Here’s the thing: we all want to be better leaders.
But too often we focus on what to do as leaders while neglecting what not to do.
That’s where leadership derailers come in—the things that take us off track and inhibit our leadership effectiveness. If we want to be good leaders, we must be aware of our derailers and begin working on them.
“Most books about leadership tell us what a person ought to do to become effective and powerful. Few tell us what to avoid. But the latter may be even more valuable because many people on the road to success are tripped up by their mistakes and weaknesses.” –David Gergen, political commentator and senior advisor to four U.S. presidents, from his book, Eyewitness to Power
10 Common Leadership Derailers
Here are ten common derailers, based on my research and work with leaders from many different industries, sectors, countries, and stages of career development:
Avoidance: avoiding difficult tasks, situations, or conflicts.
Burnout: becoming run-down and feeling exhausted, often due to lack of self-care.
Bottleneck: feeling you must make all decisions or taking on too much work yourself, causing delays.
Delegation: not entrusting tasks to others sufficiently, leading to reduced motivation.
Feedback: not providing feedback well or often enough, or not soliciting it enough or receiving it well.
Insecurity: lacking confidence about leading or feeling unqualified to lead; being unassertive.
Perfectionism: setting unrealistic expectations for yourself or others; needing things to be flawless.
Procrastination: putting things off until later or the last minute.
Short Game: failing to invest in the future and deciding important things without considering the long term.
Workaholism: being addicted to work and struggling to switch it off or stop thinking about it.
While these are common derailers, there are many more. In fact, I’ve identified more than sixty derailers that inhibit leadership effectiveness.
What are your top leadership derailers? And what will you do about them?
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
This always works best when colleagues openly discuss it together. We all have derailers. We all have work to do. So get real. And get busy with the important work of intentional leadership development. Reach out if you think I may be able to help.
–Gregg
Tools for You
Quality of Life Assessment so you can discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
“Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons, whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” –Jack Ma, Chinese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist
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One of the greatest assets we can build in our lives is an action orientation. No great things are possible without action. Are you action-oriented?
Dreams and visions are good, but worthless without action. Plans may impress, but they lose all value if not acted upon. Opportunities fade if we don’t seize them soon enough.
If we want a good life with good work, we must get good at taking action—and putting ourselves in a position to be able to do so. Too often, we hesitate. We wait too long before acting, as we try to line things up perfectly. A costly mistake.
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” -Pablo Picasso
The Incredible Benefits of Being Action-Oriented
There are many benefits of being action-oriented, and their effects accumulate and compound over time. Here are 14 of the top benefits:
When we’re out in the world making things happen, we naturally begin to trust ourselves more. We develop self-assurance, which becomes increasingly valuable for future scenarios.
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” -Dale Carnegie
The process of taking action and dealing with the consequences shows us that we can overcome fear and survive challenges, often becoming stronger in the process. Courage is one of the most important qualities we can develop, because most great things in life are impossible without it.
“Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk—and to act.” -Maxwell Maltz, surgeon and author
3. Being action-oriented helps us avoid the cost of regret for not trying.
Most people have regrets. Some of the most common ones are about the things we wished we had tried: the new ventures we dreamed of starting, the new relationships we wished we pursued, the places we longed to visit.
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” -Meister Eckhart, German mystic
4. It comes with a learning premium.
We develop knowledge and insights from trying things and seeing how they go. Learning is one of the best investments we can make. It pays rich dividends.
5. Being action-oriented changes our self-identity.
Suddenly, we think of ourselves as doers. As people with power, potential, and agency. We become the kind of people who act when others are watching or waiting.
Personal Values Exercise
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
It reveals our character and our tendencies. Our doubts and fears. It gives us a glimpse of our resourcefulness and persistence—and the things we need to work on to get better.
“Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action. Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, scientist, and statesman
7. Being action-oriented expands our sense of possibility.
Entrepreneur Steve Jobs spoke about this in an interview—about how everything changed for him when he learned to stop accepting life as it is and start poking and pushing it instead (and, in his case, start building things). When he realized that things around him were made by people who weren’t smarter than he was, he felt excited about improving his life and putting a “dent in the universe.”
8. Being action-oriented builds momentum.
Things start to click, almost moving of their own accord once we’ve done the heaviest lift of beginning. Things pick up speed and start bouncing around. The game is afoot.
