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On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Why Follow A Leader?: 1. Constancy

Bennis says, "The underlying issue in leading from voice is trust--in fact, I believe that truth is the underlying issue in not only getting people on your side, but having them stay there."  He goes on to identify four ingredients leaders have that generate and sustain trust.  They are:

1.  Constancy, 2. Congruity, 3. Reliability and 4. Integrity.

Let's take them one at a time.

1. Constancy.  The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary defines constancy as "a steadfastness of mind under duress."  A number of leaders come to mind when thinking about that quality.  Joshua is a classic.  Moses had died, Joshua was in charge.  No one of military age who had left Egypt was left alive.  God says to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous.  Be careful to obey all the laws my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go."  Joshua did and he was.  That was good for Joshua.  But why should the Hebrew nation continue to follow him?  After all, they did have quite a reputation of murmuring and then doing what they thought was right in their own eyes.

The word, constancy, is not used much today, particularly in reference to leaders.  To me it means, keeping the hand on the wheel, focus, purposed determination.  It's different than stubborn which is more about self than others.  Constancy is a quality of dependability.  Bennis says this about constancy, "Whatever surprises leaders themselves may face, they don't create any for the group.  Leaders are all of a piece; they stay the course."

What makes up constancy?  There has to be courage, which is doing what is right regardless of the circumstances or consequences.  There has to be bravery; doing what is right regardless of personal dangers.  Constancy requires a passionate cause, a sound value system, focus, the capacity to see the big picture and a deep care for those the leader is responsible for.  But the quality can't be just being calm.  Medication will do that.  It isn't even what has been described as a non-anxious presence or serenity, yet that is certainly a quality in constancy.  Constancy, it seems, is not just an internal peace but requires action, like love and compassion, to prove its presence.

When all is blowing up and crashing down the leader who displays constancy simply displays the congruity of past words in calmer times with their present action.  Constant leaders are stable, calming influences in times of crisis who display the soundness and conviction of their deep held beliefs. 

The exercise of constancy models those same qualities to those who follow.  In today's headlines we see what constancy isn't.  It evidences as corruption, lies, broken promises and duplicity.  How long will it take for the people of Illinois to trust state politicians again?  How long will it take for America to trust the captains of Wall Street?  How long will it take before we trust the executives of auto manufacturers, insurance companies, banks and mortgage companies again?  Constancy was certainly not seen in their excessive actions in good times and was reinforced in the collapse of the companies they were hired to be stewards of.  Shame on them for their failure to constantly care for those in their trust. 

We follow leaders first because we believe in their words.  We continue to follow them because we trust in their capacity to lead in tough times because of their actions.

Joshua was constant.  The Hebrew nation knew it.  Though we may not recognize the walls of Jericho they are there and we need to be constant for the sake of those we serve.

Question for Reflection:  What would it take for you to veer from your stated and demonstrated values?  How much emotional or physical pain would you be willing to endure in order to be constant?  People who follow you may be asking that question of you.

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Four Ingredients-Curiousity and Daring

4. Curiousity and Daring   Bennis previously talked about four essential competencies—1. engaging others by creating a shared meaning, 2. having a distinctive voice, 3. having integrity, and 4. having adaptive capacity.  He now adds to that with four ingredients that constitute an effective leader.  The first is a guiding vision.  The second is passion.  The third is integrity.  The fourth is curiousity and daring.

Bennis says, "Leaders wonder about everything, want to learn as much as they can, are willing to take risks, experiment, try new things.  They do not worry about failure, but embrace errors, knowing they will learn from them."  The ability of a leader to ask questions is not an expression of doubt but an unrelenting unwillingness to accept the status quo as an acceptable answer or solution.  This is one of the most telling discriminators between a manager mind and a leader mind.  The manager mind wants to control, create predictability, order and prevent the unknown from happening.  The leader mind is unwilling to accept today's answer as anything more than a reference guide to tomorrow's unknown challenges.  The leader mind knows today's answers are totally inadequate to properly and relevantly respond to tomorrows challenges.

