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Leading Oneself

William Pullen

30 August 2018

This is a collection of short think pieces on the importance of knowing yourself before you lead others. It begins with self-awareness and branches out to look at other aspects of leadership that rest on this foundation. The topics are underlined. • Self-awareness – the ability for introspection and the capacity to act on it – is the

starting point for effective performance as a leader. • Self-awareness helps you deal with the Imposter Syndrome that everyone in a

leadership role has to contend with. • Self-awareness is a precondition for understanding your end of The Deal – the

emotional connection between a leader and an institution that defines you as an autonomous professional acting within a system of shared values.

• Self-awareness enables choices about your Leadership Style and can help you

develop Leadership Presence – that illusive but vitally important quality of owning your space and being acknowledged as the calm centre in the middle of a vortex that others look to.

• Leadership style shows itself in decisions about Leadership Reach – how far into

the organization should one reach to listen, manage, and lead? • Choices about leadership reach lead to decisions about using Leadership

Willpower - where and how to focus your energy to get things done.

• Reach also helps mitigate Leadership Risk by identifying events with the potential to influence your important relationships, your work or personal well-being.

William Pullen - 30 August 2018

Ó University of Ottawa 2018

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Table of Contents

Part 1: The Importance of Self-Awareness .............................................................................................. 4 What is it? .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Why is it Important? ........................................................................................................................... 4 How well do I know myself? ............................................................................................................... 5 Look in the Mirror .............................................................................................................................. 5

Part 2: Dealing with the Imposter Syndrome .......................................................................................... 7

What is it? .......................................................................................................................................... 7 Three Variations ................................................................................................................................. 7 Where does it come from? ................................................................................................................. 8 Dealing with it .................................................................................................................................... 8

Part 3: Understanding Your Deal .......................................................................................................... 10

Thinking about the Deal ................................................................................................................... 10 The Basic Deal .................................................................................................................................. 10 The Full Deal .................................................................................................................................... 11 The Deal Today................................................................................................................................. 12

Part 4: Developing Your Leadership Style ............................................................................................. 13

Is this Important? ............................................................................................................................. 13 Style Originates with Motives ........................................................................................................... 13 Describing Your Style ........................................................................................................................ 14 Generic Leadership Styles ................................................................................................................. 15 One Style or Many? .......................................................................................................................... 15 Style & Authenticity.......................................................................................................................... 16 Style and Climate.............................................................................................................................. 16 Developing Your Repertoire ............................................................................................................. 16 Closing Thoughts .............................................................................................................................. 17

Part 5: Developing Leadership Presence ............................................................................................... 18

Why is this important ....................................................................................................................... 18 What is it? ........................................................................................................................................ 18 What isn’t it? .................................................................................................................................... 19 The Virtues of Leadership Presence .................................................................................................. 19 Owning Your Space .......................................................................................................................... 20 Closing Thoughts .............................................................................................................................. 22

Part 6: Defining Your Leadership Reach ................................................................................................ 23



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Part 7: Leadership Willpower ............................................................................................................... 24 What is Willpower? .......................................................................................................................... 24 Developing Willpower ...................................................................................................................... 24 How does it appear?......................................................................................................................... 25 What Can I Do with This?.................................................................................................................. 26 Help People Visualize Intention ........................................................................................................ 26 Confront Ambivalence ...................................................................................................................... 26 Prepare People for Problems ............................................................................................................ 26 Exploit Choices ................................................................................................................................. 26 Set Boundaries ................................................................................................................................. 27 Willpower is the Foundation for Persistent Execution ....................................................................... 27

Part 8: Understanding Leadership Risk ................................................................................................. 28

About Leadership Risk ...................................................................................................................... 28 Categories of Leadership Risk ........................................................................................................... 28 List Your Risks ................................................................................................................................... 29 The Heat Map .................................................................................................................................. 30 Leadership Risk ................................................................................................................................ 31 Mitigating Leadership Risk ................................................................................................................ 31 Closing Thoughts .............................................................................................................................. 32



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Part 1: The Importance of Self-Awareness Leadership is about individuals engaging with groups to achieve something of lasting value. As a leader trying to get things done through others, you can't do much if you don't have a fix on who you are. Without self-awareness, it is hard to regulate your behaviours so people will follow you and achieve results you want. This note unpacks self-awareness and aims to help leaders understand better the person they see in the mirror.

What is it?

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize oneself as a sovereign entity, fully aware and present in situations and accepting responsibility for how your actions affect others. One way to look at it the idea is to see it as having two aspects, one inward facing and one looking out. Internally, it is the capacity for introspection - the ability to recognize accurately one's conscious thoughts and feelings such as perceiving a threat or feeling at risk. Externally, it is acting on results to change physical and emotional behaviours. For example, changing body language to appear less anxious or becoming more open and transparent. In practice, the internal/external distinction is blurred because recognition, examination and changes in behaviours flow together and are nearly seamless. But, it is essential to know that while someone may have the ability to recognize a feeling, they may be less able to regulate it appropriately. Or, they may be able to change behaviuours but are less able to identify accurately the emotions prompting the change. The point about looking at both sides is that it provides more scope for development. Learning to recognize thoughts and feelings correctly is essential for personal growth. Equally, learning to change and calibrate behaviours is largely a matter of experience that can also be developed. Working on both gives a greater payoff.

Why is it Important?

You become conscious of who you are as a leader through self-awareness. This is how you know your strengths and weaknesses, blind spots and areas where you over-invest energy. This knowledge is essential as you build your repertoire and establish important relationships. On an applied basis, self-awareness helps you make better choices when recruiting by hiring to your weaknesses. Self-awareness is vital for authenticity - the person you think you are is the person others see and accept as the real you. The more you know yourself, the more authentic you will be to others because the actions they observe in your behaviours will be congruent with your intentions. Authenticity is the point of departure for credible leadership and, ultimately, acceptance of your legitimacy as a leader. Self-awareness is the basis of leadership style, the set of consistently reliable behaviours that define you as a leader. Making deliberate choices about which behaviours to emphasize in your style begins with knowing who you are, what you can do with what you've got, and what’s missing or needs adjusting. As part of developing your leadership style, self-awareness can help change behaviours that limit your effectiveness with teams and groups. For example, it is important to be aware of a need to dominate conversations, so you appear to be the smartest person in the room. Similarly, use of assertive behaviours can shut down conversations. Being aware of body language that signals approval or disdain for an idea is



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important. Leaders who appear impatient through physical actions such as restless hand or leg movements or who have perfected the eye-roll may find themselves leading a parade of one. Beyond improving one’s effectiveness as a leader, self-awareness is the antidote to derailing - the phenomenon of a leader failing in a role and becoming plateaued or leaving the position or organization because of personality traits. Study after study on derailing points to lack of self-awareness as the factor that most explains why flame-outs occurs and leaders derail. Self-awareness can lead to better change management. There is research which shows that leaders involved in successful change efforts demonstrate high levels of self-awareness, an ability to 'work in the moment' while remaining in tune with the overall purpose of the change.

How well do I know myself?

