Mastering Leadership by R. Anderson & W. Adams - Book Summary
This is my summary of the book ‘Mastering Leadership’ by R. Anderson & W. Adams.
What it means to be a good leader
Leadership has more to do with character, courage, and conviction than with specific skills or competencies.
When we describe great leadership, we describe something beyond skill, capability, and competence. Leadership requires wisdom, self-knowledge, and character development.
We use words like
Integrity
Honesty
Passion
Vision
Risk-taking
Fearlessness
Compassion
Courage
Authenticity
Collaboration
Self-awareness
Selflessness
Purposefulness
Humility
Intuition
Wisdom
Master both task execution and relationship capability.
If leaders effectively organize and execute to accomplish tasks, and establish great relationships, they will be effective.
If leaders are ineffective on either task execution or relationship capability, their leadership effectiveness diminishes
The inner game of leadership runs the outer game.
The inner game is what drives the leader, how they define themselves, what is important to them, what they believe.
The inner game consists of:
Our meaning-making system - what we use to make sense of the world.
Our decision-making system - how we analyze, decide, and act.
Our values and spiritual beliefs
Our level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence
The mental models we use to understand reality, think, act, and create
The internal beliefs and assumptions making up our personal identity
The outer game of leadership consists of:
Leadership process:
The domain of management. The allocation and effective utilization of resources: people, time, and money.
To effectively utilize resources, leaders deploy management systems that include business cadence, strategy, direction, execution, process, metrics, and decision making.
Leadership competencies
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The four universal promises of leadership
Set the right direction and create meaningful work
Tie the company’s direction to the work at hand in meaningful ways
Every employee should have a clear line of sight into how their contribution makes a difference
Engage all stakeholders and hold them accountable for performance
When you set challenging goals, specifically address the reasons to work towards these goals, each individual’s role, and the significance of each person’s contribution
Recognize individual and collective contribution toward the goals because there is a strong link between recognizing individual strengths and talents and capturing their potential as full, committed participation
Ensure that processes and systems facilitate focus and execution
Keep the organization focused on execution
Leaders break this promise in four ways:
By not providing the resources (time, people, money) necessary to ensure execution
By allowing the organization to be distracted by yet another “silver bullet” or “bright shiny object” (an attractive lower priority)
By having too little or an ineffective process in place so everything is done “for the first time” every time
By being so process-bound that execution becomes secondary to the process
Repeatedly breaking this promise creates a culture of frustration, resentment, and hopelessness. Then, cynicism-by-experience regarding all strategic change initiatives poisons the well - even for new leaders.
Lead effectively - maintain relationships of trust to achieve and sustain desired results
Commit to enhancing your effectiveness by engaging in ongoing personal and professional development
—
The leadership circle profile:
(It will make sense with the notes below about reactive and creative leadership.)
Reactive leadership
The reactive mind holds beliefs about ourselves that equate our self-worth and security with being perceived a certain way:
Worth and Security = X (where X is a strength)
Security = X
I am okay if I = X
To be myself is to be X
The stronger your reactive tendencies, the less likely you will be experienced as an effective leader. Most adults operate from the reactive mind. Reactive leaders habitually seek safety over purpose (“staying within a comfort zone”).
The limitations of reactive leaders come not from their giftedness, or lack thereof, but because they run their strengths through a reactive structure of mind. This creates liabilities.
3 core reactive types - heart / will / head:
Each of us is a unique blend of all three. While each of us has all these strengths, we tend to have one that is primary.
Heart type - complying:
Heart types move towards others to form relationship bonds. They establish their core identity in relationship to people. They establish their self-worth and security by ingratiating themselves with others. Their self-worth and security depend on others liking, loving, or accepting them, rather than what they intend and want.
Core beliefs:
The core beliefs that make up this type are, “I am okay if you like, love, and/or accept me,” and “I am not okay if you do not.”
The core fear is rejection.
Strength of this type:
Moves towards others to establish relationships as its first priority.
Becomes loyal, hard-working, gifted at creating harmony, sensing others’ needs, and helping and supporting others.
Limitations at the reactive stage:
Heart types give up too much power in order to be liked.
Since not being accepted, loved, and liked feels like death, this type of person tends not to push controversial issues, to be conflict-averse, and thereby fails to lead.
The more we are defined by other people’s approval, the more likely we will fear rejection and be risk-averse, indecisive, cowardly, and compliant.
If X = Conform, we become conservative, which measures the extent to which the leader thinks and acts conservatively, follows procedure, and lives within the prescribed rules of the organization with which they are associated.
