The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is easy to look good and behave well when everything around you is going well. If you want to see what a person is made of, put the pressure on them.

When a routine is thrown into the air, when people are stressed out, when employees are under unimaginable pressures, it is precisely the time when you want to test people for leadership potential.

Dozens of times in my life I have seen the sharpest, best & fittest soldier in the barracks or on the parade square fall to pieces under the leadership pressures, of lack of sleep, bad weather and the intensity of combat.

But the quiet person, the calm and steady one, the least suspecting man or woman rise to the moment and steps up into leadership like a well-fitted suit when given the opportunity.

In a recent post, I explored the difference between those high-performance employees and those who have high potential.

Read that post here

When looking for your next generation of leaders, it makes sense to cultivate the most extensive pool you can manage and explore who is stepping up during the current pandemic.

Start asking yourself:

Who is quietly leading their teams and their coworkers?

Who is the person other employees look to for help and guidance instead of existing managers?

Who is bringing the ideas forward?

When thinking about the future executives should stop old-school thinking by stopping these common errors:

1. Overvaluing job performance and undervalue character traits.
2. Promoting people who look, talk, act, and manage as they do.
3. Undervaluing opinions of your employees.

Performance Matters. But Potential Matters More.

Then, when looking for leaders, you can focus less on performance and more on actual leadership skills, like

• Curiosity;
• Emotional intelligence; or the
• Ability to communicate.

Read more about Emotional Intelligence.

When trying to identify future leaders, merely skimming from the top layer of job performers is seldom the best strategy.

Look for People Willing to Try Different Solutions — and Accept the Consequences

Pointing out problems is easy.

What is harder is to come up with solutions.

Even harder? Have the wisdom to change things when the first solution doesn’t work.

Great leaders aren’t only those with the best ideas. They’re also willing to accept responsibility for the decisions they’ve made: especially their failures. That’s what inspires other people.

So when looking for leaders, it’s not only essential to search for creative thinkers. You also want to find people with the courage to fail, publicly, and to re-evaluate their strategies accordingly.

The Best Leaders Are Not Always Those Who Talk the Most

Studies show that people who talk the most in meetings tend to get their performance rated as more intelligent, and they overwhelmingly tend to be male.

Put differently, those people who seem to be leading in group settings may, in fact, not be leading at all – they’re just talking a lot. 

Consider that maybe the best leader is the person best able to build consensus or is the quiet person who waits to speak but always comes up with the most forward-thinking solution.

Some leaders may be quite successful with personal projects.

Point being, many successful people keep their wins to their selves.

Read about boastful leadership

Trust Your Employees’ Opinions

Too many executives tend to imagine that they can easily pick out leadership potential, but relying only on your own opinions can limit the range of people you notice.

Here’s a different idea: ask your employees what they think.

Every once in a while, ask all employees who, other than themselves, they think possesses the most leadership potential.

Whom would they follow into uncharted territory?

To whom would they most trust their jobs or the future of the company?

This bottom-up approach to identifying leaders can pay huge dividends: you’re not only telling your employees that you value their opinions but also locating people whom employees already look for guidance.

I often work with people who are transitioning from follower to leader.

The question always arises is: What characteristic makes a good leader?

I tell them the answer is moral courage. 

I realized I was never as concerned about my boss’s technical expertise as I was about their moral courage, honesty, and ethics.

Coincidentally, Abacus Data shared the results of a poll examining Canadians opinions of the leadership, answering the question by saying:

“Leadership can be hard to define – but … people … know what they like when they see it. We gave respondents a forced-choice question about what was most important to them in supporting a … leader. By a considerable margin, “values” (42%) were identified as the top quality to look for, followed by judgment (29%). “Ideas” (15%) and “attitude” (13%) were well back in consideration.

What Matters Most in a Leader?

For me, values and judgment add up to Moral Courage. Historically, courage hasn’t been recognized as an essential attribute for business leaders.

This is changing.

Future leaders will need the ability to act courageously.

