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The high costs of low morals and destructive behavior of bad bosses Ah, bad bosses. Most of us have had at least one in our careers.   You know the type: their management style is characterized by abusive, manipulative, and self-centered behaviors. They run the show on a mix of fear, intimidation, coercion, and control. They lack empathy, blame others for their mistakes, and can’t accept feedback.  In my last post, I shared some stories from fairly early in my career about a cartoonishly bad boss (although no one who had to work under this dictator was laughing). While J.R.'s outsized awfulness took place nearly 30 years ago, I’m worried about the rise of toxic leaders in our politics and the risk of spillover effects in business. We must actively resist returning to this outdated, destructive brand of leadership.  In this post, I outline some adverse effects on employees and organizations, including undermined morale, reduced productivity, increased stress and burnout, and higher turnover rates.   Just as a single drop of oil can poison a well, toxic bosses pollute their work environments to catastrophic effect. Here’s how.  Engagement Plummets Under Toxic Leadership The biggest hit I see toxic leaders having on their organizations is on people's commitment to their jobs and overall engagement–and who can blame them? Why should you care about your work when your boss clearly doesn’t care about you?   Toxic leaders often create hostile work environments that degrade employee morale and job satisfaction. Constant criticism, unrealistic expectations, and lack of support can demoralize even the most dedicated workers. When employees feel undervalued and mistreated, their enthusiasm and engagement with their work drop like a stone. Productivity takes a nosedive  Bad bosses don’t just hurt feelings; they can also have very real financial impacts. Instead of helping the bottom line by being “tough,” toxic leaders often hurt it through reduced productivity and increased recruitment costs.   Companies suffer from high turnover rates, reduced productivity, and increased healthcare costs due to the stress and burnout associated with toxic work environments, as these pieces by​ McKinsey & Company ​​ and the Ivey Business Journal  detail. Burnout is ignited It is exhausting for employees to come to work every day and navigate a workplace ruled by a dark overlord, where it feels like they are walking on eggshells. Under constant pressure and scrutiny, employees can experience increased rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, which affect their sense of well-being AND their productivity and performance.  Collaboration is crushed Successful teams run on trust, which toxic leaders erode through their manipulative behavior. In this setting, people become more guarded and suspicious, more hesitant to share ideas or seek help, and less communicative and collaborative. A toxic leader's divisive tactics can foster a culture of competition and conflict rather than cooperation, where employees are pitted against each other rather than encouraged to work as a team.  All this delivers a gut punch to innovation, which thrives in environments where employees feel safe, valued, and empowered to take chances. Toxic leaders stifle creativity and discourage initiative, leading to a stagnant, risk-averse culture.  Diversity and inclusion suffer  Toxic leadership disproportionately affects underrepresented groups, including women and minorities. These leaders often create environments that hinder diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, exacerbating the challenges these groups face in the workplace​ ( McKinsey & Company )​ Reputational damage  In the age of social media and online reviews, your organization’s reputation is more vulnerable than ever. Word of toxic leadership practices can spread quickly online and in real life, damaging your organization’s brand and making it difficult to attract top talent. A tarnished reputation can also affect relationships with clients, customers, and business partners. And…the doom cycle continues Bad leaders typically hire bad leaders, spawning a whole org chart of toxic mini-me managers.  This ripple effect can accelerate quickly with exponentially toxic leadership (remember that 1980s Faberge shampoo ad, where Heather Locklear “told two friends about it, and they told two friends, and so on,” into infinity? Same idea, just with bad bosses, not gorgeous hair).  As we see from this laundry list of workplace disasters, the consequences of toxic leadership are far-reaching and detrimental. Being caring, and coming from a place of character isn’t just good for your humanity and that of your team – it’s better for your business, too.

Scenario planning’s origins and evolution The 1970s were a tumultuous decade on many fronts, not least the economy, notably the 1973 Oil Crisis. When Arab countries turned off their U.S. oil tap, it rippled through the economy, causing a rush at the pumps and nearly quadrupling barrel prices in just a couple of years. For many, it was an unthinkable turn of events. Not so at Royal Dutch/Shell, which had been experimenting with a dynamic and multifaceted planning approach to be ready for just this sort of upheaval. They’d used scenarios to predict the possibility of this disruption. What’s a scenario, you ask? “Scenarios are not projections, predictions, or preferences; rather, they are coherent and credible alternative stories about the future,” Peter Cornelius, Alexander Van de Putte, and Mattia Romani wrote in Three Decades of Scenario Planning in Shell  in California Management Review.  “They are designed to help companies challenge their assumptions, develop their strategies, and test their plans.” Shell wanted a more sophisticated and multilayered approach to future readiness than traditional forecasting, which tends to predict a future that is similar to the present. Forecasts aren’t simply inadequate; they might even be dangerous, the authors write, “as they are typically wrong when they are needed most.” The oil crisis and its unimaginable-to-some scenario of Middle Eastern oil supplies abruptly ceasing illustrates this point. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood While Shell is widely recognized for its early adoption and ongoing refinement of this approach, the roots of scenario planning run deeper, all the way to Southern California in the late 1940s. That’s when the futurist Herman Kahn, a defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, used stories to illustrate how nuclear weapons might be used by hostile nations. Scientific American dubbed it “thinking the unthinkable.” By 1961, Kahn had founded the Hudson Institute to expand his scenario planning work to social forecasting and public policy. In the mid-1960s, he was approached by Royal Dutch/Shell executives Pierre Wack and Ted Newland, who shared two key insights. First, they thought changes in the Arab world would soon end the decades-long stability of the oil regime. “Second, everybody in the oil industry knew it, but nobody was prepared to do anything,” Kleiner writes. Wack and Newland set out to bring that awareness to the entire organization through scenario planning. It was the first application of a tool subsequent generations of Shell planners and strategists would continue to