Mike Lehr's Blog

One can read endlessly about leadership. However, if plays play on a stage, if baseball plays on a diamond, movies on a screen and chess on a board, where does leadership play? It plays in the mind of every member of the group.

Yes, we often see leaderships as having a good vision, strategy, idea or something tangibly similar. In reality though, these aren’t any good if leaders can’t inspire members around these things. By putting leadership on this emotional plane, it becomes subjective; a leader to one could be the Pied Piper to another.

Additionally, leadership comes from the word lead. Lead implies movement from one place to another. This is a change, so leadership is about change. Thus, by combining emotions and change, we arrive at a the conclusion that:

Leadership is an affect – felt by members and personified by one individual – which induces change.

We can see this more clearly in business if we ask: Are employees’ hearts into following their leader? After all, inspiration is a far better motivator for change than compliance. For example, if a leader can personify some of these feelings into an affect, that leader could be a powerful change agent:
 

Since groups are an abstraction, leaders become the “faces” groups, the vehicle through which members can give their feelings a human form. Leaders become the manifestation of their members’ feelings.

The practical outcome of this is that leadership changes from a project- or action-oriented endeavor to a relational one. This means people are more important than vision and relationships are more important than processes. Thus, leadership transform from something mechanical to something human . . . and possibly divine.

Previously I had indicated that placebo management could impact performance. I recently read

Michael Specter’s article, “The Power of Nothing,” in the December 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. He shared Ted Kaptchuk’s work on the Placebo Effect at the Harvard Medical School. I found this passage extremely apropos for placebo management:

. . . although placebos had no impact on the chemical markers that indicate whether a patient is responding to therapy, patients nonetheless reported feeling better. Kaptchuk concluded that objective data should not be the only criterion for doctors to consider.

Translated to the business world, we cannot just evaluate our effectiveness with people only on objective considerations. For instance, when a manager explains a business plan to an employee, the value isn’t just in the manager’s explanation and the employee’s understanding. There is additional intangible value in the time the manager spent with the employee. The manager could have enhanced this value by taking the employee to breakfast or lunch for the discussion.

As we saw there are two aspects to an interaction: thinking and feelings (see diagram to right). In this example, the manager’s explanation represents the thinking; the time and place represent the feeling. A different outcome would occur if the manager simply gave the plan for the employee’s reading.

In using this managerial approach, keep five things in mind:

1. Objective information and criteria don’t tell the whole story
2. People react differently
3. Expectations of you and the other person matter
4. Feelings matter more than #1
5. Different users have different results

Relationship building strategies and techniques maximize the placebo effect. It helps to have a strategy for improving your relationship with each of your employees. Implementing initiatives and effecting change will be easier and more effective.

Other links in this series: Placebo Management: Impacting Employees’ Beliefs

People feel better about themselves when they feel they have power to effect change in their worlds. One of the best ways is to ask them to help you. It also integrates well with other morale building techniques.

It’s difficult for people to feel valueless when they are helping others; helping senior members of the organization compounds these positive feelings. Telling people what to do only reinforces helpless subordinating feelings because they are just order takers. In the end, it’s the difference between creating a compliant workforce and an inspired one.

The Ask has two parts:

1. The ask itself
2. The tying of the ask to you

For instance, compare the following:

• “Would you do this?”
• “Would you do this for me? You would really help me make this project successful.”

Feelings of value grow if they know how they are helping you. Avoid “we,” “they,” or “us.” Avoid generic group terms such as “company,” “employees” or “customers.” Use the power of names by referencing specific people, especially if they were helped too. Evoke the CEO’s (or Owner’s) name rather than the company’s name.

Sometimes employees will appear puzzled by your ask especially if it’s something that is obviously mandatory. Here’s a response:

• Employee: Why are you asking? I don’t have a choice.
• Manager: That’s not true. Yes, you might not have a choice whether to do this but you can choose whether to do it in an acceptable manner or an exceptional one. That is why I’m asking for your help. Will you help me?

