Leadership used to be about certainty; now it's about leading in uncertainty

Just finished reading the book "Just Enough Anxiety" by psychologist Robert Rosen.

As I read it, it became clear how many of the leaders and coaches featured on this blog over the last year fit Rosen's description of today's "successful leaders."

As I read the following excerpt, I thought about how coaching and the business of basketball has changed over the 20 years that I've been a coach and for the 40 years I watched my father coach.

As the author describes, there's considerably more uncertainty in basketball today than ever before, which makes his model relevant for coaches and GMs.

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Fear has been with us since the beginning of time -- the guardian of our survival. Fear kept our ancestors from becoming some predator's dinner. It alerted generation after generation to situations that threatened their survival. It keeps us from walking down dark alleys at night. Sometimes fear propels us forward; sometimes it freezes us in our tracks.

Your relationship with fear -- and its cousin, anxiety -- has a profound effect on your life. It shapes how you see yourself and others, and how others see you. It influences how you think about problems and make decisions. It affects how you view and manage change.

It's a key factor in how you lead teams.

Fear and anxiety are what we experience when we go through life on autopilot. But we can no longer allow ourselves to operate this way. Leadership used to be about certainty. Now it's about leading in uncertainty.

Successful leaders stay ahead of the game by either shaping their world to suit themselves or quickly adapting to the world around them. Leading people through change is every leader's job. It's about taking people from where they are to where they need to be. And it's about the courage and commitment to drive and sustain change.

Following are the five characteristics of today's successful leaders.

1. Successful leaders willingly travel into the unknown. They take uncertainty in stride. In fact, they enjoy the challenge that constant change provides.

2. Successful leaders set an evolving course through ambiguity, complexity, and change. They turn uncertainty and adversity into advantages. They are willing to change their minds and their course of action when necessary. They steer and support others through change after change with a sense of urgency. Simultaneously optimistic and realistic, they risk failure in pursuit of success.

3. Successful leaders inspire and challenge people to perform beyond their own expectations. They are relationship builders. They align people around a shared vision -- with honest and open dialogue -- and open hearts. Comfortable with conflict and disagreement, these leaders foster dynamic debate and constructive impatience. They get people involved by earning their confidence and trust. Their empathy and compassion for others allows them to stretch people into their discomfort zones, while igniting their passion to win. Their ability to motivate, coach, and develop leaders at all levels enables them to build a culture of accountability and execution.

4. Successful leaders learn and re-learn in real time. They are willing to reinvent themselves and their organizations to adapt to change. They see lifelong learning as a priority and themselves as teachers and learners. They see both success and failure as good teachers.

5. Successful leaders imagine possibilities, discover opportunities, and release creative energies inside their organizations. They refuse to accept the status quo. There's always a new goal to reach or a new opportunity to grab. These leaders are masterful at accessing and channeling energy, in themselves and others. They push boundaries. They create excitement.

One capability makes it possible for leaders to succeed at these key tasks. It is the capability to live with and create just enough anxiety within themselves and others. More than any other leadership quality, this ability propels great leaders to the top.

It enables them to embrace uncertainty and manage the ups and downs of a crazy world. It brings out their best performance, enables them to build great teams, and inspires and challenges their organizations. It is the hidden driver of success.

A vision is something that consumes you like a fire

From Gwen Knapp's column yesterday comes this quote from Niners coach Mike Singletary:

"When I look around the NFL, I'm amazed by how many people have a dream and how few have a vision."

The difference, he said, is that a dream ends up being passive, accommodating disappointment.

A vision, he said, "captures the imagination. A vision is something that consumes you like a fire, won't let you eat, won't let you sleep until that vision comes to pass."

[Thanks, Ken!]

Not much happens without a dream

The following is an excerpt from Robert Greenleaf's book "Servant Leadership," a concept that "encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization's values and integrity."

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The very essence of leadership, going out ahead to show the way, derives from more than usual openness to inspiration. But the leader needs more than inspiration.

A leader ventures to say, "I will go; come with me!" A leader initiates, provides the ideas and structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance 0f success.

A leaders says, "I will go; follow me!" while knowing that the path is uncertain, even dangerous. One then trust those who go with one's leadership.

A mark of leaders, an attribute that puts them in a position to show the way for others, is that they are better than most at pointing the direction. As long as one is leading, one always has a goal. It may be a goal arrived at by a group consensus, or the leader, acting on inspiration, may simply have said, "Let's go this way." But the leader always knows what it is and can articulate it for any who are unsure.

By clearly stating and restating the goal the leader gives certainty to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves.

The word "goal" is used here in the special sense of the overarching purpose, the big dream, the visionary concept, the ultimate consummation that one approaches but never really achieves. It is something presently out of reach; it is something to strive for, to move toward, to become.

It is so stated that it excites the imagination and challenges people to work for something they do not yet know how to do, something they can be proud of as they move toward it.