Accurate assessment of your self-awareness is obviously essential but quite hard to develop. Work on the validity of self-assessments shows that people over-estimate their skillsets and, in the workplace, flawed self-assessments happen all the way up the food chain. Employees over-estimate their abilities, managers have overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and experience with corporate train wrecks shows that many executives are over-confident when they make critical strategic judgment calls. Research on the Five-Factor Model of Personality looked at alignment between self-awareness and others perception of self. Individual self-awareness was most accurate when assessing feelings such as fear, anger, and loneliness. Colleagues were the best judges of traits such as imagination, creativity, and intellectual curiosity. People of all perspectives were equally good at judging features like openness and transparency. Research from the Centre for Creative Leadership shows that managers who under-rated themselves were rated highest in self-awareness by direct reports and highest in terms of overall leadership effectiveness. Managers who tend to overrate themselves compared to others' ratings were perceived as lowest of the three groups in both self-awareness and effectiveness.

Look in the Mirror

Building your self-awareness so it more accurately reflects who you are is key to your development. Mostly, it comes with experience in different situations across different domains. Leaders with a broad track record in, say, corporate functions as well as policy or operational roles would have had more varied experience than one with a near-vertical track record of achievement in the same role in the same organization. Knowing how they respond to a variety of challenges, and seeing what worked, helps them become more self-aware. Any opportunity for meaningful feedback will build self-awareness. Coaching and mentoring are good ways to do this because the relationships involved in these activities may help with introspection and round off some sharp corners of personality that might otherwise be a cause for concern. Multi-rater instruments such as 360s are helpful and tools such as the Emotional Intelligence Inventory will show areas where greater insight would strengthen the day-to-day skills leaders use to work with people to get things done.



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All the above can help build self-awareness, but they cannot replace the insight that comes with looking at oneself in the mirror every day. Asking yourself the blunt question “how am I doing as a leader?" may not be the greatest way to start a busy day but, if you can make it a habit, it can become the place where you build true self-awareness. A routine, well-ordered and unflinching examination of self is the place to establish the foundation of the leadership repertoire you will need for success as a leader. In time, it may become the foundation of leadership presence – the poise and confident self-assurance and sense of inner calm that comes from a deep understanding of the person in the mirror.



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Part 2: Dealing with the Imposter Syndrome “Fake it till you make it” is sometimes proposed as a solution for leaders feeling like imposters. But, advice to temporarily imitate self-confidence is not very helpful because it depends on being inauthentic until you feel able to be authentic, which may be different from the false persona you presented while finding your feet. The difference is almost certain to be noticed and may contribute to ambiguity about who you are and uncertainty about your leadership style. Neither condition is helpful for a leader, especially a new one in a new role.

What is it?

Impostor Syndrome is a pervasive feeling of self-doubt despite abundant contrary evidence. It presents as a deep feeling of fraudulence and morbid certainty that a leader’s “real” incompetence will be revealed and the person exposed as a fake. It happens to nearly everyone, but particularly to high achievers and high potentials. Imposter syndrome is especially prevalent among minorities and women. A 2017 UK Study suggests more than 30% of millennials have it. Leaders with the syndrome have difficulty internalizing their success. They may feel they have achieved it because of luck or good timing. It produces feelings that everyone else is smarter and more deserving of recognition, that they are not entitled, and so do not belong in their role. The syndrome can adversely affect credibility and, in the eyes of the individual, diminish their sense of legitimacy as a leader. Imposter syndrome is not the same as lack of self-confidence, but it is related and may contribute it. Feeling like an imposter is a self-belief about unworthiness as opposed to self-confidence’s incorrect assessment of one’s ability. Over time, as doubts about worthiness persist, impostor syndrome can contribute to a lack of self-confidence and this, in turn, can adversely affect performance.

Three Variations

Imposter syndrome has variations. There is a degree of overlap and all variations may be present to some degree and contribute to self-perception about being a fraud. • Type #1: “I’m a fake.” This type is a gnawing fear that a leader will be discovered and unmasked as a

fraud. There is a feeling that whatever success they have achieved has been kept hidden, but the time will surely come when their true incompetence will be revealed to all. They don't believe they belong in the job and there has been an error in judgment about their worthiness which will soon be exposed.

• Type #2: “I’m lucky.” Career success is attributed to luck and the random nature of fate. Positive accomplishments are explained as being in the right place at the right time. A variation is a feeling of not being sufficiently talented and achieving things only through hard work.

• Type #3: “Oh no, not me.” This is false modesty. People have difficulty accepting compliments. They downplay the importance of success or diminish an accomplishment by minimizing its difficulty or say that success is due to someone else and that the mistake will soon be revealed.



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Where does it come from?

Three sources of the syndrome are early influence by parents with their children, a persistent feeling of social isolation, and as a side-effect of high achievement. • Source #1: Early Childhood: parents who lavish praise on children can set them up for failure and lay the

foundation for the syndrome. Kids are repeatedly told they are smart, and this smartness comes to be taken as a given. They are smart and will always be successful. But, when success does not come, it suggests someone made a mistake, either the kid or the parent, and there is doubt about smartness which lays the groundwork for feeling like an imposter.

• Source #2: Not Being Like the Others: individuals who don’t “match” the characteristics or qualities of a group may be socially isolated and find it hard to feel credible and legitimate in their role. Despite ample evidence of talent from past performance and advanced academic or professional qualifications, they feel measured by some secret standard of which they are unaware. They believe they don't qualify as part of the group and are imposters.

• Source #3: The Side Effects of Achievement: High achievers are only high achievers in comparison to others. Probably they have been compared to others all their life, earning top marks, being accepted to prestigious universities, or selected for early promotion. Coming first does two things. First, the practice of comparison works because they have benefited from it. Second, they are very alert about comparative evaluation. They care about the process that got them recognition, and this becomes part of their view of success. But, when things don't turn out that way, it lays the groundwork for feeling like an imposter.

Dealing with it

• Accept that feeling like a fraud is normal. The syndrome is widespread but rarely discussed because everyone feels it is their secret. Fear of being revealed causes people to remain silent. But, when someone speaks of it, others feel relief. Try to normalize the feeling by sharing it. You will be among friends!

• Remember, you’ve earned a seat at the table. There is a tipping point between feeling like a fraud and the feeling of self-regard called authentic modesty. Remember your track record is one of achievements and you are deserving of your status and role. Read your c.v. and accept that you don’t just look good on paper; you accomplished everything on that paper. You are where you are for a good reason. Take comfort in the certainty of others’ assessments of you and celebrate that reason.

• Change the Channel, Change the Frame: The way we explain events to ourselves is called explanatory style. It has optimistic or pessimistic variations. Pessimistic explanations interpret events in ways that create self-doubt and enable the imposter syndrome. Hold the imposter thought at a distance, change the style to optimistic and re-explain the event to yourself in a more positive way.



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• Get a Mentor: Mentoring can be a solution for both mentor and mentee. Discussions about accomplishments allow both to internalize success. Find someone who has relevant experience, is unbiased, and has no vested interest in your success and talk with them about being an imposter.

• Teach: Teaching is a great way to confirm to yourself how much you know and how skilled you are. As a teacher, you are different than students because of your greater knowledge or skill and this can help dispel self-doubt. Teaching is a constant reminder that you are a credible expert who has accomplished much.

Feeling like an imposter is a self-inflicted hurt. To stop feeling like one, be the person you want to be. Lead by example. Model the way. Challenge your insecurity. Feel, believe, and act that you are just as capable, successful, and intelligent as others think you are.



