Carmine Gallo had a thoughtful article, December 26, 2012, in Forbes on-line. Gallo talked about Zappos, acquired by Amazon in 2009. Zappos is known for its strong employee and customer friendly culture. It has a culture book of over 400 pages. Gallo makes five points about Zappos, each of which underscores the culture. But one point stood out to me. Gallo wrote about the Zappos commitment to transparency and questioned, “The next time you think you’re a ‘transparent leader’, ask yourself if you’re willing to open up your home to anyone who asks for a free tour.”

Discussions of transparent leaders have been more common in popular management literature than in the academic literature. My research did not find any scholarly peer-reviewed studies about transparency and leadership.

Blogging in 2009 Colleen J. Payne-Nabors defined transparency as “the ability to clearly see the relationship between oneself and one’s environment. Transparent leaders know their strengths and weakness but, above all, know who they are and how their actions impact the actions of others.”  She listed five characteristics of transparent leaders. Here is her list on being a transparent leader, with my thoughts:

1. “Share Information.”

Not always easy. There are some aspects of leading that require confidentiality, sometimes legally required. I think the key is creating a culture of trust where leaders can share most of what is happening, where the organization is going, how we plan to get there. My consulting experience has been that most employees want to know a lot more than their leaders are typically sharing. Knowing the big picture may be helpful in the trenches in ways leaders may not foresee.

2. “Convey Your Principles and Beliefs.”

Interesting in that some who have achieved significant organizational influence may not have thought this one through. I have an acquaintance who, in reflecting back at his early career and decisions in his corporate positions now has regrets. He now clearly can convey his principles and beliefs – but he could not then. To convey your principles and beliefs, you have to know what they are. That takes time for reflection and self-examination.

3. “Be Trustworthy and Reliable.”

First point of the Boy Scout law. A Scout is trustworthy. I think there is a reason it is number one. To lead a culture where trust is a value, one must be trustworthy, consistently trustworthy.

In The Transparent Leader: How to Build a Great Company through Straight Talk, Openness, and Accountability, Herb Baum wrote:

“I think America is tired. Tired of seeing dishonest people run companies and be rewarded for doing it. Tired of seeing the little guy trounced on and tired of hearing about CEOs who earn millions more than their average employee.” (p.178)

Even more true today, in my opinion, than in 2004 when Baum published.

4. “Listen to Your Inner Voice”

This speaks to confidence and knowing who you are. And taking the time to hear and heed the inner voice.

5. Admit When You are Wrong and Learn from It

Over the years my students have conducted hundreds of interviews on decision-making, a course assignment by which to learn aspects of business research. Consistently at all levels most managers interviewed state that you must admit when you are wrong and correct. To not do so would usually be shortsighted. My guess is that if you exhibit the other four behaviors, this one will be second nature. 


Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/61023128@N08/5553412207/
Used with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

© John Ballard, PhD, 2012. All rights reserved.

These are interesting times in the study of leadership. The traditional “Patton” model or strong individual still exists. So too does the model of the inspirational or transformative leader. Many equate leadership with a leader. But leadership can be a property of a group of people or organization. 

In an excellent review in The Academy of Management Annals 2012, Jean-Louis Denis, Ann Langley, and Vivianne Sergi  discussed patterns of plural leadership. Plural leadership Is a “collective phenomenon that is distributed or shared among different people, potentially fluid, and constructed in interaction” (p. 212). Denis and his colleagues describe four types of plural leadership. My guess is you may have seen these in your organizations.

Teams often use “sharing leadership.”  Anyone can perform leadership functions. Everyone is a follower.

In knowledge-based organizations we sometimes see leadership just emerge out of interactions. In a meeting of equals, ideas flow, a path is developed, a plan started, an agreement reached. In this “producing leadership” style, individuals lead each other. Leadership emerges as a property of group interaction.

In both “sharing leadership” and “producing leadership”, followers are leaders and leaders are followers. Denis and his co-authors call this mutuality. In essence these involve reciprocal interactions that move things along where there is no clear “leader” identified.

Other forms of plural leadership still have identifiable leaders. In “pooling leadership”, there may be a group of people who lead together, a dyad, or triad. The leadership group leads the followers. There is still an “elite group”.

Likewise in “spreading leadership”, leadership is passed from person to person, much like a relay team, as parts of a project or undertaking are completed. Leadership is periodically shifted. Not all followers lead nor are expected to lead.

Sharing, producing, pooling, spreading: four approaches to plural leadership. We’ve identified these styles. Now we need to find the best approach for different situations. In the meantime we can use our understanding of these different forms of plural leadership to expand our own leader skill set --- and to build human capital in our organizations.


Reference:  Denis, J., Langley, A.,& Sergi, V.  (2012). Leadership in the plural. The Academy of Management Annals, 6:1, 211-283.

Image of painting of General Patton by B. J. Czedikowski from http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-3006648163. Used with permission of Craig1066 per http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

© John Ballard, PhD, 2012. All rights reserved.

This is the season of the year when people think about New Year’s resolutions, changes or improvements they may wish to make in the new year. Mitch McCrimmon in his article, “Effective Managers” in the Canadian Manager  last year, argued that we should review ourselves, our own resources, just as we might our financial resources. We should challenge ourselves. One of the questions he posed was:  “What is the best use of my time today?”  How are we spending our time?  Are we getting the best rate of return on our time investment?