use and refine. Over the years, scenario planning has helped Shell anticipate major industry disruptions, from oil price shocks to geopolitical shifts. But its usefulness extends far beyond the energy sector. Why This Matters for You: A Mid-Sized Business Case Study While scenario planning has shaped the strategies of global corporations and governments, its principles apply to businesses of all sizes—especially those navigating uncertain market conditions. If you’re leading a mid-sized company, you may not be dealing with global oil crises, but uncertainty still looms large. Supply chain disruptions, shifting regulations, and economic downturns can all threaten business-as-usual. That’s where scenario planning comes in. Consider the recent U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods. Policy changes like these can shift costs and market dynamics overnight. Take, for example, a fast-growing mid-sized manufacturer. Over the last five years, they’ve expanded rapidly, growing revenue by 25% annually. But now, shifting policies and rising costs are creating uncertainty about their next move. By mapping out different scenarios—ranging from continued growth to potential setbacks—they identify key factors that could impact their business, from legislation changes to supply chain costs. Instead of reacting in panic, they’re proactively preparing for multiple futures. The world remains unpredictable, but one thing is certain: leaders who embrace scenario planning can turn uncertainty into an opportunity rather than a threat. In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at how this company puts its scenarios into action—and what lessons you can apply to your own business. Stay tuned. The Plot Thickens - How Scenario Planning Shapes the Future In the decades since Wack met Kahn, a number of organizations and schools have further developed scenario planning. The Oxford approach, for instance, explores the interplay between your immediate business environment and the broader context during “TUNA conditions”: times of turbulence, unpredictable uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. Its application has spread across the corporate world and beyond, including to governments. In South Africa, Kleiner writes, scenario planning played a significant role in the peaceful transition from a system of apartheid to a stable multiracial government. In the business world, scenario planning continues to evolve and stay relevant. A Harvard Business School  newsletter, Scenario Planning Reconsidered , quotes Chris Ertel, cohead of practice at Global Business Network, saying scenario planning is becoming “much more entrepreneurial.” “There’s definitely been a shift in recent years away from using it as a contingency-planning device and more as an idea-generation and innovation device,” he says. “For some fast-growth firms, the problem is too many options, so they use scenario planning as an opportunity-management tool.”   Takeaway Uncertainty is inevitable, but leaders who embrace scenario planning turn it into an advantage. The real question is: Is your business prepared for what’s ahead? Download free whitepaper on scenario planning

Why a core of character, caring wins in the long run “You can’t be a leader around here until your ego eats your brain.”  This frank observation, imparted to me early in my tenure at Pacific Gas and Electric by a senior leader in the California utility, has stuck with me throughout my career, not only for its darkly catchy phrasing but also for its undeniable accuracy in that organization.   In those days, what we would now consider corporate bullying was often tolerated and even rewarded with promotions and bonuses. The upper ranks included accomplished people with big titles who crushed those reporting to them.  Back then, when I looked up the corporate ladder, I didn’t see enough examples of leaders with what I call a “core of character.” They weren't caring. They weren't necessarily trustworthy. And they often didn’t make the best decisions for their teams or their customers. They were in it for themselves–and encouraged to be.  Admittedly, that was a long time ago, more than 30 years. I’d love to think that this leadership style is a remnant of a colder, crueler era, that we’ve moved into an age that is more empathetic, people-focused, and collaborative.  It’s interesting and instructive to look at the tale of two leadership styles emerging in the U.S. presidential election. As an American living in Canada, I’ve been dismayed at times by the incivility and even cruelty that’s crept into our politics. But I’m also inspired and encouraged by the clear signs that empathy, caring and character are alive and well.  Monday night of the Democratic National Convention, I found myself nodding along to the burn-burning speech by Steve Kerr, the coach who’s taken the NBA’s Golden State Warriors to four championships and recently returned from the Paris Olympics, where the U.S. basketball squad got the gold. The guy knows a thing or two about leadership!  “I believe leaders must display dignity. I believe that leaders must tell the truth,” Steve said. “I believe that leaders must care for and love the people that they are leading.” This is the core of leadership in any arena: sports, politics, business, and even our homes.  Toxic Leadership memories  The election has caused me to reflect back on some of the worst leaders I’ve met. J.R. is probably the worst, the embodiment of toxic behavior.  This is how he opened daily meetings with his department managers, who were expected to yell at their teams to prove their competence: “You need to go out and kick somebody's ass today.”  Yep, that was his version of “good morning.” Dude, can I get a coffee first? To him, being loud and intimidating was synonymous with being effective. I think he got his leadership lessons from Hulk Hogan!  J.R. was a neat freak who lost it when anything violated his sense of order. One day, after work hours, he went down to the construction crew offices, ripped all of the maps (this was before GPS and digital mapping tools) off the walls, and stuffed them in the garbage. I guess he didn’t like the way they looked!  When the construction crews arrived the following day to prepare for their work in the field, they had to dumpster dive to retrieve their maps.  Another time, a few days after my group moved to a new office space, my colleague, Charlie, came into my office, practically in tears. “Where's my stuff?” he asked. Once I calmed him down, he explained that his collection of family photos and personal items decorating his desktop and cubicle was… gone. After the incident with the missing maps, I had a hunch about where to look first. Sure enough, we ended up in the dumpster behind the office building, where we found his family pictures, along with a bunch of other personal belongings. Again, J.R. had swept through like a hurricane the night before, taking stuff off people's desks that he didn't think ought to be there, callously tossing them. I was starting to think he should set up his office in there!  Anyhow, that did it for Charlie. All of a sudden, this incredibly loyal, talented, hard-working team member essentially said, “screw it.”He started coming in precisely at eight o'clock and leaving at five when he’d lock his pictures and belongings in his desk. In the morning, he’d start his day by taking everything back out, dusting and cleaning to make his point, before laying it all out on his desk. Only then would he go to visit customers. It wasn’t long before he moved on, which was a stupid loss of a great team member.  