Every good leader has within him the discipline of a manager and every good manager also has the spark of leadership.  Leadership is the capacity to influence others.  Management is the ability to create order.  To be a good leader, you must be disciplined in both.

A manager mind asks "what," the leader mind asks "how" and "why."  A successful spiritual leader's curiosity goes below the surface of "nickels and noggins." The successful spiritual leader wants to know how a successful ministry functions successfully.  The effective spiritual leader wants to know how they  deal with conflict, change, risk, decision making, power struggles and alignment/misalignment issues.  They want to know when ministry staff and volunteers are failing to perform effectively, how do they address the issue?  How do successful ministry leaders plan for succession, build teams that last and frame, form and influence the culture internally and in the community where they minister.  An effective leader is never satisfied with today's answers and is never fully fulfilled--knowing something more and better can be done to make the ministry more effective, more productive, more efficient, more spiritually rooted in their reason for existence.

A successful leader is willing to challenge but not be defient, take risks but not be reckless and ask questions without sowing seeds of doubt.  Curiousity and daring; essential ingredients for leaders of influence.

Questions for Reflection:  When things in ministry are going well, am I satisfied or challenged? 

When things in ministry are not going well do I look for tried and true solutions or am I more inclined to be open for new ideas? 

When is the best time to be curious and daring--when things are going well or when faced with challenges.  In your experience how has your answer proven to be correct or unsatisfactory? 

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Four Ingredients-Integrity

3. Integrity  Bennis previously talked about four essential competencies—1. engaging others by creating a shared meaning, 2. having a distinctive voice, 3. having integrity, and 4. having adaptive capacity.  He now adds to that with four ingredients that constitute an effective leader.  The first is a guiding vision.  The second is passion.  The third is integrity.

Interestingly, Bennis lists integrity twice--as a competency and as an essential ingredient.  Did he forget and mindlessly repeat himself or was there something more there?  I'll give him the credit of having a point to make.  When he talks of integrity as a competency he's talking about doing integrity.  Now, when he talks about it as an ingredient he's talking about being integrity.

What's the difference?  Bennis doesn't make a significant distinction in the book.  So here's my take.  The Apostle, James, asks in the second chapter of his epistle, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?".   In the same vein we can ask, what good is it if a person knows the right thing to do but fails to do it?  James concludes the thought by saying, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (NIV)  In other words, the being without a corresponding evidence of doing is evidence of death. 

While it appears that Bennis' order of competencies before ingredients seems reversed, he's actually consistent with James.  In essesnce, what Bennis is saying is, show me the consistent competency of integrity and I'll show you the ingredient of a core of integrity as well.

What is integrity?  Wrapped up in the meaning includes a soundness of moral character and separately a state of being whole.  Merging those two meanings gives us a sense that integrity is having our "stuff" together.  The opposite is being in a floating state of disarray when it comes to having an understanding of who we are, what we do and why we do it and then the discipline to actually act on our beliefs.

What drives integrity?  I believe the capacity to consistently display integrity in our life requires the supernatural engine of Christ's virtue within us.  Anything less results in sincere intentions with inconsistent and situational success.

A simple fact; bad leaders lack integrity.  Poor leaders lack the personal discipline to allow the virture of Christ to overtake the "old man."  Evil leaders intentionally devise strategies to manipulate an impression of integrity but purposefully have none.  Integrity, the active expression of good character must be the DNA of good and effective leaders.

Question for Reflection: How is my integrity reflected in the little acts of my life? 

What keeps the virtue of Christ within me from bursting through the "old man/woman" that are my carnal thoughts, fears, ambitions and desires/lusts?

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Four Ingredients-Passion

2. Passion  Bennis previously talked about four essential competencies—1. engaging others by creating a shared meaning, 2. having a distinctive voice, 3. having integrity, and 4. having adaptive capacity.  He now adds to that with four ingredients that constitute an effective leader.  The first is a guiding vision.  The second is passion.

