agenda should include:
- Current Reality: a description of current reality and why the status quo isn’t acceptable
- Preferred Futures: one maybe 12-18 months out and one three years out.
- Priorities: the top priorities (What’s) and the top ways of operating (How’s) that will get you to that preferred future
- Metrics: what measurements, that the business cares about, will ultimately improve but also what metrics will people see improving along the way
- Speaking of Elevators, Leverage Them for More Than a Lift. Want to get better on your feet or just get more comfortable being uncomfortable, interact with strangers on the elevator or standing in line for admission to an event. Just strike up a conversation and ad lib. Try to connect. Get them talking. Find out something important to them. look for and point out common ground.
- Collect No’s. Take the pressure off of outcomes, by getting out there with your pitch, not with the goal to get wins however defined, but to get at-bats and and collect no’s. Your success metric is the number of No’s you get.
In summary, there are a lot of parallels between what my guitar teacher friend did to get his students to find their own sound and what leaders can do to stop worrying about promotions they can’t control and instead get on the road to finding and mastering their own approach to leading.
In the final installment, I will focus on the role of the coach (if you are using one) and Job #1 for you in mastering your own way of leading.
“Change gurus? Sure. Each will tell you a direction and destination. But the eternal guru is the road itself. Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj I Am That
Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service that has helped hundreds of newly hired and promoted executives get great starts in challenging new jobs.