Bob, our transportation manager, responsible for a fleet of around 150 vehicles, was another favorite target of J.R.’s, who insisted the trucks be spotless, a challenging standard in the primarily rural, dusty Central Valley.  One day, J.R. decided to hold a fleet examination, like a military inspection. Bob and his team worked their butts off to get their vehicles gleaming. After passing a half-dozen trucks, J.R. suddenly stopped, yelling at Bob, “What's wrong with this truck? What’s wrong with this truck?” The rest of us assembled there shrugged. We looked at the gleaming half-ton and couldn’t see anything wrong with it.J.R.’s beef was that the license plate was on the right side of the bumper instead of the left, like the other vehicles.  The next day, I was in J.R.’s office when Deb, our human resources manager, came in to speak with him. She sat down and got right to the point: “I just have one question: What's your theory of how to lead people?”J.R. didn’t hesitate: he grabbed a Sharpie out of his drawer, put it in his palm, and started twisting–hard.“You crank it down, and crank it down, and crank it down,” he said as he drilled the pen into his reddening hand. “And when it's just about tight enough, you give it one turn more.” (You can’t make this stuff up!) Deb looked him straight in the eye. “Well, I'm just wondering,” she asked, “what happens if you strip the screw?” Two weeks later, Deb was transferred out of the division.  I’ll be the first to admit that J.R.’s dictatorial leadership was extreme. These stories are not the norm I see in my clients or corporate culture at large, but they are real. And as we have seen in politics, the slip from integrity, decency, respect, and trust can happen very quickly.  But there is an alternative, embodied by leaders like Steve Kerr, and in businesses everywhere.  I know many of you, like me, still believe in the marrow of your bones, that people are the most important thing, that caring matters, and that it’s not naive to think that we can be both profitable AND humane.  I’ll end with a line from Steve Kerr’s DNC speech that says it best.  “Leadership, real leadership, is not the kind that seeks to divide us,” he said, “but the kind that recognizes and celebrates our common purpose.” Toxic Leadership

Don't let the election–or other big events–steal your focus, especially amidst change. The election, the election: these days, it’s almost all anyone can talk about. As an American living in Canada who works mainly in the U.S., I have to admit that I’m a little bit addicted to the constant discussion of battleground states, polls, debates, and projections! (And, my Canadian friends, neighbors and relatives often ask me to explain it…and, it’s often really hard to come up with an answer that makes sense!) And while I follow the news of the day as much as anyone and care deeply about the outcome, here’s the thing: whoever wins the election, it doesn't matter.  Now, I'm not trying to be glib. Of course, there will be serious policy implications regardless of the victor. The next administration will shape our lives, work, and economy in myriad ways, big and small. Of that, there's no doubt.  What doesn't matter, though, regardless of the outcome, is the inevitability of change. What matters to you and me is that we can't stop and wait. We can't put our companies and our plans goals on hold. We can't wait and see. We must keep going and adjust as needed when the results are in. Living in a VUCA world This isn’t just true during election seasons but is an important lesson all the time. The world is in a state of accelerated change. As I wrote in a recent blog post , we live in an age of endless distractions, where it feels like the ground is constantly shifting beneath us, with competing priorities coming at us fast and furious.  The term VUCA – first used at the US Army War College in 1987 – pretty much sums up our times: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous . It’s what our team describes as a world of perpetual whitewater.  Developing the skills to overcome distraction, to stay calm and focused even in the proverbial storm, and to keep on keeping on is a powerful leadership skill. Here's how to cultivate yours even in– especially –in uncertain times. Revisit your vision It can feel tempting in times of uncertainty to ignore our purpose or even risk abandoning it. In fact, this is when it's most important to double down and recommit to your core,  even as it feels like everything is changing around you. It can be really helpful to step out of our day-to-day concerns and remember our bigger purpose. if you know who you are and what you stand for, that's immutable, and incredibly stabilizing Connect with your team   That uncertainty you're feeling? Your team is feeling it, too. It's your job to make them feel motivated and also safe. The best leaders foster a culture of trust and transparency. That means communicating clearly, being supportive, and actively working to build stronger, more positive relationships with them.  Be a good role model Your team looks to you for cues on how things are going, how to behave, and what's acceptable in your workplace. In times of uncertainty, this is more true than ever.  You need to model the kind of calm focus and dedication that you want from your staff. That might mean working extra hard to manage your frustrations or to embody a positive energy you might not necessarily feel. This is one of those times when you should fake it till you make it.  Control what you can We are bombarded by so many things grabbing for our attention every day that it is impossible to pay attention to them all. So, don’t bother trying. To paraphrase a line I first heard used by Dan Patrick on ESPN’s SportCenter  sometime in the last century , “You can’t stop it; you can only hope to contain it!” The simple act of setting priorities and developing a system for effectively managing them can go a long way. A great place to start is the elegantly simple Time Management  Matrix, with its four boxes plotting tasks along the urgent/non-urgent and important/not important axes. Once you've plotted out your tasks and priorities on The Matrix, ask yourself a few questions: Many of us spend a lot of time on Important, Urgent tasks. How might we change what we do to minimize the number of them in the future?  What low-importance tasks can you eliminate so you can spend more time on your important, non-urgent tasks? Plan for the future Just because the future is unknowable and the present feels uncertain doesn't mean we can't look to the future and plan for it as much as possible. This is what risk management is all about: proactively identifying potential risks and developing contingency plans. This forward-thinking approach helps you anticipate challenges without becoming paralyzed by the prospect of what might or might not happen.  As November 5th draws near, it's helpful to remember this is not our first election, nor will it be our last. (At least, we hope it won’t be!) Whatever happens, your team is looking to you to be focused amidst change, lead them and your organization through it.

