Page 150 - Fearless Leadership

Changing Your Direction and Taking a Bold Stand 137

• Learn how to be a committed partner and ask others to do
the same. There is a reason we call this special type of partner-
ship a “committed” partnership. As with any significant commit-
ment, there are agreements and a formal acceptance, which
provide the infrastructure for holding each other accountable.
You will need to help people learn what it means to work in
committed partnerships, so you must also learn. But what comes
first is the commitment to learning and working together as an
invincible team.
• Leave them with an inspired vision of the future. Although
you will need to explain what you don’t want, as well as what
you do want, make sure you leave people with a positive
message. End with what you want them to do, and give them
a sense of how the future will be different. Describe what will
happen when you achieve the objective: what business results
will be different, how attitudes and the environment will
change, and how the behavior of people will transform. You
must send a strong and consistent message that communicates:
how we work together as committed partners is the foundation
for producing exceptional business results.

Let’s turn to an example of a courageous leader, Scott, who went far
beyond his comfort zone to emotionally connect with people. As an expe-
rienced leader of a large manufacturing site, he anticipated major prob-
lems during a ramp-up. A sister site had just experienced significant
burnout and loss of employees during their recent ramp-up, and Scott
wanted to avoid those problems.
After trying many different approaches, he tried the one that he had
avoided—moving toward his own discomfort and learning how to emotion-
ally engage with others. His technical background did not equip him with
a template for being confidently open and accessible, so he had to learn
how to express himself in a new way.
Below is an excerpt of what Scott said to his extended leadership
group. If you had been in the room, you would have felt his emotion, car-
ing, and passion. I can tell you that his leaders were so moved by his mes-
sage that they cascaded it throughout the entire organization.