Any achievement starts with a goal -- but not just any goal and not just anybody stating it. The one who states the goal must elicit trust, especially if it is a high risk or visionary goal, because those who follow are asked to accept the risk along with the leader.

Leaders do not elicit trust unless one has confidence in their values and competence (including judgment) and unless they have a sustaining spirit that will support the tenacious pursuit of a goal.

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality, but the dream must be there first.

We are all writing the story of our own life

Yesterday, my sister forwarded a good article she'd read in Fast Company magazine.

If you've not read Fast Company before, it's described as the magazine that "sets the agenda, charting the evolution of business through a unique focus on the most creative individuals sparking change in the marketplace. Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business."

Written by Po Bronson (pictured below), author of the book "What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question," the article contends that "instead of focusing on what's next, let's get back to what's first."

Bronson believes "there are far too many smart, educated, talented people operating at quarter speed, unsure of their place in the world, contributing far too little to the productive engine of modern civilization."

There are far too many people who look like they have their act together but have yet to make an impact. You know who you are. It comes down to a simple gut check: You either love what you do or you don't. Period.

According to the author, "those who are lit by that passion are the object of envy among their peers and the subject of intense curiosity. They are the source of good ideas. They make the extra effort. They demonstrate the commitment. They are the ones who, day by day, will rescue this drifting ship. And they will be rewarded. With money, sure, and responsibility, undoubtedly."

Bronson writes that "most of us are blessed with the ultimate privilege: We get to be true to our individual nature. Our economy is so vast that we don't have to grind it out forever at jobs we hate. For the most part, we get to choose. That choice isn't about a career search so much as an identity quest."

Asking The Question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. There is nothing more brave than filtering out the chatter that tells you to be someone you're not. There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice. Asking The Question is nothing short of an act of courage: It requires a level of commitment and clarity that is almost foreign to our working lives.

In researching his book, Bronson spoke to nearly 1000 people who "have dared to be honest with themselves." He spent "considerable time"with less than 10 percent of those people "in order to learn how they did it."

These are ordinary people. People of all ages, classes, and professions... These people don't have any resources or character traits that give them an edge in pursuing their dream. Only two are so smart that they would succeed at anything they chose (though having more choices makes answering The Question that much harder). They're just people who faced up to it, armed with only their weaknesses, equipped with only their fears.

Many of the people Bronson spent time with worked in what he considered to be "boring" office jobs. And yet, they "were absolutely committed to their work."

That commitment sustained them through slow stretches and setbacks. They never watched the clock, never dreaded Mondays, never worried about the years passing by. They didn't wonder where they belonged in life. They were phenomenally productive and confident in their value. In places unusual and unexpected, they had found their calling, and those callings were as idiosyncratic as each individual.

What he found is that "your calling isn't something you inherently 'know,' some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right."

He writes of a catfish farmer who started out as an investment banker and a truck driver who had been an entertainment lawyer. Then there was the Harvard MBA who ended up as a police officer. In every case, they'd "discovered latent talents that weren't in their skill sets at age 25."

Most of us don't get epiphanies. We only get a whisper -- a faint urge. That's it. That's the call. It's up to you to do the work of discovery, to connect it to an answer.

The truth is, most of us have know deep inside of us where we "belong," but, unfortunately, we "make poor choices and waste productive years on the wrong work."

Bronson outlines four reasons why we get caught up in the wrong line of work -- many of us failing to recover before we retire:

1. Money
2. Smarts
3. Place
4. Attitude

MONEY: "Shouldn't I make money first -- to fund my dream?" Bronson says most of us believe we should pay our dues, then tend to our dreams. As he puts it: "Put your calling in a lockbox, go out and make a ton of money, and then come back to the lockbox to pick up your calling where you left it."

It turns out that having the financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that. The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you. It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifices than anyone expects. You become so emotionally invested in that world -- and psychologically adapted to it -- that you don't really want to ditch it.

According to Bronson, "the ruling assumption is that money is the shortest route to freedom. Absurdly, that strategy is cast as the 'practical approach.'

In truth, the opposite is true. The shortest route to the good life involves building the confidence that you can live happily within your means (whatever the means provided by the choices that are truly acceptable to you turn out to be)."

This is an extremely threatening conclusion. It suggests that the vast majority of us aren't just putting our dreams on ice -- we're killing them.

SMARTS: "Being smarter doesn't make answering The Question easier." Bronson writes that asking the question, "What am I good at?" is not the right way to go about it.

"People who attempt to deduce an answer usually end up mistaking intensity for passion. To the heart, they are vastly different. Intensity comes across as a pale busyness , while passion is meaningful and fulfilling. A simple test: Is your choice something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?"

He argues that "work should be like life: sometimes fun, sometimes moving, often frustrating, and defined by meaningful events." [Sounds a lot like coaching.]