Our scenario planning whitepaper helps you prepare for uncertainty. Strap on your helmet, and get your paddles ready: we’re about to enter some very turbulent times! That era of perpetual whitewater we’ve been paddling through will likely get even more choppy as Trump returns to the White House later this month.  As his first term demonstrates, it’s foolish to try and anticipate what the returning president will do, what policies or plans he will put in play. The only certainty is change, which isn’t new but is accelerating and intensifying at a pace we’ve never seen before. It’s not just Trump-related. The world is also grappling with other upheavals: economic and geopolitical instability, the environmental crisis, and warp-speed digital transformation.  It all adds up to a boatload of uncertainty for leaders. As an American living in Canada who works in the states almost weekly, I feel it on both sides of the border. Regardless of your politics, what’s for sure is that the Trump presidency will have wide-ranging impacts on businesses in the U.S. and beyond.  It can feel like tough paddling out there! But the worst thing you can do is sit on shore, helpless. Scenario-proof your strategy   While we can’t know what lies around the bend, wise leaders are doing all they can to be ready to respond to changing circumstances and even prepare for worst-case scenarios. That takes agility. Traditional strategic plans, with their years-long cycles, are too slow to respond to this breakneck change.  This is where scenario planning steps in. It offers a dynamic and multifaceted approach to future planning that can respond to the complexity of multiple uncertainties.  The WhiteWater team are such fans of this approach that we’ve created a  free whitepaper  on scenario planning. This concise primer will give you the confidence to prepare for an unknowable future through a proactive process.  Scenario planning can help your organization plan in three key ways: exploring future options, naming the triggers that will activate a course of action, and defining the factors to evaluate a plan’s success. Along with drawing on our extensive experience leading clients through this process, we’ve curated the best practices and ideas from the leadership literature. Our whitepaper breaks down the three major categories of destabilizing elements in the larger context that could affect your business and operations: your markets, your people and your values. It offers a brief history of scenario planning, and details the three essential elements of successful scenario planning. It also looks at the related roles of improvisation and communication in this approach.  Why Traditional Forecasting Falls Short: The Power of Scenario Planning Unlike traditional forecasting, which tends to assume a single future that’s not very different from the present, scenario planning proactively explores multiple potential scenarios and their implications for your organizations.  Scenarios explore a range of  plausible  outcomes, not a single  probable  one. They help you prepare for the unexpected–before it happens. After all, your strategy is based on a set of assumptions about what will likely occur.  But what if that planned-for future never arrives? What if the conditions change? Scenario planning is an antidote to helplessness, a source of credible action plans to implement when change happens. Scenario planning is a way to explore the interplay between your immediate business environment and the broader context during “TUNA conditions”: times of turbulence, unpredictable uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity.   This approach helps make your strategy as dynamic as the context in which you do business. It allows you to interact pre-emptively with external factors, from local, national and international politics to domestic and foreign economic forces and social movements. Most importantly, it helps you prepare for multiple eventualities–including those that are not ideal or that seem less likely. If there’s anything we can expect these days, it’s the unexpected.  Building Business Resilience Through Scenario Planning Scenario planning requires an open and creative stance to uncertainty. It also brings your team into the process and mindset of being ready for whatever may come. It provides training, in a sense, for flexible responses to quickly changing circumstances.  As Fernando F. Suarez and Juan S. Montes wrote in ‘Building Organizational Resilience,’ a fascinating Harvard Business Review piece, “Organizations that regularly deal with fast-evolving situations—think SWAT teams and military commandos—know that it pays to practice and prepare for the unexpected while you have the luxury of time and resources instead of trying to learn how to adapt in the middle of a storm.”    By reflecting on their potential impacts today, you can better plan for a prosperous future. Remember, for every risk, there’s the possibility of a new opportunity.  The more comfortable you become with the uncertainty, the better you’ll be able to navigate the whitewater that’s ahead.  So, ready, set, let’s dig in! Grab your free copy of our whitepaper now. And stay tuned for more posts on the power of scenario planning.

