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Respect and Generosity are Governing Principles for Any Effective Leader

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It is so easy, especially in turbulent economic times such as those we are in now, to get focused on efficiency and cost cutting. And those things do have their place.

But they are not the main thing. They are not what’s most important. And leadership should be diligent to never succumb to the temptation to let them usurp what is most important.

After a God-centered passion, two of the most important principles for any leader are respect and generosity.

Generosity — not efficiency. And respect — not efficiency.

Efficiency can, and often does, undermine both. That’s why you have to make it second, not first.

There are few (if any) promises in the Bible to prosper the “efficient” man or woman. But there is an abundance of promises to the generous person.

We know this from the Bible. But often we think that “business thinking” is different. That somehow the realm of running non-profits and businesses and other organizations plays by different rules.

But it doesn’t.

To be sure, people often think it does, and act like it does. That’s why we need to be careful about saying “non-profits need to be run more like businesses” and so forth — not because the principles for running an effective business are always different (though sometimes they are), but because there are many wrong business principles being used to run businesses, and we don’t want to let those infect the non-profit sector as well.

But the things that are ultimately required for running a business and non-profit well are ultimately the same things necessary for living a good life. And generosity and respect are two of those overarching principles.

And we aren’t left simply looking at the Bible to see this (though that should be enough). The best business and leadership thinkers have always acknowledged this.

Take Peter Drucker. At the end of his book The Effective Executive, he points out that his emphasis on making strengths productive “is fundamentally respect for the person — one’s own as well as others. It is a value system of action.” Drucker isn’t detaching executive effectiveness from the realm of morality and decency and sheer humanity. Rather, he sees them as utterly intertwined. A focus on strengths is ultimately a respect for the individual.

Likewise, he points out that the practice of “putting first things first” is not simply an issue of effectiveness, but character. “What is being developed here is not information, but chracter: foresight, self-reliance, courage. What is being developed here, in other words, is leadership — not the leadership of brilliance and genius, to be sure, but hte much more modest yet more enduring leadership of dedication, determination, and serious purpose.”

Drucker does not abstract effectiveness, even in large organizations, from character. They are utterly intertwined such that the core practices of effectiveness are actually manifestations of (and means of developing) character and respect for others.

Likewise, when I was at the Global Leadership Summit the year before this one, Jack Welch made a very significant comment. He said “Top people have a generosity of spirit. They get a kick out of giving bonuses, for example. They don’t have envy. They love helping people grow.” There’s character once again, and generosity. Top people are generous. Generosity is not just something for our personal lives and personal finances; we are to have a generosity of spirit in the way we go about our work. That is biblical, but what we see is that it is also borne out by the experience of the most effective business leaders and thinkers of our time.

So, how do you lead? Do you care first about generosity, or efficiency? About respect — and thus it’s corollary of positioning people according to their strengths — or efficiency?

I’m not playing these things off against efficiency, rightly understood. For ultimately, the best way to be efficient is to value generosity and respect before efficiency.

Leadership: What Not to Do, 3

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Don’t leave it to merely to your advisers. In contrast:

Any good leader must develop a substantive base. No matter how talented your advisers and deputies, you have to attack challenges with as much of your own knowledge as possible. (Rudy Giuliani)

Leadership: What Not to Do, 2

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Rudy Giuliani:

A leader who distances himself from his staff at the first sign of trouble might save a few popularity points, but it’s shortsighted. Eventually, no one wants to work for someone like that.

Leadership: What Not to Do

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Here’s a good example of authoritarian leadership from Hans Finzel’s classic The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make.

The most important thing worth noting here is that the leaders weren’t being authoritarian on purpose. That’s the thing about authoritarian leadership: it’s often a subtle thing that someone doesn’t even know they are doing. This doesn’t excuse it, but it shows us that we need to be careful to reflect on our own leadership styles. For we can fall into an authoritarian approach sometimes without even knowing it.

Here’s the example that Finzel relates from one of his students:

My organization was looking for a new regional leader. Those making the decision had somebody picked out. However, before finalizing it, they were going to meet with different people to receive feedback on the individual they had chosen.

I gave them my serious concerns and observations. Even though they took the time to listen to us, they really didn’t hear what we were saying. In the end, our input and feedback was rejected. And our predictions came to pass.

How did this whole situation make us feel? We concluded that the leaders at the top had already made up their minds regarding their choice, and that, almost as an afterthought, they had decided to talk to us “underlings” to try to get our rubberstamp approval.

It made me feel as if they didn’t really want or need my input. If they would have listened to us, we would have been spared the pain, misunderstanding, and hurt when it became obvious to everyone that this individual was the wrong choice for leadership.

5 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

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In You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference, Mark Sanborn highlights five core characteristics of effective leaders. Effective leaders:

  1. Believe they can positively shape their lives and careers.
  2. Lead through their relationships with people, as opposed to their control over people.
  3. Collaborate rather than control.
  4. Persuade others to contribute, rather than order them to.
  5. Get others to follow them out of respect and commitment rather than fear and compliance.

