In this video Marshal Goldsmith answers two main questions. Firstly how leadership has changed over time and secondly how to influence upper management.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better – by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams.
Here is the interview with Marshal Goldsmith entitled ‘Ask the Coach”.
Transcript of the interview below:
Paul: Hello I’m Paul Michaelman Michelman director of content for Harvardbusiness.org and I am delighted to be joined today by executive coaching guru, teacher and author Marshall Goldsmith. Marshal writes the ask the coach blog for Harvardbusiness.org and his latest book is “What got you here wont get you there”. Marshal thanks for joining us today.
Marshal: Very happy to be here
Paul: Marshal, in your ask the coach blog you address questions from our readers as well as other managers you encounter about their biggest challenges on the job and what I would like to do today is look at a couple of questions. Here is the first.
How is the role of a business leader changing and will the qualities of a great leader be different in the future or is great leadership timeless?
Marshal Goldsmith: And the answer is both of the above. How is the role of a leader changing?, erm, we did some research on this interviewing 200 specially selected high potential leaders from around the world and asked them how’s the leader of the future different from the leader in the past. Some will answer the same and will probably be the same 100 years from today. Things like integrity, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, communicating a vision. You can pretty much guess a lot of these characteristics have always been important for leaders.
On the other hand we found 5 characteristics that were different for the future then they were in the past. These were changing dynamics of leadership. The first one is called thinking globally. If you look at the leader of the past, leadership was largely domestic; it was regional and perhaps countrywide. Not really global for most leaders. Today even leaders that deal in a domestic market have to look at global implications in terms of suppliers, in terms of support staff. So global thinking came out as a big change.
Another big thing that came out as a difference is appreciating cross culture diversity. In America historically we had virtually no diversity. It was largely white males. Then we came into diversity dealing with women, perhaps minorities in America. Today we are looking at cross culture diversity which is a whole wide element of what does it mean to work with different religions, different cultures, and different peoples from around the world. That’s also a change in the world of leadership.
The third one is called technological savvy. Now that doesn’t mean that every great leader has to be a technician. What It means is you have to know how technological impacts your core business. You have to be able to hire people that are technologically gifted and you have to be technically competent enough to really navigate in the new world.
Then we came up with two others. The next one is building alliances and partnerships. Historically leaders often didn’t work in the area of alliance and partnerships and today it’s a common part of the job. A great example is IBM. In the old days IBM had no alliances and partnerships. They were proud of the fact that everything was just IBM. Today in IBM they have a different alliance or partnership every day almost or every week. Just a constant changing in terms of alliances and partnerships. Building all kinds of different relationships. Then the final one we came up in our research is called “sharing leadership”. Peter Drucker said “The leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future knows how to ask”. A big change in leadership today is historically the leader knew more then the direct reports. There was an apprentice model. The direct reports would work up then learn more, no more then the next direct reports and evolved.
Today most leaders manage people called ‘knowledge workers’. What’s the definition of a ‘knowledge worker’. They know more about what they are doing then their boss does. When we manage people that know more about what their doing then we do we can’t tell them what to do and how to do it. We have to ask, listen and learn and leadership becomes a shared responsibility.
Now I mentioned these 5 in my blog but I got a great post from one of our readers and he came up with an idea that I think looking back on our research kind of got left out. Its called ‘learning agility’. Really the leader of the future e is a person who is continuously learning and growing and as the world has changed this learning agility has become more and more and more important.
Paul: Marshal I hear one kind of common theme. The notion of openness and the need to be more open. Open to the ideas of other people. Open to learning new ideas. Open to learning about new cultures. I think we all like to think we are very open but we are probably not. How do we train ourselves to think differently?
Well you know I’m going to give you an even bigger challenge. How do we train ourselves to act differently? Because if you think differently but you don’t act differently it doesn’t help a whole lot. That’s basically what I do in my day job. I teach leaders how to learn and what I teach leaders is the importance of asking for input. How can I be a better leader. How can I learn from you. How can I help the team.
Peter Drucker really instilled in me the value of asking which was a big theme of his work. Asking and getting feedback, responding to people, following up, learning. I did a research study with 86,000 respondents and I showed that leaders who asked for input, listened, responded in an open way, follow up in a disciplined way invariably are seen as more effective leaders. Leaders that don’t respond, don’t follow up typically don’t get better.
Paul: lets move on to a different question that has recently been submitted to your blog. This one has to do with influencing these leaders we have just been talking about. Here is the question that came in.
The biggest challenge that I face at work is not managing my team. Its dealing with my boss and upper management. Any suggestions.
Marshal: Well effectively influencing upper management is a critically important topic and I noticed this is important because it touches everyone. You don’t have to be a in a leadership role. It touches every employee and every company that has to make a difference.
A couple of guidelines: The next thing I’m going to say is going to sound incredibly simple. Its amazing how few people ever existentially get this point. Every decision in the world is made on the bases of one variable. Who has the power to make the decision. Not who’s pretty, or right, or good, or fair. Its who has the power to make the decision. Think of the school child coming home. “Its not fair, the teacher gave me a C, I deserved an A”. Well you didn’t sell to the teacher. The teacher had the power to make the decisions. Grow up and live with it. This is the way life works.
Now as obvious as that sounds its amazing how few people ever get this. The first thing to do in effectively influencing up is, think like a great sale person. Think like a salesperson and you have to realise that it is not their responsibility to buy. It is your responsibility to sell. And when you start thinking like a sales person you get much more effective. Next you sell to the higher level. You don’t sell to your needs you sell to their needs. So many people and organizations basically whine. “You need to give me this”, “Why”, “I need it”. That’s like a sales person saying “You need to buy this”, “Why”, “Well I want to collect my commission”. Who cares, that’s not their problem.
You also have to realise when you’re influencing up your taking away resources from somebody else when you’re asking for resources for yourself. You’ve got to be sensitive to your peers. What am I doing to my peers when I’m asking for these resources for me. How is this going to influence them. Prepare for objections. Develop a cost benefit analysis. Do your homework. Sell to the bigger needs of the business. Then when you go to influence up you may not win but you will dramatically improve your odds of success. And finally if you cant sell it make peace. Sell what you can sell make peace with what you cant sell.
Finally never stick it to the boss if you can’t sell it. Never go down and stay “that idiot told me to tell you”, especially if you are in middle management. I always teach middle managers this. If you’re a middle manager, you stab your boss in the back in front of your direct reports. What will you teach your direct reports to do. Stab you in the back when they disagree with you. So you treat your manager with the same courtesy that you would like to be treated with if those roles were reversed. Just a couple of quick guidelines.
Paul: So you said one thing that struck me. At the same time that your trying to exert your influence you said you also need to be cognisant of the needs of your peers and the fact that you may be taking resources away from them. Seems like a pretty delicate balance.
Marshal: It is a delicate balance. Something very important – lets say X is critically important to your peer, Y is minimal important to you. If you get Y and your peer looses X, be very sensitive about asking for Y. Because one day the roles are going to be reversed and your going to need your peer to help you. So its important when we influence up not just to think about our management. Also think about our peers. And by the way let me expand this concept a little bit. Sometimes it isn’t influencing up with just your boss. What I’ve jus talked about applies to any situation where you have to influence people without direct line authority. So if you don’t have direct line authority you have to sell. You may not want to sell. You may not feel the need to sell. If you want to make a difference you have to sell because they don’t have to buy.
Paul: Marshal Goldsmith, thank you very much.
Marshal: thank you
Paul: for more of Marshals ideas visit his ask the coach blog at harverdbusiness.org.
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