PLACE: "Every industry has a culture. And every culture is driven by a value system. Once you're rooted in a particular system -- whether it's medicine, New York City, Microsoft, or a startup -- it's often agonizingly difficult to unravel yourself from its values, practices, and rewards. You'll be a lot happier if you aren't fighting the value system around you. Find one that enforces a set of beliefs that you can really get behind. There's a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people. Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your goals instead of distracting you from them."

ATTITUDE: Bronson believes that this is the biggest obstacle. "Environment matters, but in the end, when it comes to tackling the question, 'What should I do with my life?' it really is all in your head."

The first psychological stumbling block that keeps people from finding themselves is that they feel guilty for simply taking the quest seriously. They think that it's a self-indulgent privilege of the educated upper class. Working-class people manage to be happy without trying to "find themselves," or so the myth goes.

I've posted on this blog about the downside of having too many options. Bronson contends that "probably the most debilitating obstacle to taking on The Question is the fear that making a choice is a one-way ride, that starting down a path means closing a door forever. 'Keeping your doors open' is a trap. It's an excuse to stay uninvolved."

Bronson (pictured here) concludes with this:

We are all writing the story of our own life. It's not a story of conquest. It's a story of discovery. Through trial and error, we learn what gifts we have to offer the world and are pushed to greater recognition about what we really need. The Big Bold Leap turns out to be only the first step.

Once you start winning, you don't want to go back

In the week leading up to yesterday's Super Bowl, the Phoenix paper had a story about how, in two years, Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt took a team with "a legacy of losing perhaps un- rivaled by any team in sports" to the NFL's championship game.

In the simplest terms, Whisenhunt was trying to change the Cardinals from a team that lost more than it should to one that won as much as it could.

In short, he had to re-work the team's culture.

In a business, or on a football team, he said it boils down to one thing: "Getting people who are talented to work together as a team." But talking about it is easy. Actually doing it is difficult.

Says Coach Whisenhunt: "I think a lot of people want to say culture change. It's really about getting people to believe. Raise the expectations. Be prepared to work. It has to be everything. Practices, off-season workouts, preparation, accountability. It's got to be every day."

According to one management expert, "there was another important factor that led the team to change under Whisenhunt's leadership."

In his words, "Don't laugh when I say this. Winning culture depends a lot on winning" because it makes people willing to work even harder.

"A team gets into a rhythm of winning," the expert said. "It shows that effort leads to reward."

Another important note is that all of Arizona's coaches are on the same page.

Special-teams player Sean Morey, a 10-year veteran in the league, says the coaches are always on the players about how to do things. "They are consistent in holding players accountable," Morey said in the locker room. "Watching tape, sometimes you have this voice, you can hear it in your head, when things go wrong, saying: 'It's not OK. It's not OK.' "

Says Arizona offensive lineman Reggie Wells, who has played for three head coaches in his career with the team, "Whisenhunt's vision just sounded a little bit different."

"You can tell they believe it," Wells said. "They are sincere in how they think we should approach the game. It's not just words. Winning is habitual, just like losing. But once you start winning, you don't want to go back."

Both an architect and a plumber

Came across Reverend Richard Stazesky's 2000 presentation about the leadership ability of President George Washington.

In it, he describes how "visionary leaders" like President Washington are able to focus "simultaneously on two seemingly different configurations, yet to such a leader they are always inextricably related."

According to Rev. Stazesky, effective leaders not only see the "big picture," but also see the little deals. They're able to lay out the strategy, but can also develop the tactics.

They not only set goals, but outline the objectives necessary to reach those goals. They understand theory, but also know how to apply the theory.

As Reverend Stazesky puts it, these leaders are at once the architect and the plumber.

In a time when some preach the "coach as CEO" model, Rev. Stazesky makes a strong argument for balancing a hands-off and hands-on approach to coaching.

In fact, just last month, in an effort to shore up his team's defense, Bears coach Lovie Smith pledged to take "a more hands-on approach."

Clearly, the head coach can't do it all. Having a talented, trustworthy staff is critical. But it's possible (and important) for the head coach to be involved and engaged without micromanaging.

We're all in this dog pile together

In Columbus, coach Ken Hitchcock (right) and general manager Scott Howson (left) aren't anything alike.

As this article describes, Coach Hitchcock is known for his gregariousness. Howson is "soft spoken and measured."

"He calms me down when I want to fight every fight," Hitchcock said of his boss. "When we're talking after a tough game, he can take the emotion out of the competition and get us focused on the next day. In that way we work well together. It's very unique. We both lean heavily on each other. We're all in this dog pile together."

While "Hitchcock and Howson don't always agree... they share a similar vision for the franchise."

In Howson's words, "I think we respect each other's positions. He cares about winning the next game, and my focus is more long term. But he respects the intricacies of the position. He understands you can't just wave a magic wand."