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Part 3: Understanding Your Deal “The Deal” is the emotional bond that links someone to the idea (and institutions) of public service. It is the tie(s) that binds and encompasses the call to serve that draws people to public service as well as the aspirations and expectations that people have of work and a career within public service. These connections form a powerful emotional bond that endures over a career and enables effective performance. Everyone who works in an organization for any length of time has one, and it provides a solid foundation for a leadership practice. The intentional care and nurturing of the deal is something that engaged and successful public servants do well. The idea of a deal has been around for a while: Philip Selznick, James Thompson, and Edgar Schein have all written on it at various times since the late 1950s. More recently, the challenge of finding, fixing and healing the “broken” deal resulting from wholesale downsizing has been well described by David Noer from the Centre for Creative Leadership. Charles Heckscher has written about the emergence of a new deal and new professionalism in response to less security of employment.

Thinking about the Deal

The deal is defined as the deep emotional bond that connects an individual and an institution and is based on explicit and implicit conditions and expectations. So long as both parties meet expectations, a flexible bond results that facilitates performance in both directions: the individual gets tangible and intangible rewards, and the institution receives intelligent effort in public service. However, the deal is not static. As institutions and individuals change, so too does the deal. Every time there is a significant change, the deal changes. When institutions invalidate an existing deal, as when salaries are frozen, or a role is changed, or an essential condition like the security of employment is eliminated, or when an individual violates a deal through breach of trust, then the deal breaks. There are always consequences – employees may be less engaged or withdraw completely, or the organization may terminate employment. The deal provides distance between an institution and an individual. The idea of separation is important because it prevents co-dependency; the world that exists when the individual submerges their identity in the job so that they and the institution become one. The distance creates professional autonomy and establishes a place of greater safety for the individual when the interests of the organization change or diverge from the aspirations of an individual.

The Basic Deal

I see the basic deal having two dimensions: a hard deal and a soft deal.

• The Hard Deal: The formal connections between an individual and an institution made up of elements of employment law and formal expectations for behaviour that make up the specific terms and conditions of employment. It is the formal statement of the official ties that bind in a contractual sense. These are the acts and regulations that spell out how a person is hired, fired, paid, developed and promoted in a public service. The hard deal creates a platform for the “soft” deal.



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• The Soft Deal: Implicit expectations of behaviour make up the soft deal. On the individual’s end, these

expectations emerge over time from the intrinsic motivation(s) for public service that calls someone to serve. On the institution’s side, there is an expectation that the individual public servant will be loyal, provide good service and fearless advice, and act in the public interest. The quid pro quo used to be that in return for good and loyal service, public servants could anticipate security of employment and a fair wage, if never a great one, for a fair day's work.

The Full Deal

The Full Deal is some combination of hard and soft deal that evolves into a more complicated set of understandings when new elements are incorporated.

• Organizational Culture: Organizational reality is both a filter and a lens that shapes how one sees the connection between individual and institution. It filters the view through the kind of role that the organization is supposed to play. For example; the view of the deal in a public safety department is vastly different from the one that plays out in a social policy agency.

The different perspectives on the deal come from a different focal length, if you will that comes from different cultural assumptions. We know that the role an organization’s culture plays in determining basic assumptions about reality will shape how a person would view the deal. Culture not only plays out in norms about work and working together but also in fundamental and essentially un-testable assumptions about truth, language and metaphor, the devices we use to code and decode meaning about the deal. So, the deal changes in each organization.

• Work Group Culture: Most public organizations are too large and dispersed to have a monolithic

culture. It is better to think of each work-group, each team, district office, regional headquarters, whatever, as developing a local variation of the overall organizational deal represented by the organizational culture. This local kind of deal is likely more visible because it gets played out daily, whereas the larger deal is probably buried in the preconscious of the organization’s memory. The important thing is to accept that the deal changes depending on where you are within the organization. Leaders who are contemplating change will understand the importance of locally directed change efforts so that as much of the deal as possible can be renewed in situ.

• Supervisor: There is also a set of understandings with one’s supervisor. There are formal agreements

known as Performance Management Agreements (PMAs), and they could be seen as local representations of a “hard” deal. However, in any work setting, there are a host of unspoken expectations for performance that go well beyond any formal arrangement that will influence behaviour and morale. These expectations are the stuff of relationships, and they encounter all the stress and strain that any human bond goes through in the turbulence of life in an organization.



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• Self: There is also a set of understandings with oneself, with one’s ethics and personal moral frameworks, that shape how you live, thrive and survive. Perhaps the personal actions of an individual offend your personal deal. It may be that the greater good is better served by not letting this cause a fracture in the whole deal. On the other hand, it may, and you resign.

• Side Deals: There also exist at least two important side deals: the connection that comes with being a

member of a profession, and a similar arrangement that comes with being a member of a union or a labour association. To the extent that the values of these deals are aligned with those of the public service deal, you have harmony. When the interests diverge, as in the case of, say, scientific freedom or the expiration of a labour agreement, these connections change to some other condition that may or may not be helpful for performance.

The important thing about the Full Monty is that the quality of the deal; its strength, flexibility and durability, and how it changes when circumstances change. For example, when a change occurs in a new political administration, or when a new leader takes charge, the period of transition that comes with this change may create a space where attractions to, say, a particular cultural mindset or professional ethos exert a stronger pull that may distort or displace the original deal. This has implications for change management and transformation, and for the approach a new leader may decide to use when stepping into a new role or joining a new organization.

The Deal Today

The traditional deal in public service has changed significantly from a time when the security of tenure was balanced with neutral, anonymous and impartial service. This old deal has largely evaporated after decades of downsizing and contractions. What remains after momentous change is uncertain and what may develop could be disquieting. Media accounts of a workforce made up of individual agents, or the idea of a Free Agent, all bent on maximizing their private interests are, from a public service perspective, hard to understand or accept. For democracy to function, citizens must know that officials will always default to the public interest when exercising discretion. However, it is by no means clear that the official who reads Fast Company and buys into the ethos or idea of “Brand You” will do this automatically. One of the most critical challenges facing the senior leadership of a public service is the development of consensus about a new deal.



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Part 4: Developing Your Leadership Style

Leadership is about the actions of a group in response to a leader’s influence. The way leaders lead is the result of choices they make about behaviours used in different situations. These choices come from a repertoire that builds over time as leaders experience different situations and draw lessons from what worked (or not). A repertoire appears as a leadership style; a consistent pattern of behaviours, used either separately or in combination, and to varying degrees, to achieve desired results. Questions develop about how to describe a leadership style, if it is better to use different styles or if a single style can be adapted and used across a range of conditions, and how a leader’s style might evolve as they assume greater responsibility. This note offers thoughts on these ideas and aims to help leaders make deliberate choices about developing their style(s).

Is this Important?

Understanding your leadership style is important because it influences an organization’s internal climate. As will be discussed later, research suggests that climate accounts for as much as a third of an organization’s performance and so it is in a leader’s self-interest to have a style that works well for them and pays dividends in performance and results. This idea comes from understanding that the proper role of a leader is to set and sustain conditions that allow others to perform and reach goals the leader has set, and thus achieve the results a leader is accountable for. These conditions are an organization’s climate; the social environment in which people work together and achieve shared goals. The choices that leaders make within this environment about how they communicate, direct and motivate others emerge from the behaviours that make a unique leadership style.

Style Originates with Motives

Style emerges from motives each of us has. The term “motive” means a person’s underlying needs that influence patterns of thinking and are visible through behaviours. Everyone has needs, for example, those for inclusion, openness and control that William Schutz identified as key to good work relationships. Regarding leadership style, David McClelland describes three needs that shape motives:

• Achievement: People work for a reason and for leaders, this is achieving something of lasting value. The need is characterized by wanting to outperform others, to have high internal standards of excellence, and a desire to innovate. People with high needs for achievement take responsibility for their actions, set challenging goals, and need feedback.