Without question, innovation is needed in “for’ and ‘not for’ profit businesses, but courage makes change possible. 

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Rosabeth Moss Kantor wrote:” moral courage enables people to stand up for principle rather than stand on the sidelines.” 

What is Moral Courage in Leadership?

Courage in leadership is doing what’s right despite being afraid of risking negative repercussions.

Fear is the most common reason people give when they avoid being courageous. Think about how you feel when you watch a leader who demonstrates personal courage. Most likely, you will trust that leader more.

Courage comes from being very clear about essential values and working to achieve goals that are consistent with those values.

Ultimately, every leader has the choice to either lead with courage or lead without it.

Examples of Courageous Leadership Behaviours

1. Moral courage & humility when providing honest feedback in conversations and discussions or managing your supervisors or boards
2. Allowing alternative & opposing viewpoints to be shared with the rest of the team.
3. Speaking up rather than being compliant in silence.
4. Leading through change & not settling for “we have always done it this way.”
5. Taking ownership when you are in uncharted territory, and the safe path is to do nothing.

How are you, or your organization, doing at removing the barriers to morally courageous behaviour? Try this simple exercise here to find out. 

Developing Moral Courage

1. Be very clear about your vision and values.
2. Scripting in advance what to say.
3. Anticipate those who will disagree.
4. Be honest in admitting when you have made a mistake or taken a wrong path.
5. Be willing to entertain new ideas and change your assumptions.

Courage is a learned skill, and we all can be courageous. Being brave means stepping out of your comfort zone and taking risks.

As we invest in the future and emerging leaders, isn’t it better to learn values, judgment, and moral courage in a SYSTEMATIC and PURPOSEFUL way instead of allowing them to muddle through?

Do you think fear is driving your leadership actions? Here are 7 questions to prevent fear of leadership failure. 

If you’re interested in going more profound or moving your career to the next level, you’ll also want to look at my 1-on-1 coaching services.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check these out, too:

How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture

9 Stupid Management Practices (and what to do instead)

The 6T’s To Know What To Delegate

This article was originally published on January 5, 2015, and has been updated.

When a new leader begins their role they often get a surprise.

They’re shocked at the time it takes to manage personal and professional relationships at work.

Their success can come down to seeing the warning signs and having the skills to deal with them.

Until you’ve actually been a leader, it’s tricky to develop the specific leadership skills and qualities you need to be effective. To help you get there faster, here are five signs your leadership skills could use some work—and what you can do about it. 

Surprise #1: You really can’t run everything.  

A leader doesn’t need to have a toe dipped in every single pool at work. Sure, you want to know what’s going on and be consulted when necessary. But trying to run everything single-handedly will ultimately lead to burnout, making mistakes, and ineffective leadership.

There are a few instances when micromanaging can be a useful tactic. Learn about them here.

Here are some warning signs you’re trying to run too many things as a leader:

• You are in too many meetings and involved in too many tactical discussions.
• There are too many days when you feel as though you have lost control over your time.

Surprise #2: You learn there’s a price to giving orders.

New leaders are often surprised to find they pay a price for being the one to give orders. Often, this is shown in how their relationships can change with coworkers. 

Here are some warning signs to look out for:

• You have become the bottleneck.
• Employees are overly inclined to consult you before they act.
• People start using your name to endorse things, as in, “Stephanie says…”

Surprise #3: You don’t know what’s going on.

Remember how we talked about being too involved in every project, decision, or discussion? There’s another side to that, and it involves being too distant from all of these things and missing important details and information.

Here are some warning signs you don’t know what’s going on at work:

• You keep hearing things that surprise you.
• You learn about events after the fact.
• You hear concerns and dissenting views through the grapevine rather than directly.

Surprise #4: You’re always on display.

As a leader, you’re bound to face the spotlight more often than you did in your previous roles. This feeling of “always being on display” is often a surprise to new leaders. 

Warning signs:

• Employees circulate stories about your behavior that magnify or distort reality.
• People around you act as if they’re trying to anticipate your likes and dislikes.