The Sticky Gear Gets the Grease: Aligning Goals and Creating a Culture of Communication Recently, I had the utmost pleasure to have a great chat with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner at Business Confidential Now. We discussed many aspects of what makes things go wrong in organizations of all sizes and how to go about remedying those issues. We had a chance to talk through all the gears outlined in my book, Get In Gear: The Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results and how each gear works together to keep moving forward. Hanna posed a question to me which gear gets jammed up most often. One gear that seems to cause the most trouble is the fourth gear, SET Result-Oriented Goals. It’s also relatively easy to grease this gear to unjam it. A great way to find a solution to this common issue is to play a game of 5-on-5. You have the performers write down their top five goals; then have their managers also write a list of the top 5 goals for each of their team members. You would think (hope?) that these lists would be similar, but typically we have found that maybe only 2 out of the 5 match. And the performers are often more task or activity-focused while the managers maybe more focused on the goals of the organization: grow sales, drive down costs, improve quality, etc. And, as Hanna so bluntly put it “some goals are stupid!” You need to align your goals to what’s critical to the organization’s strategy and leave out the unimportant ones that get you nowhere. We cannot be afraid to rethink and revamp goals when needed. We also dove into the gear regarding Creating a Culture of Communication. When you create a culture of communication within the workplace, you need to create an environment of trust and mutual respect. This doesn’t just magically happen! Leaders must create a foundation. One of the most important parts of creating this culture of communications is moving away from sharing information on a “need-to-know basis” to one in which everyone asks, “who else needs to know.” Another very important communication aspect is clarity, being able to have the difficult conversations without making a mud filled Twinkie: being direct as opposed to hiding the foul-tasting tough feedback between two sides of delicious praise. We discuss the pitfalls of “The marshmallow layer” in an organization that can hold everything up, a place where the information coming from upper levels cannot permeate down to the front-line team members. In turn, the challenges and everyday problems at the frontline of the organization don’t permeate their way back up creating a total disconnect. Some of the actions you can take to penetrate this layer in your organization include: Constantly communicate: once is not enough Hear the question beyond the question, make sure you are really hearing what your people are saying. Hold reoccurring roundtable discussions and take action based upon what you hear Introduce a white board for jotting down issues and challenges that might be blocking success, hold discussions based around these points and quickly find solutions. This teaches your team that they will always be heard and that their concerns will be resolved. We also discussed that you don’t have to fix every gear at once. You can identify the gear in your organization that is the wobbliest, then work toward fixing that one gear. You can then move to another gear that might need a little grease. To listen to the entire podcast, click this link: How To Successfully Drive The Strategy Execution Process - Business Confidential Now Podcast (businessconfidentialradio.com)

Leaders are Works-in-Progress I got one of my earliest lessons in leadership in college. A nerdy engineering student, I was a floor counsellor in a Georgia Tech dorm with the good fortune to have a visionary and unusual boss. Templeton was the associate dean of students, a bona fide adult in a role usually held by students. But his age and experience weren’t the only things that set him apart. Miller did things differently from the other head residents. In advance of our Monday night staff meetings, he assigned readings, typically classic leadership texts such as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People , books on assertiveness training, that kind of thing. Now, keep in mind that this was the late 1980s, decades before the leadership industry exploded. Tim, a good friend of mine, was another of Miller’s counsellors. Tim was what you might call a natural leader. Super people-oriented, energetic, just downright magnetic, he was the guy everybody wanted to know, who we all aspired to be like. I later realized that the Tims of the world, they’re the exception. And yet, we can learn how to connect with others. Just as Miller invested in us, teaching us how to lead the kids on our floors and each other. He made us better, both individually and as a team. Leadership can be taught. And yet, so often in my decades working as a consultant or inside some of the world’s biggest brands, I’ve met dozens of leaders at all levels, from middle management right up to the c-suite, who think leaders are like Tim: born, not made. This is a dangerously limiting belief. Leadership is a set of skills you can learn. As with learning chess, say, or French cooking, your education, your quest for improvement, never ends. Leaders have to create environments that emphasize learning as a key principle AND apply that to themselves. Being in a leadership role is not a finished state. In fact, you’re never done growing and advancing. You’ve never “made it,” in this sense. But there’s another, even riskier myth: conflating leadership roles with true leadership. Your title doesn’t make you a leader. In the early 2000s, I was working on a consulting project in the maintenance department of an aerospace manufacturing company. The division was notoriously slow, and it was easy to see why: there were seven levels of management for 1,200 people. A restructuring was in order. The rub? A lot of managers would have to return to their former jobs carrying tools. I wasn’t surprised when, a month later, our team got a call from the client saying there had been grumblings about the process. What did surprise me? The company wanted us to interview those who’d been affected. I’ll never forget my first interview. Virgil was in his late 50s. He’d lost his supervisor role and been sent back to the floor. I was barely 30 and nervous. I had no idea how it was going to go, but I anticipated badly. I didn't know how to start, so I opened with something simple. “Hey, what's going on for you?” I asked. “It’s my fault,’’ Virgil said. That was not what I’d expected. “What’s your fault?” “Well, it's my fault that I didn’t get to keep my role as a supervisor.” Virgil told me that all his career, he’d aspired to be a supervisor. But when he finally landed the role, he did nothing to prepare for it. He didn’t know how to empower people. He took no opportunity to develop himself. Now, here he was, on the runway to retirement, back in his old job. He’d squandered his chance, and he knew it. And at his age, he wasn’t going to get another one. “I am who I am” doesn't cut it. I meet a lot of managers like Virgil. Some identify that they’ve got stuff to work on but avoid the effort and discomfort of growth. Others shrug and go: “This is me” or “This is just how I am.” They have no intention of changing. And then there are the people who think that when they become a leader, they've hit the pinnacle, they're done. “I have now achieved what I wanted to achieve” or “I've made it.” Done. Leadership is not a title or a fixed state. It’s a process of becoming someone who can align people around a cause to deliver results. A leader defines the gap between where you are and where you need to be and engages people in the journey to close it. Leaders know they are works-in-progress who never stop learning and growing. They know that the art of leadership is a life-long pursuit. I think of a coaching client of mine who, when he was named CEO, knew that public speaking and media interviews would be significant parts of the role. So he got to work, spending untold hours and days getting ready to face employees, shareholders, and reporters. Some might say there's no way someone at that level has time to make that kind of investment. Or, why not just offload this part to an underling? Not him. He knew this was a critical skill for the role. He knew he had to master it to deliver the best possible outcomes for the company. He knew that even as a leader, he would have to challenge himself constantly, and he embraced it.