• Affiliation: People work in organizations because of social rewards and the benefits that come with collaboration. These needs are characterized by having a strong desire to establish and maintain close relationships. People with high needs for affiliation tend to be cooperative, supportive, and communicative.



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• Power: Leaders use power, influence and persuasion to get things done at work. People with a high need for power get satisfaction in influencing others and are often concerned about their reputation and position. They typically act in ways that generate strong feelings in others, both positive and negative, and they influence others naturally through their actions.

Everyone has some degree of each of these needs. Combined, the relative amounts form a motive profile. Because we each have a distinct profile, these differences make up what Bradford calls a unique “motive signature.” It is from this signature that an individual’s leadership style emerges.

Describing Your Style

A leadership style can be described by looking at five behavioural dimensions.

• Physical: Body language and non-verbal aspects of communications are examples of physical behaviours. A confident style would be shown in the way someone carries themselves, appearing open and accessible, and communicating with self-assurance in the timbre and pitch of their voice.

• Intellectual: Style would include behaviours such as the ability to analyze and synthesize information, reconcile or conciliate different perspectives, and use judgment and discernment. A confident style would be shown in how a leader presents ideas, makes decisions or advances consensus positions.

• Emotional: Style may include emotional behaviours like resilience, emotional availability and empathy. A well-developed emotional dimension would be shown in a confident leader who is well grounded, has good self-control, and who can recover smoothly from setbacks or adverse conditions.

• Social: These are the interpersonal behaviours that make up the social side of emotional intelligence and that bring success in everyday life. A confident leadership style would include behaviours like assertiveness, social responsibility, reality testing, and optimism.

• Professional: Domain knowledge will influence style, as will professional or technical knowledge, and cultural backgrounds. A leader with a science or engineering background may have a style that relies on quantifiable facts, direct communication, and technical problem-solving. This can be challenging in a more subjective domain that gives greater weight to qualitative reasoning, or in a cultural setting where indirect communication is preferred.

Each dimension has a range of possible leadership behaviours. The greater the range, the more finely tuned a leader can calibrate their style to their situation. Well-seasoned leaders with experience in different domains and cultural backgrounds can draw on a broader range of behaviours, and this provides an advantage, particularly when making nuanced choices about taking charge in a new role or new organization. A leadership style also has depth, in the sense that some of the behaviours a leader uses come from a deeper or more complete understanding of, say, how to intervene in a conversation to offer a different perspective. Like range, depth comes with experience, and it gives a leader an advantage in new situations because it gives a style weight that can have a longer-lasting impact.



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Generic Leadership Styles

The idea of leadership style has been well investigated by thought leaders. Hershey and Blanchard developed a life-cycle approach that suggested four styles. Sosik and Dionne have looked at leadership style and total quality management. In his article on "Leadership that Gets Results," Daniel Goleman proposes generic styles based on a study of executives worldwide. Goleman suggests the following as contemporary common leadership styles:

• Coercive: This “Do what I say” approach can be very effective in a turnaround situation, a natural disaster, or when working with problem employees. But in most situations, it may inhibit flexibility and dampens morale.

• Authoritative: A leader takes a “Come with me” approach, stating an overall goal but giving people the freedom to choose how to achieve it. This works well in an organization that is adrift but is less effective when working with a team of experts with more experience than the leader.

• Affiliative: The hallmark of the affiliative leader is a “People come first” attitude. This style is useful for building teams or increasing morale. But, affiliative leaders rarely offer advice, which may create ambiguity about means and ends. As well, the focus on praise may facilitate poor performance.

• Democratic: This style gives followers a voice in decisions that build organizational flexibility and responsibility. It may help generate fresh ideas. But, sometimes it results in drift and ambiguity about direction and intentions.

• Pacesetting: Leaders who set high-performance standards and exemplify them by their performance may have a positive impact on competent and self-motivated employees. But other employees may feel overwhelmed by demands for excellence and resent a tendency to take over a situation.

• Coaching: This style focuses more on personal development than on immediate work-related tasks. It works well when employees are already aware of their weaknesses and want to improve, but not when they are resistant to changing their ways.

One Style or Many?

Should a leader have one style or many? A key finding in Goleman’s research is that leaders should vary their style according to their environment. Goleman suggests that a leader who has mastered many styles can switch among them to create the best organizational climate and optimize performance. The literature implies that style is a matter of distinct choice between options. This is difficult to accept, because experience suggests that leaders seldom have the luxury of standing apart and analyzing their context, and then choosing what they believe to be appropriate behaviours. The reality is that leaders are fully present in their world and make choices about behaviours as they seize opportunities and adapt to pressures. It is not that choosing from distinct styles is unhelpful, but rather strictly associating underlying behaviours this way imposes unnecessary arbitrary restrictions on behavioural choices.



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Style & Authenticity

To an observer, there is an obvious connection between leadership style and authenticity; the predictable use of behaviours that are familiar and that ‘ring true’ to the leader’s character as it is discerned and experienced by others. Authenticity influences credibility and, ultimately, a leader’s legitimacy in their role. Authentic behaviour comes from a leader’s motive profile. Even though the literature suggests that leaders should have many styles, I believe the need for authenticity overrides this. It may be that a leader has at their command multiple styles but, if in using them they appear inauthentic it will be difficult persuading others to follow. In the same way, deliberately modeling another’s style can appear as inauthentic behaviour. Probably the best advice is to be oneself and work with what is comfortable, while finding ways to expand your style’s range and depth.

Style and Climate

In the beginning, the point was made that style is important because of its influence on an organization’s climate. Climate refers to six factors that are present in a social environment:

• Flexibility: how free employees feel to innovate unencumbered by red tape; • Commitment: the sense of responsibility to the organization; • Standards: shared expectations for performance; • Feedback: the accuracy of performance feedback and rewards; • Clarity: the simplicity and transparency of mission and values; and; • Commitment: a shared sense of commitment to a common purpose.

Goleman found that all six of the leadership styles he identified had a measurable effect on each aspect of climate. Leaders who used styles that positively affected climate had better performance results. Of course, organizational climate does not by itself account for all an organization’s performance or results. Available resources and the external environment also influence it. But, in support of Goleman’s findings, analysis by Bradford and others suggest that climate accounts for nearly a third of results.

Developing Your Repertoire

Throughout their career, leaders accumulate professional knowledge about a domain and how to direct activities successfully within it. They develop procedural knowledge about the business of leading – as Stephen Covey described it, the art of starting with the end in mind and of doing first things first. Through experiment, trial, and many errors, leaders become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They sharpen interpersonal skills such as managing relationships. Experience provides opportunities to enhance self-awareness and expand the range and depth of useful behaviours that constitute a repertoire which grows through experience to enable performance across a range of situations. Repertoires need to grow as leaders take on more responsibility. The behavioural demands of senior roles and positions are different from those in mid-level management, supervisory and individual contributor roles. To



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succeed, leaders should be thinking about how to expand their repertoire so that it works well for them now and later in executive leadership roles. Ignoring opportunities to develop a repertoire has consequences One would be a loss of fit with a role because the range and depth of available behaviours are insufficient for expected performance as the role evolves. If the fit is lost, the possibility of derailing develops; a leader may find themselves eased out of their role because they do not have the behaviours needed for success. This can be traumatic and, while recovery is possible, the crucible experience of derailing has a profound effect on self-esteem and confidence.