Surprise #5: You feel like you’re on shifting ground.

New leaders don’t always feel the stability and security they expected to in their new role. 

Be on the lookout for these warning signs:

• You don’t know where you stand with your boss or board.
• Roles and responsibilities between your boss or board are not clear.
• The discussions in board or executive meetings are limited mostly to reporting on results and decisions.

Implications on your leadership.

These ‘five surprises’ have tremendous implications on how a new leader should perform their role.

First: Learn to manage strategically rather than focusing on daily operations. Strategic, effective leadership, not diving into the details, can be a jarring transition.

One client, a CEO, said that he initially felt like the company’s “most useless executive,” despite holding all the power.

He needed to learn how to act in indirect ways by:

• setting and communicating strategy,
• putting sound processes in place,
• selecting and mentoring key people who create conditions to help others make the right choices.

At the same time, he needed to learn how to set the tone and define the organization’s culture and values through his words and actions—in other words, demonstrate how employees should behave. To do this, he needed to learn the right leadership skills.

Second: Leaders must recognize that a position does not automatically give the right to lead, nor does it guarantee loyalty.

Leaders must perpetually earn and maintain the moral authority to lead. CEOs can quickly lose their legitimacy if:

• their vision is unconvincing,
• if their actions are inconsistent with the values they espouse, or
• if their self-interest appears to trump the welfare of the organization.

They must realize that success ultimately depends on the ability to enlist voluntary commitment rather than forced obedience—and yes, it takes certain leadership skills and leadership qualities to do so.

By the way, you won’t want to miss these 3 important things to remember on your first day as a new leader. 

Mastering the conventional tools of effective leadership and management may lead to the promotion or appointment of a leader, but these tools alone will not keep you there.

Before you commence your leadership role, ask yourself WHY you want to be a leader in the first place. 

Finally, it’s essential that the leader maintains humility, and must not get absorbed in the role.

Even if others think you are omnipotent, you are only human.

Failing to recognize this will lead to arrogance, exhaustion, and a shortened tenure.

By maintaining a personal balance and staying grounded, an effective leader can achieve the perspective required to make decisions in the interest of the organization and its long-term prosperity.

If you’re interested in going deeper or moving your career to the next level, you’ll also want to have a look at my 1-on-1 coaching services.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check these out, too:

How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture

9 Stupid Management Practices (and what to do instead)

The 6T’s To Know What To Delegate

This article was originally published on November 25, 2018, and has been updated.

Leaders are traditionally the ones who provide answers, not ask questions.

Good leaders are into questioning.

They know it’s important.

But often,  they do not act on the information they gather by questioning, nor are they spreading it throughout the organization.

Before you go too far asking questions of others, start with yourself and then your leadership team.

Use the following discussion guide based on the work of Jeff Grimshaw, Tanya Mann, Lynne Viscio, and Jennifer Landis to prompt thought and conversation on why you are a leader.

What you can do with this

You can print it, read it, share it, and discuss it.

How to use this material

Introduce. Discuss. Remind. Encourage.

That’s my recommended approach to helping people commit and develop.

And once you’ve done the introduction piece (e.g., introduce ideas or concepts), those last three points should be an ongoing thing as long as someone is on your team or in your department … and maybe for those special few, even when they go somewhere else (be a mentor).

I recommend reading and discussing each of the categories with your team each week.

Each can be read in less than 3 minutes and discussed in 10 – 15 minutes.

How to prepare

Share one with your team and schedule a time for discussion.

Or, share the guide with your department leaders and have them facilitate smaller discussions.

Ask everyone to read and consider each of the questions.

Ask them to make notes on anything they find valuable or disagree with.

On your own, make your notes, and answer the questions you intend to ask or give.

Give some quick thought to any likely objections or challenges to the material you can anticipate from your group. (Who might ask what and how do you want to respond?)

