DETERMINATION
AN INTRODUCTION TO DETERMINATION
Leaders do not shrink from challenge or difficulty. They have a clear sense of what is right and wrong. They work hard to finish what they start and are not easily distracted. Regardless of what they do, they approach it with excitement and energy. They know their strengths intimately and they come to the fore when the going gets tough.
CHALLENGE
16. I do not shrink from threat, challenge or difficulty. Or put another way: stand up and be counted.
Bravery reveals itself in leaders who show a preparedness to act on their convictions – to do what is right and be accepting of the consequences. In this sense, it is not an absence of fear, rather a readiness to act and not be concerned with risks such as losing a job, being criticised, being embarrassed, making enemies or losing status. Leaders face up to the many situations where they are required to act with moral bravery every day.
Be careful not to confuse bravery with foolishness. Brave leaders know they need to guard against recklessness and a predisposition to take risks without having thought through all potential consequences.
Leader bravery has little to do with status, position, title or income. It is deeply personal, regardless of where people sit in the organisational hierarchy. One person’s perception of risk may be very different from another’s. Bravery is in evidence when a leader, for whom the act feels uncertain (even a little scary at times), performs with conviction. Another leader may not require bravery to take the same action.
STEVE
Steve, the CEO and owner of a small and highly successful tech company, had a little test for himself that he used as an indicator of whether he needed to switch on his ‘bravery’ button.
When he was about to contribute to a meeting, have a difficult conversation with one of his team or present to the shareholders, he noticed what was happening in his body and made use of the physiological cues. If his palms were a little sweaty and there were butterflies doing acrobatics in his stomach, it was almost guaranteed that he was going to need to step up, be brave and often be direct. Or put another way: he knew he needed to lead.
The best performing leaders see challenges as opportunities to achieve breakthroughs and personal growth. They often do their best work when there’s a chance to change the way things are. Maintaining the status quo breeds mediocrity. Leaders seek and accept challenging opportunities to test their abilities. They look for innovative ways to improve the organisation and are willing to experiment and take risks. Since risk-taking involves mistakes and failure, leaders learn to accept the inevitable disappointments. They treat them as learning opportunities.
When followers experience brave leadership, they gain confidence in themselves and their colleagues. They believe they can accomplish something special and often they do. The risks associated with acting may be real or perceived. Leaders assess each situation to determine accurately the nature of risks. How real is this risk? What are the potential consequences of taking this action? And then make a judgement call to act in the interest of their team or the business, even though they may feel anxiety and uncertainty.
How can you lead bravely? You can believe, think, say, do and ask yourself.
BELIEVE
‘Is taking this action worth it?’ is not the first question great leaders ask when faced with a real challenge. What they tend to ask themselves first is ‘Do I need to do something here?’ If the answer is yes, they’ll assess their options then move right along. Highly capable leaders are led by the deeply held belief that doing the right thing is always the right thing. Failing to act is not part of who they are. It is not in their Leader iD.
THINK
When faced with a challenge do not kick off your thought process by assessing risk. Start by assessing the situation and your ability to meet that challenge. Think through the available solutions. Then, before taking action, assess the risk. This done, act quickly and confidently.
SAY
When the time comes to be brave, brilliant leaders rely on stock phrases, including:
- Yes, we can …
- How can we do this?
- What do we need to do first?
- Who can help us?
- I believe …
- That’s just not right. What do we do about it?
- How difficult can it be? (Our particular favourite.)
DO
By stepping into the ‘arena of anxiety’, leaders take the tough route but know that the most likely outcome is change and learning. By doing nothing and choosing ‘creative avoidance’, you get to live with the status quo at best. Here are five ways to take action that might make your palms sweat a bit but where real change could be achieved if you step up:
- Pick out the one tough conversation that you have been avoiding. Make it happen.
- The next time a mistake happens, accept the blame rather than looking to deflect it and commit to making it right.
- Stop a situation to address disrespectful or rude behaviour.
