“A leader must earnestly pursue the question, How can I improve my human qualities? “

—Kazuo Inamori
Founder and chairman emeritus,
Kyocera Corporation, Japan

CHAPTER 2
Five Distinctive Qualities of Leadership

Being asked to fundamentally change the rules in how we think, act, and operate as leaders may seem to be a tall order for many of us. At the same time, there is something familiar about being called to change ourselves in order to lead the way. In times of both crisis and opportunity, leaders are often asked to reinvent themselves; to redirect their attention in some significant way in order for them to champion a transformation of some kind. This is one of those times we’re being called on to put our differences to work to forge a new path.

As I admit it, my mind again recalls another poignant time in history in my own leadership life when I was reminded that it is the role of leadership to pioneer new trails so others will feel safe to follow. The story may remind you of events in your own life and work.

In many respects, it was a time that seemed a lot like today’s environment. There was great upheaval and change in the world, a time clearly marked by the need for change and unprecedented new demands on leaders. Everything around us was outdated. Old notions of command and control no longer worked to our advantage and needed to be refocused. Much like this time, our thinking needed to be shifted in order to begin a new phase of growth:

THE CALL

I found myself sitting with twenty or thirty other men and women in a conference room. Each of us had been called together—flown in from different locations—for what was to be an important assignment. It had an air of Mission: Impossible. There was crisis at IBM with a lot at stake, involving people’s lives and well-being—people we knew—our customers, our friends, and our families. None of us in the room knew the others that had been invited to this meeting or specifically why we were chosen to be there or what would be asked of us. I remember clearly that the room had a tense feel of uncertainty. With a start, an executive entered the room. He had a piercing gaze as he seemed to look into each of our faces before he said a word. I’m not sure what his impact was on others, but when he spoke, I’ve forever remembered what he said, looking directly at me, delivering his message. “You have been invited here—at this time in our history—because of all you’ve enjoyed.” A lot flew through my mind in that instant. He was right. I had enjoyed a great deal. Dreams I had never thought possible at one time had come true for me as a woman and as a leader. My work was interesting, with challenge and opportunity. Most of all, it offered great promise for more to learn, more to become—and if I was reading the message right, I had been called here to somehow give back. Soon we discovered that our mission was to help the company take its first steps in making a course correction that ultimately led to IBM’s transformation that began back in the 1990s. It was a moment that each of us was being called on to step up to be on the front line of change. It called for us to be adaptable and willing to change our thinking and actions to serve as pioneers of a new era. It was clear that we would be contributing to something far bigger and more far-reaching than any of us could do alone or even collectively, but we would join other leaders, putting our differences to work across the country and the world to help find the new paths of the future.

The need for change is calling us in a similar way. We are the ones—the leaders, the innovators, the aspiring leaders, and individual contributors. “We are all being invited to bring all we already know and strengthen our portfolio of skills with Five Distinctive Qualities of Leadership needed for putting our differences to work.

These five qualities aren’t the next iteration of leadership tenets. Instead, they invite you to put a “laser-beam” focus on how you think, operate, and behave—considering that every word you speak, every thought you express, every attitude you reveal has a powerful influence on achieving results.

The Five Distinctive Qualities of Leadership also in themselves are “stretching lessons” for us all. They will tug at your consciousness from a number of vantage points. They will mean casting off some bad habits you’ve perhaps been overlooking—maybe creating some new habits you’ve needed for a while. Stepping into these leadership practices relies on the truth in that old adage “Practice makes permanent.” Are you up to the challenge?

Let’s look closely at what it asks of us to put our differences to work and what distinguishes this new level of thinking and action, as well as key behaviors that express them. You’ll see that each quality complements the knowledge you already have in our own leadership “toolbox,” while guiding you to explore shifts in thinking and behavior. These changes will strengthen your influence, enhance how you connect with people different from you, transform how you lead, and work as a catalyst to achieve higher levels of achievement across your organization.

FIVE DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP NEEDED FOR PUTTING OUR DIFFERENCES TO WORK

Each one of the leadership qualities described here is intentionally defined using simple words, so they are easy to remember. Each definition redefines the meaning behind these common words for a new time and the new realities in business and society. As you consider each of them, think about how you might change or adapt them to serve the unique needs of your organization and leadership style.

