My company works with groups of all shapes, flavors and sizes. Human behavior in groups fascinates us greatly; we stay up at night thinking about it; we find it intriguing and enlightening. We’re considered experts of sorts regarding group behavior. It was Margaret Mead that said, “Never doubt that a small group of citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” We would agree. We also think that Margaret’s wisdom applies to organizations as well as societies.

In organizations, there are times when leaders find themselves in a group, feel compelled to accomplish something collaboratively, but struggle and stagnate because for some reason no there is no clearly appointed leader. This situation is often fraught with frustration and bountiful harvests of learning. We can learn a great deal about each other and ourselves from observing “leaderless” groups. Some organizations have even had us design leaderless group interviewing scenarios to be used in junior executive hiring forums.

One of the first things we typically see from an average leaderless group that is tasked to accomplish something, is that they waste the first 50% of their allotted time jockeying for position and obsessing over how they are going to work together. It seems that hens in a barnyard are more adept at establishing pecking order than humans. This is probably because humans function better collectively without too much pecking order involved, so we instinctively fight it. However, we also fear the absence of hierarchy because the lack of its clarity requires trust and relationship. The onset jockeying/obsessing usually stems from personal insecurities, illogical assumptions, and discomfort in the ambiguity of dynamic boundary negotiation. When leaders view power as a scarce resource, they move to hoard it quickly. When leaders have strong habits from operating in firmly established parameters, they sometimes flounder in the land of uncertainty and moving targets where the rapid, lucid articulation of normally “unsaid” stuff is required to succeed or stay alive. When leaders are unable to retain their personal power and are too used to giving it willingly to their appointed superior, they usually either jump for the “power position” in a leaderless group or they freeze in paralyzing hope for someone to collect their forfeited freedom. This usually stems from too much unconscious experience in metastasized patriarchies – hierarchies held together by tyrannical coercion.

Another common phenomenon we observe is what we call “shoot the first leader.” In a leaderless group, typically within the first few minutes, one of the most over-aggressive/control-oriented ones moves to condescendingly take leadership of the group. The group politely tolerates/tests it for a while and then somehow finds some way to shoot them down. That leader almost never makes it back into a position of relative strength or meaningful influence in the group. Sometimes the group marginalizes them completely. If the group remains together long enough, a second leader, usually more democratically-oriented and facilitative, emerges. This second leader almost always retains their power and influence indefinitely, without appointment or position.

The lesson for leaders here is this: 1) don’t be so quick to take that which is not yours, 2) take the time to build relationships and trust so that your leadership emerges in response to the needs of those around you, and 3) followers are loyal to leaders who respect and honor them. Flawless leaders know that you’re not leading unless you have followers, and that a follower choosing to follow a leader is so much more important that a leader choosing a follower to be on their team. Followers do not follow simply because they are there; following is never a foregone conclusion.

Would your followers choose you if they were not in any way constrained to do so?

What makes a flawless leader a leader? As water is to fish, what is the equivalent to the leader? What makes a leader a leader; what isn’t just optional – what’s oxygen? Beyond traits, characteristics, behaviors, methods, and all the other things that scientists and academics write about, what is the leadership thing?

In the last chapter of my new book coming out next month, Leaving Prisons: Release Your Trapped Value!, I deal with this burning question. When I have asked this of leaders in the past, I have received lists upon lists of responses – decision-making, vision, encouragement, strategic thinking, communication skills, strong example, collaboration, empowerment, customer focus, change leadership, forging alignment, clarity, dependability, ownership, team building, systems thinker, results-focused, accountability guru, conflict resolver, trust-builder, inspirational motivator, charismatic, listener, intensity, and more, much more. None of these things are bad, but they are not the water-to-fish equivalent – they are not, nor do they collectively comprise the leadership thing. However, as described in their book, Encouraging the Heart, researchers Kouzes and Posner touched on something powerful when they interviewed Major-General John H. Stanford on his secrets to developing leaders and people. This was his reply:

When anyone asks me that question, I tell them I have the secret to success in life. The secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to really ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people. A person who is not in love doesn’t really feel the kind of excitement that helps them to get ahead and lead others and to achieve. I don’t know of any other fire, any other thing in life that is more exhilarating and is more positive a feeling than love is.

