Heard this one the other day…I thought it showed great poise.

Terry Francona…Manager of the Boston Red Sox was being questioned by the media about the batting slump that David Ortiz was experiencing for the first few weeks of the season.  Is he over the hill?  Has he lost it?  Should he be replaced?  How long will you wait before changing him out for someone else?  How do you plan to react?

He replied, “You can’t react to everything”.  The implication was right on.  As  a leader, you can’t react to everything.  Sometimes you have to let things play themselves out a bit before jumping in and taking action.  Immediately acting on everything raises the level of pressure on the situation, and creates an atmosphere in which everything becomes a crisis.  It creates a level of stress which inhibits everyones ability to perform effectively.

By letting things play out a bit you show poise and calm, which is so needed by your constituents…in this case the other team members, the fans, and the owners.  You demonstrate that the situation may not require intervention at this moment.  You diffuse the pressure.  You make it clear that you are aware of the situation, the implications, and that you have it under control.  It is critical to your constituents that they know you are in control of the situation.

In this situation Terry Francona was absolutely right.  David Ortiz is a pro.  He, like any other professional athlete, will have slumps and hot streaks.  If he were to have gotten all excited about this situation it would have made the situation worse.  It would have put extra pressure on Ortiz to resolve his problems, and it would have demonstrated to the team that they had better not go into a slump, or they would come under the same kind of scrutiny.  That would negatively affect the performance of the team.

What Terry Francona did not only silenced the media and took the pressure off Ortiz, he protected the core of the rest of the team and the organization from the same kind of pressure…a great leadership response on his part. 

The result of Terry Francona’s leadership was exactly as one would expect…Ortiz did come out of his slump in grand fashion and has been on a hot streak for the past several weeks.  Now, one could say that Ortiz would have come out of his slump anyway, which is certainly true.  But, the bigger effect of his actions is in how the rest of the team, the fans, and the ownership respond to his ability to manage the media and public scrutiny of their performance. He minimized the effect that external inluences could have on the performance of the team.

(By the way…I am to be congratulated on my objectivity in this post since I am a die hard Yankee fan.)

I like this quote because it speaks to “how” you get things done as a leader, more so than ”what” you get done.  To me, the “how” has a greater affect on your ability to sustain organizational performance than it does on achieving a short term result because it defines an approach which, if reflective of your style and attitude, is representative of how you will do things in the future.  It is therefore also reflective of the results you will continue to achieve.

The quote goes:

“Being successful as a leader does not mean having all the answers, it means getting them.”

This quote speaks to knowing the strengths of your team and being able to access their knowledge and expertise for the use and benefit of the entire organization.  By doing so you leverage your own strengths and abilities, and you exponentially increase the results your organization can achieve. 

This aspect of leadership requires having the right processes and mechanisms in place…something we discussed in the post on leadership as being a process rather than a set of skills http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=63

It also implies a strong degree of empowerment in your workforce which enables people to draw on their own creativity and motivations to excell in their work and bring all their skills and abilities to performing their daily taks.  This is a big subject and one which I really want to get into.  It has many sub-parts which must work together to be successful.  It combines aspects of several posts I have done recently, and will be a nice assimilation of the thoughts in each…showing how it all ties together.  That has to be a subject for another post.

This is the last segment in the series on Common Mistakes made by leaders, in which I have been summarizing responses from readers.  This issue focuses on the impact of EGO on leadership behavior.  For this issue I interviewed Dr. Timothy Gilmor, a Psychologist in Toronto, Canada, with Gilmor Associates, who focuses on executive assessment and development, website www.gilmorassociates.ca

The comments I received from readers about the role that EGO plays in dysfunctional leadership behavior were focused on a leader’s ambitions for themselves, the effect that those ambitions have on their decision-making, and the de-motivating effect they have on the people in the organization. 

To start, Dr. Gilmor gave me a bit of an education on the subject and pointed out that EGO is not the issue here, it is the maturity of the EGO that must be understood.  He described the mature EGO as an enlightened EGO, one that is grounded in confidence and strong self-esteem.

Surprisingly, those leaders whose motivations are based in self-advancement do not seem to be aware that many people around them recognize their actions as being for their own benefit.

He elaborated by saying that a common trait among leaders is that they are people who are attracted to positions of power.  There is nothing wrong with that; it is part of the make-up of leaders.  A strong EGO is a sign of an individual who is striving and ambitious, and that is an important element of being successful as a leader.  Those individuals with strong EGOs will often rise to the top of organizations.  It is the maturity of their EGO that defines whether that pursuit is intended for exploitation and self-aggrandizement, or for the greater good of all involved.

Unfortunately, I think (and this is ME speaking, not Dr. Gilmor) that the term EGO gets a bad rap and is generally used to describe the behavior of people in hot pursuit of their own advancement.  Conversely, if I understand what Dr. Gilmor is saying, a strong sense of philanthropy is also a reflection of the EGO at work…in this case, an enlightened EGO.

Dr. Gilmor went on to say that today fewer leaders have a value of the greater good as a backdrop for their actions.  The desire to prove “ONESELF” has become strongly rooted in our culture and the desire to do good for all is no longer stressed.   Our society has become more about “ME”.  As a result, decisions are often made with self-advancement as a primary driver. 

Surprisingly, those leaders whose motivations are based in self-advancement do not seem to be aware that many people around them see through their feigned interests of “doing what’s in the best interest of the organization” and recognize their actions as being for their own benefit.

How do you recognize people with a less enlightened ego?  The alienating quality of the less enlightened ego depreciates you and makes you feel badly.  Ask yourself, does this person leave me with good, mixed or bad feelings?  In a hiring situation be attentive to how a person makes you feel.  Be aware of their interests.  Are they focused on what they can get for themselves, or are they more interested in what they can contribute to the organization?

What leads to a less enlightened EGO versus an enlightened EGO?  A less enlightened EGO has suffered from deprivation in life, mistreatment, and a lack of introspection.  Those individuals become fixated on power to enrich themselves.  The need for potency and power trumps all else and results in behavior that is damaging to others and organizations.

An enlightened EGO grows from self-awareness, and learning from experience.  Diverse experiences, both painful and not, influences of childhood, role models, care and security play a role in shaping the degree to which one’s EGO is enlightened. 

Leaders who are motivated by the “good of the many” accept responsibility for their organizations and people rather than finding blame and fault.  They make you feel uplifted, safe, loyal and ready to support.  These are signs of an enlightened ego.  Sounds like the type of leader Jim Collins describes in his book “Good to Great”.

What I often hear, and often think, is that behavior of the less enlightened EGO seems about as obvious as the nose on my face.  We all seem to know the people that behave in this way.  How is it that they seem to continually move up in organizations and stay in positions of power despite the problems that ensue from their actions?

The answer is in adaptive and deceptive behavior.  They learn what needs to be said to their superiors to maintain the veil of “enlightenment”.  They learn how to manage information to protect their turf.  They learn how to avoid responsibility for results.  And, they learn how to “take out” those that stand in the way of them gaining power.  People we often describe as scary!

It sounds to me as if the hardest part of this issue, for those of us with the “good of the many” perspective, is to be able take the responsibility to look at ourselves and our actions, and decide if they are intended for exploitation, or for the good of all.  Having said that, if we are well grounded enough to be able to honestly challenge our own motivations, then we probably don’t need to.