Page 134 - Fearless Leadership

Changing Your Direction and Taking a Bold Stand 121

Transformation is not a soft science; it is a methodical, disciplined
approach to optimizing leadership and organizational effectiveness in a
remarkably short period of time. The concept of speed is perhaps the most
misunderstood aspect of transformation. When you provide people with
an opportunity to profoundly expand their personal context and capabil-
ity, they instantly reengage and redirect their newfound enthusiasm and
confidence into organizational goals. This explains why organizational and
personal context are interdependent factors in helping an organization
reach optimal effectiveness.
Exhibit 5-1 provides an overview of the different focuses needed to
change an organization versus transform it.
Leaders who push the organization to deliver more and try vainly to
squeeze extra effort out of people who are emotionally disconnected and
unaligned are disappointed with the results. This push to get more gives
you less, especially when you are fixated on the wrong things.
The root of the problem lies in thinking that results are separate from
relationships. There is no equivocation that business results are, and must
be, the measure of success in any organization. However, relationships—
how people work together—are the foundation for business results. Most
leaders give lip service to relationships, and at best, they provide detached
or disjointed efforts that do not connect people to business objectives. The
leaders are ignoring the fact that how people work together must be placed
at the heart of the business mission, not on the periphery.
How often do you think of relationships or teamwork as “nice to have,”
“something that can wait until the crisis blows over” or “something that
is working fine and can be tweaked later”? Most leaders, if they are hon-
est, put business results and people in a hierarchical order in which results
must be achieved in order to have the luxury of developing people—and
these leaders are going backward again.
Instead, leaders need to operate from the principle that people are both
their business concern and their vehicle for delivering results. If the peo-
ple of the organization are not front and center of a leader’s thinking and
strategy, then it is time to consider a new direction. When leaders focus
on building committed partnerships, they produce a seismic shift in
behavior and organizational results.