by Matt Richter

I ask you to take a few minutes and watch the following video. It’s an activity. Follow along and do what it says.

Modeled behavior is so much more powerful than the spoken word. How we behave, how our behaviors are reinforced, how our organizations set expectations both explicitly and tacitly set a tone and influence our cultures. When it comes to leadership development, this is truer than we like. Our programs and initiatives are vastly out of sync with reality.

Stanford professor, Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his brilliant book, LEADERSHIP BS, conducts a superb take down of the leadership development industry in his opening chapters. On pages 1-3, he lists leader after leader and executive team after executive team that have failed their respective organizations. Some for devious and malevolent purposes. Others, likely (I hope) for reasons more likely aligned to incompetence. Some leaders fail due to ethical breakdowns. Others make choices for revenue gains despite hurting those that follow. Pfeffer says one approach, or filter, we can use to evaluate failed leadership is the “bad apple” theory. That the leader is simply the wrong choice for the times. The leader was poorly selected and matched to the role.

If you don’t believe me, or Pfeffer for that matter, I urge you to dive into Barbara Kellerman’s work—listed in the references.

The more relevant method specific to this blog post is to explore the misalignment between what these leaders were taught, what our organizational cultures espouse, and what the leaders actually value do, and must feel, in order to meet the success metrics their boards and governing bodies really expect. 

In other words, the goals and values we espouse in most organizations are not the same goals and values reinforced and rewarded. How many organizations use the metaphor of a “family” to describe their company culture, or how many state that employees “bleed (insert whatever color or cultural mascot is used)” to indicate loyalty and cohesiveness. Yet, these families and dedicated loyalists are shocked when layoffs happen or they are residing in toxic environments.

The final of the four issues that undermine leadership development is how dissonant our espoused values and behaviors are to what is actually rewarded. 1-2-3 CLAP!

Let’s do another thought experiment.

On a scale of 1-10 (10 is high), please rate the importance of empathy in a leader toward her followers.

I bet you said 8, 9, or 10. Empathy is a hot topic. It is the evolved spot where emotional intelligence used to reside (and probably still does). All leaders need to have great EQ, right?

Ok, now let’s name some famous leaders in history. Famous effective leaders, who likely would not be included in the list of failures from Pfeffer. Evaluate whether these leaders were known for their empathic abilities or their EQ.

Franklin Roosevelt… Yes, to both.

Mother Theresa… Yes, to both.

Gandhi… Yes, to both.

Ok, so far, so good.

What about Josef Stalin?

Hold on, you say… sure, he was a leader in name, but he was a genocidal maniac and his leadership was a failure.

What about Steve Jobs? He didn’t kill anyone (that I know of). He certainly wasn’t empathic. Or a master of others’ feelings. Well, if we just look at late 1990’s and 2000’s Jobs, he was pretty successful, right? He is one of those tech leaders held in high estimation.

But this is the problem. This is the issue. By what goals are we measuring leader efficacy? What standards are we setting? Job certainly hit incredible revenue targets. He gets credit (along with several under his employ) for spectacular innovation. He drove market value of Apple through the roof (at least again, in his second tenure as CEO). But, to his followers, he was a bit of a jerk. Many, however, nonetheless still found him inspiring. A jerky inspirationalist. So, is inspirational effectiveness a good measure?

Go back to Stalin…

His followers followed him for decades. He led through horrifying fear tactics, sure. But, he led. In fact, if you asked him, perhaps he would have been happy with the goals he achieved. His goals for the USSR were likely not aligned with his followers, though. Yet, he accomplished them. Definitely not in a transformational way, à la James MacGregor Burns’ definition of effective leadership. But, you cannot argue with Stalin’s effectiveness to move the needle the way he wanted it over a long period of time. In other words, he decides what goals and targets the said leader is held against? And once set, how are those goals and targets discussed and disseminated among the masses?

Both Jobs and Stalin had organizational goals. Both had goals that were relatively clear for them. Both espoused a core set of values Both did not hide their leadership approaches. Both were quite clear about what was expected and they acted accordingly. Stalin used terror to motivate and nip opposition in the bud. Jobs leveraged ego and feelings of approval and rejection.

Both were aligned in their goals and their behaviors.

And it is an oversimplification to imply that alignment is the only reason they were effective. Certainly a myriad of other factors contributed. And this post isn’t about making Stalin into a good guy! Please remember, I know he was a horrifying and awful person. I use Stalin and Jobs to indicate that leadership should be evaluated on multiple levels. There is effective and ineffective leadership. That is different than moral and amoral leadership. So, we can have an effective lead who reaches some set of goals and that same leader can do so in an amoral way—amoral meaning Stalin. Alternatively, we can have leaders who align to certain ethical codes who fail nonetheless to reach a set of goals.