In 1965  there was a movie about Michelangelo and the painting of the Sistine Chapel.  Charlton Heston was Michelangelo and Rex Harrison played Pope Julius II.  It was titled “The Agony and the Ecstasy.”  It took Michelangelo 4 years to complete the ceiling fresco and there were many days when Michelangelo went head to head with the Pope over how the painting as envisioned by the artist would satisfy the personal and practical needs of the owner.  So it is with passion.  Passion usually isn't always pretty as the possessor of the passion struggles between the ideal and the "deal."  But in the end, a person with a guiding vision and no passion is merely a dreamer--perhaps like the priests of Jerusalem in Ezekiel's time, "Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice." (Ezekiel 33:32) 

Passion personalizes the dream and makes it happen in the midst of adversity and struggle.  There was, no doubt, many a day when Michelangelo didn't want to argue with Pope Julius or work the plaster and paint of a 12,000 square feet work of art.  But something drove him back each day.  It was the passion to make a dream become real--so real that five hundred years later people wait in lines for half a day for a fifteen minute view of a magnificent work of art.

So it is with passion.  Not merely enthusiasm or excitement or a positive attitude.  It is a drive that comes from deep within that if left unfulfilled will leave the person feeling anxious, restless and longing for the opportunity to see the work completed. 

A person with a guiding vision but no passion is merely a dreamer.  When it comes to leadership, people will inevitably follow someone who can articulate a compelling vision and then act that vision out with an intensity of commitment and clarity.  They have become “one tune Willies”—single minded and intensely focused on the message.   Much of what they say and write contains the thoughts, ideas and plans of that vision. 

Passion is not limited to enthusiasm, charismic elocution and emotional transparency.  Passion is more often communicated through the leader’s willingness to take selfless risk, displaying courage and bravery, even facing the possibility of arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution for a crime committed by others so that they would not have to endure the same punishment.  Through the ages this has been known as the “passion” of Christ; a passion not of enthusiasm and charismic titillation, but rather of virtue and purposed focus of living out the vision.

A leader with passion wakes in the morning thinking about the vision. During the day a leader incorporates the vision as a frame of reference in most of what is done, whether directly related to ministry or not.  Going to bed at night the leader prepares to dream about the vision as well.  A little over focused?  Not when passion has taken over a life.  Passion is vision plus inspiration.  Perhaps even a magnificent obsession with all the agony and ecstacy.

Questions for Reflection:  How does passion evidence itself in your ministry?  By you?  By others?  How do you distinguish true passion from intense manipulation?

Next Post:  Four Ingredients-Integrity 

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Four Ingredients-A Guiding Vision

Bennis previously talked about four essential competencies—1. engaging others by creating a shared meaning, 2. having a distinctive voice, 3. having integrity, and 4. having adaptive capacity.  He now adds to that with four ingredients that constitute an effective leader.  1. a guiding vision,  2.  passion,  3.  integrity, and  4.  curiosity and daring.

Bennis doesn’t make the distinction between competencies and ingredients so here’s my take.  Ingredients are the components, when added to the mix make the whole.  Competencies are what you do with the whole and how excellent the product is.

1.  A Guiding Vision  In leadership, as with most of life, there are few, if any, linear lists.  Everything is connected and inner connected. We make linear lists so we can comprehend the complexities of life and a life of faith.  So it is with vision—a linear statement to help make sense out of a complex and often chaotic life.

Vision starts small.  It starts with one person and begins to form from the life experiences, interactions, personality styles and “ahah” moments of big connections from the “dots” of data, facts, understandings and beliefs.  Hopefully, there is the “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit, challenging, shaping and breathing life into ideas, dreams and imaginations.  From that origination grows a drive, a sense of purpose that begins to define who, what and why you are.  Vision has been birthed.

Abram had a vision.  It started with herds, land and moving.  It ended with succession and a nation; a Covenant people for and of God.

As that emerging vision takes form it is shared with someone else and the “voice” has been found.

If leaders must have followers than the reverse is true as well.  Leaders with no guiding vision are merely occupying positions of authority but have no lasting influence beyond title and power to reward and punish by managing performance.