Here is one idea to introduce your upcoming discussions in person or by email – edit to fit your style:           

“I came across a few thought-inspiring questions that had a big impact on me. I thought we all might benefit from talking about them over the next few weeks – one a week.

Each question can be dealt with within a matter of minutes. Please read each one and give some advance thought to it. Make notes on anything that connects or resonates with you.

Let’s kick off next week and meet in the conference room on Monday morning at 8:00 for 30 minutes, at most.

I believe the effort will be good for our work, but it might be helpful to each of us personally.”

Discussion tips

• Smile and be enthusiastic.
• Avoid interrupting or finishing someone’s answer to them. Add a small gap of silence to an answer – just a beat or two – allowing someone to expand on something or minimizing someone’s feeling that they need to rush through their answer.
• When you feel someone might have more value to add, encourage them with a “How do you mean, Nancy?” or “Can you expand on that?” or “What happened next?”
• Invite different people to contribute to the discussion and have different people lead the talks each week.
• Be ready to help the discussion move on if someone takes too much control of it. (“Good point, Bob. If we have time in the end, let’s come back to this.”)

The Discussion Guide:

How do I make decisions and actions

1. What are some ways you or other leaders effectively “role model what you want to see more of”?
2. Some people argue that “if it costs you nothing, it’s not a ‘value.’” What are some values you want to stand for, even if it costs you something or is inconvenient?

What you reward and recognize

3. How consistently do you reward what you want to see more of? In your culture, what are some ways that you “reward A while hoping for B”? What are the consequences?
4. How can you more effectively leverage your greatest source of power? (The power to change the way people feel?)

What you tolerate (or don’t)

5. Leaders are defined by what they tolerate, what have you tolerated that you shouldn’t?
6. What excuses have you used to rationalize your leadership choices? What’s the long-term cost?
7. How can you be smarter about what you do tolerate? In the long-run, how is that likely to pay off?

How you show up informally

8. What are some examples in your culture of leaders effectively “showing up”?
9. In your culture, do you operate more from a creative mindset or a reactive mindset? What, if anything, does being reactive cost you and your culture?
10. In your culture, does fear and egos get in the way of having real conversations, confronting problems, exchanging feedback, and innovating? How can you “change the conversation”?

Formal communication

11. How effectively do you use official communication to boost your messages?
12. What are some ways that the signals transmitted as formal communication are inconsistent with your other communication efforts?

Turning culture into a competitive advantage

13. Is your current culture more of an asset or a liability? Is it boosting performance—or “eating your strategy for breakfast”? How do you know?
14. In your culture, do leaders broadcast consistent formal communication? What is an example of signals getting crossed?
15. What do you believe to be the gaps between the culture you have and the culture you need? (What’s your evidence?)
16. If you move the needle on culture, how will you know it?

*Based on the average Canadian salary of $51,000

Intuitively we know that having a poor performer on your team will cost money in lower production, inter-personal conflict, extra supervision.

Shockingly, a poor performer who is enthusiastic and is personally likable stays employed on average 18-months longer than if they were not liked.

Imagine taking $76,500* and lighting it on fire just because you enjoy the enthusiastic warmth it gives off.

That is what you are doing by paying someone for 18-months just because you like them.

What do you do?

You can follow the Servant Leadership model or the Netflix model.

The Servant Leader Model

Recently Ken Blanchard of the Greenleaf Centre addressed the problems leaders face when employees “won’t do” what is expected of them.

Blanchard defines a “won’t do” problem as one when, despite being given the tools, the person doesn’t have the desire to change his or her behaviour and that there is a cost to your organization.

Read my thoughts on servant leadership

In the Servant Leader model, you give your poor performer every opportunity to improve, and when you know that they understand what you expect but still won’t do it, it may be time to “share them with the competition.”

The implications of the Servant Leader approach to the ‘won’t do’ employee means taking time to assess a person’s mindset and skill set correctly, develop performance management plans and manage the risk in letting someone go.

All of this cost money, time and the opportunity costs when you are focused on the poor performer when your time could be better spent with you higher potential employees.