Love is the leadership thing. Leadership is relationship, so love is not optional – it’s oxygen. Love is the key to leadership relationships. The mature know this instinctively. More importantly, love that is enduring and significant is not a mere feeling; it is an act of the will that just happens to be accompanied by occasionally enjoyable feelings. The late M. Scott Peck brilliantly defined love in his book, The Road Less Traveled, as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” So mature love is simply a spiritual commitment to yourself or another. The fruition of the focused commitment to love is a spiritual manifestation of flawlessly leading. Furthermore, love, spirituality, and submission to worthy purpose are inextricably linked to leadership and each other at many levels. Leaders who struggle in these areas struggle proportionately in their leadership.

In James Hollis’ book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, he explains that pursuing psychological and spiritual development always requires an increased capacity to tolerate anxiety and ambiguity, and our ability to accept and abide in this troubled state is the moral measure of our maturity. Love, for leaders, is the dynamic and quintessential state of ambiguity and anxiety, making it the consummate path to flawlessness. Love is so problematic – it cannot be controlled and measured. Oh well, lean into the discomfort. Love is such an unpredictable moving target; it’s so uncertain. OK, grow up and do it anyway. Control in a social system (the only system in which leadership resides) is non-existent. To lead flawlessly and to unleash their trapped value, leaders must relinquish their unhelpful dysfunctional needs for illogical control. Control is not part of your kingdom, love is. Embrace love and release your trapped value!

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” -Albert Einstein

What holds you back from love? In what ways will love release your trapped value?

A few years ago, I was asked to coach a leader in crisis. Her organization was struggling to survive, and she was fighting to keep her job. The board told her that unless she made drastic improvements they would fire her. Both the board and the leader were convinced that the root cause of the situation was simply the lack of execution throughout her organization. If everyone would just “run the play as it was called” and “do what they were supposed to do,” desired results would flow. These were the fundamental assumptions that the leader and the board believed. After we talked, the leader agreed to challenge these core assumptions with me. After thorough investigation, we found that “execution” was a result, not a root cause. Execution was merely a lagging indicator, a measurement of what happens at the end of a process in business. Once we switched tactics by identifying and fixing key leading indicators, the organization rapidly released trapped value and began to thrive.

Fortunately, I learned this critical lesson early in life. I had a wonderful boss once who taught me that you don’t run a business by reacting to the numbers; you run a business to produce the numbers. Loggers do not cut trees down by first removing leaves and fruit. No leader ever released trapped value within an organization by whining about execution. Unfortunately, most managers are stuck in the weakness of blame; they choose slavery to frenetic meaningless reaction, servitude to self-referential logic. These are the harmful side-effects of subjugation to lagging indicators. To break the cycle and release trapped value, leaders must lead leading indicators. Two critical leading indicators that flawless leaders manage are the hospitability of their organizations and key behaviors of their people.

Recently there has been much-ado-about-nothing regarding “execution”. It is currently the most commoditized, misused, misunderstood, and inaccurate description in business today. The core “execution” argument (that if everyone just “executes” given directions and plans, results occur) is a weak defense against leadership, a platitude of narcissistic and inactionable direction, skillful incompetence, self-referential logic, ridiculous whining, and sophisticated blame. Execution is meant to be the answer to the question “why aren’t things getting done around here?” The problem is that the answer, “because people aren’t getting things done,” sounds so much like the question. It is easily more logical to blame weak leadership. The first thing the direction of “execution” brings to an organization is more meaningless and frenetic motion, which is the last thing most organizations need. It is actually difficult to count the number of erroneous and self-justified assumptions within the “execution” argument. What complicates and confuses the matter further is that execution without organizational hospitability requires enforcement via coercion. Coercion is not leadership. Leaders who invoke coercion do so out of fear and distrust. Followers invoke their own will; they do not require coercion in order to execute.

Leading indicators are predictive and strategically pertinent. Reacting to lagging indicators is weak management at best. Leading the leading indicators is leading flawlessly. Good begets good. Hospitable organizations attract high performers. Leading indicators are grounded in individual and collective capabilities, competencies, meaningfulness, and behaviors. Flawless leaders are anticipatory and predictive due to their focus on leading indicators. Flawless leaders refuse to blame poor organizational results on followers. Flawless leaders run a business to produce the numbers. Flawless leaders are not stuck continually reacting to metrics and measurements. Flawless leaders lead leading indicators.

What measurements are most meaningful and predictive? What behaviors will you articulate and encourage to produce desired results?