Closing Thoughts

It seems reasonable to conclude that a leader needs a well-formed default style that draws on a range of reliable and authentic behaviours which enables performance and leads to results. Given this, it seems that maintaining a repertoire with good range and depth will serve a leader well for most situations, and that gradually expanding and adapting it ought to be a long-term leadership development priority.



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Part 5: Developing Leadership Presence Most of us have been in the company of a leader with presence – that elusive collection of personal qualities that commands our attention and respect. Self-assured and confident, they look, act and speak as if they are in charge. They exert a calm influence just by being present and they own the space they occupy. Why is this important? Presence is important because it helps a leader own the social space that comes with a leadership role. Ownership of this space is a precondition for performance and results. It works like this: as you move up the hierarchy in an organization, you occupy larger roles with greater authority and broader responsibilities. You have charge of more resources and your accountability for the results obtained by these resources expands. These conditions create successively larger social spaces that need to be occupied by an incumbent leader, so they can perform and deliver on expectations. I believe that leadership presence is what fills the space and enables ownership of it. It provides the basis for effective performance that will create credibility and, in time, legitimacy in representing the institution’s culture and leading it. It is in your self-interest to do what you can to cultivate presence. The underlying rationale rests on the idea that leadership is primarily about interactions between and among people, and our experience is that leaders with presence attract people almost naturally. They see a manifestation of character and talents they admire, ethics and values they share, and a purpose they believe to be important and which they fully support. They enlist voluntarily in the leader’s cause and become willing followers. People will follow leaders with presence, not just out of curiosity, but because they believe the promised journey will lead them to a better place or rescue a situation in peril. In this sense, leadership presence is transformational. So much of the received wisdom about leadership is transactional. It’s all about how to have interactions with others that achieve desired ends using a certain model or technique. To be sure, leaders with presence are professionally accomplished with a track history of successful transactions, but they have moved well past this to a place where their reputation, values, and character create a sense of purpose that transforms others’ understanding of what may be possible and enrolls them in the journey.

What is it?

Presence is an elusive quality – you know it when you see it, but it is hard to define with precision. Presence is not an end state, but rather something to be developed and maintained. It is shaped by experience, and a leader’s track record will show times and places where it was developed. Crucible experiences, episodes where great pressure was experienced, and the leader’s character annealed, are probably events where presence is created, refined, or destroyed. These legacy events also form one’s reputation – they connect to each other and form a narrative of your leadership that others use to make judgments about your abilities and decide if you can be trusted. The choices others make to follow you will be made based on your reputation and presence.



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What isn’t it?

Presence is not social charm, that superficial collection of learned interpersonal abilities that enables one to swim through social situations smoothly and leave others feeling pleased with the interaction. People with charm are no doubt polished communicators. They have poise and navigate difficult situations well and have extensive social networks. But, this does not equal presence. To be sure, leaders with presence have good social skills but they appear as manifestations of a deeper sense of self assurance and regard for others. Although it may look like it, leadership presence is not the same as charisma - the magnetic attraction of someone’s personality that draws people to them. Charisma overlaps with narcissism and research suggests that very charismatic leaders have a deep-seated need to be at the centre of whatever world they occupy, and from this position they promote self-serving goals. But, it needs saying that while most narcissists are charismatic, not all charismatic people are narcissists. There is always a degree of charisma in leadership presence, but it is made evident in virtues that are not self-serving. Authentic presence is a deeper quality than leadership style, which is the pattern of consistently reliable behaviours that leaders use every day to work with others and get things done. The underlying motivations and the varied behaviours that create a leadership style certainly contribute to presence but, as I will show below, there are other more important enablers.

The Virtues of Leadership Presence

Good leadership can be described many ways: decisiveness, good judgment, commitment, a bias for action, and perseverance are good examples. I think it is quite likely that someone could have all these traits, and many more, and still lack presence. While obviously related to them, I think the virtues of leadership presence are on a different plane. Among other traits, leaders with presence have the virtues of Duty, Courage, Faith, Humility and Grace.

• Duty is the willing assumption of a positive moral obligation to lead and achieve something of lasting value. Leaders with presence in the public sector have a nuanced understanding of their duty to serve the public and they show by their actions that they understand this obligation at a deep level. They have discerned the rewards for service and accept that public service is its own reward. Based on years of service and varied experience, they have a well-formed ethos and a solid understanding of their personal relationship with the institution of public service. This complex relationship helps define an independent professional identity as an autonomous public servant preforming as a leader within a broader governing system. Leaders have made a moral commitment to serve the public within this context and willingly accept their duty to serve.

• Courage is the acceptance of personal and professional risk with little regard for possible cost. It

comes in many shapes and sizes but the one that is most important for presence in the public service is moral courage. I define this as the ability to remain true to one’s beliefs and demonstrate by thought, word and deed the values and principles of public service despite pressures for administrative or partisan expediency. Leaders with presence have the scars that come from personal experience of living through events where moral courage was required and tested. The lessons



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learned from these crucibles has given them a maturity and seasoning that becomes strength in the face of adversity.

• Faith is confidence in oneself and belief in one’s ability to lead others by setting and sustaining the

conditions that allow them to excel. Faith is a precursor to trust – the implicit assumption that past behaviours are reliable predictors of future performance. The trust that emanates from faith includes tested pragmatic optimism and a default realistic inclination to look for the best in a situation with hope for the future. It is shown through a positive explanatory style and contributes positive energy to an interaction.

• Humility has been described as not thinking less of oneself but rather thinking of oneself less. Leaders

with humility have better control of their ego and do not need to be the smartest person in the room. Because they are self-aware and self-assured, they understand their personal limits and they act effectively within them. They are aware of their impact on people and manage this for the common good and not personal gain. They make others feel important and are content to lead from the rear so that others can succeed.

• Grace is an unusual quality for a leader but one that I believe is important. It is compassion for others

and is shown through acts of kindness and consideration in daily life. Leaders with presence have the self-respect that comes from deep self-awareness and acceptance of who they are and comfort with being in the space they occupy. From this position, they demonstrate grace in a calm and contained physical carriage, with authentic emotional gravitas and true empathy, and intellectual humility for the roles they perform.

Owning Your Space

Your responsibility and accountability define the boundaries of the social space you occupy. As a leader, you need to fill the space and own it because it is how your performance will be judged. As I said earlier, leadership presence is what fills the space and enables ownership. There is an art to owning your space, and it requires focus, discipline and practice. Here are some ideas that may help you to own your space:

• Know your space. Understand the limits of your responsibility and accountability that define your space. Map them so you know the boundaries within which you must perform and meet expectations. Avoid rigid or fixed determinations of boundaries. It is easier to get things done if the limits of your space are supple, so you can adjust and adapt as things change.

• Make the decision that you belong in your space. You are in a leadership role for a reason. Don t

second guess it. You are not an imposter – you’ve arrived where you are through hard work and personal abilities. Don’t discount the things that got you where you are. You have a right to be where you are, so decide that you belong there and fill the space.



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• You are worthy of the space. Through your abilities and experience, you have built a solid track record of knowledge and expertise. You know how to work in the white spaces and get things done. You add value in many ways, and because of this, accept that you are a worthy contributor who belongs in your space.

• Own the space with body language. Pay attention to how you move and act. Your physical presence

is determined by your body language and how you speak. Be upright and confident as you move within your space, with direct eye contact, a smile and an open posture that invites rather than pushes people away. When you are in your space, be there, and don’t be pushed aside by intruders.