- Find a hobby, project or challenge where you are going to have to really push yourself beyond your current perceived limits: join a public speaking group, run a marathon, live abroad and only speak the local language or call someone who you want to mentor you.
- In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the USA: ‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’
ASK YOURSELF
- What one thing have I been avoiding that would be good to do now?
- What is really stopping me from doing the above?
- Excluding feelings of ‘busy-ness’, how stretched do I really feel on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?
- What job would I be doing if I could do anything? Hint: you probably can get much closer to this than you currently think.
- How would I feel if I was more willing to challenge myself, others and situations, rather than just letting things pass?
RIGHT AND WRONG
17. I have a clear sense of what is right and wrong and shape my actions accordingly. Or put another way: there are reasons why great leaders are high on integrity.
Do you ever feel uncomfortable with what you are being asked to do at work? Are you aware sometimes that the way your boss treats people is certainly not the way you would (or will) do it when you are in their seat? Well, that internal alarm system is linked to your sense of integrity. Living with integrity is about how closely you act consistently with your values.
Here are the top 10 reasons why you should lead with integrity:
- Leaders who are clear about their values, and spend time being specific about which values they hold as priorities, are easier to follow.
- Knowing your own values as a leader helps build consistent high-performing teams. If you act consistently, people will experience you in a way that is more predictable – that gives others high levels of certainty.
- Working in an integrated way with your values reduces the energy required to make important decisions.
- Whilst your decisions and actions will not always be right, decisions guided by your values can be more readily justified – to yourself and others.
- Leaders know their values are linked to their purpose and vice versa.
- Knowing when it’s time to leave an organisation can come more easily to those with high levels of integrity. Your inner alarm system informs you when your values and those of your employer are too far apart to be reconciled and it is time to look elsewhere.
- When people know you have a clear set of values they tend to adapt their behaviours accordingly – helping both you and them.
- Greater clarity of your values helps you appreciate the dynamics between you and others who might hold similar or very different perspectives.
- High integrity is not inflexible. When information surfaces that indicates a review of values is required, highly sophisticated leaders take time to reconsider how they might adapt.
- Finding a new job is much more straightforward when you are clear on what drives your integrity. You can find a new organisation to work for simply by getting a feel for their values and the integrity between what they say and what they do.
So, how can you lead with integrity? You can believe, think, say, do and ask yourself.
BELIEVE
Counterintuitively, the ability to hold several perspectives is really important to high integrity – even when those perspectives might appear to conflict. Make sure you can verbalise your values clearly to yourself and couple this with regular reflection on alternative views. This deep reflection helps assert your values and reinforces a life of integrity. It also keeps a weather-check on your perspective and allows for a change in values if feedback suggests a change is important.
THINK
Think regularly about your thoughts and actions. Are they aligned with those values you say are important to you? If they honestly are, then you are living a life high on integrity. However, if like many of us, you own up to areas of your life where your ideal ‘self’ is not a match for your current ‘self’, then your life is out of kilter a bit and it will have an impact on important areas such as your self-esteem. Think and plan how to get better alignment.
SAY
Leaders with a clear sense of themselves and their values and who live with high levels of integrity are not afraid to state a position: ‘I believe that …’ They won’t apologise for holding such a position as they appreciate that we’re all entitled to a view. However, they will also often be heard responding to something that does not align with theirs: ‘That’s interesting. Tell me some more …’ They genuinely want information that helps them understand others.
Practise it – it’s liberating, fun and you learn a lot too.
DO
The following exercise comes from a dear friend of ours, recognised psychologist and coach, Professor Tatiana Bachkirova.
- Divide a sheet of paper into five columns.
- Now add a title to each column in turn:
- 1: Values
- 2: Ideal
- 3: Current
- 4: Integrity score
- 5: Reflections
- In the first column, make a list of 10 values that you believe are important to you.
- In column 2, rank order them 1 to 10 in terms of their importance to you. The most important value on this list gets a score of 1 and the least important gets a 10.