If X = Liked, we become pleasing, which measures the leader’s need to seek other’s support and approval in order to feel secure and worthwhile as a person. People with strong needs for approval tend to base their degree of self-worth on their ability to gain others’ favor and confirmation.
If X = Accepted, we become (overly) belonging, which measures the leader’s need to conform, follow the rules, and meet the expectations of those in authority. It measures the extent to which they go along to get along, thereby compressing the full extent of their creative power into culturally accepted boxes.
If X = Submissive, we become passive, which measures the degree to which the leader gives away their power to others and to circumstances outside of their control. It is a measure of the extent to which they believe that they are not the creator of their life experience, that their efforts do not make much difference, and that they lack the power to create the future they want.
Will type - controlling:
The opposite of the heart type. They move against others. Rather than ingratiating themselves to others, they compete in order to triumph over others. They take up power and use it to get ahead.
Core beliefs:
The core beliefs that make up this type are, “I am okay if I am the one who gets results, if I am perfect, if I move up the organization, and if I am the one in charge and in control.”
Their core fear is failure. Failing at anything, or even coming up short, feels like death.
Strength of this type:
Their inner drive to make things happen and get results. They are naturally gifted at using their personal power to accomplish and create what they want.
They push for aggressive growth, accomplish important priorities, and organize vast resources toward the accomplishment of a worthy objective.
Limitations at the reactive stage:
They take up power at the expense of others and see others as resources to be used to accomplish what they want. They do not delegate, develop teamwork, build trust, or mentor others gracefully because trusting others with results risks failure.
The more we define ourselves by our results, the more likely we fear failure and fail to delegate, collaborate, build teamwork, and allow others to engage meaningfully and creatively. We will tend to relate to others in autocratic and controlling ways.
If X = Perfect results, we become perfectionistic, which measures the leader’s need to attain flawless results and perform to extremely high standards in order to feel secure and worthwhile as a person. Worth and security are equated with being perfect, performing constantly at heroic levels, and succeeding beyond all expectations.
If X = Work, we become (overly) driven, which measures the extent to which the leader is in overdrive. It is a measure of their belief that worth and security are tied to accomplishing a great deal through hard work. It measures their need to perform at a very high level in order to feel worthwhile as a person. A good work ethic is a strength of this style, provided that the leader keeps things in balance helping others achieve with their own achievement.
If X = Win, we become (overly) ambitious, which measures the extent to which the leader needs to get ahead, move up in the organization, and be better than others. Ambition is a powerful motivator. This scale assesses if that motivation is positive, furthering progress - or negative, becoming overly self-centered and competitive.
If X = In control, we become autocratic, which measures the leader’s tendency to be forceful, aggressive, and controlling. It measures the extent to which they equate self-worth and security to being powerful, in control, strong, dominant, invulnerable, or on top. Worth is measured through comparison; that is, having more income, achieving a higher position, being seen as a most/more valuable contributor, gaining credit, or being promoted.
Head type - protecting:
They move away from others in rational, analytical distance. They form their character structure around their gift of head - intellect. They are usually intellectually brilliant and quite rational. They seek knowledge and truth. They establish their sense of worth and personal security by demonstrating their analytical and critical capabilities. They remain in their head, staying above the fray, and provide rational explanations for what is going on around them.
Core beliefs:
Their self-worth and security depends on others seeing them as smart, knowledgeable, and superior.
The core beliefs that make up this type are, “I am okay if I am smart, self-sufficient, superior, and above it all and can find the flaws in others’ thinking,”
Strength of this type:
The ability to remain composed and rational amid chaos and conflict, analyzing what is going on from a safe, rational distance and providing brilliant analysis to complex and conflictual situations.
They bring the strength of the analytical mind to bear on complex problems. They stand apart to gain perspective and engage with unemotional calm, clarity, and often-needed insight.
Limitations at the reactive stage:
They play from the neck up. They are often experienced as cold, distant, disengaged, overly analytical, critical, or arrogant. Their core fear is vulnerability while life and leadership are inherently vulnerable. They protect themselves from vulnerability with the safety of the rational analytical world. Consequently, they tend to stay in their head and provide analysis, but often come across as being harshly critical, finding fault, and feigning superiority. They therefore fail to get the message across because others are put off by the delivery.
If we define ourselves on our intellectual capacity, we will fear vulnerability, fail to connect with others and acknowledge their brilliance, and relate to others in self-protecting, arrogant, analytically critical, and condescending ways.