• Be present in the space – emotionally and intellectually fill the space that is yours. Own the space

with your words and actions. Listen to how you speak. This is about the tone and pitch of your voice, the rhythm and cadence of your speech, its pitch and volume. Breathe easily. People who are skilled communicators vary these elements of their voice so that their speech opens their space, engages others and draws them into a conversation that demonstrates ownership of the domain.

• Share the space you own. Be open and welcome others to share your space and collaborate. There is

no need to fill a space with empty words and use airtime that would be better used in sharing ideas. Watch the flow and wait until you have something substantive to say that adds value and encourages others to build on your ideas.

• Don’t compare. Don’t compete. If you judge yourself against others, it rarely ends well. It ends up

being a winners and losers competition, and it’s tough to succeed if you are competing against everyone else. Judge yourself against the role you are expected to perform, the space you are expected to own, and the results you are accountable for, not about what others are doing.

• Fill your space with positive energy. You fill your space by bringing your energy into it. If you bring

positive optimistic energy to the space, it will be easier to keep the space open, flexible and accessible to others so that collaboration is possible. Negative energy will shrink a space, make boundaries brittle, and limit collaboration and opportunities. Nobody wants to work with a leader occupying a black hole.

• Use the power of the space and become influential. A big part of a successful leadership style is the

ability to use power in ways that influence and persuade others to act on your ideas. Leadership roles can influence things that others cannot. Of course, there are constraints on what you can do, but if you understand them and act positively within them, you can influence events and persuade others to act.

• Be resilient in your space. No social space has fixed boundaries – they flex and bend in response to

events and then recover. Work to make the limits of your space flexible. Develop your ability to roll with the changes that wash over you and then recover to where you want to be, in the moment and fully present, and in control of your space.



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Closing Thoughts

Apart from the obvious fact that leadership presence will help you to foster a style and a climate in which people want to succeed for you, there are other important things that it will do. Chief among them is that presence is living proof of emotional independence and comfort with an autonomous leadership role within a larger system. Most of us strive for this but many do not make it. Honour your success. You earned it. Because presence depends so much on self-awareness, it will help you to establish better relationships with others. The self-awareness that is the foundation of presence will help you to calibrate the way you interact with others and help build stronger and more durable connections with them. As a leader, you can’t get much done if you don’t have relationships that work well for you and others. Work hard to maintain them. Trust will be easier to establish because what people see is who they get. Presence is about being authentic so that the inner person is the outer one experienced by others. There are no sides or shades to a leader with presence. True presence is not a façade, and there is no artifice in it. People see your values in the way you carry yourself and act, and this clarity helps build trust. Trust allows authenticity to form and is the basis of credibility. In time, and with evidence of the virtues of presence, you may become a legitimate leader that owns your space.



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Part 6: Defining Your Leadership Reach

Manage down one level, and lead down two (at least) The arts of leading and techniques of managing must each find a place in the skill sets of senior leaders. Leaders provide vision and direction and also manage by engaging with details and the complexities of delegating responsibility. Making an informed choice about performing each role is important. Leading and managing occur within a social space that is usually recognized as a hierarchy but may also be a horizontal network. The act of leading defines the boundaries of the space and the tasks of management are to work the details within it so that execution occurs, and valued results are obtained. Leaders decide how they will perform their role as leader and manager. Because leadership is essentially a human activity, each role depends a lot on the style a leader uses to communicate through these human connections to set and sustain conditions that allow others to perform and accomplish goals they have set. There is another important choice to be made – a decision about reach: how far a leader’s direct management influence and indirect leadership influence should extend. Reach has two dimensions: depth, as in how far into the social space reach should extend, and breadth, as in the degree to which reach should be focused or deliberately opened to encompass a greater number of activities or functions. Choices about reach can make a leader’s job easier or harder. Getting this right depends on many factors, for example: expectations or direction from more senior levels, time or experience in the role, preferred leadership style, and the circumstances of the organization and the context in which it functions. An important consideration is the presence of leadership risk. Another is accessibility of informal social networks within an organization that act as distribution channels for leadership reach. A new leader in a new organization might decide to have a limited and narrow reach until they find their feet and can form their personal leadership agenda. As the leader becomes more confident, the reach can extend and broaden. A seasoned leader with established relationships might decide to extend it deeper and more broadly. A leader deciding to implement large-scale change or transformation needs a solid handle on management details and considerably greater reach. So, what is an appropriate reach for a leader? Pushing reach out can lead to perceptions of micro-management and the phenomenon of the three-thousand-mile long precision screw driver that minimizes personal and organizational risk. In contrast, a limited reach focused on setting direction and managing risk separates leaders from the people they lead and can result in ungrounded visions or strategies that have no basis in daily life. Advice from a senior leader in charge of a large organization is to manage down one level, lead down two, and listen down three. This means engaging directly with the management team while at the same time using a leadership style that extends indirect influence down at least two levels, while listening to the social space for clues about engagement, relationships and performance.



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Part 7: Leadership Willpower Conversations about leadership, execution and performance often overlook an important consideration, which is how effective leaders use volition, or willpower, to focus and direct energy so that performance occurs, and execution happens. Leaders may have clear strategic goals, the means to achieve these through, say, performance management agreements, and awareness of the bench strength necessary for execution but, in the absence willpower, these may remain unfocused and possibly of limited impact. Willpower distinguishes sustained execution from ad hoc performance. Leadership willpower is the secret sauce that marshals and directs energy to establish the conditions that enable performance.

What is Willpower?

Everyone has seen willpower in action. It is the self-control needed to resist distractions and focus on a long-term goal. But, a lack of management literature suggests that few have considered how to use it in a leadership context. Volition is a distinct activity and understanding its components is important. The social science literature suggests it has characteristics such as:

• Intention: giving meaning to a goal and defining it in accessible terms. • Attention: keeping a goal in the forefront of consciousness. • Cognition: understanding a goal in terms that are relevant to the context. • Emotion: sentiments that create motivations to achieve a goal. • Persistence: sustaining commitment to a goal in the face of difficulties

These traits are present in volition in varying degrees. They are also interdependent. Attention activates and maintains intention. Cognition is necessary for the exercise of volition but is changed by it as experience is gained through focused attention on an intended goal. Both are affected by emotion, which itself may be changed by cognition. Emotion also influences intention, attention and persistence and these are all modified by cognition. Willpower is not motivation. Motivation is the desire to do something; willpower is the unconditional commitment to achieving something. It implies deep attachment to an intention. Motivation often crumbles in the face of obstacles. Willpower is inspired by them. Leaders with willpower execute and produce results even in the absence of desire, enjoyment, rewards or competing temptations.

Developing Willpower

In his work on willpower and the virtues, Robert C. Roberts argues that a group of virtues which he terms moral strengths, or virtues of willpower, are used in two dimensions. The first is how willpower describes inclinations, desires and motivations. The second is a family of capacities that help one to resist adverse inclinations and remain focused on a goal. Roberts argues that the capacity to resist adverse inclinations is learned and that the skill involved is the capacity for self-control which, in turn, emerges from a capacity for self-awareness. Both can be developed through assessment, self-reflection, coaching and mentoring. Experience in different situations adds breadth



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and depth to both. Using leadership development and stretch assignments to develop each capacity would strengthen a leadership talent pipeline.

How does it appear?