According to the article, "Howson values Hitchcock's experience and knowledge of players in the league. He considers Hitchcock not only a proven coach but an excellent resource. Hitchcock appreciates that his general manager does not panic in the face of trouble. Howson might still be new to the job, but he doesn't act it."

Says Coach Hitchcock, who guided the Dallas Stars to a Stanley Cup in 1999:

"I've always thought that good coach and general manager tandems are joined at the hip."

The difference between collecting talent and building a team

Scott Pioli, the former VP of Player Personnel for the Patriots, had some interesting things to say at his press conference yesterday introducing him as the new GM of the KC Chiefs.

Pioli, who worked closely with Bill Belichick "to turn the Patriots into consistent winners" described how the two worked together.

"Bill had the final say in everything," Pioli said. "However, it was a collaboration. I'm not sure I can think of many players that ever came into the program that Bill and I didn't completely agree on. The amount of respect that he and I had for one another, if there was a disagreement, the respect for the other person led us away from that player. It was never a battle over ego with Bill and me. We were more honed in on coming up with the right answer, rather than his answer or my answer. It was more about the right answer. It was a true collaboration."

As for his role and vision with the Chiefs, Pioli talked about what he'd learned in New England:

"My job is not to collect talent, it's to build a team. Individuals go to Pro Bowls, teams win championships. That's our goal here - to build this team with the right kind of people and the right kind of players, and consistently compete for championships. The 'Patriots Way' starts with hard work, discipline, and creating a culture where everyone is on the same page, everyone knows their role, everyone believes in the system, and everyone does their job."

Make people believers, not bystanders

Good story in the January '09 issue of Harvard Business Review about the keys to success for new leaders.

The authors outline five common traps that new leaders frequently fall into as they look to "prove themselves by going after quick wins" (i.e., early results).

Instead of "abandoning the quest for early results... the leaders who make the most successful transitions do, in fact, focus relentlessly on quick wins. But they focus on a different kind of achievement. Rather than riding roughshod over others to prove themselves, they pursue... 'collective quick wins,' accomplishments that make their entire teams look good."

Here are the five common traps:

1. Focus too heavily on details. "A tendency to get bogged down in minutiae. In looking for the quick win, the [new] leader tries to ace one component of the new job. Focusing intently on this goal, [he] doesn't pay enough attention to [his] broader responsibilities."

When a leader personally attends to details, the rest of the team/staff can't see a role for themselves in the effort. There's no "shared understanding." Further, when focusing on one area, a new leader can ignore "the performance issues they considered to be higher priorities."

2. Reacting negatively to criticism. "At the very least, an inability to deal with criticism means that the leader takes much longer to improve in areas of relative weakness."

3. Intimidating others. "When leaders come to new roles convinced of their brilliance and the inevitability of their rise..., they can be intimidating to those around them. Confident of their plans' success, [new leaders] can mistake their team's compliance for agreement and endorsement."

4. Jumping to conclusions. "Some leaders hoping to score a quick win jump into its implementation too quickly. To the people around them, it feels as if these leaders have arrived with the solution already formulated instead of engaging others in its design."

5. Micromanaging. "Leaders new to their roles often make the mistake of meddling in work they should trust others to do. Unwilling to take the time to get [the team] on board with an overall vision or goal -- but afraid their decisions and actions won't align with it -- they second-guess and micromanage."

According to the authors, members of "the team must make real, direct contributions." In their words, "Make people believers, not bystanders."

They recommend asking, "Can key players on the team see their fingerprints on the outcome? Would they cite their contributions with pride? If the answer to either questions is no, the win is not collective."

Further, "a leader... should engage a respected member of the team to help." Why? Because this person "may have more credibility with the team than [the new leader] does, so the early endorsement will quickly alleviate the skepticism of other team members."

Moving out of the trees to see the forest

As Cal coach Jeff Tedford has demonstrated this season, giving up play-calling doesn't mean giving up control.

An article from yesterday describes how Coach Tedford "gave up play-calling duties during the offseason so he could ensure he has a better grasp of all aspects of his program. It's helped the Bears become a more cohesive team, with clear leadership, player camaraderie and individual accountability flourishing."

According to one Cal player:

"I think this year he's been a little more overlooking the team. Last year he said he was so focused on the X's and O's. This time, he has other guys taking care of that. He's making sure the team as a whole is a little more focused and concentrating on what we need to focus on."

Coach Tedford believes that taking a step back from the tactics has enabled him to better see the big picture:

"It kind of lets me keep more of a pulse of the whole team, especially during the game," Tedford said. "A lot of times when I was calling every play, even in between series, I had my face buried in the play chart trying to figure out what we're going to do next series. It just gives you a better perspective of the whole game and how things are going instead of just focusing on one thing. It frees me up to do things more later in the week with team oriented things."