“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” –Tony Robbins, author
9. It positions us as a doer and leader—and people respond to that.
The best leaders and entrepreneurs are doers, with a strong bias toward action. People respect us for trying, for starting, for daring. They respect us for getting things done—and for being the kind of person to jump into the fray. It inspires them to start doing so as well.
“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.” -Napoleon Hill, author
10. Being action-oriented yields better results over time and increases our probability of success.
We get better results in part because we get more attempts. (There’s simple math at work here.) Also, we learn what works and what doesn’t, and we develop experience, confidence, and resilience.
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” -Wayne Gretzky, legendary hockey player
11. Being action-oriented invites serendipity.
When we take action, we start making unintended or unexpected but fortunate discoveries.
When we’re taking purposeful action and following our bliss, as Joseph Campbell advises, we start meeting people who can help us, and doors open for us, almost like magic.
12. It’s more fun to be in the game than on the sidelines.
Do we want to watch others play, or be the ones in the maelstrom facing challenges and having a chance to prevail?
13. Being action-oriented gives us more chances at breakthroughs.
Windows of opportunity are only open for so long. Without taking action consistently, even when we don’t feel fully ready, we’re prone to missing big chances, including opportunities for breakthroughs.
14. Since there’s no such thing as a perfect time or “the right time,” we might as well get started.
What’s the point in waiting? Where does that get us? How many times will we sit and watch opportunities pass us by?
“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” -Napoleon Hill
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
It requires a willingness to act in spite of our fears. A willingness to go for it, despite the risks.
3. Being action-oriented requires a willingness to pounce when opportunities arise.
We must be willing to strike, even when the picture isn’t fully clear. This requires tapping into our warrior spirit.
“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.” -Carlos Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan
4. It helps to have a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is a belief that our intelligence, abilities, and talents can be developed. By contrast, if we have a fixed mindset, we’ll be preoccupied with the prospect of looking bad or being wrong, without realizing that it doesn’t matter as much as we may think because we can always learn and develop.
Action is must better when it’s pulled from a powerful vision of success, a motivating dream of a desired future, as opposed to being pushed from a troubled situation we seek to flee.
Warrior and Sage
Of course, being action-oriented isn’t the only thing we need to succeed. We need discernment and insight. Experience and wisdom.
We’re better off when we iterate between action and reflection, when we flex between being warrior and sage. We’re better off when we take action, then learn and adjust. But too often, people get stuck in thought and doubt when what they really should be doing is getting started.
Quality of Life Assessment
Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it.” -Chinese proverb
“Successful people start before they’re ready.” -James Clear, author
“Do not wait till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” -William B. Sprague
“I think the number one advice I can give is: you just have to start it. Just get your feet in the water and do it. I learned a lot from just trying it out.” -Yoshikazu Tanaka, Japanese entrepreneur
“I said to myself, You know what? This is the wrong time to do it, but there is never a perfect time. We have the right idea, and I’ve got to try.” -Seth Goldman, social entrepreneur, when thinking about launching Honest Tea
“An ounce of action can crush a ton of fear.” -Tim Fargo
“Inaction regrets increase as people age.” -Dan Pink, The Power of Regret
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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With the Olympics underway—with all the competition, drama, and intrigue—what can we learn from them not only about excellence and teamwork but also about life and leadership?
Sure we admire the grueling physical feats and the mental preparation. The years of punishing practices, discipline, focus, and skill-building that go into the nine-second sprint, the epic overtime soccer match, or the attempt to shatter records.
Part of what’s great about the Olympics is the quest for excellence—and the occasional flash of it that electrifies the world. “Excellent” is one of the three components of our “triple crown leadership” model (the others are “ethical” and “enduring”).
So what can we learn about personal and professional excellence as we watch the Olympic athletes in action? Much, it turns out. Here are ten lessons:
1. Excellence begins with a dream and a burning desire.
Who are you, and what is your quest? What would be a good life and career for you? What’s your deeply motivating pursuit? The legacy you aspire to?
“Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practices and the coaches who have pushed you… is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back. Play for her.”
-Mia Hamm, legendary U.S. women’s soccer champion
2. Excellence is the result of a systematic and disciplined process and pursuit.
Are you playing the long game? Do you have systems in place to get a little better each day? And to track progress?
“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”
-Pat Riley, legendary former NBA basketball coach and player
3. Excellence is only possible with discipline and deliberate practice.
Have you “turned pro” and committed to doing the work (even when—or especially when—you don’t feel like it)? Do you have a coach and a regimen of deliberate practice?