The Netflix Model

When Netflix has someone who cannot or will not do their jobs as they expected, they choose to limit the cost quickly.

Like pulling a Band-Aid off.

In a recent podcast interview with Alex Blumberg and Patty McCord Netflix’s past Chief HR Officer she explained: Once they recognized there wasn’t a fit, they would knock on the door and say, “I think you’ve gotten kind of the vibe that I’m not particularly happy about the way things are going.”

If the employee disagrees or isn’t expecting the conversation, they say “Okay, so I haven’t been very clear about that. So here’s the team that I’m trying to build. And I need to have people that understand the technical people and understand what they’re. And unfortunately, you are not a fit.

Read about having tough conversations

The Netflix approach is to let you have three months of severance already in your pocket, instead of wasting that three months of time for you, the person and the rest of the team.

McCord recommends that instead of developing a 90-day performance improvement plan where once a week, she is going to sit down with the poor performer and prove that they are incompetent in writing. So not only is the employee and the supervisor miserable, because we both know it’s a farce. 

Conclusion

When dealing with poor performers, you need to do what is right for you and your organization.

And I understand that you may face HR policies or collective agreements that may trip you up.

Read about spending the right time in the right place

But do you want to waste your time, the employee’s life and all that money when you already know the right thing to do?

Do Any Of These Statements Sound Like Your Workplace?

I have partnered with organizations ranging in size from 15 to 150, to 1,500, to 15,000 employees.

All have scaled from high-impact teams into enterprises.

All struggle when the ties and tendons that once held everyone focused became stretched by the growth.

Stretched to the point where the organization’s efforts to meet its goals and objectives were frustrated because employees:

• They lacked trust and confidence in leadership and
• They were disconnected from the organization’s mission and strategic objectives.

Read about connecting employees to strategy

And they faced these very issues while undergoing a considerable expansion.

Imagine the most significant project your company has ever taken on.

A new project that would grow your company’s size by 30-50%.

Your company’s leadership is 90%  sure they will be on time, on budget and successful.

BUT: Employees are 75% sure this will fail.

The Problem

When I reported what I saw to the client, the CEO asked angrily, “Why is this a problem? I Am The CEO, if I want it fixed, I’ll say so!”

Why can’t the CEO fix it?

The CEO, though respected, is an emotional vacuum.

Read more about Emotional Intelligence.

He would move through the floors of his office complex by the stairwell and skirt around work areas. He purposely avoided talking to his employees.

He was a visionary but could not explain the strategy or the tactics humanly.

He needed to accept responsibility for how the company’s story was disseminated through the company.

My work with employees identified concerns about leadership competencies, the poor culture of leadership and the leadership skills of managers & supervisors.

Read about Steve’s organizational consulting.

Yet the CEO wanted it fixed by fiat.

Research and experience show that investing in the following key leadership competencies are most critical for success:

• Inspirational Leadership & Execution
• Strategic Direction & Influence
• Building Talent

Leaders who are influential in these competencies have the strength to lead the organization for years.

Organizations whose leaders struggle in these areas are doomed to remain irrelevant and ineffective.

The Solution?

The gap between the current organization’s leadership bench strength and what its future leadership demands is as severe a liability as failing to manage any other risk.

I recommended that my client take both a strategic and a tactical approach to align the development of managers with organizational objectives.

Strategically, they must invest in developing leadership competencies development programs and hiring tools and processes.

Tactically, they must develop mentoring and coaching support to close the skill gaps in each critical leadership competency.

The Single Most Important Thing To Do?

There is a Japanese term called Gemba (現場), meaning “the actual place.”… In business, Gemba refers to where value is created; in manufacturing, the Gemba is the factory floor.

The CEO needs to see and be seen where value is created—the gas plant, the control room and, yes, even the accounting and IT departments.

Read about leadership presence.

He needs to ask good questions to hear and see what is going on and ensure his messages are communicated throughout his company.

He needs to paint the picture of his vision so everyone can see it.