The Charisma Myth I’ve met many charismatic people over more than 30 years as a consultant and executive. Some have been leaders. But not all. And yet, leadership is so often conflated with charisma, I’d say it’s one of its greatest myths. In my last post , I wrote about my college buddy Tim, who possessed almost superhuman people skills. To know the guy was to love him. When you talked to Tim, he was one of those rare people who made you feel like you were the only person in the room. But that’s not why he was a leader. Tim was a leader because he was able to get people to join him to accomplish goals together. Did his natural magnetism hurt? Of course not. But on its own, without the skills to harness it to deliver results, it’s just likeability, not leadership. One time, I worked with a leader who was a former star college athlete. He had great stories and people always flocked to him. He was also highly influential, his opinions always heard and often followed. Sounds like a leader, right? Not so fast. Those same people who either reported to him directly or indirectly also described him as uncaring and disconnected. They didn't feel inspired or engaged working for him. On the flip side, I’ve met people who weren’t particularly magnetic but who were leaders because they could inspire people to move with them towards a defined goal. They were able to overcome what we might call their charisma deficit to get results. What Really Matters I’m talking about charisma because it is very risky to confuse it with leadership. Too often, people with big personalities end up in leadership positions but lack the skills to actually, you know, lead. Or, even worse, people DO follow them, but in the wrong direction. I worked with a charming senior executive at a global beverage company who self-described as "often wrong, never confused!" This was apt. He was always clear about where he wanted to drive his team, even if it was to the detriment of his business segment. He had a tough time listening to others or challenging his thinking. And, as I wrote in my last post, the ability to grow and change is essential to leading. The bosses I mentioned above were both missing a foundational element in the recipe for success: the ability to engage your team in the journey. And that is only possible in a values-based environment. All About Engagement Values are the key to creating environments that fully engage and inspire people because they feel deeply connected to something bigger than themselves. Values are key to this engagement because they provide moral and practical guidance on what matters, and how to act. Values nurture trust and meaning. As a leader, you are responsible both for what gets done (results) and how they are accomplished. That’s where values come into play, setting the standards of behaviour for reaching goals. In a values-based environment, results are achieved with, not at the expense of others. Your team members feel valued for who they are, and are empowered to contribute their best. In a values-based environment, people feel respected. This starts at the top, but it’s a two-way street. You can’t impose or mandate values. To create truly engaging environments, people have to trust and respect their leaders. The Leadership Trifecta Leadership training and theory often presents a series of management functions, things like delegating, planning or hiring. Those skills are important, sure, but great leadership requires going far beyond them. It requires that leaders play three critical roles, all wrapped around a core of character. Those roles? Learner. Teacher. Steward. As a learner , you must be open to a continuous journey of self-reflection and self-improvement, constantly challenging your thinking. As a teacher , you must educate your team through the examples you set, the decisions you make, and the stories you share. As a steward of the values, you show by your words and deeds which behaviours are in-bounds–and which are out. You set the parameters and are responsible for nurturing, growing and perpetuating them. Setting the right example is paramount. You can have all the charisma in the world, but without a bedrock of character and a values-based environment, you’ll never be able to connect with and motivate people to get them psychologically engaged. You’ll never truly lead them to contribute their best every day. In my next piece, I’ll dig deeper into your role as steward of your organization’s values and explore how this relates to performance. Meanwhile, I want to hear from you. What values do you seek to embody for your team? How have you struggled or succeeded in being a learner, teacher and steward of them? Let me know in the comments or send me an email .