Questions for Reflection:  What is your personal vision of and for ministry?  How did it form?  How has it found “voice?” 

Can you write down your personal vision of and for ministry?  To be an effective leader, a person who will follow you, they must know where you are going and why.

Suggestion.  As you select volunteer leaders and staff for ministry, ask them why they are doing what they are doing.  Help them to begin to find their “voice” in their personal vision for ministry.  Help them to incorporate their vision into a larger ministry vision and vice versa. 

Next Post:  Four Key Ingredients--Passion

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Engaging the World

Thoughts From On Becoming a Leader—Warren Bennis   

[Warren Bennis is Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California and a consultant to multinational companies and governments around the world.  He also chairs the Advisory Board of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University.  He is the author dozens of articles and more than thirty books on leadership, including Geeks and Geezers, Learning to Lead, Managing the Dream, and Organizing Genius.] 

Engaging the World

Bennis makes a profound observation.  “Good leaders engage the world.  Bad leaders entrap it, or try to.” (page 36)

This is, perhaps, the best explanation I’ve read for the necessity of the Reformation and emergence of the Protestant movement.  For well over a thousand years as the Church of Christ--with the empowerment and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit—sought to systematize and codify who we are and we do as a Covenant people.  In the midst of that process spiritual leaders also sought to entrap humankind with standards and punishments and rules for conformity.

There exists in almost every human endeavor the dynamic tension between trying to manage a process and thus maintain order and trying to break free from that order which has become a systematic way to preserve for the privileged few the opportunities intended for the many.

It is the role of leaders and the function of leadership to continuously be at odds with the entrapping systems of management yet not destroying the order for which most leaders have been elected or selected to administer.  Effective leaders must be able to successfully tolerate the ambiguity and tension that exists between being a leader that seeks to question everything yet being the responsible administrator who has the wisdom to know what must be retained in order to assure continuity and security.  Leadership without order is chaotic anarchy.  Leadership moderated by an appropriate measure of management creates ordered chaos—the leading edge where real change and dynamic ministry takes place.

Question for Reflection:  In a ministry setting what does engaging the world look like?  What does entrapping look like?  How much of your time and effort is systematically directed to engaging the world and how much of your time and effort has devolved to a managed process of entrapping?

Next Post:  On Becoming a Leader  Four Basic Ingredients   1.  A Guiding Vision

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Competencies Part 4

In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis identifies four essential competencies that all effective leaders must possess. 

1.  Leaders are able to engage others by creating shared meaning.

2.  Distinctive leaders have a distinctive voice.

3.  The third key competency all effective leaders have is integrity.

His last is:

4.  The key competence is adaptive capacity.

Management is linear.  That is why and how we can establish policies, rules and procedures to keep an enterprise healthy.  The purpose of management is hygiene--creating order to prevent messes.

However, leadership is asymmetrical, amorphous , fluid and flexible.  Bennis says management wears square hats, leadership wears sombreros.  With leadership boundaries are ever changing.  There always exists a dynamic tension between management and leadership and while a good leader must also be a disciplined manager, the role of leading is to attempt to undue the neat square corners built by managing.  Effective leaders must be able to skillfully and successfully tolerate, embrace, navigate and arbitrate surprise, tension and paradox.   Barriers once thought impregnable suddenly become corridors through which the life blood of change courses.  For example, the bandwidth now being used by YouTube in 2008 is equivalent to the entire bandwidth available to the internet in 2004. 

Bennis says, “Life on this turbulent, complex planet is no loner linear and sequential, one thing logically leading to another.  It is spontaneous, contrary, unexpected, and ambiguous.  Things do not happen according to plan, and they are not reducible to tidy models.  We persist in grasping at neat, simple answers, when we should be questioning everything.” (page 18)

Leadership--the work of leaders--is certainly not about maintaining the status quo.

Next Post:  On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis   Engaging the World

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Competencies Part 3

In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Bennis identifies four key competencies a leader must have.

