The first idea is, I reflect on my behavior and its impact on other people. I have written another article “observe first, judge later” that discusses the benefits that accrue from watching your behaviour. This helps in two ways: first, I get a clearer picture about my strengths and potential derailers. Second, it helps me to improve my ability to guesstimate – the brain’s neural nets appreciate high quality feedback.

One client had a problem with project planning – their projects were always way off. A quick session helped them identify that the planners were never involved in the final review, so they never saw what happened to their estimates in practice. After that small change, their ability to estimate project plans improved quickly and sharply.

The second idea is, use models to get a handle on what’s happening. Life is complicated and we are inundated with information. In theory, it is possible to process all this information and then respond. In practice, life has moved on long before we get that far. Therefore, it is helpful to have a way to filter out the noise. Judiciously selected models can do this quite well. As long as we keep George E.P. Box’s words in mind, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”. The trick is to have a wide range of simple models and select an appropriate one in any given situation. With practice and reflection, this becomes easier than you might think.

The third idea is, maintain an attitude of experimentation. When I was starting out in research, I naively hoped that leadership might turn out to be as deterministic as Newtonian physics. I got several quick wake-up calls! I quickly learned that it is helpful to treat leadership issues from a systems theory viewpoint. Thus, I learned to treat any steps I take as experiments, since the effect of an intervention in a complex system can often be surprising.

Two main reasons for that are: one, people are not as predictable as we might hope. Two, depending on where we draw the boundary on our system, we get a different idea about how to handle the problem. For example, I recently had a conversation with a client about how to solve a conflict between two group members. In the old days, I might have focused my attention on just those two and helped him figure out how to hold a conversation with them. However, by asking a few questions and helping him to sketch his system, it quickly crystallized that the source of tension was less between these two individuals, and lay more between their respective collaboration partners. Thus a whole new frame of reference for a solution opened up and he was quickly able to find a good path forward.

I’m curious to hear how your training in science or engineering influences your approach to leadership.

(Photo: Robert Scarth)

He gave one piece of advice on time management. Academic researchers are judged on their research success and still need to handle the demands of teaching and committee work. For lectures that were not too early, e.g. 10am or 11am, he would get up earlier than usual, so that he had three hours to prepare the 50 minute lecture. His experience reflected the law of diminishing returns: if he spent six or even nine hours on preparation, the lecture was not appreciably better. The key for him was that as a result of this strategy, the rest of the day was free for research.

His strategy is an example of the Principle of Delayed Gratification (which I first came across many years ago in M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled). If you have things to do on a particular day, first do the ones you don’t like. Your reward is, you can spend the rest of the day on the things you do want to do (in Cech’s case, research).  As long as you really do reward yourself, you’ll find that you get through the things you don’t like much more quickly and without the guilty conscience that comes from postponing them.

Cech finished his piece of advice with, “it it’s an 8 o’clock class, that’s a little brutal.”

A major part of leadership is about influencing others through word and deed. Since it isn’t possible to be aware at all times about what we say and do, and how this impacts others, it is essential to collect information about this. The resulting increased level of awareness about behavior helps to set up effective learning loops that allow you to improve your leadership quickly.

One way to collect is to obtain feedback from others. Another way is to learn or cultivate the habit of observing your own behaviour and then learn how to evaluate it. Two challenges to this are the tendency to jump the gun and the role our personality plays in what we notice.  By “jump the gun” I mean the tendency that most of us have to announce our judgment or interpretation, skipping over the observed data.  A couple of tell-tale signs that we’re doing this are:

• generalizing from one recent observation “you’re never on time” (instead of “this morning you were fifteen minutes late for the meeting”). “you’re always faster” (instead of “yesterday, you finished the experiment ahead of schedule”).
• Using an interpretation to describe the data “he looked angrily at me” (What facial expression or body language did he use that suggest his anger?), “the report was excellent” (What was it about the report that made it excellent?)