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
4. Excellence requires Herculean effort and a relentless work ethic.
Operating at such a high level requires extraordinary effort and a willingness to push past thresholds of pain and fatigue. It requires a commitment to doing the long and hard work of mastering your craft.
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
-Mario Andretti, Italian-born American car racing legend
5. Excellence requires alternating cycles of intense training and recovery.
The best athletes are as intentional and disciplined about rest and renewal (including sleep and mindfulness) as they are about their training. Otherwise injuries and burnout are likely to follow.
6. Excellence requires overcoming adversity.
There’s no easy path. We live in a competitive context with hungry and talented rivals and unforgiving markets that change quickly. We’ll face setbacks and failures. That’s the real test: how do we respond?
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
-Thomas Paine, political activist and revolutionary
Quality of Life Assessment
Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
7. Excellence is a function of the team, not only the individual.
Most of what we do is a group endeavor, not an individual one. As we say in our book, Triple Crown Leadership, “leadership is a group performance.” Even mostly individual functions require support from family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and coaches, and handoffs between teams or divisions.
“I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it,
because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.”
-Mia Hamm, legendary U.S. women’s soccer champion
8. Excellence requires going for it—putting ourselves on the line in the face of potential failure.
There are no guarantees. Our mettle will be tested. What are we willing to risk—and why, and for whom? As the Roman poet Virgil wrote, “Audentis Fortuna iuvat” (“Fortune favors the bold”).
“Who dares wins.”
-British Special Air Service (SAS) motto
9. In the end, it’s about something much larger than victory or success alone.
We must prepare not only for the race but the years after it too, and how we handle ourselves during the preparation for it.
“The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”
-Martina Navratilova, legendary tennis player
10. Be grateful for the opportunity to participate—whether as an athlete, trainer, coach, family member, or spectator.
It’s a gift to be savored. The Olympian pledge captures the spirit of the Games:
“Ask not alone for victory. Ask for courage. For if you can endure, you bring honor to yourself.
Even more, you bring honor to us all.”
As we enjoy the Games, let’s watch not only the events and standings but also look at what they reveal about us and our lives and work.
Goal-Setting Template
Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.
Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life (new book in the works on this)
Postscript: Inspirations on Excellence in Sports and Beyond
“Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision.” -Muhammad Ali, legendary boxing champion
“Don’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the further you get.” -Michael Phelps, gold-medal swimmer
“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do—even on the days you don’t feel like doing it.” -Julius Erving (Dr. J), legendary basketball player
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do…. Everything is practice.” -Pele, legendary Brazilian soccer champion
“I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.” -Mia Hamm, gold-medal soccer player
“Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work.” -Andre Agassi, gold-medal tennis player
“Success comes from knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” -John Wooden, legendary basketball coach
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” -Vince Lombardi, legendary football coach
“The main ingredient in stardom is the rest of the team.” -John Wooden, legendary basketball coach
“I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.” -Mia Hamm, legendary U.S. women’s soccer champion
“Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can’t handle.” -Sanya Richards-Ross, gold-medal track and field athlete
“I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.” -Nadia Comaneci, gold-medal gymnast
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” -Muhammad Ali, gold-medal boxer
“The difference between Olympians and the rest of us is: they behave as longtime friends who occasionally compete, while we behave as longtime adversaries who occasionally get along.” -Nelson Mandela, former South African president
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” -Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games
Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter
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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations(a winner of the International Book Awards). Get his monthly newsletter. Gregg was a co-captain of his high school and college soccer teams and high school track team, First-State in high school track, and collegiate Academic All-American soccer player (Division III). If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!
The problems in far too many organizations today are legion:
Unproductive, boring meetings
Astonishing amounts of wasted time
Avoidance of sensitive issues
Lack of full engagement
Reluctance to provide candid, constructive feedback
Political games and hidden agendas
Sound familiar?
The effects are far-reaching, from low quality work to employee turnover. According to a Corporate Executive Board study: “Nearly half of all executive teams fail to receive negative news that is material to firm performance in a timely manner because employees are afraid of being tainted by the bad news,” and only “19% of executive teams are always promptly informed of bad news that is material to firm performance.”
“So many times, I’ve heard people say, ‘I knew our strategy wasn’t working, but no one was willing to tell our CEO. No one wanted to lose their job.” –Susan Scott in Fierce Conversations
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
Andrew Kakabadse found that a very high percentage of top management team members in countries around the world report that there are issues not discussed because they are too sensitive, as shown below.