This exchange demonstrates why the ask is sincere and valuable. We are asking for something exceptional. People not only feel better about themselves when they help us, but they feel even better when they learn that their help is exceptional.

Part of what makes intuition so powerful is the assumption that we are born with personalities, talents and knowledge. Life then becomes the challenge to express them.

For example, we are born knowing about the “opposite sex.” It’s only later in life we arrive at an understanding of it and the ability to verbalize it. However, this contradicts the more popularized view of humans being born a “blank slate.” The article, “Transporter of Delight”, in the October 15, 2011 edition of The Economist, severely undercuts this notion by beginning:

“The idea that the human personality is a blank slate, to be written upon only by experience, prevailed for most of the second half of the 20th century. Over the past two decades, however, that notion has been undermined.”

The article cites research concluding, “personality is the single biggest determinant” of happiness with “a third of the variation in people’s happiness [being] heritable.” For example, extroverts tend to feel happier than introverts do. Thus, what I wrote regarding free will (more) and “who we are” being quite different from “who we think we are” is really about us being substantially more than “the sum of our experiences” and more than “a product of our environment.” There are opportunities for us when we realize we weren’t born slaves to our conditions, environments, societies and cultures.

Yet, this poses some thought provoking questions such as, “What happens to us when our nature is in conflict with our culture, our society or our upbringing?” Also, “What happens when we try to express ourselves in the midst of such conflict?” In such situations, we can easily see how God or Nature created us to alter the status quo, to change things . . . to encourage growth where stagnation exists. Growth cannot occur without change.

The two aspects of every interpersonal interaction are thoughts and feelings. You can change people’s views of your ideas by changing how they feel about you; you don’t need to change your idea. This is because emotions are more powerful influencers than cognitive tools such as reason, logic and thoughts. However, we still need cognitive tools. They serve as the diversion, distraction and excuse allowing the emotional aspects of relationship building to work. This is because emotions can create discomfort for people especially in a business setting.

The right-hand diagram expresses this by showing the direct nature of thoughts (red arrow) and the indirect one of feelings (blue arrow). While thoughts become the overt focus of the interaction, the message’s real impact arrives through the back door on a deeper level in the form of impressions. Therefore, thoughts become excuses to build relationships.

For example, when a boy carries a girl’s books home, it’s not because he likes to carry books. He wants to interact with the girl. The visible, tangible acts are carrying books and conversing. The invisible, intangible ones involve developing a emotional connection.  If he were to overtly state his romantic intentions, he’d likely scare off the girl. Carrying the books serves as the boys excuse, diversion and distraction while feelings do their subliminal work.

Even though the emotional connection we develop with employees is not the same as the one in our example, we observe excuses to foster relationships every day in business as “face time” with the boss. From the perspective of the right-hand diagram, the feelings developed in this face time are more important than the actual exchange of ideas. Thus, we should evaluate every interaction’s potential for relationship building, not just for the objective communication of ideas.

The power someone has as a leader in an organization is a function of 1) the authority it gives him and 2) his personal influence within the organization. The former is formal organizational power (FOP) and the latter informal organizational power (IOP). Figures 1 and 2 help us visualize their difference.

Figure 1: Formal Organizational Power

The importance of IOP becomes more apparent if we view leadership beyond a management context. For instance, one client expanded its definition from those in management to those who could initiate and develop new services, those who could grow existing services and those who could find and develop new customer channels.

The source of IOP varies by person. It could be his expertise, knowledge, experience, achievements, attractiveness, personality, education, intelligence, relationships, character, talents, skills, abilities, credibility, reliability, judgment, wisdom, seniority plus many other things. I knew one machinist who was a leader because he could run more of the machines in the plant better than anyone could.

Figure 2: Informal Organizational Power

FOP gets people to do things because they must; it’s the rule. IOP encourages people to do things because they want to; they like those with IOP or do so out of respect. Using a body as an analogy, FOP represents the bones and IOP the muscles. The most powerful leaders have a lot of both; organizations give them a lot of authority and people within the organization have a strong desire to help them.