1. Makes diversity an organizational priority. This quality flips everything we have been conditioned to believe. You know, let’s put our differences aside, we are more alike than we are unalike; look at all we have in common. These remain valuable truths, but when we stop there, our differences are made secondary, sometimes brushed away as if they don’t matter. The bigger oversight is that they aren’t even recognized as an advantageous stockpile of kindling to ignite for new ideas, breakthrough thinking—the drivers of creativity, innovation, and invention at any level, in any organization or community. Putting our differences to work requires us to do much more than celebrate differences; or merely saying we appreciate them or tolerate them. It means consciously elevating the importance of our diversity and creating an environment that makes it a catalyst for success. Instead, we need to look for differences, welcome them, and utilize them for the good of all, consciously making our differences a priority—part of the mix—for any mainstream practices like problem solving, team building, and decision making. Albert Einstein helped us understand why this is important when he said, “You can’t solve problems with the same thinking you used to create them.”

2. Gets to know people and their differences. This quality expands our thinking, enabling us to see the many dimensions of diversity in a new light. This requires us to respond to the global realities of the twenty-first century by updating, upgrading, and broadening our knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the many dimensions of diversity. Seeing our differences as organizational assets is new to many of us. More often, anything to do with diversity is deemed a human resources issue or not considered as more than nice to know in mainstream business activities. Putting our differences to work means consciously developing a curiosity, a reservoir of knowledge, and a day-to-day practice that masters how, when, and where to tap into these invaluable resources of unique ethnic origins, cultural perspective, generational insight, global know-how, marketplace understanding, fresh new thinking, challenging new motivations, creative talents, and a wide range of life experiences. In turn, recognizing and appreciating diversity in its broadest sense will help us more effectively work together, learn together, live together, improve our organizations, reach new levels of success, serve customers in more personalized ways, build strong communities, and create breakthroughs in the quality of life for all (see the illustration).

3. Enables rich communication. This quality defies the notion of unilateral streams of thought and closes the gap between layers of hierarchy within organizations of every kind that destroy opportunities for putting our differences to work. It relies on approaching problems with a “beginner’s mind”— even as an expert. It reaches beyond asking questions or inviting input, when the past shows little was heard or acted upon. It places a new level of value on what others have to say and ups the ante on responsibility and openness to listen with a new consciousness of mining for the better idea. It dramatically broadens the notion of open, honest two-way communications. How about three-way, four-way, or across-the-world communications? It adds a requirement of trusting ourselves, and each other, enough to engage in action-directed dialogue, across disciplines—welcoming outsiders—in new and different forms that accelerate change and boost productivity in solving problems.

4. Holds personal responsibility as a core value. This quality acknowledges the shift from “institutional loyalty” of the past to the reality of being “free agents” or perhaps other more fluid, mobile kinds of arrangements we’ve not yet imagined in the marketplaces, workplaces, and communities that are in a continual state of churn. What is added to our way of operating as individuals is the essential quality that Nelson Mandela affirmed: “With freedom comes responsibility.” It is a sense of personal responsibility that needs to be part of our portable portfolio that goes with us when we move from one job to another at a new company or within an organization, out into the community, or into some new region of the world. Putting our differences to work is greatly enhanced when personal responsibility is a common thread woven tightly into everyone’s fabric. This doesn’t happen automatically. We have to consciously install a sense of personal responsibility into our mindset, so that we are ready for action wherever we find ourselves with an opportunity to influence a positive outcome of any endeavor. Then we have to work hard to instill the habits of personal responsibility through practice so that they are ever-present in all we do. Then, we have an obligation to support, inspire, and encourage each other’s mastery of this skill. This might mean acknowledgment; it might mean calling one another on our behavior in a constructive way.