Lack of Dialogue among Top Management Team about Sensitive Issues (% of top management team members reporting that there are issues that should be aired but are not discussed because they’re too sensitive)
A related problem is “groupthink”—when people feel pressure to conform to an artificial consensus instead of pressure-testing ideas thoroughly without fear or favor.
What’s to be done?
Psychological Safety
What’s needed—desperately in some cases—is what Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and others call psychological safety. It’s a shared sense that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. As with floating a new idea for improving performance, raising a concern, or admitting a mistake.
Timothy R. Clark notes that psychological safety exists when people feel included and safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo—“all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished.”
Easier said than done.
Our neurological wiring helps explain why psychological safety is fragile: our brains process a raised voice or a cutting comment as a threat, triggering certain parts of the brain with a fight-or-flight response and shutting down the parts responsible for advanced reasoning and creativity. We become unable to think clearly just when we need it most.
Edmondson found that “Low levels of psychological safety can create a culture of silence… in which speaking up is belittled and warnings go unheeded.”
She notes that speaking up is only the beginning. If a manager responds negatively when someone raises a concern, it reduces or eliminates psychological safety.
She also notes that “psychologically safe workplaces have a powerful advantage in competitive industries.” That’s because they benefit from the feedback loops when customer service agents raise concerns with their managers or when line workers mention production problems to their supervisors, thereby identifying opportunities for improvement. In too many organizations, people are afraid to speak up, and so they don’t share their ideas.
Personal Values Exercise
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
To create psychological safety we must build trust. Stephen M. R. Covey has noted that with high trust in organizations, speed increases and costs decrease.
Enter the work of Patrick Lencioni. He noted the value of conflict in organizations (productive, not destructive, conflict). Most people view conflict as something to avoid, because it’s awkward and uncomfortable.
Healthy teams use conflict productively, for example, to work through a difficult problem or understand the root cause of a breakdown. Lencioni observes that the best leaders “mine for conflict,” almost like it’s gold.
“Weak leaders want agreement. Strong leaders want the truth.” -Susan Scott in Fierce Conversations
Most teams run from conflict like it’s the plague. The first “dysfunction of a team” noted by Lencioni is an absence of trust. When people aren’t comfortable being vulnerable in the group (due to a lack of psychological safety), it’s impossible to build a foundation of trust. That’s because people are not open about their mistakes, weaknesses, and needs for help.
This tees up the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Without trust, team members can’t engage in an unfiltered and vigorous debate, instead relying on veiled discussions and guarded comments that don’t get anywhere near the core issues.
“Trust is the foundation of real teamwork…. Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal…. The most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team is to demonstrate vulnerability first.” -Patrick Lencioni
By showing vulnerability, leaders model the way and open a space where others feel comfortable doing the same.
The results of disciplined attention to these matters over time can be extraordinary. With high levels of psychological safety, fueled by vulnerability and trust, people rise to new heights of performance and engagement.
Psychological safety, while fragile and rare, is precious and powerful. The best leaders cultivate it carefully.
These days, we ask much of our leaders. Organizations and governments are under great pressures to perform, and these days leaders are responsible for crisis management during a pandemic with its attendant economic destruction and social and emotional anxiety.
More and more we are realizing that empathy is a powerful aspect of leading well.
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from their frame of reference (i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another person’s position).
Different Types of Empathy
Researchers have identified several types of empathy:
Cognitive empathy is the capacity to understand someone’s mental state.
Emotional empathy is the capacity to respond with an appropriate emotion to another’s mental states, including a concern for others when they are suffering.
Somatic empathy is a physical reaction in our nervous system that entails physically feeling someone else’s pain (e.g., getting a sense of physical pain when you see someone else get hurt).
According to the research, when managers exhibit the most empathy toward their team, they are viewed as better performers. What’s more, when we exhibit empathy as leaders, we build trust with others because they see that we are paying attention to them and recognizing their issues and concerns.
When we empathize, we relate to and connect with people, and that contributes toward building a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.
According to Roman Krznaric in Empathy: Why It Matters and How to Get It,empathy “is not just about seeing things from another’s perspective. It’s the cornerstone of smart leadership. The real competitive advantage of the human worker will be their capacity to create relationships….”
Empathy and Leadership
Great leaders focus not just on vision and execution but also on building healthy and close relationships with people they work with.
