The Four Foundations of Effective Leadership
How to easily build a strong leadership foundation
Leadership is about getting people from point A to point B.
To get to point B, you have to define point A, and that's the first responsibility of any leader. This is what Max Depree called reality: "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality."
A is where you are now, and B is your desired destination. When you understand leadership in these terms, leadership success becomes simpler but not easier because defining reality is a difficult task.
When I took over one of the health departments in North Texas, I knew I had two early missions.
- Mission #1: Communicate my vision
- Mission #2: Define Reality
1. Define Your Vision
Leaders who lack vision lack followers, and leaders who lack followers are not true leaders.
Benjamin Hooks made that very clear when he said, "If you think you're leading and turn around to see no one following, you're just taking a walk." That is a powerful statement. So, if you want people to follow you, create a powerful vision.
Southwest Airlines' vision is clear, "To be the world's most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline." If you work at Southwest, it is easy to see where the company wants to go. They want to be the most efficient airline in the world. So are you in or out?
How to craft your vision
Andy Stanley often states that you must cast a clear, compelling vision and reinforce your vision through your actions for people to follow you. To cast a vision, answer two questions:
- First, what problem am I trying to solve?
- What happens if this problem goes unsolved?
A good vision statement is a reference point for every leader's decision. Every decision should be focused on helping you solve the main problem your business is trying to solve.
2. Communicate Your Vision
Crafting a vision is a leader's most important job, but no one can communicate a vision without communication. According to Harvard Business School Online, "A leader's most powerful tool is communication."
Jack Welch confirmed that by stating, "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own it, and relentlessly drive it to completion." However, it is not enough to create a vision. Be able to communicate it.
How To Communicate Clearly
Kelly Decker and Ben Decker provided leaders with a framework to communicate their business vision. The framework contains four steps:
- Think about your audience: What do they care about? For example, talking to your marketing team differs from talking to your accounting team. Likewise, speaking to your customers differs from talking to your stakeholders.
- Target the message to their needs: How is the vision relevant to them?
- Communicate your action steps clearly: What would you like them to do next? What needs to be done? When do you want it to be completed?
- Engage your team emotionally: How will the process benefit them? You should connect your company goals to their personal goals.
3. Define Reality
When Alan Mulally took over Ford Motor in 2006, Ford was on the verge of bankruptcy. So Mulally knew that he needed to act fast.
He devised one of the most effective systems in the world. It is a simple system, but it wasn't easy to implement. He called it Business Plan Review.
Red — Yellow — Green
During his first few meetings, he felt that the Ford leadership was divorced from Reality. So he implemented a concept called Business Plan Review (BPR) meetings.
The leadership team met weekly for BPR, and each leader had to deliver a brief status update on their 4–5 priorities. Then, they would use the red-yellow-green indicators to show whether they were on track to achieve their goals or not.
Green for good, yellow for a potential issue, and red for an urgent problem. Everyone stood up for the first few meetings and said everything was green.
Alan got frustrated and said, "We are about to lose $17 billion this year, and you are saying everything is OK? Did we plan last year to lose $17 billion this year? If the answer to that question is yes, then we are in the green. Otherwise, we are not!"
That was a crucial moment in Ford's history. At that moment, they defined reality. So, if you want to define reality, answer these four questions.
- What is working well?
- What is not working well?
- What are your strengths and opportunities?
- What are your weaknesses and threats?
4. Confront the Brutal Facts
As you can see from the examples above, you can't define reality if you don't confront the brutal facts.
Confront the Brutal Fact is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. In the book, Jim Collins stated every leader should confront the most brutal facts of their current reality, whatever they might be.
It helps me to sit down and write them out on paper. I usually find that the facts are less scary on paper than keeping them in my head. To find your brutal facts, answer the following questions.
- What brutal facts are you facing?
- How can you constructively gather the facts about the brutal facts, have a healthy debate, and move ahead?
Once you answer and discuss these facts, you will find that you have more options than you realized and more resources than you thought.
Yes, leadership is about getting from point A to point B, but you can never get to point B if you don't define point A and what obstacles stand in your way to getting to point B.
Let's review:
- Point A is your starting point. That is your reality. It could be your current performance or a specific situation you are dealing with.
- Point B is your destination. That is your vision or the desired place to get to.
- Communication is your most powerful tool for sharing your vision.
- The Brutal facts are the obstacles that stand between your current situation and your desired future.
The future is created in the present. The future can't be created in any other place but in the present. So, to accomplish your goals, start by defining reality.
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