It’s the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, my favorite of the whole Star Wars series because it really showed the truth of the difficulty and risk in mastery. At one point in Luke’s training with the master Yoda, this exchance occurs:
Luke: “I’m not afraid!”
Yoda: “You will be. You will be…”
Leadership is risk. If one would lead, one accepts all sorts of risk. The risk of loneliness, as one is separated by power and level from former friends and peers. The risk of hurt from subtle, sly lying as people seek to curry favor by spinning the truth. Most of all, one accepts the risk of articulating visions and setting goals and making decisions and being held accountable for the quality of their outcomes. This is why BUILT TO LEAD insists that leaders must be BUILT to be strong enough to meet their fears of these risks, and many more, with the one thing that that trumps fear: That would be…
LOVE.
Love is the supreme antidote for the poison of fear, and it is the unspoken but irreducible essence of great leadership.
Institutional people are uncomfortable with the word love. “Not businesslike,” they say. Funny, huh? That says more about “business” and its need to change than about love and trying to find another less challenging word for it.
Love in action is “service,” and we can talk about that without offending people’s sensibilities, so that’s the term I will use here today.
The singular, irreplaceable, irreducible essential for ANY and ALL would-be leaders is a SERVANT’s HEART. Service in this context is the antidote to fear.
If one would lead, one must serve. Otherwise one is in it for the power and the glory and the riches and each one of those is a corrupting LIE. We need a new word for THAT kind of leader. I propose we call such people “Vaders” for the memory that conjures in our minds. Think about it.
For those of us who want to lead in order to serve, here is how we must banish fear. We must come to learn and understand what all humans are afraid of, especially as it affects us in organizations, and we must be ready, willing, and able to serve the antidote to each of those fears (i.e., be BUILT to LEAD).
The five universal human fears, born in our early days as a species (probably before) and their antidotes in leadership as service, are as follows:
1.) Fear of DEATH of ourselves and our families. In organizations, this fear manifests itself as fear of failing, fear of looking foolish, fear of risk taking, fear of offering our unvarnished viewpoints for fear of being FIRED, itself a form of death. The antidote is SAFETY and SECURITY. This is brought by the servant leader as TRUST, more precisely as personal TRUSTWORTHINESS. The servant leader insists that every action his or her organization takes builds trust. Every action. No exceptions. We feel secure in a community of trust. Nothing of positive consequence happens without trust. The servant leader is the MODEL for trust, and that is why the pursuit of personal excellence always precedes the pursuit of team excellence. Not easy, but then the way of love is not easy.
2. Fear of the STRANGER or outsider. (They brought either disease or weapons when they came). In organizations, this fear surfaces as close-mindedness, defensiveness, poor teamwork, groupthink, silos, politics, and turf wars. The antidote is the INSPIRED COMMUNITY. By definition, a community must stand for some set of common causes, insist on a culture of common norms of behavior, and screen its members for true buy-in and belonging. The servant leader nurtures positive cultural norms with a vivid sense of purpose while protecting it from becoming a cult. The difference? It’s a paradox. Preventing a culture from becoming a cult rests on its openness to outside influences and welcoming others and their points of view. Not easy…
3. Fear of the UNKOWN FUTURE. Most of us are afraid of change because it takes us outside our comfort zones into a dark and scary place–the future. For example, when was the last time you saw an uplifting movie about the future? This fear comes forth in organizations as hidebound traditionalism, “not invented here” syndrome, passive aggressive resistance to change, and disastrous failures to recognize external opportunities and threats before it’s too late. The antidote is the leader’s skill, courage, and foresight in getting people to dream big dreams and make big plans. A deep sense of core purpose, married to an exciting vision of the future, brought down into plans and goals for each person is the only effective way to battle fear of the future. Great leaders know that fear is a constant companion; they take great pains to articulate a future vision more important than fear. Not easy…
4. Fear of CHAOS and a breakdown of law and order. This fear can paralyze an organization in excessive rules and bureaucracy, mindless “by-the-book” procedures, adherence to “we’ve always done it this way” thinking, unresponsiveness to customers, and making innovation a criminal offense. It may be easier for right-brain, creative leaders to affect “vision and inspiration” than “structure and order,” but effective top leaders have the responsibility to deliver WHOLE-BRAIN thinking to their organizations. That means they provide the antidote to this fear by designing and building flexible, value-adding processes and systems that efficiently meet customer needs, today and in the future. Standard methods and best practices are today’s “champions” to deliver the promise of your purpose to customers. AND each “champion” should be subjected constantly to innovative “challenger” ways of doing it better. Adaptable, structured promise-keeping. Not easy…
5. Fear of INSIGNIFICANCE. At its heart, this is a fear of abandonment by the community. It rears its ugly head as grandstanding, grabbing all the credit (due or not), self-aggrandizing power plays, and even in the pettiness of how big my cube/office/palace is relative to yours. Most of the time, negative politics and silo-based maneuvering are sure signs that those at the top are not being brought together as a team in pursuit of goals that are so grand that they leave no room for grandstanding. The antidote is a leader with the courage to commit the organization and her team to something larger and more compelling, namely challenging goals that, when achieved, are met with authentic celebration, and transparent recognition and rewards that honor accomplishments and fairly acknowledge failure to meet goals. Not poorly thought-out goals, focused only on aggregated lagging indicators like “EPS” or “EBITDA” that no one is directly able to achieve, but on the leading indicators, or drivers of final results, that employees can take aim at and deliver themselves. Making an IMPACT. Not easy…
Fear kills. It poisons teamwork. It slays innovation. It strangles flexibility. It is organizational cancer.