Empathy shows up in several modern leadership frameworks. For example, it is one of the ten characteristics of a servant leader and one of the components of emotional intelligence (and its social awareness aspect).
In our “triple crown leadership” model for how to build excellent, ethical, and enduring organizations, it shows up in our “head and heart” practice, with leaders hiring, developing, and rewarding people not just for “head” skills like knowledge and skills but also for “heart” factors, including empathy.
What’s more, we can view leadership as a quest (e.g., to achieve a higher purpose). But as entrepreneur and author Jim Rohn notes, “As a leader, you should always start with where people are before you try to take them where you want them to go.”
Recently, we’ve seen troubling examples of narcissism in leaders, including an excessive need for admiration as well as a disregard for others’ feelings, interests, or safety.
That’s a real shame, because it keeps the focus on the leader as opposed to the larger purpose and the people in the organization and those they serve.
The best leaders leverage empathy to understand their customers much more deeply and thus lead their teams in creating products and services that solve real problems—and in seeing opportunities for innovation that others miss.
Empathy is an essential aspect of effective leadership and a powerful human trait that binds us together in the ups and downs of life and work.
Leadership involves so many difficult challenges and exceptional behaviors and mindsets. These days, we ask much of our leaders.
When I ask workers to quickly name the qualities that arise in their minds when they hear the word “leader,” I am instantly assaulted by a barrage of words: vision, charisma, confidence, clarity, responsibility, results, judgment, emotional intelligence, coach, and much more.
The Most Important Aspect of Leadership
What’s the most important aspect of leadership? Have you thought about that?
In my view, the most important aspect of leadership is integrity, because everything else leaders do flows from it (or its absence), followed by the courage to uphold it.
Warren Bennis, the late scholar and author widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership, once wrote:
“Integrity is the most important characteristic of a leader, and one that he or she must be prepared to demonstrate again and again.” -Warren Bennis
Reflecting on his approach to hiring, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, noted, “I look for three things in hiring people. The first is personal integrity, the second is intelligence, and the third is high energy level. But if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
Yes, we have seen many leaders with smarts and ambition get into trouble when they lack integrity and make poor choices.
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
The Quest for Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations
For our book, Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations, we interviewed leaders in 61 organizations in 11 countries, and sought to find out how leaders build organizations that are excellent (exceptional results and positive impacts across stakeholders), ethical (doing the right thing, even when it’s costly or hard), and enduring (standing the test of time and operating sustainably).
When we interviewed Girish Vaidya, former Senior Vice President of the Infosys Leadership Institute, we asked him about the relationship between excellent results, operating with integrity, and sustaining these practices over time. He noted, “You might get high performance for a while even if there is no integrity, but for consistent high performance, integrity is absolutely important.” Notably, they view integrity not just as an aspiration or value. It’s something to bake into their culture and their organizational storytelling during onboarding and meetings.
During your career, your integrity will be tested. Have you committed to doing the right thing, even when it’s costly or hard? Do you have people around you with the courage to step up and ask the hard questions and push back when there are concerns? In her book, Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott wrote, “There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us.”
Think of your own leadership at its best, whether at work or in community engagements, sports, or family. Think of the leaders you admire. And the ones who have influenced you in lasting ways and brought out your best. In all cases, you’re likely to find people, though not perfect, who are deeply committed to honesty, fairness, and morality. Integrity is essential in leadership.
“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionable integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower, former five-star Army general and U.S. president
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
There are many ways to think about leadership. For some, as we have seen, it’s about control or power. And for others, it is about achievement or recognition. For others, it’s about people and service, along with higher purpose and positive impact.
Since leadership by definition involves a relationship between leaders and followers—and, more precisely, an influence relationship—it begs the question of trust. One may be able to command, control, or deceive at some point or for some time, but for an enduring relationship of constructive influence, trust must be present.
Trust is a firm belief in the reliability or truth of someone. This takes us into the deep and rich territory of character, credibility, ethics, honesty, integrity, morality, and values—all of which are essential underpinnings and necessary prerequisites of good leadership. These virtues are good in and of themselves and should be aspired to by all (and, yes, even in competitive contexts such as business and sports).
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
There is also a “business case” for trust. Without trust in an organization or society, things take longer and cost more, due to the need for checks and reviews and the inevitable holding back that comes in such situations. In his book, The Speed of Trust, author Stephen M. R. Coveywrote, “Trust always affects outcomes—speed and cost. When trust goes up, speed will also go up, and costs will go down. When trust goes down, speed will also go down, and costs go up.” He and his father, Stephen R. Covey(author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), brilliantly described leadership as “getting results today in a way that, by inspiring trust, increases our ability to get results tomorrow.”