Willpower is not like an on/off switch. It is more like a rheostat with a range from dormant to overdrive. Research suggests there is a threshold on the dial that is a tipping point. This point varies with individual levels of self-awareness and self-control. When initiated, willpower appears in three phases. Phase 1: Intention Formation The first phase begins with a perception that triggers attention and begins a process of forming an intention. Examples could include a perceived threat or opportunity in execution. This process may be reinforced by emotions such as anxiety, and by cognition, which is understanding the opportunity in context. This process is not necessarily rational. Mental models, passions and cognitive bias can shape perceptions where a rational calculation of costs and benefits may suggest a different choice. Phase 2: Threshold The first stage is much like the process of developing situational awareness. Initially, attention is unfocused, perceptions undirected and judgments unbiased. Gradually, leaders observe and discern events, and their focus sharpens on a goal. At some point, attention leads to intention and a threshold is crossed that leads to persistent commitment and effort to achieve a goal. The tipping point is influenced by self-control and self-awareness. Phase 3: Intention Protection A leader’s life is full of distractions. The urgent drives out the important and the style du jour become crisis management. Seasoned leaders with willpower have learned to protect intentions using several strategies. They use disciplined thinking. As attention or cognition changes, or as emotions develop, leaders refocus, reflect and reaffirm their intention and persistent commitment. This process is probably an iterative process much like the decision-making cycle designed by Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy that involves re-do loops to improve the quality of judgment. Intentional leaders display positive energy and are resilient in the face of adversity. Self-awareness helps sustain self-confidence. Leaders generate optimism and use a positive explanatory style to defend against pessimism. They are resilient in the face of criticism and can convert it into inspiration. Self-confident leaders have faith in a future while working in the present. Maintaining faith in difficult circumstances can be a challenge. It requires willpower when present conditions suggest that things are not going according to plan. Jim Collins refers to this as the Stockdale Paradox, the persistent conviction that a leader will prevail in the future combined with the discipline to confront the facts of current reality.



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What Can I Do with This?

Developing personal willpower begins with knowing oneself and developing the self-control that allows commitment and focus. Leaders should seize opportunities to reflect on oneself and receive honest feedback. It will help build self-awareness, and this can be enhanced with coaching and mentoring so that a deeper practical understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses leads to better self-control. A similar approach can work in an organisation. Work on volition by Ghoshal and Bruch suggests five simple strategies to help direct reports develop willpower.

Help People Visualize Intention

Leaders need to describe a future in simple, colourful ways that engage others’ emotions and enables intention. Simplicity in describing intentions is best. The mental model of the future needs to be sufficiently robust and unequivocal to protect intentions and enable persistent execution.

Confront Ambivalence Intention, attention and cognition are primarily intellectual characteristics of willpower. As execution begins, these must be integrated with emotion so that a richer and more durable intention develops. This is where the threshold is reached that leads to persistent commitment and sustained execution. The gap between the intellectual and the emotional is ambivalence. It is the uncertainty that comes with not knowing what the future may hold, what the risks and rewards are, what personal commitment is needed and expected and how much effort will be required. Helping people to confront their ambivalence about intentions is a leadership responsibility. It means combining the rationality of intentions with the irrationality of emotions and talking about the future in ways that enable commitment. Questions about practicality need to be complemented with questions about feelings, how downsides appear, and about the strength of commitment. Engaging emotions leads to deeper commitment and persistent execution.

Prepare People for Problems

Many efforts to enlist people in support of a goal paint a superficial picture of the future that is optimistic and where difficulties are minimized. A positive answer is given to the “what’s in it for me?” question. Experience suggests that deep commitment requires a different approach where problems and challenges are recognized honestly and given due weight. Needs for discipline and focus are acknowledged. Leadership willpower creates expectations for execution even in the face of seemingly intractable problems.

Exploit Choices Warren Bennis famously said that “managers do the things right, and leaders do the right thing.” Both roles involve choices about what to do and this is certainly the case is in the formation of intention where choices are made about opportunities or challenges. But, the status quo in an organization is created from routines



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that capture the attention of people. Managers and supervisors react to problems associated with routines rather than systematically weighing choices about how to do something right or what the right thing may be. Some may lack the openness needed to see opportunities. Others may be hostages to habit. The point is that opportunities may go unnoticed and intention is never formed. Leaders need to encourage everyone to “hang a lantern” on an opportunity and exploit it. In doing this, the first steps are taken toward the formation of collective will.

Set Boundaries

Unchecked willpower is a blind spot. Overdone volition may fail to protect intention. Disengagement becomes difficult and one-track tunnel vision takes over. To mitigate risks, leaders need to set boundaries on how willpower is exercised throughout the organization and insist on continually moving through re-do loops that refocus, reflect and reaffirm intentions and persistent commitment to a goal. It may take longer and be more complex, but it is better to move slowly than to derail because of unbridled willpower.

Willpower is the Foundation for Persistent Execution

Transformations, turnarounds, and bold new strategic ideas capture the imagination. The road ahead is straight and smooth. Sadly, many ideas become slogans and are soon cast aside in search of the next bright shiny thing. It bears remembering that sustained effective performance by people is the durable core of execution and the bread and butter of a public service. Execution begins when willpower is brought to the disciplined performance of specific tasks required to provide policy advice, enforce regulatory compliance or deliver a service. Execution is sustained by a deep persistent commitment to an intention, formed by a leader and adopted by a workforce, in relation to an opportunity clearly seen and understood, whose realization solves problems and makes things better for Canadians.



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Part 8: Understanding Leadership Risk Leaders deal with risk every day, and skilled management of it is an essential part of a leader’s repertoire. Risk appears in all aspects of public service: in the development and carriage of a policy file, in program implementation, in the operational delivery of services, and in the management of supporting corporate functions such as information technology. In general, methods for managing functional risks are well-known. What is perhaps less well understood, is the nature of personal risk that leaders accept in performing their role. This is the risk that develops from personal choices as opposed to that arising from corporate decisions or actions. For example, leadership risk emerges from choices about personal visibility in a crisis, when deciding on a career move, or determining if one has the horse-power to carry a complex file. Miss-steps in these and other areas can harm a leader’s credibility and reputation. In the worst case, it can lead to derailing. Leadership risk is a new area and there is little material available. This note offers an approach to the idea and suggests some tools to record and display it so that better choices can be made about the priority and sequence of mitigation strategies.

About Leadership Risk

I’m proposing a working definition of leadership risk: the likelihood of a personal setback, or development of a longer-term adverse condition, with consequences for a leader’s performance and professional career. To break the idea into chewable chunks, I want to expropriate and then elaborate on ideas in a 2017 presentation on DM Risk by Yaprak Baltacioglu. The then-Secretary to the Treasury Board proposed the following categories of risk for senior officials: work-risk that arises from a leader’s direct involvement in the organization’s work, person-risk associated with the leader’s health and energy, and relationship-risk that develops from social connections that a leader needs to get things done. I want to acknowledge her thought leadership in this area and expand on it. Risks that appear in these categories can be positive, such as when an opportunity presents itself, or negative as when a consequence diminishes personal credibility. They are not static and evolve as the context changes. Think of looking through a Kaleidoscope – risk spreads and morphs into different colours and shapes as the lens moves. It can be positive, as colours consolidate, or negative as different colours emerge.

Categories of Leadership Risk

It is essential to understand that when risk appears in one category, it can, and most likely will, spread to others as follow-on risk. Total leadership risk is, therefore, the sum of risks in all three categories. This makes risk management complicated because different mitigation strategies need to be used at different times. Consider the following:

• Work-risk: leaders make choices about the role(s) they play in an organization’s work such as delivering services or ensuring regulatory compliance, and in the functions that enable and support these activities. Think of a failing complex IT project or a large procurement effort with significant financial implications. Work-risk develops when leaders make choices to intervene and possibly



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rescue a project, or to close it off prematurely. These choices will affect their credibility and reputation. In turn, these can create person-risk regarding stress on physical and mental health and energy to deal with a failing project, as well as relationship-risk with, say, oversight agencies.