Goals and objectives are tricky. Because whose goals and whose objectives? Are we talking about the organization’s board that sets them and then the leader executes toward them? This assumes they are one and the same with the leader. Or are the leader’s goals different from the board’s and therefore what matters? What about the follower’s goals? Burns includes in his leadership definition that the goals must be shared between leader and followers. But, that is one definition. One I personally love, but it is not necessarily the one organizations and organizational leaders adhere to when choosing and evaluating leadership.

Let’s talk values… Many organizational leaders today talk about employee well-being. They talk about supportive cultures, DE&I, sustainability. I love these ideas!!! But, how are CEOs measured? Sure, there are some companies out there that would accept little to no profits for highly achieved levels of team member health, happy work environments, a world that is truly sustainable, and a fully diverse and integrated society. But how many more likely would fire the CEO for failed high profits despite those societal values improvements? Ok… ok… you might counter that these things are not opposable ideas. Or you might counter that results do not exclude values. But goals work like priorities and when profit isn’t met, all these other espoused goals tend to fall by the wayside.

Or these values-based goals become marketing points… competitive advantages for engaging with clients and customers who expect them. In which case, how many organizations are going deeply into well-being initiatives that expand beyond the pizza party, yoga mornings, or some other superficial gathering. In other words, they don’t do the work, but they do espouse the importance. The goals… and hence, the values conflict with the behaviors and targets actually present that dictate how leaders get measured and evaluated.

Now, let’s get a bit more spot on to leadership development.

Define the traits, behaviors, and values an effective leader today must have to succeed.

Did you do it?

I bet you named all positive ones. If you look at your list, I’ll put a month’s salary against the fact that you likely did not name one negative behavior or trait. Pretty sure no one listed manipulation. Pretty sure lying is missing. Pretty sure obsessive compulsion isn’t on there. Not that these three examples are required for a leader to succeed. But, again, if we look at successful leaders in the past, they have all had negative characteristics that gave them an edge. Denying that is delusional.

So when we design leadership programs, we tend to ignore those negative aspects and only focus on the positive ones. Survey any LD program in your organization. Not one says you should be a manipulative prick.

Does this mean for us to have better LD initiatives, we should people how to manipulate others? I don’t know… But, to ignoring the presence of negative aspects of leadership ain’t going so well now.

From Pfeffer…

Leadership developments programs overwhelmingly recommend, “that leaders inspire trust, be authentic, tell the truth, serve others (particularly those who work for, and with them), be modest and self-effacing, exhibit empathic understanding and emotional intelligence, and other similar seemingly sensible nostrums.” (p.4.)

First off… I love the word, “nostrum…” definitely needs to be used more often. 

Anyway, Pfeffer continues, “… there sits ample, even overwhelming evidence of work places filled with disengaged, dissatisfied employees who do not trust their leaders and whose oft-expressed number one desire is to leave their current employer. What’s the upshot? Not only is the world filled with dysfunctional workplaces, but leaders themselves are not doing so well, as they confront shorter job tenures and an ever-higher probability of suffering career derailments and getting fired.” (p.4.)

Why do they get fired or have shorter tenures? They get fired for poor performance, mostly related to share-holder expectations (revenue and revenue related activities). What are they taught to do in their schools and their leadership development programs? Foster trust, build collegiality, exhibit emotional intelligence, etc. All fine and dandy, as long as the revenue targets get met. Which means that when in conflict, we get a Steve Jobs.

I am not saying… let me repeat… I AM NOT SAYING kindness, fostering trust, and supporting well-being is bad. I am not saying sustainability and DE&I is bad! Rather, I am saying, in today’s environment, we are ever in dissonance. We are advocating for a world in our organizations that our goals and values (actually lived, not aspirational) do not support. We teach to the aspiration and ignore the reinforced reality. We build curricula that is naïve, but hopeful. Then we beat the heck out of those who leave the programs and try to do so. Or worse, we design ineffectively and cynical learners roll their eyes and follow the models they see around them.

We need better alignment before we can build better aligned programs. We know that modeled behavior is much more powerful than the spoken word. 1-2-3 CLAP.

REFERENCES

Burns, J. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming Leadership: a new pursuit of happiness. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Fambrough, M., & Hart, R.K. (2008). Emotions in Leadership Development: A Critique of Emotional Intelligence. Advances in Developing Human Resources. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Fambrough/publication/249631547_Emotions_in_Leadership_Development_A_Critique_of_Emotional_Intelligence/links/0046353bef93c7b874000000/Emotions-in-Leadership-Development-A-Critique-of-Emotional-Intelligence.pdf

Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kellerman, B. (2012). The end of leadership (1st ed.). New York: Harper Business, An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.

Kellerman, B. (2015). Hard times: leadership in America. Stanford, California: Stanford Business Books, an imprint of Stanford University Press.

Khlevniuk, O.V. (2015). Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator. New Haven: Yale university Press.

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership : theory and practice (Eighth Edition. ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS : fixing workplaces and careers one truth at a time (First edition. ed.). New York, NY: Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Smith, J.E. (2007). FDR. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.