Leadership scholars James Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of the classic book, The Leadership Challenge, have been surveying people around the world for decades on the characteristics of admired leaders. More than 100,000 people worldwide have responded, and the findings are powerful:
“Credibility is the foundation of leadership. People must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. To willingly follow them, people must believe that the leaders’ word can be trusted…. Trust is the most significant predictor of individuals’ satisfaction within their organizations.” -James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge
This is not rocket science. Imagine working for a leader or colleague whose behavior has demonstrated that he or she is not worthy of your trust, since he or she has deceived or used you. Imagine living with a family member or having a friend who abuses your trust.
Unacceptable. Such a situation requires change, and urgently so.
Of course, we all make mistakes and, when we do, thankfully we can redeem and make amends when others are kind and gracious enough to give us a second chance. But patterns of deceit warrant decisive action. Otherwise, we enable abuse and corrosive forces in our organizations and society.
Trust is essential in leadership—and in all forms of human relationships and organizations. Chronically failing the trust test is disqualifying for leaders.
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Credibility: the quality of being worthy of belief and trust
Credibility, which flows from character and competence, is one of the most essential aspects of leadership. High credibility is a tremendous asset for leaders seeking to achieve exceptional performance and positive impacts. Low credibility is devastating.
Credible leaders are straight with people, even about hard topics. They walk the talk and practice what they preach. They do what they say they will do and follow through on promises.
Think about what you have wanted from your leaders, parents, teachers, and coaches over the years. Next, think of the impact that credible leaders have had on your life. And think of the kind of leader you would want your children or best friend to work for.
Personal Values Exercise
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Leadership scholars James Kouzes and Barry Posner, authors of the best-selling classic, The Leadership Challenge, have been surveying people around the world for decades on the “Characteristics of Admired Leaders.” More than 100,000 people worldwide have responded, and the findings are powerful and surprisingly consistent across nations:
“In every survey we’ve conducted, honesty is selected more often than any other leadership characteristic. Overall, it emerges as the single most important factor in the leader-constituent relationship…. First and foremost, people want a leader who is honest…. “…people want to follow leaders who, more than anything, are credible. Credibility is the foundation of leadership. People must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. To willingly follow them, people must believe that the leaders’ word can be trusted.” -James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Table 1. Characteristics of Admired Leaders (% of respondents selecting each characteristic over time periods)
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
According to their research, when people perceive their manager to have high credibility, they are significantly more likely to:
Be proud to tell others they’re part of the organization
Feel a strong sense of team spirit
See their own personal values as consistent with those of the organization
Feel attached and committed to the organization
Have a sense of ownership of the organization
When they perceive their manager to have low credibility, they are significantly more likely to:
Produce only if carefully watched
Be motivated primarily by money
Say good things about the organization publicly but criticize it privately
Consider looking for another job if the organization experiences problems
Feel unsupported and unappreciated
That leads them to the Kouzes-Posner 1st Law of Leadership:
“If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”
And then to the Kouzes-Posner 2nd Law of Leadership:
DWYSYWD: “Do what you say you will do.”
Today we all face grave challenges, from the pandemic and economic crisis, with all their stresses and pressures, to competitive and technological disruption. Now more than ever we need credible leaders worthy of our belief and trust.
What are you doing to build leadership credibility?
“Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.” -John C. Maxwell, leadership author
Tools for You
Quality of Life Assessment so you can discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Scandals. Fraud. Abuse of power. Greed. Corruption. Tax evasion. Coverups.
Once rare occurrences, coming back to haunt us every decade or so, these are now front and center in our daily lives and our daily news cycle. We see them in government, in business, and even in nonprofits and some religious organizations.
It seems as if we are in a race to the bottom.
While these challenges and failings have always been with us, we are not particularly well equipped to deal with them, in part because we fail to understand their root causes—and to hack away at them.
obsession with an overarching goal. For example, Enron executives were a group of hyper-ambitious overachievers with something to prove about being number one. Many were ruthless and uninhibited about doing whatever it took to get there. For NASA, it was fixation with set-in-stone space shuttle launch dates, contributing to tragic explosions and loss of life. Some mountain climbers get “summit fever,” where they are so focused on reaching the top that they recklessly risk their own lives and those of their teams.