My friend was interviewing doctors for his upcoming heart surgery when he met Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith’s practice was quite large, with its own clinic, staff of doctors, technicians, nurses, and support people. My friend met several of the staff, learned more about the medical procedures he would go through, and had what he described as a “good meeting” with Dr. Smith. Although from a technical perspective he had been impressed with the doctors and staff, as he was leaving the clinic he still felt apprehensive about choosing Dr. Smith as the one who would open his chest, temporarily stop his heart, and hopefully save his life. As he got on the elevator to leave, he met yet another of the clinic’s staff who appeared to be the janitor. Being polite, my friend asked the young man what he did at the clinic, and the man replied, without hesitation, “Me and Dr. Smith save lives.” The young man went on to passionately explain that by ensuring the cleanliness of Dr. Smith’s facility he was helping him save lives. The young man asked my friend if Dr. Smith was his doctor. My friend replied thoughtfully, “He is now.”

We choose to be flawed when we attempt to lead others without first creating a shared and resonating purpose. Obviously Dr. Smith’s staff shared a purpose that held motivating meaning for even the janitor. Helping people see that their daily grind powerfully serves a larger purpose is the work of flawless leaders. Witnesses, such as my friend, cannot help but be moved by the ripples that such action creates.

Followers flock to meaning like moths to a flame. So imagine my disappointment when I hear leaders talk of “driving execution”, “getting them on the bus”, “getting them in the boat”, and “drilling down change”. My problem with all these defenses against leadership is that all too often, the leaders do not know how to drive, they are not on the boat or the bus themselves, and since they don’t want anyone drilling anything into them why do they think others would welcome such drilling? These are all examples of manipulative behavior that extinguishes the engagement of followers. It’s no wonder most managers secretly suspect that the spirits of their people have departed while their bodies remain (the definition of disengaged). When leaders have genuine conversations with followers about meaningful possibilities, followers engage. Finding and articulating the meaning in work is the work of leaders. Orchestrating meaningful conversation with followers is the work of flawless leaders. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, is the message one of cutting costs to make the quarter’s earnings, or is it one of shared continuous struggle to save lives and improve the health of the world? One message coldly shrinks life to a short term goal. The other message fills hearts with warm meaningful purpose and endurance to reach a larger-purpose horizon. As leaders, are we shrinking or are we growing?

There is more to work than meets the wallet. There is more to the quarter than the numbers. There is more to the future than the past can offer.

It is the work of flawless leaders to engage others. Everything enduring begins with purpose. Find and articulate the unifying purpose in work and you are half way to leading. Masterfully engage followers in meaningful conversations around that purpose allowing the emergence of a greater co-created purpose and you start leading. Genuinely build relationships in the process and you are leading flawlessly.

What is closest to your heart? What is most meaningful? What is most worth doing in this life? What purpose is worthy of your unadulterated surrender?

Cindy was one of two Group Presidents who were leading a large multinational company. Walter, her counterpart, was responsible for Europe, Asia, and Australia while Cindy ran the larger of the two operations in North and South America. Both leaders were responsible for billions of dollars of business, and both were considered outstanding business leaders. In fact, both Walter and Cindy had been offered CEO positions in other companies in their industry, but both had decided to stay with this organization and cultivate their possibility for the top job there. While Cindy ran the larger of the two main groups within the company and was largely considered the logical choice for the next CEO, she reached out for me because she noticed a disturbing difference between herself and Walter, and she was seeing that difference ripple throughout their respective operations.

The unsettling dissimilarity Cindy noticed was that Walter was more decisive than she was, and his entire organization consequently moved faster than hers did. Most leaders rarely see the connection between their trapping of value in their own lives and the trapping of value in the organizations they lead. She had a rare awareness, and she knew that an authentic change of this magnitude and at this stage in her career would require a little help to navigate. Being more decisive or less decisive is neither good nor bad, however, there are leadership situations where these behaviors create distinctive repercussions. If the organization is large, spread out geographically, and requires speed to be competitive, then bottlenecking decisions at the top is not desirable. For Cindy, her major blockers were around illogical assumptions regarding “control” and “being right.” While these are two important things, the needs of the organization did not require the behaviors she was embracing. Essentially, through our work together, Cindy chose to change her thinking and create new behaviors that were more aligned with her vision and awareness. Her organization subsequently became even more nimble than Walter’s and she turned a weakness into a strength – not an easy task, to say the least.