- In column 3, rank order again with how you live these values daily. The value you live most consistently scores a 1 and the value you live most inconsistently gets a 10.
- In column 4, calculate the differences in your scores between columns 2 and 3. No need for negative numbers here, just the difference, so if you chose ‘Honesty’ as a Value and gave it a 6 in Ideal and a 3 in Current, then your Integrity score in column 4 would be a 3.
- Finally, in column 5, write some notes to yourself about why you are living some values in a highly integrated way. They’ll have a low score in column 4 – and others less so.
ASK YOURSELF
- What situations do I find cause me the most disturbance to my values?
- Where have my values come from?
- When do I recognise that I most easily appear to act in a way that lacks personal integrity? What are the reasons I tend to do that?
- What values do I hold that might be inconsistent with who I am now?
- When do I feel most at ease with myself and at my very best?
SATISFACTION
18. I do not get distracted when at work and take satisfaction in completing tasks. Or put another way: persistence is the key ingredient to your long-term success.
In a brilliant article, with the equally fantastic title ‘Mundanity of Excellence’, Daniel Chambliss (1989) outlined how swimmers become excellent competitors – how they produce ‘consistent superiority of performance’. He suggested excellence in swimming was possible with an approach that focused on doing all the little, normal, inglorious things to an incredibly high standard over the long haul.
Note several important things here:
- The swimmers didn’t just turn up. They applied themselves to the myriad of ‘little things’ that make up great performance. Focused practice is an important element for excellence. The best swimmers applied themselves in a qualitatively superior way to other swimmers.
- These swimmers didn’t do more lengths than other swimmers. They were not present for longer sessions. They didn’t suffer from ‘presenteeism’.
- These swimmers practised excellence over a long timeframe – years.
American swimmer Mary T Meagher won three gold medals at the 2004 Olympics and held the view that:
People don’t know how ordinary success is.
Her point that excellence comes from consistent, high-quality actions and thinking aligns with our experience that the highest levels of performance are possible in all fields with such an approach, including leadership.
You may well have heard of the concept that being outstanding in any field can be achieved by applying yourself to deliberate practice for 10,000 hours (Ericsson, 1993). Sadly, such research has often been oversimplified or distilled into bite-sized commentary. That debate aside, it appears to be true that outstanding performers practise deliberately with a focus on high quality over the long haul.
Persistence – the ability to apply yourself over longer periods of time when faced with inevitable challenges – is a quality that we deeply admire in top leaders.
To become an awesome leader of others requires consistent persistence. Being determined to carry out the often mundane to a high quality over the long term, and in the face of obstacles, is pretty much the single biggest factor in determining your chances of success.
So how can you become a more persistent leader? You can believe, think, say, do and ask yourself.
BELIEVE
Committing high levels of energy to excellence over a sufficiently long period requires believing in the importance of the outcome. Clarifying the importance of outcomes (or the benefits) enables you to find the deep wells of drive required to commit to the process. Also, appreciating at the outset that the path ahead will include setbacks, whilst believing that overcoming them will be worth it, provides the spur to long-term, high-quality action.
THINK
Positive thinking here needs to be grounded in your belief that the singular pursuit of excellence in your chosen field – leadership – is a noble and worthy end in itself. If you think developing into a great leader is an expectation of others, or something you need to do to get short-term reward, this project is doomed to failure. You’ll no doubt do great for a few weeks, then stop. Persistence requires mental strength, based on internal drivers.
SAY
Individual persistence is accompanied more by internal conversations than by what you externalise. Regularly practising some of the following internal statements helps.
DO
Here are five top tips for building persistence:
- Be willing to stare hard and objectively at the level of your current performance.
- Write down the skills, behaviours, thinking and attitudes you can demonstrate to an outstanding level consistently.
- Write down the skill that you will need to develop to get your performance to the next level.
- Have a clear sense of purpose as this will keep your motivation fired up sustainably.