1.  Leaders are able to engage others by creating shared meaning.

2.  Distinctive leaders have a distinctive voice.

3.  The third key competency all effective leaders have is integrity.

Character has been defined as what you do when no one is looking.  And while character has two faces, good and bad, integrity has only one.  No one has “bad” integrity.  If you don’t have integrity you are bad.  Integrity is like humility.  You either have it or you don't.  Put another way, integrity is the inclination to don’t right without thinking about it.  It is the ability to override our sin nature--most of the time.  While Bennis doesn’t posit this, integrity is an expression of virtue which is the mind of Christ.

Bad leaders don’t have a problem with integrity.  They don’t have it.  Good leaders have the capacity and the knowledge to do right and do it frequently without having to go through too many sleepless nights to come to the right decision.  A little twist on a Bennis proverb, The manager does things right.  The leader does the right thing.  This is not to imply that managers don’t have integrity.  It does mean effective leaders MUST have integrity to have a lasting influence. 

Speaking later in the book about integrity being the basis of trust, Bennis says, “A major challenge that all leaders are now facing is an epidemic of corporate malfeasance, as we read nearly every day in the news.  And if there is anything that undermines trust, it is the feeling that the people at the top lack integrity, are without a solid sense of ethics." 

There is a reason why there appears to be more of a public outrage when a spiritual leader experiences moral failure.   People are disillusioned with those who proclaim themselves to be leaders having a concern for all yet making sure their power base has been taken care of first.  Leaders have a great influence over the quality of life of large numbers of people it is no surprise to see the level of cynicism to those leaders by the lead.  And then when the last hope for good decent people as leaders seems to erode away by the moral failures of spirtual leaders, even the unbeliever feels violated and experiences an anxiety regarding is there any leader they can really trust.  Leaders, and especially spiritual leaders, above all else must be trustworthy.  Others eternal lives are dependent in a large way by how true they walk the talk.  They are worthy of trust if the core of who they are, transformed creatures, rings true.

Next Post:  Essential Competencies -- The key is Adaptive Capacity

On Becoming a Leader--Warren Bennis Competencies Part 1

[Warren Bennis is Distinguished Professor of Business Administratin at the University of Southern California and a consultant to multinational companies and governments around the world.  He also chairs the Advisory Board of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University.  He is the author of dozens of articles and more than thirty books on leadership, including Geeks and Geezers, Learning to Lead, Managing the Dream, and Organizing Genius.]

Mentors are vital for leadership. I didn't have one until I was in my late 50's so I simply attached myself to some of the best thinkers on the subject by reading their books and listening to MP3s of their lectures.  Warren Bennis is one of my coaches.

In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Bennis gives the reader the wisdom of his years of study, reasearch, consulting, teaching and hanging out with some of the top leaders in their fields.  The book was originally published in 1989 and Bennis revised and updated the classic in 2003.

Four Essential Competencies  Through the book Bennis will identify key competencies and key ingredients.  Competencies are the expert skills any accomplished practioner must have in order to do their craft well.  Bennis lists four.

1.  Leaders are able to engage others by creating shared meaning.

What exactly is shared meaning.  First of all it embodies the vision, mission/purpose of an enterprise.  It answers the question, "Why do we exist?"  Effective leaders are able to grasp that core understanding first within them and then to communicate an intensely personal version of that to others, assuring not only that it has been taught but it has also been caught.

Second, shared meaning tells everyone where the enterprise is going, why the journey is necessary, what it will cost and generally how it will be accomplished.  Shared meaning is basically the "who, what, why, when, where and how" of good reporting.

In a minstry setting spiritual leaders continuously communicate the fundamentals of faith and practice in practical ways.  In doing so any person who identifies with that faith community can find their place in the journey and will want to move from where they presently are at because the shared meaning means everyone is on the journey.  Not all will fully comprehend the significance of the movement for the moment but to not move at least is understood to be left behind.  If there are people who are content with where they are at, they have either not grasped the shared meaning or it wasn't communicated in a way assuring it was caught.

Next posting, The Second Competency, a Distinctive Voice