If you listen out for these, you will begin to spot them quickly. Simply by becoming more aware of these patterns, you will probably notice that you use them less often.

Another challenge is the role that your personality plays in this. In my work I usually use the Enneagram model of personality; in this each personality type applies a different type-based filter to the data the person is collecting or receiving. For example, some people who have very high standards are labeled Perfectionists by others and have an automatic data filter that helps them to notice what’s wrong or a mistake quite easily.

The wordle at the top of this post shows the characteristics that people name; the larger the word, the more often it is named. These characteristics illustrate how important relationship skills are for leaders.

The characteristics that your people look for in you are also in this collection. Now, before you get depressed, please remember that this is a composite picture – many people describing many leaders. There’s no need to try and measure yourself against this collection and exhibit all of these qualities. However, it’s worthwhile to take a moment to think about how many of these qualities you already exhibit and which you might want to cultivate. This will help you to be a leader others want to follow.

I’ll be updating this wordle from time-to-time. So, if you’re surprised by the importance attached to any of these qualities, if something important for you is missing, or you’d just like to share what makes your best leader special, please leave a comment below.

Field Marshal Lord Slim, responsible for the British campaign in Burma in WWII and a great thinker on leadership, summed up the difference thus:

“There is a difference between leadership and management. The leader and the men who follow him represent one of the oldest, most natural, and most effective of all human relationships. The manager and those he manages are a later product with neither so romantic nor so inspiring a history. Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision. Its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculations, statistics, methods, timetables, and routine. Its practice is a science. Managers are necessary, Leaders are essential.”

Here is a chart I use to illustrate the difference:

The tasks in the management zone require a certain degree of intelligence and discipline. Those in the leadership zone largely benefit from emotional and social intelligence. While some tasks are purely leadership ((e.g. develop vision) and others purely management (e.g. plan), many require a blend of the two (e.g. develop staff).

To succeed, you need strength in both areas: an excellent manager with no leadership qualities will ensure that the experiments are completed; however, there is no guarantee that the results shed light on the right question. An excellent leader with no management skills can develop and communicate wonderful visions; however, these will never materialise. The former is a technocrat, the latter a dreamer.

I surround the management zone with the leadership zone (rather than vice versa) in this model, since most researchers who move into leadership positions start out with a reasonable level of management ability and need to expand their skills and capabilities into the leadership zone.

If you would like to find out where your centre of gravity is between management and leadership, carry out the following experiment: write down your six most important tasks (not necessarily most time-consuming). Then place them on an axis with management at one end and leadership at the other. Some tasks will be at one end or the other, others will be somewhere in-between; this reflects that they need a blend of management and leadership. When you look at how you’ve positioned these six, you get a sense of whether your center of gravity for the six is closer to management and leadership. I’d like to hear from you, how you get on with this exercise.

leadership noun \ˈlÄ�-dər-ˌship\
1: the office or position of a leader
2: capacity to lead
3: the act or an instance of leading

For once, the dictionary is not so helpful. So, let’s continue and see what some of the great thinkers on leadership have to say.

Peter Drucker defines the term leader pithily: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” However, that seems a little to pithy for my taste. Are you only a leader once you have followers, or do you attract followers through displaying leadership? (This is akin to the old philosophical question about whether a falling tree in the forest makes any noise, if there’s nobody present to hear it.) John C. Maxwell made an early attempt to fill out the dictionary definition, “leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.”

The coiner of the term transformational leadership, James MacGregor Burns, expanded on the idea of influence thus: “I define leadership as leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations – the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations – of both leaders and followers.” Bernard Bass defined this in terms of how the leader affects followers, who are intended to trust, admire and respect the transformational leader.

Warren Bennis added another layer to this, “leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential.” So, one way of being better able to influence others is through knowing yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. John Kotter points to another aspect in “Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles”. Tenacity is a key quality in research, the willingness and ability to keep attacking a problem or question until it yields its secrets.