2. Rationalization:
attempting to explain or justify behavior with logical reasons, even when not appropriate. Sometimes values conflict (e.g., truth vs. loyalty). Rationalization entails choosing based on one “privileged feature” (e.g., total loyalty regardless of the truth). This creates “blind spots” in ethical thinking. Examples of rationalization are legion:
My boss told me to do it.
Everybody else is doing it.
It’s just this one time.
No one will find out.
It’s not my responsibility.
It’s not lying. (It’s just not telling the truth.)
We really need/deserve this.
I didn’t do anything. (I just looked the other way.)
You don’t understand the pressure we’re under.
“Business is business”: we’re just “maximizing shareholder value.”
“Politics is dirty”: we have to do this so we can do X, Y, Z….
“I… rationalized that what I was doing was OK, that it wasn’t going to hurt anybody.” / “I will live with this pain, with this torment, for the rest of my life.” –Bernie Madoff, former financier and operator of a Ponzi scheme considered the largest financial fraud in U.S. history
3. Detachment:
the sense of not being personally involved in something or of having no interest or stake. On ethical matters, Goodpaster raises the alarm when our actions are detached from our personal values. When detached, people bypass their heart and soul as they privilege only their head, and they anesthetize their humanity in the face of temptations to win or be perceived as successful. Here he draws on psychoanalyst and author Michael Maccoby, who warned that “careerism” was a self-destructive affliction suffered by many successful executives (and politicians, presumably), fueled by an obsession with winning and a “gamesman” view of all actions in terms of whether they will help you succeed in your career or campaign. The person detaches from his or her sense of identity (e.g., as a mother or father, citizen, etc.) and integrity, and one’s sense of self-worth becomes measured by performance in the market, game, or arena. Such detachment corrodes character and degrades mental health, with people leading divided lives between work and home.
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
Two related dangers here are “ethical fading” and “moral disengagement”:
Ethical fading: “when the ethical aspects of a decision disappear from view,” such as when people focus so much on things like profitability or winning that they do not register unethical and illegal behavior (and the related aspects of harm, pain, conflict).
Moral disengagement: restructuring reality to make our actions seem less harmful than they are, convincing ourselves that ethical standards do not apply to us in a certain context, such as a political campaign. We mentally reframe destructive behavior as acceptable, and our brains are masterful at this misdirection.
Each one of these three symptoms is dangerous, but the real problem is that they converge into a single, terrible pattern. Goodpaster calls this “teleopathy”: the unbalanced pursuit of purpose. The word “teleopathy” combines two Greek roots: “teleo”: goal, target, or purpose; and “pathos”: disease or sickness.
We can think of it as a goal sickness—as being so focused on a goal that we pursue it destructively. Here’s the rationale:
We must win…. And we must be the best… We must rule.
Antidotes for Ethical Hazard
Thankfully, Goodpaster notes that there are “antidotes” for the three symptoms of ethical hazard:
1. From fixation to perspective.
We must see that our goals are part of a larger mission, the common good. We need to transcend our perpetual busyness and reactivity and build in reflection time, renewal rituals, and sanctuary. Without a larger and longer term perspective of community, duty, stewardship, and sustainability, we will spiral down in self-destructive patterns.
2. From rationalization to frankness.
Since our rationalizations tend to be subconscious, coming from the older and faster parts of our brain that do not engage our most advanced reasoning capacities in our prefrontal cortex, we need radical honesty and candor through searching and piercing dialogue and healthy conflict with colleagues who recognize the tremendous value of vetting and pressure-testing our ideas and decisions and inviting conversations about whether we are upholding our shared values. We need people who are willing to “speak truth to power,” even when they are a voice of one. Ideally, our organizational culture fosters such questioning and conflict, all in service of making wise decisions and proper actions.
3. From detachment to engagement.
This requires engaging our heart as well as our head. A powerful way to do that is to be clear about the higher purpose of the work you are doing (beyond winning a campaign or maximizing profits:
What will you do once elected?
What value can you create for all stakeholders through the profits you generate?
What positive impact can you have via serving others, and are you doing your part for the common good?