Reflections on 2021: A Year of Constant Adaptation Another epic year of change and challenges is in the books. In 2021, as we continued to navigate the whitewater of the pandemic and other shifting factors, it was reassuring to see how many foundational ideas about leadership and strategy held fast. Here’s a recap of the most significant enduring truths that the WhiteWater team noticed when it comes to building a thriving, resilient, future-facing organization. Strategy doesn’t need to be intimidating. To some, “strategy” sounds complex or even abstract, but the concept is actually really straightforward and grounded: how do you create a sustainable, defensible competitive advantage in the marketplace? That is, how do you win your target customers’ choice? For more, check out this recent post . “Implicit” strategy can work – for a while. If you’re a small company or a startup, there’s a certain momentum you can call strategy, even if your success is more of a serendipitous by-product than the outcome of focused planning. It looks like this: You offer a product or service. People like it. They buy. You grow…until you don’t. Sustainable, long-term growth requires explicit strategy. Eventually, you have to get serious if you want to maximize the value of your organization. And even many mature, decades-old companies have to learn this lesson the hard way: organizations without a defined strategy tend to be under-valued. Strategy starts with talking to your customers. ​​The best way to build a strategy is ridiculously basic, but many organizations skip this step: speak to your customers. That includes existing, former and potential customers. They have the intel and insights you need to understand what brings value for them. Execution is vital: Despite the unparalleled success of our book, Get in Gear: The Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results , more than a few organizations are still not performing their best! While some of these shortcomings are due to bad strategy, far more often, organizations fall short due to execution failures. Systematically aligning the seven gears takes work but invariably results in better performance. Set explicit goals. Most people avoid setting goals because accountability is scary. What if you don’t hit your target? We must reframe failure, not as something to avoid, but to embrace as the path to achieving new outcomes and, when you fall short, of learning. Defined goals lead to better performance. Not surprising, Captain Obvious! Despite knowing this, it is shocking how few organizations, teams and individuals put serious effort into defining their goals and then – and this is essential – cascading them down through the organization, so everyone is aligned . Something like 85% of businesses come up short on results because they haven’t actually executed those goals. For some ideas on how to get started, check out this post . Communication is vital. We just gotta talk to each other and listen. And yet, in so many organizations, when team members try to give their points of view, their leaders are too busy talking or formulating responses to stop, listen and absorb what is being shared. This post shares some easy ways to improve communications today. It starts with active listening. This is a simple concept that almost everyone in our training sessions can describe. And yet, it’s alarming to learn how little truly active listening people do. Also surprising? When someone truly, actively, empathetically listens to them, how great people feel. Active listening is team-building, motivational gold. The best leaders embrace courageous conversations. The ability to hold a challenging conversation continues to be one of the leading performance drivers distinguishing great from average leaders. Courageous conversations are built on a foundation of trust, respect and caring. There is no new normal. Change is a constant. There is merely a next normal, which will be quickly replaced by a next, next normal. Your organization must be flexible, adaptable and build a resilient team capable of changing quickly and performing regardless of whatever comes next.

‘Have you noticed what’s happening here?’ I vividly remember being called in to lead a group of leaders and managers through a discussion of diversity and inclusion. They worked for an organization that clearly had made good progress on this front, or at least appeared to be. This group was itself as diverse as you could assemble, a collage of people from different racial and cultural backgrounds, bringing multiple generations, and including the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation. To my mind, the perfect group to engage in this discussion. In challenging them to speak openly about the normally thorny issues involving their experiences and views, conversations flowed freely. Engagement was high. There were jokes, and easy laughter. As an outsider, I was impressed. But I couldn’t help but notice that the first time race was brought up, someone else in the group would quickly change the topic. And then again. And again. Finally, I called a time out and asked, “Have any of you noticed what’s happening here?” Later that day, breakout groups presented to the CEO of the organization on their experiences, challenges and successes for issues of diversity and inclusion. They were phenomenal – candid, emotionally charged, well articulated. They were some of the most incredibly difficult conversations I had ever heard. They had laid bare organizational gaps and proposed solutions. They presented an incredible opportunity to their leader. What did he do? Change the topic. It was a most uncomfortable moment, and crushing for all those assembled. It was a stark illustration for me of how incredibly important it is for top leadership to engage in – and take responsibility for – these issues, as difficult as they are to address.

The ABCs of Effective Training There are three types of training participants: the keeners, the vacationers, and the prisoners. Only those in the first category actually want to–and should–be there. So how do the other two groups end up in these sessions? The vacationers may be mandated to attend. Or they may volunteer, raising their hands for a day “off” work. And the prisoners? Well, they just got an email from their boss telling them they “had” to be there. Cue the crossed arms and thousand-yard stare. On the day of the training, the facilitator, faced with a room stacked with apathetic or resistant attendees, does the song-and-dance routine: trying to entertain in the hopes of keeping the group’s attention. Any learning is purely incidental. At the end of the training, a survey goes out to rate the session. And that’s….it. Early in my consulting career, I became frustrated by how much time, money and energy are wasted on this approach. So I designed a better way, and it’s as simple as A, B, C. My three-step process bookends the training session with equally important preparation and follow-through stages to leverage your investment in learning and development. Here’s how it breaks down. Step A: The Pre-Work Getting the right people in the room is essential. And getting them ready to be there is also key. But too often, the scenario I described above is what actually happens, dooming the training initiative from the start. Our process puts equal weight on what happens before the session. In this step, we explore: Who needs to be there? Who will benefit from the teaching? How’s it going to help them do their job? What problems do they need to solve? What are their expectations and needs? What do they need to know or do to prepare? With those answers, we design the invite list and the right reading and pre-work so they arrive mentally ready. Step B: The Main Event Ah, Step B. I’ve been paid a lot of money over the last 30-plus years for this part of the process. In my experience, almost all of the energy of any learning or development program is focused on the session, be it in-person classroom learning or a webinar series. Regardless of the delivery method and duration, this has been proven true. So, the training is delivered to an ad-hoc group of staffers, and then a survey goes out immediately after the session, asking things like: did you enjoy the training? Did you get something out of it? Would you recommend it? This is how training effectiveness is typically measured, and it’s useless. The real value of the training is what comes next. It’s what happens in Step C. Step C: The Follow-Through This step is all about reinforcing the learning. And most organizations fail at it because, frankly, it’s hard. It usually involves change and action and doing things differently. But what’s the point of investing in the development if you don’t want it to have real impact? I need to cite the influence of Rob Brinkerhoff, author of The Success Case Method (Berrett-Koehler, 2003), a brilliant leadership development and training consultant, for helping me understand how to bring the learning from Step B into the ongoing operations. Remember how I mentioned that post-training surveys are pointless? So here’s what we do instead: we wait. Then, a week or month after the session, we ask attendees: how have you put what you learned to work? And again, there are three types of people: those who’ll say it rocked their world, here's what I've done with it. Those in the middle with mediocre results. And those who say it didn't work at all. From there, we follow up with the first and third groups, the success cases and the failures. We interview them, their colleagues and their bosses to understand what and how they did things differently due to the training. We want to understand what drove their results and work with the organization to replicate and amplify them. And then, we talk to the failure cases to figure out why the training didn’t translate to impact. Most of the time, it’s because of systems, structures, processes, and leadership. This shines a light on where to work on improvements and mitigate against the risks of more failure cases. Our A, B, C approach isn’t complicated, but it is effective, ensuring the right people are at the right training to make a real difference. I’d love to hear your stories of training and development that stuck–or didn’t. Share yours in the comments. And email me directly if you think this approach might be a fit. Want more stories from the leadership and strategy trenches? Sign up here for WhiteWater’s free bimonthly newsletter.