If X = Superior, we become arrogant, which measures the leader’s tendency to project a large ego - behavior that is experienced as superior, egotistical, and self-centered.
If X = Right, we become critical, which measures the leader’s tendency to take a critical, questioning, and somewhat cynical attitude.
If X = Aloof, we become distant, which measures the leader’s tendency to establish a sense of personal worth and security through withdrawal, being superior and remaining aloof, emotionally distant, and above it all.
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Creative leadership
Creative leadership is much more effective than reactive leadership. Face the fact that following our own path often means disappointing others, risking failure, or contradicting the norms that you assume make you (as a reactive self) worthwhile, successful, and valuable.
The core organizing questions of the creative mind are:
Who am I, if I am not my ability to get results? (or any other strength)
What do I really want?
What would I do if I could? If I knew I cannot fail and will not be fired?
The creative mind orients on purpose. The heart of the creative mind is overarching passion. At its core is a constant focus on a desired future vision, and amid the current reality (with all its mixed messages and hurdles) taking authentic, collaborative action to bring that vision into being over time.
Our self-esteem, worth and security are in our own hands. We do not base our self-esteem, worth, and security on how others see us. We establish them, not by living up to others’ standards, but by living up to our own:
“My future is in your hands.” —> “I am responsible for, and capable of, creating my own future.”
“I am okay only if you always like or admire me.” —> “I am okay whether or not you like and admire me.”
“To be is to be successful, and, thus, failure is not an option.” —> “I create results; I am not my results. Failure and mistakes are part of this process of creating success.”
Creative patterns:
Relating - the critical leadership capability to relate well to others, build teams, collaborate and build trust, and mentor and develop people:
Caring connection, which measures the leader’s interest in and ability to form warm, caring relationships.
Fosters team play, which measures the leader’s ability to foster high-performance teamwork among team members who report to them, across the organization and within teams in which they participate.
Collaborator, which measures the extent to which the leader engages others in a manner that allows the parties involved to discover common ground.
Mentoring and developing, which measures the leader’s ability to develop others through mentoring and maintaining growth-enhancing relationships.
Interpersonal intelligence, which measures the interpersonal effectiveness with which the leader listens, engages in conflict and controversy, deals with the feelings of others, and manages their own feelings.
Self-awareness - balance and composure that result from highly-developed self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and ongoing learning and development:
Selfless leader, which measures the extent to which the leader pursues service over self-interest, where the need for credit and personal ambition is far less important than creating results that serve a common good.
Balance, which measures the leader’s ability to keep a healthy balance between business and family, activity and reflection, work and leisure - the tendency to be self-renewing and handle the stress of life without losing the self.
Composure, which measures the leader’s ability, in the midst of conflict and high-tension situations, to remain composed and centered and to maintain a calm, focused perspective.
Personal learner, which measures the degree to which the leader demonstrates a strong and active interest in learning and personal and professional growth. It measures the extent to which they actively and reflectively pursue growing in self-awareness, wisdom, knowledge, and insight.
Authenticity - the willingness to act with integrity to courageously tell the truth even when it’s risky, and the capability to relate to others in an authentic and high integrity manner:
Integrity, which measures how well the leader adheres to the set of values and principles that they espouse; that is, how well they can be trusted to “walk the talk”.
Courageous authenticity, which measures the leader’s willingness to take tough stands, bring up the “undiscussables” (risky issues the group avoids discussing), and openly deal with difficult relationship problems.
Systems awareness - the advanced leadership capability to think systemically and design organizational systems for higher performance:
Community concern, which measures the service orientation from which the leader leads. It measures the extent to which they link their legacy to service of community and global welfare.
Sustainable productivity, which measures the leader’s ability to achieve results in a way that maintains or enhances the overall long-term effectiveness of the organization. It measures how well they balance human/technical resources to sustain long-term high performance.
Systems thinker, which measures the degree to which the leader thinks and acts from a whole system perspective as well as the extent to which they make decisions in light of the long-term health of the whole system.
Achieving - the ability to envision and get results:
Strategic focus, which measures the extent to which the leader thinks and plans rigorously and strategically to ensure that the organization will thrive in the near and long term.
Purposeful & visionary, which measures the extent to which the leader clearly communicates and models commitment to personal purpose and vision.
Achieves results, which measures the degree to which the leader is goal-directed and has a track record of goal achievement and high performance.