- Commit to developing consistent persistence in your chosen field, in this case leadership, over a long period. Not just six months, or a year, but three, five or even ten years. Persistence has a lovely and helpful relationship with patience.
One further thought about persistence. Grow the capacity to do a lot in a narrow field, rather than a little in lots of fields. Such a focused approach allows you to build expertise that helps you find solutions to challenges more readily when they occur. It also allows you to develop excellence in your chosen area, with the accompanying benefits, such as high levels of self-confidence.
ASK YOURSELF
- How important is developing X (e.g. leadership) to me?
- What setbacks can I expect to come along the way?
- How will I stay on track?
- Who can I connect with to help me stay focused?
- What do I find uninteresting even though it is important for me to succeed? What will I do about that?
- When do I get impatient with progress? How will I make sure I stay the course?
- When I imagine succeeding it would be like …
EXCITEMENT
19. I approach all work with excitement and energy. Or put another way: vitality is the spice of life.
Vitality is a key attribute to highly effective leadership. Leaders who are truly following their passion and have a clear vision and sense of purpose exude a real energy. We have met many seemingly quiet, even reserved leaders, who come alive as if a switch has been flicked when they are given a platform to engage in a topic that is deeply important to them.
However, there is what can appear at first to be a downside to such vitality. That is that not everybody else is going to be as engaged by your thing as you are. Indeed, your own passion for your thing may come across as vital to some but pushy or overbearing to others.
Let us share an example. Gary Vaynerchuk came to prominence as a very early e-commerce guru in the world of wine. In more recent years, he has set up his own media company and gives keynote speeches all over the world. Here’s the thing: Gary’s style is so ‘in your face’ with expletives aplenty that many people can be turned off by him initially. He is strident. He is forceful. But he is also really clear on his message, awesome at what he does and unapologetic about who he is. He appears to have taken his own social filters away and, as a result, has buckets of vitality to spare – including his legendary 18 to 20 hour-long workdays. He inspires so many people through his energy that it is difficult not to get swept up in it, even if you were initially sceptical.
Now, we’re not suggesting that you start swearing and ranting at those you lead. Rather, our point is that you get clear on what really drives you. If you can’t be vital and alive about an element of your own leadership, there is slim chance you can influence positive engagement with those you lead.
So how can you develop vitality in your leadership? You can believe, think, say, do and ask yourself.
BELIEVE
A deep connection with your purpose and mission will allow you to generate all the vitality you are going to need. Believing that what you are doing is important, both for you and for others (employees, employers, society) will provide bucketloads of drive and energy. A measured belief in your chance of success is also important. Be balanced but don’t shy away from your ability to achieve great things – by whatever standard you judge that to be.
THINK
We know many leaders who are constantly asking themselves, ‘How would doing this align to my purpose?’ If the answer, following some thinking, is that moving ahead is coherent with your purpose, then go right ahead. However, if it isn’t aligned, you may be best to take a pass. In addition to checking for such alignment, good leaders also think about ‘How can I be my best self in this situation?’ They are acutely aware that as a leader they are never not role-modelling to others.
SAY
Say ‘no’ when you need to.
Experienced leaders say no when asked to do something that is not important to the priorities they are working on. They do not apologise but they do give a short explanation, helpful to others, especially if those others are not used to people saying no. Such an explanation can be as simple as: ‘I can’t do that at the moment because all my energies are going into …’
DO
Here are five ways to bring more vitality to your role as leader:
- Check all the work you are currently doing. Find things you can stop doing or pass on to someone else to do. Then dump things or delegate them.
- Renegotiate some of your work with your line manager so you can focus more clearly on the important work.
- Start to notice your rhythms. Notice when you do your best work and have the most energy. Focus important work in those times of day or night.
- Monitor your nutrition. Poor eating habits significantly impact your moods and also the energy levels you have.
