Читать книгу Accountable Leaders - Vince Molinaro - Страница 11

What my work with clients has taught me is that if you want to improve as a leader, a team, or a company, the quickest and most enduring way to do this is by focusing on leadership accountability. When you do, it immediately puts you on a different trajectory.

In my book The Leadership Contract ⁵ I define leadership accountability as the ability of individuals in leadership roles to step up and demonstrate personal ownership for their roles, be deliberate and decisive in the way they lead, and bring a sense of urgency, courage, and resilience to the position. They must not only demonstrate this accountability at a personal level, but they must also ensure it exists within their teams and with other leaders across their organization. They need to help inspire others to step up, take ownership, and deliver results. However, what I have discovered is that we have many people in leadership roles who simply are not accountable. They are more committed to the technical aspects of their roles—whether they are accountants, engineers, sales professionals, analysts, marketers, or investment bankers, to name a few. They do not bring the same level of personal commitment to the leadership aspects of their roles. I have come to learn many do not even define themselves as leaders, even though they have a leadership role within their company. They essentially treat leadership as a part-time job—something they do in addition to being technical experts.

I came to realize that our organizations are filled with thousands of part-time leaders. One of the primary reasons this has happened is because a lot of people get into leadership roles by accident. They excel at something technical, and organizations go to these individuals and promote them into leadership roles. The underlying assumption is that strong technical performance would translate into strong leadership performance. Sometimes that is true; but we’ve learned in practice that most of the time it isn’t. As a result, many companies have significant leadership accountability gaps. They have people in leadership roles who simply are not stepping up or leading in a way that their company expects.

My clients asked me to help them find a way forward to resolve this problem. In my book, I positioned the critical idea of a leadership contract that stipulates those in leadership roles must understand they are held to a higher standard of behavior. This idea of a leadership contract has always existed, but we have never made it explicit with leaders. In fact, many people who are in leadership roles have treated the leadership contract like an online contract—you know, the one that comes up on your laptop or tablet with all the terms and conditions. When it does, most of us simply scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click “agree” without reading a single word. You know you are bound to something; you are not quite sure what that is. This analogy has resonated with a lot of leaders I work with. They acknowledge that they haven’t been deliberate in considering what they signed up for when they took on a leadership role. Now, given the challenges that leaders will face today and over the next decade, it’s critical that this idea of a leadership contract becomes explicit and that leaders appreciate what they actually signed up for in their roles.

In 2013, when the first edition of The Leadership Contract was released, these ideas immediately resonated in the marketplace. No matter where I went, or whom I talked to, I repeatedly heard the same thing: “This is what we’ve been missing. We need people in leadership roles to understand what it means to be a leader. They need to understand that they’ve signed up for something important, and we need them to step up and be accountable.” “They can’t simply be committed to only the technical parts of their roles; they need to fully commit to being accountable leaders.” Those who read my book described it as a mindset book about leadership because it helps leaders understand how they need to think about their roles and what they must pay attention to every single day.

I believe this idea of leadership accountability resonated because I’ve come to appreciate that as humans, we expect more of people in leadership roles. We hope that they will step up and lead, create exceptional organizations, and even make the world a better place. When they succeed, we praise them, admire them, and even want to emulate them. However, when they fail, misbehave, or are simply mediocre, we feel a sense of disappointment, despair, and even disgust.

As a leader, you need to understand that you signed a leadership contract and that it comes with four terms and conditions (see Figure I.1). Let’s explore them now.

Figure I.1 The Four Terms of The Leadership Contract