Time to call Doctor Love, the one with the antidotes: Vision Clarity, Inspired Communities, Teams of Trust, Aligned Disciplines, and Leading-Indicator Focused Results.
Final thought: lately, survey data suggests that employees increasingly fear their leaders. Breaches of trust, scandals, and lack of management attention to building productive communities of exceptional sustained performance have created deep and growing cynicism. No one escapes the implications of that.
The antidote? Build YOURSELF. Regain your OWN vision. Become inspired YOURSELF. Build YOUR trustworthiness. Get aligned in your OWN life’s priorities and process. Focus on YOUR leading indicators, the most powerful of which are your relationships with your spouse and children.
Servant, or Vader?
Time to DECIDE.
And may the FORCE (LOVE) be with you.
BUILT TO LEAD 
Yea, BABY. Do not miss the last paragraph. In fact, start at the end, let the antidote sink in. AND, then apply around you. Very cool young Sully.
Very cool…
So Jim, in order to help us ALL get away from focusing on lagging indicators, which unfortunately is how the world measures…tell us more on how we can better understand our leading indicators…
And yes, I realize WE have to do it, but I am sure you have given this some thought.
Leading indicators and measuring them is cool, indeed. So why are there not more universal leading indicators like there are with the laggers?
At the risk of being REMINDED, I submit this question: Is there a process for understanding them better in WORK and LIFE?
And by the way – awesome post!!!
Kirk: Thanks for the comment and question. There actually is a fair body of thought and measurement on leading indicators, but not enough in practice yet. It’s a HUGE topic. I will boil it down to a few principles here. It starts with customer loyalty, goes next to employee loyalty, and then how all other roles are judged to be supporting the core processes and systems that drive either customer or employee loyalty. Both line AND staff.
Let’s agree up front that the purpose of all business is a societal question that goes REALLY far beyond “maximizing shareholder value” or any other single notion. We don’t have time to explore all the obligations a business organization has to ALL its stakeholders, so I will center down on this:
Peter Drucker said that the purpose of all business is to create and sustain customers and of course I believe him. Loyal customers provide revenue, repeat sales, and referrals–all lower cost, high quality revenue–and are easier to serve and at lower cost. All that is the driver of both high-quality revenue and a preferred cost structure versus competitors, leading to superior financial performance and shareholder value.
So, Customer Centric management systems are the key. Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Referral Behavior are the primary leading indicators. If they are not being measured they are not being managed. Almost every job in Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Production, and R&D can be designed and measured to link to its direct method of building customer loyalty. Those are leading indicators that everyone in those areas can directly impact and should be accountable to deliver.
The next question is, how do you get that kind of customer loyalty? Customer loyalty rests on routine satisfaction with the value being delivered, along with occasional positive surprise, aka “delight.” That can only be delivered by an exceptional branded customer experience. In manufacturing, that’s a combination of product and service value. In services, it’s purely a people-to-people exchange. Therefore, the second key area of leading indicators is in Employee loyalty, engagement and commitment to the cause. How else can customers be loyal if employees are not?
Every line job in the company should trace directly to how it creates customer satisfaction and loyalty, or indirectly through its support value to front-line players. All that should be measured on an internal or external customer satisfaction basis.
The third leading indicator area to be measured is the one that always is: Sales and selling.
The fourth area, staff jobs, and measuring their value to the leading indicators, is a more complex thing. I’ll blog out a more thoughtful and complete answer soon. Hope this helps…