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey devoted a chapter to putting first things first and later developed into his book, Putting First Things First. He suggested our activities can be categorized on two dimensions: “urgent—not urgent” and “important—not important,” thus creating a matrix. Using these dimensions, we can classify our activities into one of four areas. So how do we spend our time? How much time do we spend on “not urgent, not important” activities? More importantly, how much do we spend on “important, not urgent."   The importance of investing time in the “important but not urgent” is repeated in Clay Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life. Both would argue this is the area where our relationships often fall and can be too easily neglected.

My favorite, and I think the best, self-study questions come from Henry Mintzberg, his 1975 Harvard Business Review (July-August) article, “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact.”  His questions should be in the desk drawer of every manager. Here is an example from Mintzberg’s self-study questions:

12. Do I spend too much time on current, tangible activities? Am I a slave to the action and excitement of my work, so that I am no longer able to concentrate on issues? Do key problems receive the attention they deserve? Should I spend more time reading and probing deeply into certain issues? Could I be more reflective? Should I be?

Taking the time to reflect on our use of time seems difficult. We are always busy. But it is probably one of the best uses of our time.

Image  © Copyright Mick Lobb and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

More from the files of the Dr. Juran "An Immigrant's Gift" Archival  Project, research and dissemination of information from the interviews conducted about Joseph Juran for the PBS Special, An Immigrant's Gift.

From an interview with Robert Galvin on June 19, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois. Bob Galvin was CEO for Motorola for 29 years, then Chairman of the Board for four more. In 1988 Motorola received the first Malcolm Baldrige Award, the national award for quality.  

Here Galvin answers a question about the effort needed at Motorola to stop doing "business as usual," to be able to make change happen. 

QUESTION:   It  had to be brave of you and others to say: we will 
stop doing business as usual, we will take people off assembly 
lines, we will teach people how to do things differently, we 
will allow people to recognize that perhaps they weren't 
working optimally before. How big an acknowledgment was 
that to make, and how difficult? 

BOB GALVIN:   Well, I don't know how hard it is for some 
other corporate bodies to make those kinds of changes. That 
wasn't so hard here. We had another influence, and that was the influence of 
my father. And my father was one who was very willing to 
admit a mistake. And never liked people who were numb, 
who stayed with things that were wrong. And so we've been 
guided by the essential principle of renewal. . . . 
There are always individuals in an institution who may have 
more difficulty than others, but that's the range of human 
nature and our various qualities. 

My take-aways: 

1.  Organizations vary widely in their readiness and capability to change. An organization may need to change but not have a culture that can sustain it or the leaders to make it happen. John Kotter has emphasized the need to start change by creating a sense of urgency. If you do not see the sky falling, you are not going to run. In other organizations, they may have the capability and leadership but lack the awareness of how essential change might be to future survival. The environment changes, the business model becomes obsolete. Many owners of CD stores failed to see the movement to downloading music and got left behind. Be aware of changes in your environment. Stay ever vigilant. And grow your talent for a flexible future. 

2.  Admit mistakes and move on. The bigger the mistake, the more important to correct and set right. Failure to do so waste time, money, energy. A culture of honesty rewards those who make corrections. Real leaders admit and correct their errors.  

“How will you measure your life?” A good question and the title of the best-selling book by Clayton Christensen and coauthors, James Allworth and Karen Dillon. Fasttimes.com listed it at #2 on the best business books of 2012. It will appear on many more “best” lists. Christensen explains management and business theories and then shows how they apply to one’s life. The main questions in the words of the authors:

“How can I be sure that I will be successful and happy in my career?”

(How can I be sure) “my relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness?”

(How can I be sure) “I live a life of integrity—and stay out of jail?”

I admit I was thrown by the last question – the part about staying out of jail – but having read the book, I understand.  No spoiler here.

This book is about the meaning we give our lives. It echoes Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning, insights from a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Frankl saw a person’s search for meaning as the greatest task in life.  Meaning could come from (1) work, (2) love, and (3) suffering. The meaning in suffering comes from how we respond (or using the term of my mentor, Joseph Rychlak, “telospond”). 

When I encountered Joseph Rychlak in a graduate course at Purdue University, I found a kindred soul. Rychlak took a Kantian perspective. We construct our reality from the world around us. In other words, we give meaning to our world – and to our work. Consciously or subconsciously, we choose how we interpret our experience, what it means to us, how we behave based on that meaning.

The implications of this Rychlakean perspective are both practical and profound. (1) We are never totally bound by our environment. In the horrors of Auschwitz Frankl experienced wonder and great beauty in a magnificent sunset. There is free will. We do have choice. (2) People can behave arbitrarily. As a manager you may use every motivational technique and reinforcement possible and still not get the desired response from your employee. People change when they choose to change. “Momma, I’ll change him after we are married.” Only if he chooses to change. (3) To understand others, we have to look through their eyes, listen with their ears, to do our best to see how they view the situation, the meaning they are giving the situation. Having been married many years, I am still working on this one.

I recommend How Will You Measure Your Life? for your reading list -– and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning – always worth another read.  And for those interested in more about Joseph Rychlak, I recommend Discovering Free Will and Personal Responsibility, very intellectual but his most accessible book. 

Image of Joseph Rychlak from the 1990s. A brilliant psychologist and even better human being. Used with permission.