From the area of research come two other definitions, which are pretty close to those from the mainstream literature. Alice Sapienza author of Managing Scientists: Leadership Strategies in Scientific Research writes “leadership is an influence process that is noncoercive in nature and produces acceptance or commitment on the part of organizational members to courses of action that contribute to the organization’s effectiveness”. In Making the Right Moves (available for download from HHMI), Edward O’Neil (UCSF) condenses it to an equation:

 Leadership = Vision + Relationships + Tasks

 This equation helps to illustrate why I place so much emphasis on skills and tools that support relationships in my leadership sculptor® process.

When I ask researchers to describe leadership, they give me a wide variety of viewpoints. One such description is of someone I would term a boss, someone who directs people to achieve a goal. In such a definition, the research leader is relying on their position, their scientific ability and on their research funding (in the literature, this is labeled assigned leadership). While such a style can work well in an emergency, Daniel Goleman et al’s research has shown this to be less effective in other settings. One indicator of an overdose of “boss” in R&D settings, in my experience, is the above-average staff turnover or drop-out rate in such a group or department. Other viewpoints echo the literature: having and being able to share a vision, getting people to do their best, maximizing results, having and transmitting ideas.

R&D takes place in an intense environment – you’re either first to a result, or nowhere. There are no 2^nd prizes. That’s why, in my definition of leadership I make visible a counter-balancing aspect to save researchers from themselves:

Leadership is the art of maintaining a dynamic balance between influencing others, by word and deed, to reach common goals and ensuring their development and well-being.

(Photo: Margaret Anne Clarke)

David Ferrucci, leader of the Watson artificial intelligence project , has just written an article for the New York Times in which he describes how he pulled together the multidisciplinary research team behind this great achievement. He had to overcome the researchers’ natural inclinations to stick with their own individual projects and to foster an environment in which they collaborated intensively and shared ideas. He won them over with the vision of how they together could achieve something grand that none of them alone would ever manage. He reinforced the team collaboration with what he terms the “war room”, where the researchers from all the different disciplines worked together in the same big office.

The grand result was due to many insignificant breakthroughs, as if each researcher was delivering one tessera for the overall mosaic.

While winning a quiz show is impressive, it’s just a milestone. IBM is already investigating how Watson’s ability to understand language and crunch data can be put to good use to suggest diagnoses and treatment options to doctors. If you would like to know more about this research, visit IBM’s own site about Watson.
Ferrucci has the last word: “In the end, the hero was the team, not any individual member or algorithm.”

Step 1 Make sure they understand that they belong

When people join a team they are usually both optimistic about the new challenge and at the same they’re wondering whether they’ll fit in. You need to remove this question mark. When I moved to ABB in Switzerland, it was a big adventure for me: new industry (gas turbines), new company, new country, new language (Swiss-German). On my first day, my new boss assigned me to one of his long-time engineers to show me the ropes, both inside and outside work. This had a powerful effect, as well as ensuring that I could be quickly productive. Clients with whom I’ve shared the story, report to me that positive effects of helping their people to settle quickly.

Once they’re settled, it is also important to give praise and recognition, when due and to ensure that they are included in any social events you or your team organise.

Steps 2 and 3 Tell them where you’re going and help them understand how they can contribute to this

One of the main differences between a team and a working group is that in the latter each person is basically working on their own and the output is the sum of individual efforts. In a well-functioning team, you can achieve more than just the individual outputs through a high degree of cooperation. One way to do this is to make sure that they understand where you are taking your research, what the long-term focus is and how their work fits into this picture.

Having such a common goal provides a focus for all activities in the team. When your people see that their work is not only serving their own interest, but is also contributing to something bigger, this helps to provide their work with more meaning, which also helps their motivation and energy levels.