Think Piece: The Foundation of True Leadership's All in Your Head. A few years ago, I worked with the leadership team of a massive, billion-dollar construction project in its very early stages. The general manager was a super dude but also incredibly intimidating. For starters, he’s the most deadpan person I’ve ever met. If he were at a poker table, I’d walk away. I’d be sure to lose my wager. Along with his incredible ability to control his reactions, he was also very assured in his perspective. I’d been invited to help the team think through the early, formative stages of its leadership philosophy for the project. At the time, there were only seven or eight people, but it would grow to a staff of more than 600 when things got rolling. One day, the team met for an important and potentially controversial conversation about how leadership would devolve as the project grew. The manager spoke first. I cringed inside a little. I knew the team was intimidated by him, that they’d likely just go along with whatever he said. And then something incredible happened. He started to speak, then stopped himself. “I'm probably going to disagree with myself before I finish this sentence,” he said before sharing his view. And his opening left the door open to debate, leading to a fascinating, four-hour discussion. That one little statement, “I may disagree with myself,” said to everybody, “feel free to challenge me on this, I'm open to changing my thinking.” And it changed everything about that conversation and that team’s dynamic moving forward. Check Yourself Being able to question your thinking is foundational to Thinking-Action-Outcomes, or TAO, for short, our core philosophy about how leaders grow. Your thinking as a leader has a far more dramatic impact on the outcomes you’ll achieve than anything you say or do. This framework sees leaders as works-in-process. Heck, just recognizing that you’re not and never will be done learning and growing is the first step to becoming a true leader instead of just a boss or manager. The Performance Paradox Of course, this is easier said than done. That’s because leaders are used to being right. As the late, great Chris Argyris writes in “ Teaching Smart People How to Learn ,’ in the Harvard Business Review, leaders “need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.” These well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals are used to being affirmed and rewarded for their ideas. Many have probably been the stars, the standouts their entire lives. And that’s a handicap because they lose the ability to hold their thinking up for examination. They will find all kinds of ways to blame any failure on something else. It clearly can't be them because, well, they don't fail. The good news? Self-interrogation is a skill you can learn, a habit you can build. As I wrote in a recent post, leader is not a static position at the top or a title. It’s a steady state of becoming. Kickstart Better Thinking Of course, endless reflection and self-inquiry are not the goal–delivering results for your organization and stakeholders by engaging your team is. But better actions and that lead to more successful outcomes rest on better thinking, which starts with becoming conscious of what we believe, assume and perceive. Here are some ways to start the process of challenging your mental models. There are a kind of mental yoga for leaders.: Read a lot. Read widely. For inspiration, check out this post by Kate Wallace, a copywriter, on swapping in some classics among your business books. Seek out and talk to people with different backgrounds and points of view. Constantly ask, “What do they see and believe that’s different from me?” Reflect upon yourself and your thoughts as a leader. Some questions to ponder: What do I think about leadership? What is my role as a leader? How have my thoughts been shaped? What have been the key influences over my mental models? What might change if I had been born and raised in a different place, met different people or gone to different schools? When faced with tough decisions, consider: what are my thoughts, my beliefs and my assumptions about the situation? What about it may be different from what I perceive? What data am I missing? Am I filtering anything out? Who has a different perspective from mine? What are the unintended consequences of my decisions on key stakeholders? What challenges do I face? What have I done about them? What were the results? (Taking action and either not solving the problem or having it pop up in a different form are key indicators that something may need to change about your thinking.) Try arguing on behalf of another point of view. Faced with a decision, try to make the case for taking an action that’s radically different from the one you favor. Consider what’s different about your thinking when doing so. When debating a course of action with others, have everyone “flip” their point of view and argue one different from their own. Keep an open, yet critical mind about everything you read and hear. Keep a journal of your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions about your role as a leader. Watch how your mental model may change over time as you are exposed to new perspectives or new experiences. Let me know how you make out with these are simple exercises to build flexible thinking. I’d love to hear about a time you challenged your thinking and it led to better or different outcomes. Share your story in the comments below. Want more stories from the leadership and strategy trenches? Sign up here for WhiteWater’s free bimonthly newsletter. www.wwici.com