{"id":8669,"date":"2019-03-31T15:13:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T22:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=8669"},"modified":"2019-04-01T08:45:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T15:45:13","slug":"spotting-a-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=8669","title":{"rendered":"Spotting a leader"},"content":{"rendered":"

Synopsis –<\/strong>\u00a0 Effective ‘leaders’ know what quality is and feel a sense\u00a0of responsibility for achieving quality. \u00a0If a person waffles, waivers or avoids discussing quality, chances are they will not make an effective leader.<\/p>\n

\n

It’s pretty clear that project success rates are higher where projects have effective leadership and lower where there was either no leader, or where those in the leadership roles didn’t discharge their duties effectively. \u00a0Effective leaders align people, focus people and ensure momentum is maintained. \u00a0There is no great insight in that observation, but it does point to the central challenge that so many organizations struggle with.<\/p>\n

The challenge facing organizations lies in finding effective leaders. \u00a0Despite the vast array of books, seminars and classes on the subject, many (if not most) organizations still struggle to achieve consistent levels of capability in their leadership ranks. \u00a0In part the problem is that natural leadership skills are relatively rare. \u00a0Although it is hard to quantify, my own casual observations indicate that just\u00a015% of people have the precursor leadership\u00a0tendencies<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 (e.g. they\u00a0show personal initiative, have the courage to step up to the plate, like heading up teams and are comfortable\u00a0voicing their opinions). \u00a0Even then, just having leadership\u00a0tendencies<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0doesn’t mean a person has\u00a0good leadership\u00a0skills<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0Leading teams requires a broad portfolio of skills (communications skills, strategic skills, interpersonal skills, organizational skills and negotiating skills to name just a few). \u00a0While the lucky few are born\u00a0with both leadership tendencies and the necessary\u00a0skills, most people\u00a0are not.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to quantify exactly how many people have both the tendencies and skills, but you can think back over your own careers and try quantifying it yourself. \u00a0When I ask people to do that, most report that the percentage of effective leaders they have worked with is small (common answers range from 5% to a depressing ‘nil’).<\/p>\n

Given that effective leadership is relatively rare, it is worth understanding how to spot a leader. \u00a0In interviews everyone claims to have leadership skills, but clearly many\u00a0making the\u00a0claim, don’t. \u00a0So, what can you look for to find a leader? \u00a0What are the tell-tale signs that someone is an effective leader?<\/p>\n

I think the first part of the answer lies in looking for the leadership tendencies; is their clear indication that they are a self-starter? \u00a0What initiatives have they personally started and sustained? \u00a0What situations can they relay in which they were ahead of the curve (thinking strategically) and were they successful in using those insights to gain advantage? Granted in an interview everyone will have a stab at answering those types of questions, but how fast can they formulate an answer? \u00a0How significant are the events they are talking about? \u00a0Can they easily draw upon multiple stories or do they run out of steam having patched together just a single story?<\/p>\n

Beyond that, there is one additional element I encourage clients to look for when searching for effective leaders. \u00a0It’s an insight that comes from the thousand plus discussion assignments I’ve reviewed in which I ask students to root cause analyze\u00a0their own experiences with successful and failed projects.\u00a0 Many of the troubled project students report quality related dysfunctions (e.g. leaders who didn’t care about quality, sacrificing quality as a side-effect of rushing, low levels of process maturity leading to poor quality, failure to do testing or inspections of the product, etc.). \u00a0On the flip side, when discussing projects that were successful, having a leader who felt an ownership of\u00a0quality<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a theme that regularly appears. \u00a0The leader understood what quality meant,\u00a0held people accountable for\u00a0quality and would work to enable the team to produce quality. \u00a0They were willing to provide guidance to the team and willing to step in if they saw the seeds of poor quality being sown.<\/p>\n

To some leaders, quality is a nebulous concept that they struggle to articulate. \u00a0To others it’s an annoyance that stands in the way of ‘getting things done’. \u00a0In other cases, it is simply a topic they’ve never even thought about. \u00a0In stark contrast, however, effective leaders tend to feel a responsibility for quality. \u00a0Read the biographies or writing of some of the top entrepreneurs, sports coaches or musicians and you’ll find quality is a topic that is close to their hearts. \u00a0The Toyoda family (Toyota), Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and the Virgin Group’s Richard Branson all have reputations for being\u00a0leaders who ‘owned quality’. \u00a0Chip Wilson of Lululemon Athletica is a local success here in Vancouver and his billion dollars plus empire has largely been powered by the quality-oriented culture he instilled.<\/p>\n

