Essential Leader

Under Pressure: Learning to be a "Clutch" Leader

By Sean Silverthorne

In the sports world, a “clutch” player performs best when the pressure is on, backs are to the wall, and all eyes turned their way. Think Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, Martina Navratilova. When it was all on the line, they not only didn’t wilt, they got better.

Is there such a thing as a clutch leader? Do you know managers or CEOs who rise above when everything is on the line? A bigger question: Can you learn to be clutch?

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review is spun around the topic of military leadership, and there is an interesting blog post on HBR.org about how military cadets learn what it takes to be clutch.

New York Times business writer Paul Sullivan, author of Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t recounts a talk he gave at West Point on the subject.

All clutch leaders display five traits, he said: focus, discipline, adaptability, being present, and fear and desire. Read his post for more depth on each of these.

Sullivan’s good news for the rest of us is that organizations can train their performers to respond well to pressure. Sullivan says there are three things business leaders can learn from cadets:

1. Focused on a goal. “When they graduate they will be deployed to lead a platoon, probably in Afghanistan or Iraq. They know the responsibilities and the risks. And everything they are doing is preparing them for that moment. Do you know what your primary mission is at work?”
2. Continuous improvement. “They work in an organization that is continually striving to be better. When a mistake happens, the Army tries not to let it happen a second time. Are you aligned with the right organization? Or if you’re leading that organization, are you prepared to change things that aren’t working, even if change could be hard or even a reversal of something you implemented?”
3. Practice for success. “These cadets are given the physical and mental training that will help them do their jobs at the highest level. They know you have to be able to perform a task perfectly under normal conditions before you can expect to do it in a stressful situation. Can you say the same thing? Are you able to do your job at a high level every day? If not, then you should not be surprised when you make the wrong decisions under pressure.”

Will following this advice make you the Michael Jordan of your business? Well, maybe not–some people are just hard-coded for success in tough situations. But working at focusing on the objective, adaptability to the environment and improvement of skills sure puts whatever natural abilities you have in the best position to succeed when the going gets tough.

Looking through history, who were the greatest clutch leaders? Churchill? Lincoln? Alexander the Great? (Photo of Michael Jordan by Flickr user Cliff1066, CC 2.0)

Was Hitler a Leader?

            As I considered who to take a closer look at as a leader, many inspirational and high quality leaders went through my mind. I considered exploring the styles of Caroline Myss, Ghandi, the Dali Lama, and many others. But there was a conversation that kept coming back to me and had me stuck: Hitler. In class, we had been discussing how one’s values make such a difference in their leadership style. What I got stuck around was: how someone like Hitler, who truly followed his convictions, could create such devastation? How could someone so horrific in history be considered a leader? I decided to pursue the answer to my own question.

            So much of it depends on how one defines what leadership is. There are many different styles, and there are those who are successful and those who are not. There are also situational leaders, and then there are those who seem to be able to lead no matter where they are. Leadership, it seems, rests not on one specific definition, but on a continuum – making room for someone like Hitler to be included.

            The complex circumstances of the times that allowed him to come into power are incredible, but like it or not, he was a leader. In my mind however, he was a failed leader of catastrophic proportions. If there is value to what he did, it was to show us how not to be as leaders. May history never repeat itself!

~LC

Temperance vs. Taking a Stand

    Kolp and Rea’s (2009) discussion of temperance is a valuable one. Learning how to manage one’s own behavior can make the difference between a huge success and a disastrous failure at times. Most of the time, it’s a cumulative effect however; the making of our reputations.

    At the same time, leadership is also about knowing when to take a stand – and pushing something to the extreme if need be. How does this fit in with temperance?

    I believe tempering one’s own behavior is the internal guide-post that allows a good leader to determine when to push and when to back off. If one has practice at tempering the extremes, it becomes easier to discern the subtleties of a situation that allow for taking a stand. It also makes the stand itself more meaningful as it is recognized as not part of one’s usual behavior – and therefore it must really matter. On the flip side, without the discipline of temperance, one’s reputation for jumping to the extremes could undermine an attempt at taking a real stand when it’s needed.

    Temperance then, becomes not only a way to modify one’s behavior and check one’s decision making process, but also serves to build one’s reputation as a solid, dependable individual.

    Is there a time though when temperance could get in the way? I admit, I struggle a bit with this one in that I see the value of it, but also feel within myself a desire to push the limits at times.

~LC

Leadership Traits include Persistence

 

"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room."

Dr. Melanie Booth posted a similar picture to her blog, PrattleNog. After I was done chuckling at the thought of trying to sleep with a mosquito in the room, it dawned on me that this picture embodied a thought that I often share with people who feel like they can’t make a real difference in their place of work. The thought is this, sure, you may not have the power to force changes throughout your entire organization. But you can always have influence in your own small circle of friends and colleagues. And over time, who knows? You might find that you have much more influence than you imagined.

There are many examples of people who persisted in the face of impossible odds to make a difference. Mother Teresa was one. Nelson Mandela was such a person. The key to their success was simply endurance–being a non-quitter. They were persistent.

One journalist wrote of Mother Teresa: "When I met Mother Teresa, I discovered she was very tiny–less than five feet tall–and kept her head cocked to one side. She had gnarled hands and thick peasant feet that protruded from under her coarse white sari. Although there was no mistaking the aura of warmth and kindness that surrounded her, I felt I was in the presence of the most powerful, focused and determined person I had ever met."