The Latin root of the English word decision means “to kill off, to cut off from all other alternatives.” There is a finality, a commitment, a starkness, a confrontation, beneath the surface of decisions that entails various forms of violence. When we say, “yes” to someone or something, we are at some level simultaneously saying “no” to all other alternatives. If the intrinsic “no” to all other options is not present in our “yes,” than our “yes” is a thinly veiled lie, a political spin, a shallowly disingenuous act of a pithy, unaware and immature, soul – a soul, incidentally, that others intuitively find unappealing to follow.

The act of authentically committing our “yes” in the world is actually a marriage of sorts, in that we now identify with the choice we have made. Often, we even become the choices we make, so our choices dynamically craft and wed themselves to our identity. A decision is a self-creative act in that our lives become the sum total of our choices over time.

There is an inherent forcibleness to choice; but it is not coercion – it is the subtle, more powerful force of freedom. Flawless leaders don’t force choice on anyone; they invite and encourage choice and thus engender full commitment and self-accountability. In this way, they release the force of those making the commitment and unleash power and speed throughout their entire organization. Followers are not machines; flawless leaders never treat them as such. Our most effective decisions will always be about the ways in which we facilitate others releasing their trapped value both inside and outside our organizations.

What choices will release trapped value in your life and the life of the organization you lead?

The fires of our discontent are found within our unquenchable desires for more. Nowhere does this discontent rage fiercer than in the engulfing flames of our weak over-indulgence, our gluttony. Leaders often choose to burn contentment in the bonfires of gluttony. Our conspicuous consumptions and illogical wishes are the unfortunately stressful byproducts of our capitalistic democracies, our extortionist organizations, our self-absorbed cultures, and our fears of our unknown self. On a planet where fifty percent of the people have no shoes, have never made a telephone call, and will never read this page, discontent of mythical proportions broods hysterically among those who have countless shoes, phones and reading materials. We hear the cries of gluttony everyday, “Enough is never enough,” “Mommy, I want that – now!” “Gotta do more, gotta be more,” “You deserve it – you can have it all,” “We must never be satisfied,” “There is no finish line.” Our cultures of credit cards, mortgages, “keeping up with the Joneses,” and ever increasing salaries and revenue targets continually feed this well hidden dysfunction. The problem, however, with discontent and gluttony is that it robs us of our power, the power of authentic and actionable identity.

Gluttony is the strongest defense we have against contentment. Contentment must be defended against because it’s scary, for we can only be content when we abandon blame and judgment and unconditionally accept ourselves for who we are and what we are doing. Authentic contentment does not include satisfaction and complacency; it is an unadulterated acceptance of our current reality and an actionable agreement with our current objectives. This self-acceptance entails acute awareness, exacting alignment of intention and behavior, courage, and forgiveness: a rare recipe in kitchens these days. Gluttony wouldn’t be a root cause to leader dysfunction if it didn’t captivate so much of our attention and deflect us from the truly meaningful. Our blind grasping of ill-defined accumulations prevents us from our most powerful and enduring interventions: identity and purpose.

T.D. Jakes, a contrarian voice, said, “Contentment is the apex of existence.” When we are satisfied with ourselves we embody our own gift of “enough.” Contentment is the ultimate act of unconditional love and acceptance, the resulting joy and peace that come from meaningful identity and purposeful action. Few of us experience this because we swim with our heads barely above water in our own ocean of discontent, dissatisfaction, self-hate, and overall revenge for being born. Most organizations encourage these feelings because they use people as human resources, as inhumane means to an end. Gluttonous leaders preach to the masses that encouraging contentment would create laziness, resistance to change, and a culture coated with haphazard malaise. Most managers prefer to use fear and domination because to actually lead is risky and scary. These leaders are defending against honoring people as equals and leading through the power of resonating purpose. The gluttonous leader is weak and produces shallow, short-lived conquests, where the flawless leader brings enriching and enduring contributions. Contentment is quite possibly the most precious thing that gluttony cannot attain.