Samsung provides a dramatic illustration of what ‘owning quality’ means. \u00a0In 1993 Samsung was developing its first-generation cell phones. Having developed a product\u00a0that was ahead of its time, then Chairman, Kun-hee Lee, sent samples to his business contacts as gifts.\u00a0 On hearing from them that some of the phones didn\u2019t work, he personally visited the factory, went to the warehouse and tested samples.\u00a0 To his horror,\u00a0he found some that\u00a0didn\u2019t work. \u00a0While many senior leaders\u00a0would\u00a0delegate the fixes to their subordinates, Lee took a more direct approach. \u00a0He summoned the board of directors and the staff to gather outside the factory.\u00a0 He had the entire stock ($50M worth) burned in front of everyone. \u00a0 According to reports, he then had a worker drive a bulldozer over the remains. \u00a0He then left. \u00a0That’s brutal feedback,\u00a0but the message is clear: shoddy work will not be accepted.\u00a0 To this day, Samsung still leverages that incident to help shape their culture (Samsung Performance<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 see page 10 and note the document is bit slow to open). \u00a0Since\u00a01993\u00a0Samsung has rapidly expanded and despite a few technical issues along the way has developed a strong reputation for quality.<\/p>\n

Although middle management, Program\/Project Managers and technical leaders won’t have the authority to crush millions of dollars\u00a0worth of phones, I do see positive attitudes to and considered positions on quality in the more capable people I work with. \u00a0the experiences of the 1,000+ participants in my online classes have reinforced that observation. \u00a0No matter the level of the organization, some people care about quality and those are typically the ones you should focus on hiring or developing.<\/p>\n

That insight provides useful start point for looking for leaders.\u00a0 Questions about quality can easily be built into an interview. \u00a0Can the candidate\u00a0explain what quality is in their industry? \u00a0Can they explain how to get it? \u00a0How in-depth or considered are their answers and what is their physical reaction to the questions? \u00a0People who are quality oriented will often get quite animated when asked about quality\u00a0(likely the shock of being asked – many, or perhaps most,\u00a0interviews don’t touch on quality as a topic). \u00a0Furthermore, to encourage people with positive attitudes towards quality to apply, simply leverage the language of quality into the job posting. \u00a0There is no guarantee, but people who are interested in doing a good job may be more likely to apply than those who really don’t care. \u00a0As such the job posting can act as a filter giving you a stronger candidate base from which to choose.<\/p>\n

When you hire or appoint a leader, you are in part delegating responsibility for your organization’s product or service quality to that person. \u00a0If they don’t understand what quality is, if they don’t have an understanding for how to get quality or if they really don’t care,\u00a0then\u00a0you may be disappointed with the results your new appointment achieves. \u00a0From a project perspective, you may well have stacked the cards in favour of yet another troubled project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis –\u00a0 Effective ‘leaders’ know what quality is and feel a sense\u00a0of responsibility for achieving quality. \u00a0If a person waffles, waivers or avoids discussing quality, chances are they will not make an effective leader. It’s pretty clear that project success rates are higher where projects have effective leadership and lower where there was either no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,126,28,120,40,37,38,31,42,70,43,73,77],"tags":[64,135,138,149,17,141,142,21,62,144,93,147],"class_list":["post-8669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-career-development","category-causes-of-failure","category-corporate-culture","category-leadership-blog","category-management","category-organizational-learning","category-people","category-project-management","category-quality-blog","category-team-dynamics","category-training","category-why-projects-fail","tag-advanced-project-management-training","tag-behavioral-pattern","tag-causes-of-failure","tag-corporate-culture","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-organizational-learning","tag-quality","tag-quality-management","tag-team-dynamics","tag-why-do-projects-fail","tag-why-projects-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8669"}],"version-history":[{"count":82,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8755,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669\/revisions\/8755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}