A “thinking leader” is someone who is a thought leader in the area of decision making and solution finding.
Our author interview this week is with E. Michael Shays, one of the most celebrated and respected independent management consultants in the world. Shays has twice been the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) chair and was the fourth recipient of the organization’s highest honor – a lifetime achievement award.
In a career covering over 800 assignments with clients ranging from start-up entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies Shays, a former anti-submarine seaplane commander with the US Navy, has seen every type of leadership in action – and knows what works. This week he agreed to be part of our interview series to talk about leadership and his new book Focused or Failed Leadership.
A statement towards the beginning of your book Focused or Failed Leadership raises a quick eyebrow for me. You mention attending a session given by Gerry Nadler in which he awoke your interest by proclaiming that “You do not have to analyze the problem to create a solution”. As a consultant to management isn’t that counterintuitive?
Its very counterintuitive. When I first heard it I thought it was an absolute contradiction to everything I had learned as a system analyst but there is a reason it makes sense. The reason is that when you analyze the problem you become anchored to the construct, or the domain of the problem and it’s an unnatural act to work your way outside of that construct or domain. It is a very powerful statement to realize.
In the corporate world we often hear the term “Thought Leader”. You give particular attention to becoming, or finding, “Thinking Leaders” can you explain what the potential differences are?
A thought leader is someone with expertise in a particular area. Someone we go to them for leading edge thinking within their space. It could be industry or function or something else that is happening.
A “thinking leader” is someone who is a thought leader in the area of decision making and solution finding. They’re incredibly important because the solution processes we’ve been taught aren’t really effect in human problems. The process we’ve been taught breaks problems down into a parts list. In order to solve human problems we have to look at the whole rather than the parts. And with humans it’s not what we say is the problem - it’s what we feel is the problem.
I go so far as to say we have two identities, a public identity and a private or core identity. Our public deals with rational issues and our private deals with emotional issues - and we may not always understand what our private identity is after.
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Public identity is what we think we’re supposed to do, what we believe the world wants to see from us. Our private identity is what we would do if there were no descriptions, no rules, no repercussions. It boils down to the fact that what we feel is important in a problem overrides our rational decision making without us even knowing it a good chunk of time.
We’ve all met leaders who are fixed in their thinking, who believes that his opinion is fact. How do you recommend that a leader open up – or that an employee might “nudge” them?
Two things come to mind. We need to be better schooled in active listening, empathizing and feedback. Those are the most important skills we have in dealing with people and problems. We hear what they are saying but are so busy with our own thoughts and in formulating responses that we aren’t listening.
The other thing is that leader s who are managers are isolated to what other people are feeling and they are more resistant to change than staff members believe it or not. They say that no one likes change, but the truth is that they don’t like to be changed. To do anything that forces them to change themselves is to attack their legacy.
When non-management employees are going to be effected by change, they are more able to handle it because there is less filtering at that level, less personal emotion at stake. That‘s why I believe in flat-level management. Keeping everyone on the same level and within the same parameters means that they tend to be working with the same group of filters.
These seven ambushes to clear thinking that I’ve put together for the book force you to ask yourself why things are happening. Once, long ago, I was facilitating a group that was half women and half men, the men always answered the question to the group and the women didn’t seem to be answering anything. I asked a question and would do what most teachers do. I would always just call on whoever put their hands up first, it was always men.
During a break I called my daughter and talked to her about it. She had been experimenting with a class of her own in which she had a class teaching mathematics that was for women only. She told me that men are more competitive where women are more collaborative, and that men tend to be most competitive in the company of women. I went back to the room and asked another question. Sure enough the men’s hands went up immediately. I said “Hold on, let’s think about it for a minute” and that’s when the women’s hands went up. And they were brilliant. Women tended to think a little longer and formulate their responses whereas the men wanted to win. That’s an example of taking a step back to look at a reason why something is happening. It would have been a huge mistake to have assumed that the men where better prepared because they were answering the questions more eagerly.
Cognitive dissonance, in physiology, is the desire to resist contradictory information, because someone is the owner of the idea. When it gets challenged it raises the passion level of the owner. The idea doesn’t matter, but it becomes a matter of being challenged. Devils advocates can end up in this situation quite often.
When we spoke earlier you told me that when you concentrate on a problem that the problem expands, and that the energy should be put into the purpose of what you’re doing. Can that be related to our current economic situation?
It can, but the difficulty is that we’re going through some political filtering. This is something that needs to be handled immediately. My brother was working on this years ago, and they all knew it was going to happen. The government doesn’t work ahead of time. They wait until something breaks and then they fix it. Some nations plan specifically for long terms, 25 year plans. They would have seen something like this coming. Back in the 1980’s I was sitting with an executive from Sony and we were talking about the walkman. I asked him what his next project was going to be and when he thought it would be finished. He told me the timeline for his next product would be something that was coming out in 20 years! They have the long term process and vision. Eisenhower had this kind of vision with the foresight of building our highway systems – and even that was a reaction to what he was seeing elsewhere in the world.
We haven’t taken care of the infrastructure. Our roads, and other systems. Our only long term plans are bonds. Our government unfortunately doesn’t work in a way that supports long term planning in that way. If we were looking at the long term can you imagine what we could do to help countries like some of those we see in
OK, switching gears; we know that technologically our younger workforce is ready for the job. Do you feel that those in Gen X and Gen Y are prepared to lead, innovate, and drive change?
In my generation we were brought up to work hard and work our way up. I was a child of the depression and we learned to do things that way. The boomers then came along and began to think that they should be able to being their career where their schooling left off, if they were high achievers in school they immediately wanted to considered high achievers at work.
After them came a group of people, the Gen X youngsters who said “you have to sell me on whether or not I should work for you” without having proven themselves in their careers they wanted recognition, signing bonuses, and other perks. They knew their value sometimes before the organizations did and demanded to be treated a certain way.
This youngest generation is so innovative and aren’t looking forward to working for a company - unless it’s a start up. They want to be their own boss. They aren’t interested in salary that we’re used to employees being, they are interested in a quality of life. The tendency is toward entrepreneurialism.
Do they have the leadership skills? They have the entrepreneurial courage for sure, I think they ‘ll learn the leadership skills. They will fail, and they’ll be able to make them fast, cheap, and painless. They’ll get back up and try again. Look at the young role models they have and their understanding of the technology. This young generation will know when they are on to something, and we’ve got to know enough to listen. I’ve got a grandchild who has gotten involved in cutting edge filming and listening allowed me get in to creating websites and online video content. Our future is in good hands.
Want to become a more “Thinkable” leader, learn the “Seven Ambushes to Clear Thinking”, and begin to invent your own future? Order the new book Focused or Failed Leadership today by clicking the link below.
www.focusedorfailedleadership.com