Thus, when we try to understand and appreciate how organizations work, looking at the organization chart shows formal organizational power. Overlaying this chart is the influence of a multitude of relationships that vary by situation and by moments in time. In effect, we don’t really know an organization unless we have a feel for how informal organizational power influences it.

Related Link:

• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part II)

Figure 2: Holes (Unknowns)

Figure 1: Emotional Driver

Leadership is about people, and management about things. Management will tend to objectify people as resources (i.e. human resources) and rely more heavily on authority from the organization. Thus, management manages all resources given to it by the organization not just people.

We cannot make a similar connection between these things and leadership since leadership is an emotional connection that the member has for the leader. Things can’t have emotional connections to managers.

By delving deeper into this connection, we can more easily see how leadership differs from management. Figure 1 shows the emotional driver a member will have for the leader on a subconscious level. The member and leader are different people as denoted by the different colors. However, no member can ever know a leader completely, so holes in a member’s knowledge of the leader will exist as Figure 2 shows.

Figure 4: Blend (Perception)

Figure 3: Fill (Member’s Likes)

These “holes” produce emotional vacuums that need filling. If the member likes the leader, he will imbue the leader with qualities he likes (Figure 3). These qualities blend with the ones the member knows to produce Figure 4, which is essentially the member’s perception of the leader.

Consequently, what motivates the member is not the leader but his perception of the leader. From the leader’s perspective, she is really two people: the one she knows as herself and the other that the member knows. Every member will have a slightly different perception. Thus, the leader must not only manage herself, but also manage the perception others have of her.

In essence then, leadership is the interpersonal aspect of management. Since we do not need to be managers to be leaders, leadership becomes the interpersonal aspect of any job. Therefore, tapping the power of personality is more the domain of leadership than management.

Other links in this series:

• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part II)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part IV)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part V)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part VI)

Executives and senior managers often overlook their most important business asset: their personalities. We are blessed from birth with a personality that has an inherent power all its own. Too much though, we tend to discount or ignore it in favor of more objective qualities such as vision, planning, analysis and decision-making. Yet, interpersonal skills can encourage powerful motivations in others. When people are motivated, amazing things can happen.

I have found that executives and senior managers underestimate the impact they have on their people from a interpersonal perspective. They don’t realize how much their actions trigger the grapevine that many of them dislike. Rather than fight it, use it. The grapevine is word-of-mouth advertising. These effects are similar to the ones produced by management by walking around (MBWA) (detailed PDF on management by walking around), but our personalities are the tools that make it work. Moreover, there are specific interpersonal techniques that bring MBWA to life. I’ve discussed three in previous posts:

1. Remembering and using names
2. Shaking hands
3. Thank you’s

When executives and senior managers apply these techniques to employees, employees invariably tell other employees about the experience. A bank president was famous for remembering names; employees always recounted that talent when they talked about him. Thus, there is not only a direct impact on that employee but a residual one with others. It’s similar to the way the sun heats a stone and then that stone heats other things.

The downside to these techniques is that they require discipline and patience. Their effects have a compounding effect over time when relentlessly applied. However, our personalities are more powerful than any other motivational system on the market.

Compliments are an extremely effective way to build morale and relationships. However, they are not as easy to employ as one might think. It’s not just a matter of saying something nice; it’s a matter of saying something positive about something that is important to the other person. There are two broad types, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic compliments refer to things “outside” of someone and intrinsic “inside.” Intrinsic compliments will tend to make a greater impact than extrinsic ones. Their disadvantage is that they tend to be harder to pinpoint and describe. For some, intrinsic compliments are more difficult to deliver because they require a higher level of sensitivity.

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Four Basic Types of Compliments

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Extrinsic Compliments

1.    Things: compliment what they have.

2.    Job: compliment what they did.

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Intrinsic Compliments

3.    Values: compliment what they believe.

4.    Talents: compliment their innate qualities.

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Examples

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