Decisiveness, which measures the leader’s ability to make decisions on time and the extent to which they are comfortable moving forward in uncertainty.
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‘Mastering leadership’ also covered many more insightful topics. You’ll find them below in alphabetical order.
Communication
In every conversation, you have 3 objectives:
Increase understanding and buy-in
Achieve the desired outcome
Improve the relationship
Discerning purpose for what you do in life
Discern the purpose of your life. Great leaders stand for what matters and create it. Find out what it is you’re about, and be that. Follow your bliss.
Our purpose is not merely about our personal fulfilment. It is about contribution and service.
How to discern your purpose:
Discerning purpose is a practice of attention:
“The first step toward the fire is noticing how cold you are.” Learn to trust those moments of clarity when purpose is speaking.
When we sift the times we are most and least alive, we can extract the themes, patterns, and clues that forge our purpose:
If it brings you joy, do more of it. The purpose of our life is leaving clues in periods of joy, excitement, enthusiasm, meaning, and fulfilment. These are the times when we feel most alive.
Life is also speaking in the moments when we are least alive, when life is not working, when it is as bad as it gets, when we are miserable, bored, restless, and flat. Life is letting us know, in these periods, what is most intensely missing.
Description from “Letters to a young poet” by Rilke:
“You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me, and others before me. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts.”
“Now, since you have allowed me to advise you, I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.”
“Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: Must I write?”
“Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and testimony to it.”
Habits
Why do some habits stick and others fail? Your reactive internal beliefs are holding you back:
There is no risk-free path to creating the future we want. To lead transformation requires the biggest risk of all: that we change fundamentally.
Choosing to create outcomes that lie outside the bounds of our belief system produces conscious or unconscious anxiety, fear, doubt, and other forms of internal conflict. Reactive structure is designed to reduce this anxiety and so we typically default to old behavior, behavior consistent with our unseen current belief structure, behavior that was patterned to meet the expectations of the very current reality we are intending to change.
Unless, as we champion bold change, we do the work of seeing how we habitually return to old habits of behavior, and then explore the deeper self-defining assumptions that drive these behaviors, we will likely undermine the change to which we aspire.
Learning
Mastery in anything requires well-practiced capability mediated by a highly mature interiority: a well-honed “outer game” arising on a highly evolved “inner game”.
The inner game runs the outer game.
Organizational change
Organizations do not transform - people do:
Many well-intentioned improvement efforts and transformation initiatives fall short of the intended results because leaders fail to account for the transformation in consciousness required to create and sustain high performance.
Much “resistance to change” is actually the struggle people have with reorganizing their identity. People need help and support to make this inner journey. They seldom get it in change efforts.
The inner dynamics of identity are powerful forces. They operate at both individual levels (who I am) and at collective/cultural levels (who we are). For most of us, these powerful forces were organized years ago. They have decades of momentum behind them. If these internal dynamics are ignored, they can easily scuttle the most well-intentioned change process.
You need a functional leadership team to be successful:
Without a mature, highly evolved, and fully functioning leadership system, transformation efforts will not succeed - PERIOD.
Problem solving
Balance intuition and rational analysis.
Leaders must learn to use data and rational analysis as far as it can go and then listen to their gut, their intuitive knowing about the best or right thing to do.
“I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logic analysis… Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.” - Steve Jobs
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Einstein
“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.” - Einstein
Product vision
Distilling vision is the ongoing discipline of translating purpose into a vision of our desired future, both individually and collectively. Vision is the centerpiece of effective leadership.
Five elements of vision:
Vision is personal. Your vision should flow from your personal commitment to higher purpose.
Vision is specific. FOr vision to be useful it needs to be specific enough to set direction, focus strategy, drive action, and guide decision making. We need to specify the result you have in mind, in enough detail that everyone knows when the vision is attained.
Vision is strategic (but it is not strategy). Strategy charts the course of how to get from wherever we are to the vision. Vision is the capstone of strategy, a description of the business, as we most want it to exist at some point in the future. Vision is a response to the current reality of the marketplace, but it is not limited by the constraints of that reality.
Vision is lofty. It appeals to our deepest values, higher aspirations, and personal purposes.
Vision is collective.
Self-awareness
The most powerful beliefs are the beliefs and internal assumptions by which we establish our identity. These powerful self-defining beliefs are formed:
Throughout our life from emotionally powerful, positive, or painful experience
By important people in our lives - parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, mentors, political leaders - and by institutional, national, and cultural affiliations.