5. Establishes mutualism as the final arbiter. This quality builds upon its definition: a doctrine that mutual dependence is necessary for social well-being. It is also essential for organizational well-being. So this quality applies this concept to all aspects of work and life, as well as all types of organizations. It creates a new definition of success that has a clear “yardstick” that serves as the final arbiter of all plans, innovations, decisions, products, services, programs, profit making, et cetera: everyone benefits and no one is harmed. In other words, it creates win, win, win—I win; you win; we all win. Building the future on a foundation of mutualism changes everything we do. It asks more of us, but the benefits are significant. It demands that we consciously make a routine practice of first evaluating our actions, behavior, decisions, thinking, and new ideas with a thoughtful inspection of their implications and benefits to all concerned. It adds a new element of consideration to every business or strategic plan. It brings out the best in us all, reversing the traits Mahatma Gandhi warned were perilous to humanity, so that our behavior and actions reflect the values of mutualism: Wealth with hard work, knowledge with principle, commerce with morality, science with humanity, pleasure with conscience.

In summary, there is really nothing particularly complex about putting our differences to work. However, it does call for us to operate and think differently. It has much more to do with being aware, adaptive, and willing to make a shift in consciousness. It asks us to pull together what we already know into an integrated supply of ready-to-use knowledge that we have generally kept compartmentalized for far too long. It asks us to take a more thoughtful look at one another—to consider others in everything we do. It calls for enlisting and developing a rich diversity of skills, along with a willingness to apply them to new and different problems and situations than we might be used to doing.

Finally, the motivation for putting our differences to work is best summed up in one of my favorite stories.

Some years back, my company had the honor of partnering with Hewlett Packard to produce its first global diversity video. It was an internationally recognized, award-winning film called The Best Place. One genera manager we interviewed for the film left a lasting impression. We asked him why he had gone to such great lengths to bring differences into his organization and put them to work. He replied,

“When you have ten engineers sitting around a table—and they are all six feet tall, weigh 250 pounds, have an engineering degree, have been around the company for eighteen years, and you give them a problem to solve—they will solve it the same way every time. If this works, fine! In our case, it wasn’t working.

…If you want to get something different, you have to do something different. “

A NEW BEGINNING FOR LEADERS

Adding these Five Distinctive Qualities of Leadership to your leadership portfolio will take a conscious effort, time to practice, and a conviction to renew yourself in a kind of on-the-job, holistic overhaul. Most of it will be done less with words and more with conscious action. It creates an opportunity for a leader’s new beginning. We only get a few of these in a lifetime. When the opportunity arrives, usually unexpected, it is up to us to be adaptive and willing to step up to lead the way down a new path, rewiring all we have down pat. Perhaps you’ll feel a sense of awkwardness at first as you put your own signature on the five qualities that have been introduced, but the more you practice, the more skill you’ll develop. Soon it will become second nature. You’ll be able to measure your own progress, just by seeing the change in results and how people respond to you as you gain new levels of trust and respect. It is, however, a bit of a quiet victory. No bands play.

Unfortunately, many leaders overlook the chance for renewal and settle into the sameness of their entrenched routines. With our organizations, our communities, and our world buzzing with opportunities for innovation, problem solving, leading in our respective fields of influence, and begging for our best performance, allowing yourself to become closed and stagnant is hardly recommended.

Two friends of mine, Tom and Karen, built a sailboat with dreams of sailing around the world. It took them nearly eight years to finish the boat, leave their full-time jobs, and take off. After a little over a year sailing, they shipwrecked in Fiji and in minutes lost everything. One night after they returned home, Tom shared a poignant moment about how Karen had had a meltdown, as the realization settled in that there was nothing left of what she had known. His response was moving. “Karen, how many times do people get the chance to take all they’ve learned and start over?”

Interestingly, there are parallels to this story and how some leaders feel today. All that they have known is changing. They invested a great deal of time and energy becoming leaders and building their “boss capital”—developing a style, their way of doing business; their reputation, perhaps as the cynic in the group that has been applauded; or maybe their ruthlessness that has been left unchecked; or perhaps they consistently got the job done with an expected wake of debris and a toll on others—or maybe it’s just a quiet complacency that no one has mentioned. They have their well-known preferences for working with those most like them and are definitely more skilled in driving the bottom line, than they are at bringing out the best in people. Well, that leadership model has “shipwrecked,” and it’s giving us all a chance to start over—to take what we know and apply it to a whole new emerging, ever-changing environment that needs more than what we offer today.