6 Steps to Becoming a Great Place to Work

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A helpful column by Jack Welch from a few years ago. Here are the six points, with some of Welch’s comments as well:

  1. Preferred employers demonstrate a real commitment to continuous learning. No lip service. These companies invest in the development of their people through classes, training programs, off-site experiences, all sending the message that the organization is eager to facilitate a steady path to personal growth.
  2. Preferred employers are meritocracies. Pay and promotions are tightly linked to performance. . . . People with brains, self-confidence, and competitive spirit are always attracted to such environments.
  3. Preferred employers not only allow people to take risks but also celebrate those who do. And they don’t shoot those who try but fail. As with meritocracies, a culture of risk-taking attracts exactly the kind of creative, bold employees companies want and need in a global marketplace where innovation is the single best defense against unrelenting cost competition.
  4. Preferred employers understand that what is good for society is also good for business.
  5. Preferred employers keep their hiring standards tight.
  6. Preferred companies are profitable and growing.

“The best thing about being a preferred employer is that it gets you good people, and this launches a virtuous cycle. The best team attracts the best team, and winning often leads to more winning.”

How to Run Your Organization

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If you get this, you have almost everything you need to know. (Almost.) Tom Peters in In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies:

Any well-functioning organization is neither centralized nor decentralized but a wonderful combination of both. Around most dimensions the best companies, then and now, are loose. They give people exceptional freedom to do things their own way.

At the same time, the great companies are highly centralized around a few crucial dimensions: the central values that make up their culture, one or two (no more) top strategic priorities, and a few key financial indicators.

Note: The key point is not simply that organizations need to be centralized in some areas and decentralized in others. If you say to yourself “great, the fact that every organization ought to have certain non-negotiable realities means I should micromanage my people and tell them what to do in whatever area I want,” you’ve missed it.

The key point is exactly where a company should (and should not) be centralized. It should be centralized in its core values — they are not up for grabs and are not negotiable. It should be decentralized in relation to letting people find their own way to accomplish the objectives of their roles.

In other words, precisely because the mission and core values of an organization are specific and tightly defined, employees are able to have great freedom in almost every other area.

I know of some organizations that get this backwards — they stray in relation to their core values, but are tightly controlled according to the leader’s wishes in almost every other area. That’s backwards. The key to a great company is unleashing your people, which is possible from making your mission and values clear — and meaning it.

Good Leadership and the Cause of Global Justice

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My guest post at the Willow Creek leadership blog.

Here’s the first part:

One of the major themes about Christ in the book of Isaiah is that he cares a lot about justice. For example, Isaiah says that “he will bring forth justice to the nations” (42:1), that “he will faithfully bring forth justice” (42:3) and that “he will not grow faint or be discouraged until he has established justice in the earth” (42:4).

In his book Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen points out that justice is “the right use of power.” To use power rightly means to skillfully exercise it in the service of others — especially those who are in need or in a situation where they are unable to help themselves. That’s why the Bible lays substantial emphasis on caring for the orphan and the widow: “Seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17).

One implication of this that is rightly getting a lot of attention in the church today is that we should spend ourselves radically in the fight against global poverty, human trafficking, and other injustices. A concern for justice means a concern for addressing large global problems.

A concern for justice also implies a concern for something else that is sometimes overlooked–namely, leadership. For if justice is “the right use of power,” then good leadership is a form of justice. And, conversely, bad leadership — even if unintentionally so — is a subtle form of injustice.

Read the whole thing.

How to Know if You are an Authoritarian Leader

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I blogged yesterday on how authoritarian leadership is actually a form of oppression.

How do you know if you are an authoritarian leader?

Aside from understanding basic leadership (see, for example, The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make — especially the first chapter, which is on authoritarian leadership), here’s one test:

Can you tolerate open inquiry? Do you let people ask questions? And do you let them do this not just one-on-one, but in public and in front of the whole staff?

Are you able to defend your views? Do you simply tell people what to do and expect them to do it because you said, or do you seek to show why it is a good idea?

Good leaders love open inquiry and can make a case for their views and the direction they are taking things.

This is probably one reason why, in the church, all elders — not just the main preaching pastor — must be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2). Without the ability to teach and show why you believe something and are doing something, there is little recourse other than to the unbiblical practice of domineering over those in your charge (1 Peter 5:3).

The Book of Leviticus on Leadership

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Leviticus 19:13 is interesting: “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him.”

What does this have to do with leadership?

It’s simple. Command and control leadership is an oppressive way to lead. Authoritarian leadership is a form of oppression. And this verse says “you shall not oppress your neighbor.” While the implications of this verse go far beyond leadership, they do pertain to leadership. If you lead in a way that oppresses your people, you are not leading in accord with this verse.

Am I being too extreme to call authoritarian leadership a form of oppression?

Obviously some forms of oppression are worse than others. I’m not classifying authoritarian leadership with slavery or other such things, which are clearly far more severe.

But as Christians we are to reject all forms of oppression. And authoritarian leadership is a subtle form of oppression because it does not seek the good of those being led. It views the leader as the one knowing all the answers, and the followers as existing to primarily carry out the will and desires of the leader. Instead of seeing his people as having initiative and ability to unleash, he sees them simply as tools. That is a failure to build people and serve them and, yes, it is a form of oppression.

I am not saying that clear, decisive leadership is a form of oppression. I’m not even saying that it is wrong for a leader to get in the details on things and seek to uphold high standards in how things are done.

Rather, we are primarily getting at a heart issue here. Is your aim in leading to serve and build others up in the accomplishment of the mission? Or do you see others merely as a tool to accomplish your aims?

There’s a big difference. That difference plays itself out in varying leadership styles, but at root and most important is your motive. Why are you even leading at all?