The structure of these beliefs is:
Worth = X
Security = X
I am OK if I = X
To be is to be X
Where X is a strength
As we adopt those assumptions, we live by them and reinforce them. The brain puts them on autopilot so that we do not have to think about them anymore. They are just seen as true.
Maturing requires us to observe, reflect on, and modify the invisible assumptions embedded in ourselves. We do not see them, we see through them, and we are subject to them until we can make them an object of our reflection.
If you are clear on your vision, and you are repeatedly falling short of achieving that vision, the highest leverage place you can look is into your belief system.
Example:
“One of my deeply embedded assumptions is that I must be perfectly successful in order to be okay. I come by this belief honestly, and most of the experience that created this belief was positive. For example, when I was 13, I tried out for the football team. I had never played football, and most of the guys on the team had been playing for a few years. I did not know that you needed to work hard to get noticed by the coaches, so I stood patiently on the sidelines waiting to be put on the practice field. As such, I was not seen as a player. Since the coaches did not have the heart to cut me, I ended up on the “taxi squad.” The few of us on this squad practiced together on another field. The real team had eight male coaches. We had Mrs. Dixon, a nice lady who knew nothing about football.”
“At this time, I was not moving in the circles in which I wanted to move. The cool kids were on the football team, and as long as I was on this taxi squad, I had little chance of getting accepted into their group. To make matter worse, all the cheerleaders practiced near where the team practiced, and I did not have their attention either. I was a nobody.”
“One day, Mrs. Dixon did not show up and the coaches were forced to allow the taxi squad to practice with the team. What happened that day changed my life. I was playing left defensive tackle and after a play in which I must have done something right, one of the coaches picked me up, lifted me above his head and screamed into my face, “That was great, do that again!”
“I was so unaware of what I just did that I asked him what I had done. He took a personal interest in me for the rest of the practice. He taught me how to play that position. Soon, I was wreaking havoc on the offense. That week I went from Taxi squad to captain of the team. I started on offense and defense for the rest of the season. I also moved into the center of the boys with whom I wanted to be friends. I even piqued the interest of the cheerleaders. I went from nobody to somebody in one practice.”
“I learned that day that I am somebody if I am first string, captain of the team. I learned that I had to be the best, first string, or else I would be a nobody.”
“This story illustrates how the driven nature of my personality began to form. I could tell other stories about how this drive was refined into the need to be flawless at everything I did. So, I entered adult life believing that my worth and self-esteem, the success and security of my future, depended utterly on being flawlessly successful all the time.”
“That belief served me well. I worked very hard at everything and created early success in my career. The belief worked well until it met its limits when, in order to scale the business growing up around me, I had to teach others how to do what I had learned to do.”
Self-management
Avoid shadow projection:
Shadow projection: seeing in others a projection of our shadow self and making them into enemies, and not seeing all the damage that our shadow, individually and collectively, is causing.
Ask yourself:
What’s your contribution to the problems that so frustrate you?
How are you the enemy? The enemy you see in others?
Stakeholder management
The fastest way to move a group into alignment is to get them focused on a vision that they collectively care about. When members of the team can see that they can pursue their personal purposes by achieving the organization’s vision, they fall into alignment.
Strategy
Culture, when it is ineffective, eats strategy for lunch. The number one reason for failure of strategy is not that it was poorly conceived. It is because the collective leadership effectiveness to execute that strategy is inadequate.
Systems thinking
Great leaders have the capacity to think systemically and to design systems for high performance.
Structure determines performance.
Refrain from reacting to symptoms.
What changes systems is leveraged action: strategically focused action aimed at particular points of leverage that may be far removed in time and space from the symptoms that infuriate us at the moment.
A business viewed through a systems lens:
System 1: Leadership
The leadership system ensures the effective functioning of the other systems.
Ensures that organization identity is defined; this happens by providing direction and strategy, and ensuring alignment. Leaders address 3 main questions:
Vision and value. What unique value do we bring to our customers to gain competitive advantage? What do we do and for whom? Why?
Strategy and approach. In what distinctive manner do we fulfil the unique needs of our customers and stakeholders? What strategy supports the vision for achieving sustainable results and competitive advantage?
Structure and alignment. What is the designed alignment of structure and strategy, technology and people, practices and processes, leadership and culture, measurement and control?
System 2: Communication
System 3: Accountability:
Performance accountability systems clarify what is important and what is expected of people. They align consequences for efforts with actual performance.
System 4: Delivery
System 5: Human Performance:
Attract, develop, and retain the most talented people
System 6: Measurement
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