Step 4 Ensure they have the skills required to contribute

There’s not much worse than being asked to do something and you have no clue how to tackle it. There’s not much better than being given a something you don’t know how to do and being given the appropriate coaching, tips or training to complete the task. I spent a year in a compressor design team to help me better understand how research could contribute to the product. On my first day I was asked to solve a technical issue about which I had no clue. Upon noticing my mild panic, Wolfgang stepped in and told me he’d show me how to work out the solution after the meeting.

Step 5 Give and receive regular feedback

It’s important regularly to give your staff feedback on their performance – this is one of the key contributing factors to high energy levels at work.  I’ve written a blog article on how to give feedback.

If you take this one step further and establish a feedback culture in your team, the multiplicative effect is powerful as the Johari window shows. Everything about a person can be assigned to one of the four panes; a team’s effectiveness can be estimated by looking at the size of the Public pane. When someone receives feedback, their blind spot pane reduces and their public increases in size. This means that more of their qualities are known and can be accessed by the full team.  In addition, any of their annoying behaviours have been addressed before they start to generate conflict.

A feedback culture usually has a positive impact on trust levels in the team. When trust rises, then people are more willing to move something from private to public to help the team further. For example, many years ago, my boss’ boss was told to run a summer school on fluid mechanics. This was new land to him and he asked for input. I told him about my experiences growing up in my parents’ international summer school in Dublin (which had been in my private pane) and got the task to set up a series of CFD summer schools close to Oxford.

I’d like to hear about how many of these you have in place and what their impact is. I’d like even more to hear about other ways you have to get your team moving.

Myth #1 Time can be managed

I’ve covered this one in a 2010 posting on my blog: You can read what the Mad Hatter has to say about time management here.

Myth #2 One size fits all

One of the biggest hurdles to improving self-management is that most of the books on the subject take a “one size fits all” approach. I work with a personality system called the Enneagram which consists of nine personality archetypes. Each Type is characterized by a particular way of looking at the world and an associated set of preferred strategies for dealing with life.

Most of the self-management books seem to be written for or by someone who is the Enneagram Archetype called the Achiever or Performer. People with this personality type tend to be very well organized and focus on what needs to be done to achieve a desired goal. If, as a reader, you’re also of this Type, then the book can help you to become even more super-organised. If you’re not, then the book is an invitation to frustration and failure – why can’t I follow this recipe?

Myth #3 An empty inbox is the sign of an organized person

To be honest, an empty in-box in your mail program is just that, the sign of an empty in-box. It shouldn’t be an end in itself. What is the point in ensuring that your inbox is empty, if you have urgent and important tasks to take care of? They need your attention, not your inbox.

It’s a good idea to keep your inbox under control, so that you avoid unwelcome surprises. However, there is a law of diminishing returns. Depending on how you tick, you may need “empty” to feel comfortable. My own threshold is about 40 mails; when my inbox goes above that, my stress levels start to go up. At the time of writing, my inbox stands at 58. Once this posting is finished, I will give my mails some attention. I notice that when the level goes below 20 that there is no appreciable change in my stress levels.

Myth #4 All it takes is self-discipline

I read an article once that claimed that procrastination could be dealt with through enough self-discipline. Procrastination is your unconscious’ way of telling you it hasn’t signed up to this particular idea. Most people have not been blessed with a self-discipline gene, so strategies that require this have a small chance of success.

Over the past eighteen months I have been learning how to use the Zurich Resource Model in my coaching and leadership development work. This blends the latest research from psychology, neuroscience and embodiment to help the conscious and unconscious to align and help you express the attitude you need to reach a particular goal. When used well, you find yourself moving effortlessly in the right direction.

Myth #5 You just need to simplify

An increasing number of books on the market propagate different approaches to simplifying your work or your life. While there are good ideas in these books, they miss the point: you’re not in a job that can be completed in four hours a week. If it could be, someone more senior would find even more for you to do!

In my experience, it is more beneficial to be clear on your organisation’s strategy and how you and your people can contribute to that; these are your core activities. This provides a natural focus for activities and a way to prioritise your tasks. The more of your time and energy is spent on this, the more progress you make and the more fulfilling your day becomes.