• Person-risk: a leader’s health and level of energy are important considerations. Health is physical,

mental and spiritual well-being, including resilience that enables recovery from adversity. Energy is the latent store of personal capacity needed to engage in an issue and be resilient in the face of setbacks. Person-risk develops when leaders make choices to remain engaged in physically or emotionally demanding circumstances that drains their energy, with follow-on consequences for Work-risk and relationship-risk.

• Relationship-risk: Leaders can’t get much done without relationships that work well for them and

others. Risk develops when relationships become warped because of dysfunctional behaviours that degrade a relationship’s essential function – its ability to resolve differences between two or more people over time. The consequence of dysfunctional relationships, or relationships that are miss-handled, have follow-on effects for Work-risk regarding results and reputations and person-risk regarding mental health and energy.

List Your Risks

A good practice in project management is understanding and keeping track of risks. Project Managers usually set up and maintain a Risk Register that categorizes and describes each risk, assesses its impact and notes if a mitigation strategy is available. On a much simpler scale, the same idea could work with Leadership Risk. Maintaining an elaborate Risk Register is probably overkill, but it could be helpful to maintain a running list of significant risks in each category and note any follow-on risk and the sequence in which it might occur. This would be helpful in deciding how and when to mitigate the risk. A pay-off from a habit of daily journaling could be a brief note on these risks and how they are evolving. If something is recorded on paper, in an audio note or smartphone list, it is more likely than not to be included in the intentional daily reflection that characterizes a deliberate leader. A simple Risk Register is shown below. Once the risk is described and assessed, the most important part is understanding the priority and sequence of mitigation strategies. It may be that dealing directly with the primary risk is sufficient, or it may be better to mitigate, say, personal and relationship-risk before Work-risk.



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The Heat Map

Another good practice in project management is to compare risks using a risk matrix to display the relationship between likelihood and consequence for each risk. The same idea can be used to record and display leadership risk. Those with higher levels of probability and consequence could be shown as having greater ‘heat’ or risk to a leader. A generic heat map looks like the diagram below. In general, behaviours and events that move you toward the orange or red areas are movements toward greater risk. Movement away from the red and orange toward green are moves toward goodness and reduced risk. Consider a Heat Map populated with specific risks, for example:

• A leadership change at the DM level poses a relationship-risk for an ADM or DG direct report. The likelihood is certain and the consequence of miss-handling the relationship is huge, so the risk would be in the red zone and suggest that being deliberate in setting this relationship up for success would be a good idea. Failure to do so might generate follow-on work-risk and then person-risk.

• A similar situation could be a decision to retire by a trusted senior DM mentor who has helped you to

advance your career. We all know that DMs attract followers who attach themselves to their trajectory, in effect ‘drafting upward’ on the momentum of the great and the good. Normally, if one’s performance meets expectations, this works fine until the DM decides to retire or leave the public service. When this happens, the relationship changes and, if you have nothing to replace it, it will be hard to sustain career momentum. Having more than one mentor is a move toward goodness.

• Person-risk can develop when competing for a promotion to a high-profile role in an unfamiliar field.

The likelihood might be assessed as possible or probable, and the consequence would be big or huge, given that a simultaneous change in role and field requires a double transition to an unknown situation. By themselves, transitions that accompany career changes at senior levels are difficult to



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navigate, but a double transition more than compounds the challenge and presents significant person-risk. If the candidate is currently being treated for, say, a stress-related physical condition, the consequence for physical health would be huge. In turn, this can create follow-on risks for work and relationships.

• Consider a first-time ADM appointed to an operational role in an organization that regularly handles

crises, for example; the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. For a new-hire ADM, work-risk would develop with the likelihood of a crisis that required a high-profile response in an unfamiliar domain, for example leading a press conference to announce or explain a recall. The consequence for personal credibility would be large or huge, with following-on risks for physical health and career.

Leadership Risk

Earlier, it was noted that leadership risk is the sum of risks in all three categories. With a Heat Map to display separate categories, you can connect the dots and see what the enclosed area looks like. This area represents the general leadership risk present from all three categories. In the diagram below, it is shown as the oval shape that connects work (WR), person (PR), and relationship (RR) risk. A leader with this degree of risk needs good mitigation strategies.

Mitigating Leadership Risk

As a general principle, any decision or action that changes a risk’s likelihood or consequence will result in movement toward goodness and mitigation. This would include actions to change the speed at which initial and follow-on risk appears. Even though leadership risk can appear in any category, and will probably expand to all three, there appears to be a hierarchy to mitigation strategies. This not an absolute and it may be that a direct approach to deal with a pressing event in one category will work as well.



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• Mitigate Person-risk First: Little of lasting value can be accomplished if a leader cannot function effectively and so it would be important to mitigate first any risks to spiritual, emotional and physical health. The sequence is important. Spiritual health is about ethos, ethics and values and it establishes a foundation for everything that follows. Emotional health builds on spiritual to create self-confidence, self-assuredness and resilience in the face of adversity. In turn, this can help to reduce the physical effects of person-risk that may be caused by stress. With health assured, the focus of mitigation can turn to replenishing energy by identifying what drains it and what restores it.

• Mitigate Relationship-risk Second: If person-risk has been mitigated, then conditions may exist that

allow relationships to be initiated, repaired or strengthened. Improving one’s self-awareness will help to restore relationships by eliminating blind spots. Increasing one's ability to communicate effectively can build on this and help to mitigate the risks that a relationship’s essential function of managing differences is impaired. Developing the skill of empathy will help to understand the source of dysfunction that may stress the relationship and offer a point of departure for repair (or escape).

• Mitigate Work-risk when Person and Relationship-risk are abated. Work-risk is mitigated by knowing

the work at a deep enough level to give you confidence when making choices about critical factors such as, say, how to frame a coherent response to a work crisis. While it may be that direct actions to mitigate work-risk is sufficient, it would be smart to assess the impact of the action on relationship and person-risk. For example, in a work crisis, the risk associated with a decision to establish a highly visible public profile and become the face of the response can be abated by demonstrating mastery of the event and the operational domain based on deep technical knowledge. This understanding may be sufficient, but it would be useful to assess relationship-risk and to know that one has the physical and emotional resources necessary to be a highly visible presence in the public eye.

Closing Thoughts

This note offered an approach to the idea of leadership risk and suggested some tools to record and display it. It draws on risk management techniques used in project management and risk management practice generally, and there is an implicit assumption that what works in one area will work in another. This assertion may or may not be the case. We need experience to see if a different approach is required. The tools are merely suggested ways to display and organize risk and there may well be other methods that work better. What is important is understanding and listing the risks, connecting the dots to see what the resulting leadership risk profile looks like and then making choices to change likelihood or consequence for certain risks. To conclude, it seems evident that elements of leadership risk can appear in most situations. They are characterized as work, relationship or person-risk, and the category that appears first will be followed by others as the risk spreads to each category. While the primary risk can be mitigated by dealing with it directly, it is apparent that there is also a mitigation hierarchy that begins with person-risk and moves on to relationship and then work-risk. The sequence is not mandatory, but it seems sensible to establish a foundation of ethos that can support robust mental and physical health before looking to mitigate relationship and work-risk.

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