It is understandable that when we are not firmly grounded in “who we are” and “what we want” we react in fear by “wanting it all.” (The illogical assumption being that more and bigger must be better.) While it is understandable, it is also unacceptable. We fill our aching voids resulting from our lack of identity and vision with random, incoherent gluttony and greed. When we don’t know who we really are and what we really want out of life, then we reach out by trying to grab it all. Gluttonous leaders instinctively criticize, judge, and reject themselves and others, habitually supporting their gluttonous addictions in lieu of simple, scary self-acceptance. When we are gluttonous we have a lot, including regrets, resentments, self-hate and emptiness. This amounts to manufacturing our own harm via the shrinking of our life by smothering it with stuff: the more we get the less we are. Gluttony is the quintessential devaluing of our distinctive selves. Its seduction is the emotional high of shopping for more in the disguised department stores of our own discontent. Ironically, we also accumulate more dissatisfaction through our frenetic purchases, accomplishments, and conquests. Once we accumulate the new, we devalue it by ignoring it in pursuit of the more, or the new and improved. In the midst of our noisy gluttony, we avoid our heart’s quiet calling for contentment: know yourself, forgive yourself, accept yourself, love yourself, choose your destiny, live out your purpose with gusto.

Flawless leaders are irritants because they dare to strive for the contentment that can only result from authentic identity, resonating purpose and meaningful action. They are content with themselves, their actions, and the directions they have set. They accept reality, create the future, and forgive quickly. They are grounded in their identity because they are able to articulate who they are without mentioning what they do. Leadership is both who you are and what you do, but it all starts in who you are. Every decision flows from identity. Every answer to every question is another brick in the building of our uniqueness. Gluttony is the consummate defense against the power and productivity that only authentic identity and meaningful purpose can bring.

Who are you? Where are you? What resentments do you still hold toward yourself? What accumulations prevent you from living fully?

Frank was a dynamo. His energy levels and stamina were the envy of all. His managerial capacity was astounding. His presence was larger than life. He also had deep needs that were satisfied by looking busy. He had defined an overstuffed schedule and generally frenetic behaviors as the hallmark of effective leadership, and his less effective boss rewarded and reinforced this behavior. So in order to fulfill his well hidden needs to be accepted, honored, and competent, Frank would literally run around his business and react vehemently to each and every fire that broke out. As a regional Vice President, he was not only responsible for putting the fires out; he was also responsible for preventing them from recurring. It was that second thing, the fire-prevention role, that Frank unconsciously neglected because he was magnetized to the seductive elixir of the reactive-manager role that he loved to play in order to feel good about who he was. Frank did feel good about his chosen identity, but that unfortunately did not help his business. It hurt his business. To really help his business, Frank actually needed to adhere to the uncommonly sage advice, “Don’t just do something – stand there!”

We all have multiple roles, hats, and positions. A mother is probably the human with the most roles. The average mother is leader, manager, teacher, lover, wife, partner, mentor, advisor, coach, counselor, officer, referee, doctor, judge, analyst, friend, daughter, accountant, nurse, negotiator, pharmacist, chef, maid, and chauffer all before lunchtime. Not all of us are blessed with such complexity. But we all play our parts, actresses and actors in a powerful play. Some parts we run toward with joyful abandon; some parts we run from like rats jumping from a sinking ship. Whatever the role, we say our lines. We move on and off the stage. We act; we interact; we switch roles; we wear hats; we put on masks; we change costumes. Certain parts we like to perform better than others. We over-identify and overuse some roles, choosing to be comfortably trapped in a fractured sliver of existence – gravitating to comfort and safety as a defense against the discomfort of living fully. A mother might overuse the caring-pacifier role, a father might be stuck in the fierce-protector role, and a Vice President could constantly gravitate to the reactive-manager role. When our pet-select roles seduce us, magnetize us, and envelope us, we over-identify with that specific part of life.

Our intoxication with these identity-magnet bit-parts of existence chips away at our wholeness, dilutes our presence in other critical roles, and shatters our fullness. A multitude of varying roles is not a fragmented life. Being less than fully present in any one role is diminishment. Overusing or avoiding roles is a sign of potential organizational dysfunction. Our identity is the compilation of fully living every role that presents itself throughout our lifetime. Our identity is not our action. Our identity is not one role or even a compilation of roles. Our identity is our unique creative process of breathing our full authentic presence into our chosen possibilities. Flawless leaders consciously create their identity and submit to a larger purpose instead of unconsciously overemphasizing single aspects of leadership in an effort to salve deeply hidden personal issues.

What roles magnetize you? What roles do you neglect and what is the resulting fallout or risk? Where and when are you less than fully living?