Tip #1 There is an “I” in Leader

Clarity is a hallmark of good leadership communication. One source of confusion is that many people use the second or third person when they intend to talk about themselves, their own ideas and standpoints. “You want to …”, when they mean “I want …”. This can be confusing. Simply a shift to the first person, “I would like you …” adds a lot of power and clarity to our speech.

Tip #2 Keep it Simple

It’s almost a given that an R&D team is international and that few people in the team are using their native language in day-to-day work. Since the team’s language is often “poor English” (as Goran Lindahl used to call ABB’s official language), it is helpful to keep things simple when communicating. Three concrete ways to do this are:

• Formulate your sentences positively. Tell people what you want, rather than what you don’t. This removes guesswork on their part.
• In her wonderful little book Making Contact, Virginia Satir demonstrates the danger of “but”: It tends to erase what precedes it. “I agree with you completely, but I think we also need to …”. The agreement gets lost. Simply replace the “but” by an “and” and notice what happens.
• If you use slang and other colourful language to add spice to a conversation, you run the risk that people miss the message. It just gets lost in translation.

Tip #3 Ask open questions

When I support leaders to develop coaching skills for use with their people, I notice that the majority tend to use closed questions (which can be simply answered with a yes or no) in the practice conversation. Such questions can be quickly answered with a low level of engagement on the part of the conversation partner. They are useful when you want to check a specific piece of information, e.g. “Did you run the experiment at 28.7°C?”, or to test a particular idea or hypothesis you have.

When you ask open questions (“when …?”, “what …?”, “how …?”, “who …?”), you engage your discussion partner and activate their thinking. You draw out information and help them and yourself to gain insight. You know that you’ve asked a particularly useful question when the other person needs to pause for thought. It’s usually a sign that learning is taking place.

Tip #4 Why not why

Many clients are not too happy at first when I suggest that they reduce heavily their use of the question “why?” It has the reputation as being the fundamental point in research. I reframe that as saying the fundamental point is to understand.

The challenge when dealing with people and their work, is that the “why” question can automatically generate a defensive reaction, which is unhelpful. “Why doesn’t the program work?” will usually not quickly lead to a solution of the problem. (A typical response is, “I don’t know, it just doesn’t give any answers.”) Instead, by asking some well-chosen open questions, you can often quickly pinpoint the source of the problem. (A better starting point to might be, “What error message does the software give?”)

Tip #5 Listen

Especially when you are busy, it is tempting to interrupt and answer – as I have learned many times to my own cost. Far better is to wait until the other person is finished and then reply. This allows you to listen on different levels, which can provide valuable insights. Three typical levels of listening are:

• Cognitive – the factual information the person is delivering. This is the strongest level in research conversations.
• Emotional – this can provide clues about how important the topic is, or what is colouring the conversation.
• Meta-level – here we look down on the conversation in order to recognize any patterns emerging. This can be particularly helpful when a conversation is unproductive as we can then switch from the topic of conversation, to a conversation about the pattern that the conversation is taking (e.g. “we seem to be going around in circles here”).

Tip #6 Paraphrase and summarise

How many meetings have you attended in which people seem to repeat their position several times? One way to short-circuit this, if you’re leading the meeting, is to summarise the conversation from time to time. This helps people to focus and also lets people know that their contribution has been heard, which reduces the likelihood that they’ll repeat it. When this is done well, it also helps the meeting participants to reach a consensus more quickly.

Tip #7 Use pictures and metaphors

Although slang is not so helpful (see Tip #1), a message without colour and imagery would be dry as two-day-old bread. Well-chosen pictures and metaphors not only brighten up a conversation, they also help people to remember your ideas.

This list isn’t exhaustive – as the number of books on communication attests. What tips have you found most useful to help your communication?

(Photo: RichVintage)