- Break up the day, especially when your work is largely desk-bound. Move around. Not only is that movement a great way to raise your energy level but it allows you to get closer to your team, and that should prove mutually helpful in remaining connected to your purpose and provide plenty of vitality.
ASK YOURSELF
- How does this work help me achieve my purpose?
- Can I say no to this request?
- What can I delegate to others?
- Is this a helpful food, exercise or habit choice for me, right now?
- What is the perception of others about how much I demonstrate vitality?
- How can I demonstrate my passion for this work more obviously but in a way that works for my personality?
VALUING STRENGTHS
20. I value my own strengths and the strengths of others. Or put another way: build on what works best.
Self-awareness is perhaps the single component that every successful leader possesses in abundance. Knowing your own mind, your own strengths and how to access those strengths whenever you need them differentiates the best leaders from the rest.
Being aware of your unique strengths, and having robust confidence in them because previous experiences showed evidence of their existence, enables people to feel self-worth. People who value themselves lead more satisfied lives and contribute more to the world.
You must also spend some of your time focused on what needs improving, of course, so you need to be aware which elements of your performance aren’t up to scratch. But giving too much time to your deficits will only lead to you not fulfilling your potential.
Successful leaders recognise the value of increasing their belief that they will be successful at a chosen task in a given situation. They know that playing to their strengths and the strengths of others increases chances of success. They don’t take strengths for granted – they look to maximise strengths and find out how far they can take them. They admire and will draw on strengths of others too.
In the spirit of balance, a word of caution feels appropriate here. Bernard Haldane provides us with a necessary reminder that helping people to play to their strengths can be accompanied by danger:
Many individuals would rather not know what is strong about them, the strengths that point to growth and reveal potential [because] a greater degree of responsibility is required to take hold of success rather than to stay in the safe arena of complacency and complaint.
So, how can you take responsibility for success by focusing on your strengths and those of your team members? You can believe, think, say, do and ask yourself.
BELIEVE
There is a fine line here between believing you possess strength in an area and being deluded about your ability. You need high levels of self-awareness to be accurate in your judgement. In many ways, your ongoing development might best be predicated on genuinely believing that building strengths is a never-ending process. Adopting such a core belief is central to continuing the process of growth.
THINK
Thinking about what strengths you possess and the evidence that supports this conclusion is an important first step. ‘How can I apply my strengths, or those of others, to succeed here?’ is a central question asked almost reflexively by effective leaders to situations they face. They also think about where they have some gaps and if tapping into their strengths can help close those gaps.
SAY
Feedback is vital in developing high levels of self-awareness. Asking others about the strengths you demonstrate effortlessly can provide you with lots of data. Asking people you know if they can share some thoughts with you about the strengths you think you have and the areas you need to develop will give you useful feedback. No need to justify or explain the feedback you get, just thank the person for their time and go and reflect on what you have heard and plan what you are going to do about it.
DO
Here are seven tips for becoming a strengths-focused leader:
- Seek some feedback on your strengths from others. See above.
- Ask a range of people to complete the online 360 version of the Leader iD diagnostic, which will generate a huge amount of relevant and specific data about strengths related to your leadership.
- Identify areas where you are not sufficiently strong. Plan how to develop these.
- Complete an informal audit of the strengths of people you rely on. Determine times that you might be able to ask for their help to overcome areas where you may be less strong.
- Find a mentor who has a range of strengths that you do not possess currently and ask if that person will help you develop in specific areas.
- Take on a challenge that requires you to develop a key area of strength that is a high priority for your current role.
- Be on watch for strengths that you might over-play. Turning the volume up too high on strengths can turn them into a liability.
ASK YOURSELF
- Think of one example when you were recently working at your best. Ask yourself what you learnt about your strengths from this experience.
- When were my energy levels at their highest in the last quarter and why?
- When is my confidence consistently high and robust? What does this tell me about my strengths?
- What are the areas of my work performance that I would say are the key strengths I rely upon, and consistently help me achieve?
- How do I plan to develop my expertise this year?