Nelson Mandela is another famous example of determined leadership. Mandela’s single goal was to end apartheid in South Africa. Though he was imprisoned for many years, he steadfastly held to his principles. He was committed to reaching his goal and he never wavered from his vision. Mandela was focused and disciplined—a persistent leader.

Those famous examples hold lessons even for those of us who hold less exalted positions in our communities and organizations. We have all heard of persistent people who have accomplished spectacular things—the person with cancer who runs a standard 26.2 mile marathon, the blind person who climbs Mr. Everest, or the single mom with four kids who graduates from college (that was my Mom, by the way). In order to leave this world a different place, be persistent. Leaders don't grow in a comfort zone. Leaders are not people with exceptional talent; they are people who have learned from their mistakes and get up and try again.

Are you persistent in the pursuit of your goals?

Getting the Right People on the Bus

Recently I had the opportunity to search for a replacement for a valued employee who had moved on, with my blessing, to a position that not only paid more, but also better fit her skill set and desires. In a clear sign of the economic times, more than 180 people responded to a single advertisement on Craig’s List and a quarter inch ad in the local newspaper. After several rounds of resume vetting, the list was whittled down to a dozen of the best candidates who were then invited to a first round of interviews. The selection committee consisted of most of the people in the department where I work as well as one “outsider,” a respected colleague from another department, whose role was to act as a reality check.

By the end of the first round of interviews a few of the candidates clearly warranted a second look. That evening as I pondered what had transpired at the interviews I knew I faced a difficult decision. Two of the remaining candidates were internal prospects. That is, employees from within the organization. The third, and my personal favorite, came from outside the organization. My dilemma: Do I pick one of the insiders because they were a “safe” choice? Or do I take a chance on an outsider?

The inside candidates were the safe choice because they were known quantities in terms of their skills sets, their daily work habits and their personalities. That, combined with the fact that hiring from within is often a morale builder for the organization, especially one like ours where internal promotion opportunities are rare, made this an apparently obvious choice. Alternatively, hiring the outsider would bring a new set of eyes to the team and perhaps help us move in new directions. Not only that, I was just impressed by the preparation of the outside candidate. She had clearly done her homework and knew a lot about us. Her answers to the questions were precise and comprehensive. And her personality was clearly extrovert, which appealed to me because I’ve learned from long experience that I needed to work with someone who could offset my tendency to be an introvert. As I came to work the next morning, I was leaning heavily toward the outside candidate.

We sat down with one more candidate who had been unable to meet with us on the previous day. By the time she had finished answering the first question, I knew that we had found the perfect candidate. The difference? Her personality and attitude were authentic and she “clicked” with every member of the selection team. On paper, she had nearly identical qualifications to the other leading candidate. Where the other leading candidate had a sparkling presentation and attitude, as one member of the selection team commented, she seemed “almost too perfect.” Ultimately, I chose to go with the last candidate because her personality fit with the dynamic of not only the team who interviewed her, but also with what I knew to be the personalities of the people who were not in the room, the rest of the organization.

 Jim Collins repeatedly said in his book “Built for Success” it is all about getting the right people on the bus. Peter Carbonara wrote in “Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill” (Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/04/hiring.html) that “the single best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” Sam Greengard, in Workforce Management noted, “you can’t turn a curmudgeon into a cheerleader” (http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/23/47/86/). So far, it looks like we brought the right person onto the bus.

T. Boone Pickens on Leadership

At 80 years old and with more than a half-century of business experience behind him, billionaire T. Boone Pickens is just getting his second wind. Or maybe his third or fourth wind. He readily admits that he’s skated on thin ice more than once in his life. But skate he did and with each new adventure he put in the long hours and dogged persistence that eventually led to success.

Pickens is again changing direction and heading out to the fringes. His goal this time is nothing less than saving the country by reducing or ending our dependence on foreign oil. The Pickens Plan, which champions wind power, is a gutsy change for a man who made his fortune pulling gas and oil out of the ground. Pickens might shrug at such a characterization. “A long time ago, I came to realize the power change brings,” he said. “Because with change comes challenge.”

The challenge in this case is to redirect and revitalize the ship called America. And Pickens is pushing hard to make the change happen sooner rather than later. In a recent magazine article he was asked what advice he would offer other leaders who faced apparently insurmountable challenges. He responded with, “Make the call. Sometimes the window of opportunity is open only briefly. Waiting is not a decision, although many people think it is. Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. Don’t fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You must be willing to fire.”

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Leadership Index

Neil Howe and William Strauss at Life Course Associates came up with this tidbit of information: In what years did the “Lost Generation” of World War I vets (the peers of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Truman, and Eisenhower) comprise more than half of America’s governors and members of Congress? (Answer: 1939 through 1951.) When did the G.I. Generation, also known as America’s World War II-winning “Greatest Generation,” reach its high-watermark of political representation? (Answer: 1965.) In what year did Boomers first achieve a generational plurality of national leaders? (Answer: 1997.)

With this post, I'm going to create a new category of information called "Leadership Index" designed to capture some of the research and writings that I come across that attempt to measure the various dimensions of Leadership. Enjoy.