Now more than ever we need to identify and hack away at the root causes of our ethical failings and political dysfunction. We need to stop our senseless race to the bottom—in business with our myopic pursuit of profit and growth regardless of the consequences on people and planet, and in politics with our zero-sum game mentality of “I must win and you must lose” with all its attendant cynicism and disdain for fellow citizens who happen to disagree with us on some issues. We need to look for shared values and mutual interests instead of stoking mistrust, anger, and resentment. This race to the bottom is so dangerous because it threatens to destroy the very foundations of our communities and society. With perspective, frankness, engagement, and a healthy pursuit of shared purpose, we can redirect the race upward.
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
Leading others well can be a great challenge. It requires courage, judgment, wisdom, emotional intelligence, integrity, and much more. Leadership excellence comes with experience, but it begins with intentionality and commitment.
Here are the most important (four) questions to help ground your leadership in a powerful foundation, whether you are a new leader learning the ropes or a seasoned leader looking to upgrade or renew.
1. Why are you leading?
Is it for prestige? The title? Money? Power? Perquisites? Is it to prove something, or impress others? In truth, several of these may be drivers for you, but the key issue is whether you have found a deeper why. Being a leader does not require being a saint absent normal human influences and motivations, but leading well requires clarity of purpose and a motivation beyond the self. Great leadership has been described as motivating people to accomplish great things together. In our Triple Crown Leadership book, we address the kind of leadership that can build an organization that is excellent, ethical, and enduring—with exceptional, positive, and sustainable impacts.
Have you matured and evolved such that you are able to rise beyond your ego and focus on the bigger picture? Followers will recognize selfish motives, especially if they become dominant, and such motives can make your leadership toxic if left unchecked. But followers will respond positively if they see a leader committed to a worthy higher purpose and aspirational vision.
Leadership Derailers Assessment
Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.
As Robert Greenleaf noted, the best leaders serve. With his “servant leadership” framework, he challenged traditional thinking about leadership as a top-down phenomenon. Greenleaf wrote, “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.”
People sense that call to serve. They respect and admire it, and willingly follow. Greenleaf even developed a conceptual “test” we can use for determining whether someone is a servant leader: “The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
At best, leaders serve their followers, and the organization serves all of its stakeholders: customers, employees, vendors and partners, the community, and its owners. The days of any organization serving only shareholders, often at the expense of other stakeholders, are numbered.
3. Are you upholding your values?
Your values are the things that are most important to you. Think about what you believe and stand for, and your convictions about what is most important in life. While many organizations have statements of their values, many people don’t take the time to discover their own values. There is great power in making your values explicit and sharing them with others—and in demonstrating them through your choices and behaviors. Values matter because they guide your behavior in congruence with your authentic self and deepest convictions. Many people run into trouble when they behave in ways that conflict with their values.
Great leaders know their own values and collaboratively elicit a set of shared values to guide the behavior and decisions of people in the organization. They key is not having values. The key is upholding them and infusing them in the organization so they are actualized.
“You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company’s values. Values make an unsinkable ship.” –Indra Nooyi, former Chair and CEO, PepsiCo
Personal Values Exercise
Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.
4. What are you doing to develop yourself and others?
Learning to lead well is a lifelong endeavor, and the best leaders are incredibly intentional about developing their own leadership through experience, stretch assignments, challenges, crises, active solicitation of feedback, coaching, mentoring, training, courses, reading, peer groups, self-reflection, and more.
The best leaders also focus on developing others. According to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge, “Leaders develop in others the competence, as well as the confidence, to act and to excel.” They go on to say, “The most lasting test of your leadership effectiveness is the extent to which you bring forth and develop the leadership abilities in others, not just in yourself.”
Unfortunately, most organizations do not invest nearly enough in effective training and development (or on vetting people during hiring). According to a Hewitt Associates study of 700 senior leaders, most organizations hold their executives and managers accountable for achieving business results, but only 10% hold executives accountable for developing their direct reports, and only 5% indicate that their managers consistently demonstrate the ability to develop employees. In their book, The Talent Masters, Ram Charan and Bill Conaty write, “If businesses managed their money as carelessly as they manage their people, most would be bankrupt. The great majority of companies that control their finances don’t have any comparable processes for developing leaders or even pinpointing which ones to develop.”
Organizations that are great at learning and development improve systematically over time in ways that allow them to excel and outperform others, leveraging the power of compounding and the engagement and motivation that come from learning, development, and growth.
Four Key Questions for Leaders
So, four key questions for leaders:
Why are you leading?
Who are you serving?
Are you upholding your values?
What are you doing to develop yourself and others?
How do you answer these questions, and which questions need better answers?
