In sharing the insights that I've gained through this revelation, I offer the context of my leadership experiences related to leading in good times and bad. I will end this series by sharing a strategic but practical approach that the executive team at St. Vincent Health embarked upon to integrate leadership character with leading functions and organizations successfully. I invite you to examine our strategy and practice field for Virtuous Leadership.
First, we must embrace slowly boiling the frog!
It's no mystery that when you subject a frog to boiling-hot water, its first and immediate instinct will be to jump out. Whatever the meaningful experience is that you want the frog to embrace, you will find yourself spending quite a bit of time chasing its impulse to fight the condition imposed.
Leaders within organizations have similar characteristics when the conditions around them “heat up”. When things get hot enough, we seek to jump to the most convenient “new thing” that will get us out of the “boiling water.” It begs the question, “How can we ever be practiced at truly leading in tough times when our first response is to escape the tough times?”
As a former psychologist, (I still practice my craft – it's what my position requires me to do – I just don't get paid for it) I found value in living in the condition. There are so many dimensions of the human person that are left unexplored and untapped that if we were to elevate even a third of our fundamental human gifts, we would find a source of energy driven by obstacles and barriers rather than wasting time mustering up the energy to avoid them.
Here's a thought. When we put a carrot in boiling water, it gets soft. The boiling water re-forms the carrot. When you put an egg in boiling water, it gets harder. Again, the boiling water re-forms the egg from a liquid to a solid. In these two examples, the condition changed the objects. However, when you put a coffee bean in boiling water, the coffee bean actually enhances the water – giving it flavor – therefore embracing and changing the condition. The coffee bean alters the condition to the extent that it gives the boiling water a new and different utility.
I find parallels in my organizational leadership life. When we as leaders are too quick to respond to the heat by “jumping out” from our organization's core to the short term fix, we eventually miss the opportunity for the long term gain. We miss the opportunity to embrace and change the condition. That's what typically happens when we aren't practiced at taking time to “slowly boil the frog.” When you slowly boil the frog in the context of responding to environmental challenges, you give yourself permission to absorb the condition you are in, slowing things down, inviting deeper levels of discipline and discernment about what the condition actually presents and you leverage leadership expertise with the organization's values and character to examine the short and long range future that your broader community will benefit from.
Of course, embracing this approach makes many leaders anxious. To “slow things down” is often interpreted as being non-productive. We are taught that the keys to success are speed, agility, being opportunistic, having a laser-focus, being competitive, thinking out of the box, etc., etc., etc. This is the stuff that business heroes are made of and we spend inordinate amounts of time and energy lionizing these individual traits.
Conversely, when we are challenged to the point where, what we traditionally rely on for success is imposed upon and diminished by significant, long-term environmental changes, forcing us to lead from the plateau versus from the top of the mountain, the question becomes, “how practiced is our leadership under this condition and what can we depend on from each other?” How effective are we when times are not favorable? What do we draw from to sustain us when the short-lived frills of leadership have evaporated under turbulent times? Do we retreat to the temptations of the quick fix?
We must embrace the fact that we are expected to lead in good times and in bad. We must be good at both. We must trust that the plateau is a gift – it's the resting place that gives us permission to deepen our familiarity with our humanity, affirming our values, our morals and our sense of purpose – both at the individual leadership level and at the organizational level.
The plateau is the place where, in good and difficult times, we practice our fundamental leadership character, using it to govern the temptation to leap prematurely to a short-lived promise. The plateau affords us time to restore energy and focus on how we collectively discern and prepare ourselves for the next big organizational leap. Through such discernment we transform ourselves and our organizations, becoming the coffee beans that create a more thoughtful, enriched environment, using our misfortune as our fuel to give flavor to the boiling water.
Style and Character
When organizations are struggling to survive under today's tough economic conditions, leaders are challenged with creating solutions that help the organization sustain itself – they become more aggressive in finding ways to weather the economic storms. Leaders look for leverage, big wins, competitive advantages, home runs and any other events that will advantage the organization. Difficult trade-offs seem to accompany every decision. Unfortunately, the organization's character fundamentals in these scenarios, often take a back seat to the new and different possibilities designed to help us avoid the rough patches.
These are times when scrutiny of leaders is also toughest. Individual survival is perceived to be at-risk. Leadership effectiveness becomes more distracted by the focus on one's style in achieving more immediate and short term successes versus thoughtful and disciplined planning to integrate short term opportunities to sustain the long term vitality of the organization's mission. Tendencies toward “me” versus “we” abound.
Organizational leadership, regardless of the conditions, is less about one's style, rising to the top of one's profession or leading our teams into battle. It is more about one's character. When basic leadership character – the depth of one's humanity shepherding the role - is not being lived and embraced in actions and decisions, the most charismatic operator, the greatest structure and most modern facility will strain to achieve minimal competency.
In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Stephen Covey speaks to “character ethics” as foundational to who we are as human beings. Character ethics involves realities such as integrity, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, and patience. These are basic principles of life that cannot and should not be violated. These are the fundamentals of human interiority and virtue.
When the fundamentals of leadership character are diminished and/or sacrificed for the gloss and glitter of the new frill, the immediate short term results and/or the feel good successes that make one stylish and unique, the unintended consequence is that many of these approaches eventually lose their luster and run out of gas. Much of the time that which is new fails because inadequate attention has been given to the underlying foundation and fundamentals of leadership character.
There are countless examples of leaders who were hired, promoted, engaged on the premise of a new, fail-safe approach, but often these inventive minds have been fired, just as quickly, because the new ideas did not produce. In many of these cases the possibility of success was completely compromised because the inventive minds did not pay attention to basic fundamentals. There may have been “style” uniqueness but it did not stand the test of time. New approaches and style opportunities can be tried - and can even fail in organizations - without the organization being jeopardized when these initiatives integrate the highest respect for character fundamentals.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins describes character in his “Level 5 Leader” as one who builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It is not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
The fundamental integrity of the Level 5 leader's character presents itself through a compelling modesty which is self-effacing and understated. These leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results and they are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions. They look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves and, when things go poorly, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. Joe's series on Virtuous Leadership: Leading with Excellence and Character continues in our next Edition of eBridge.
About the Author
Joseph O. Murdock is the System Vice President and Chief Organizational Development Officer of St. Vincent Health.