This unexpected evolution of leadership—or at least, this unnoticed evolution, until recently by some—is not completely new. It is true that both the opportunities and the challenges we face in nearly every direction are vastly different than at any time in history, but the human dimension to leadership remains the same. The best leaders across time seemed to emulate their unique version of five distinctive qualities that put differences to work—including the associated behaviors and actions—all quite naturally. Most often, this happened when they stepped up to some compelling call for leadership that led them to reach for something greater than themselves, as all of us are being asked to do now. For example, it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln lost himself in the importance of ending slavery that his life took on a significance he had never dreamed of. By one account of his renewal, “He literally was reborn; he became a new creature.” The Boston Daily Transcript reported on October 13, 1858, describing Lincoln’s new level of leadership as he was observed in the Lincoln-Douglas presidential debates:

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The Boston Daily Transcript

October 13,1858

“Lincoln is a tall, lank man, awkward and, apparently, diffident, but when he spoke he was no longer awkward or ungainly; he was graceful, bold, and commanding. For about forty minutes he spoke with a power we have seldom heard equaled. There was grandeur in his thoughts, comprehensiveness in his arguments, and a blinding force in his conclusions which were perfectly irresistible. … every eye was fixed upon the speaker, and all gave serious attention.”

Regardless of stature and station, we are all standing at the intersection of a different new world. In order to accelerate our pace, reap the benefits, and share the leadership for opening the way, we have to step into these new distinctive human qualities and wear them as a coat of arms for the twenty-first century. It will involve recharging and refreshing all that you know, while incorporating a constant flow of refinements to establish and adapt new habits in the way you think and operate. It will no doubt result in many leaders being seen in a new light. This happens to people as others respond to their care and the meaningful contributions—and witness that their leader is fostering a workplace, a marketplace, and a community that reflect the involvement of all its people.

When I think of leadership renewal, Peter Drucker, the prolific business author, well known as the father of modern management, always comes to mind. He had a straight way of talking that left you feeling the true weight of responsibility one carries as a leader. If he were here to help you take on this higher calling of leadership, he would surely get right to the point, stating clearly what he thought in plain talk, as he always did. He summed up the essence of what needs to be considered as you begin to put the Five Distinctive Qualities of Leadership into practice in a message he left behind:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Surely, he would also remind you of the competencies he felt would be most essential for you to change your leadership habits: listening, communicating, reengineering your mistakes, and subordinating your ego to the task at hand.

HOW TO BEGIN YOUR LEADERSHIP RENEWAL

The way to begin is best illustrated by a story told to me by Frances Hesselbein, chair of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-Profit Management) and recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has been a trusted mentor, teacher, and role model for me as a leader. I also saw her tell this story to a room of 2,800 leaders at HP, where, as with Abraham Lincoln, “every eye was fixed upon her, and all gave serious attention to her message.” People still remember it and quote it.

FRANCES HESSELBEIN

I was caught in New York City traffic on the way to the airport for a flight to Switzerland. I was thinking about the seventy-three men and women—the key staff members of an international organization I would be working with the next week. They were coming from their posts all over the world and from many cultures, races, languages and backgrounds. I thought how I could open my session on leadership in a way that would connect with the rich mix of culture, race, and ethnicity.

I looked beside me at a bus that also was stalled in traffic. On the side of the bus was a big advertisement—not the usual one. Just a big white placard with four lines:

To achieve greatness:

Start where you are.

Use what you have.

Do what you can.

—Arthur Ashe

It was providential. I took this message from a distinguished North American sportsman, humanitarian, and author, at the tragic end of his life dying of an AIDS-tainted blood transfusion, to people who deal every day with the most difficult human conditions and circumstances, often with massive needs, limited supplies and too few workers. Arthur Ashe’s message connected with the realities of their lives. It made sense in any language and it traveled around the world when we said good-bye.

The answers to “How?” and “What?” often are right there in front of us. It just takes a leader with open eyes to recognize it and a willingness to act. Peter Drucker has a nice way of putting it also:

“Make your contribution.

Everything else is a diversion.”

Are you ready?