Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER March 21, 2016 EXECUTIVE SERIES 11 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca Filling in the blanks in the leadership contract Vince Molinaro, author of The Leader- ship Contract, confirmed what we see all around us: Leadership is broken and we're not able to fix it. To deal with this, Molinaro is proposing his "leadership contract:" Adopting four tenets to create the accountable leader. The contract is a fine idea — though not so common sense, ac- tually — but the "what and how" of it was lacking in Molinaro's brief presentation. Importantly, he missed the opportunity to dis- cuss holding leaders accountable to be effective leaders of people. Accountability (and the appli- cation of positive and negative consequences) is ultimately the mechanism for making any be- haviour stick in an organization. Subsequently, there already is a leadership contract and it's called "role clarity:" e accountabilities and authorities a role must have to achieve that role's portion of strategy. So, let's add some meat to Molinaro's bones: Leadership is a decision "Today's leaders must make the deliberate decision to lead." Great, but what does it mean to lead? In my experience, there are four principles to which all leaders must abide: • Managerial accountability: All leaders are held accountable by their leader for the output of their direct reports. If an em- ployee fails, it is her leader who is held to account. • Judgment and discretion: All leaders must make decisions, even the hard ones. A leader is expected to put his neck on the line. • Dialogue: All leaders must lead their team in dialogue, being willing and able to elicit advice and feedback from their di- rects while providing the same through coaching. • Trust: All leaders must create environments of trust by being rational, consistent and fair. Leadership is an obligation "Leaders must step up to their ac- countabilities as a leader." Agreed, but what are those accountabili- ties? All leaders are accountable to their leader for the following: • e outputs and working behav- iours of their direct reports. • Leading their team to the accom- plishment of team goals. • Building an increasingly capable team. • Practising continuous improve- ment regarding products, po- lices, processes and procedures. • Having commensurate authori- ties to fulfil these accountabili- ties. Leadership is hard work "Leaders must resolve to tackle items they may normally avoid." Absolutely — and how do you make that happen? See the prin- ciples above but also consider role clarity. If an organization has done the heavy lifting of determining exactly who is accountable for what, and with what authority is to be used in which situations, then "hard work" is less about moral obligation, courage and difficult conversations, and more about accountability, the work and dialogue. Leadership is a community "Today's best leaders actively participate in leadership com- munities." Sounds good but the priority should be ensuring every employee turns first to her man- ager for coaching on how to be a better leader. Support groups of peers are always a good idea, but if every leader of people is actually being held to account to be a good leader, then there will be a cascade of leadership ability. Michael Clark is director of business development at Forrest & Company. Forrest is an organizational trans- formation firm, with over 25 years experience in developing the organi- zational and leadership capacity in organizations. Trish Maguire Leadership In Action Michael Clark Organizational Effectiveness Are you prepared to be a great leader? "How can you expect your organization to succeed if you are enabling mediocre (lame) leadership?" is the challenging question from Vince Molinaro, global managing director of the strategic solutions practice at Lee Hecht Har- rison Knightsbridge. But I wonder if the question needs to be even more specific. For ex- ample, what do you think would be the answer from any CEO or HR leader if I asked, "How is your barely adequate, inferior, low to moderate quality, second-rate leadership team working out?" Come to think of it, I have never seen these descriptors in any lead- ership performance plan. Neither do I believe any HR leader in- corporates any of these descrip- tors in their talent management strategies. Molinaro uses three critical sta- tistics to reinforce his belief that "Mediocre leadership is the root of the challenges we have in com- panies" and: •65 per cent of American manag- ers are disengaged in their jobs •65 per cent of employees would take a new and better boss over a pay raise •only seven per cent of employ- ees have trust and confidence in their senior leaders. ese statistics are even more disconcerting when you compare them to Deloitte's 2014 Corporate and Learning Factbook that indi- cates "of the total global corporate training spending of $130 billion, leadership development account- ed for as much as 35 per cent." Unmistakably, many leader- ship initiatives continue to fail in achieving the end goal of building better leaders. I'm curious as to how many HR leaders are shocked and prompted into immediate action to turn these statistics around. What is it that leaders and HR leaders are missing? If you think about the nev- erending supply of leadership books, articles, studies, assess- ment tools, 360-degree leader- ship surveys and executive train- ing programs, people know what leadership is. So what's the essen- tial element that prevents "better leadership" from happening? For the largest part of my ca- reer, I've observed and experi- enced an extensive variety of so- called innovative approaches to leadership. At the end of the day, I believe the reason better leader- ship is not happening is because too many of the approaches are focused on leadership training, not leadership development. It's not achieved by a standalone webcast or half-day or week-long workshops. Neither is it accom- plished through special and fun wilderness team exercises. Leadership development is a relentless learning experience. Leadership development is about changing personal behaviour. If as an HR leader you believe, like Molinaro, "leadership is in cri- sis," now is the time to act. Every single HR leader, regardless of title or level, has a pivotal role in driv- ing the needed change. Ask yourselves and your HR team: How would we describe our leadership development pro- gram? Is it action-oriented, fo- cused on the individual and not his title? Does it maximize our leader's future needs and growth potential? Does it encourage our leaders to move out of their com- fort zones and change old habits? How many of our leaders de- scribed their leadership program as being a transformational ex- perience versus a transactional process? What's the possibility our programs teach leaders about leadership and not specifically how to become and be a better or great leader? Everybody can learn leader- ship as a concept, but the ques- tion every leader needs to ask is: "Am I willing to actually commit to doing things differently, take ownership of my own transfor- mation journey, take action with authenticity and courage, set the pace for the change my company really needs?" One thing I know for sure is no leader can become a better leader if she "keeps doing what she's al- ways done." Without any hyperbole or rhet- oric, with the leadership contract, Molinaro helps conscientious leaders understand the fine print of what it means to be a truly ac- countable leader. e four terms of the leadership contract provide a no-nonsense, purposeful frame- work that facilitates a convincing leadership culture, a leadership culture designed to develop "great leaders" not just "better leaders." is is not a flavour-of-the- month intervention for the run- of-the-mill, titled or chosen few. Molinaro is not interested in just reframing a leadership con- cept — his challenge for leaders everywhere is to meet an ever- rising standard of performance and become "great leaders." I leave you with a quote from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching: "Know- ing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Master- ing others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." Trish Maguire is a commentator for SCNetwork on leadership in action and founding principal of Synergyx Solutions in Nobleton, Ont., focused on high-potential leadership develop- ment coaching. She has held senior leadership roles in HR and OD in education, manufacturing and entre- preneurial firms. She can be reached at synergyx@sympatico.ca. It's not achieved by a standalone webcast or half-day or week-long workshops.

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