Personal Leadership Effectiveness is about POWER. By power, I mean the rate at which one’s word (what one says) is made real in the world.
It is possible to improve our personal leadership effectiveness and close the gap between what we say can be accomplished and what actually is accomplished. This gap, which I call the accomplishment gap, is evident at all levels in an organization: strategic, operational, project, and individual. Although frequently blamed on a variety of factors, such as the characteristics and qualities of other people or conditions and circumstances at work, the gap is often the result of our own personal leadership effectiveness. Unfortunately, because most of us don’t want to admit that our personal leadership may be ineffective, our efforts to close the accomplishment gap are misdirected and the gap persists.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
—Philip K. Dick
Accomplishment is the result of what we bring to the party and how effective our interactions are with others – that is, our personal leadership effectiveness. After years of research, teaching, and working with people at all levels and in all types of organizations, I have come to the determination that personal leadership effectiveness and the closing of the accomplishment gap rest on five foundations: (1) focus on deliverables and agreements, (2) expand integrity, (3) generate and build accountability, (4) managing existence and infrastructure, and (5) communicate productively. When these five foundations work together in what I call the POWER Star©, personal leadership effectiveness expands and people accomplish way more of what they set out to accomplish.
THE POWER STAR©
The POWER STAR© shows the five elements of personal leadership effectiveness and the ways they are interrelated. Reliable quality performance begins when people stand in the foundations of integrity and accountably, use the tools of productive communication and managing existence and infrastructure, and maintaining a focus on deliverables and agreements. The five elements of personal leadership effectiveness do not mean you will always succeed, but you will be much more effective when you exercise all five than without any one of them. Practice, practice, practice!
1. Focus on Deliverables and Agreements. Deliverables are the products, services, and communications that are delivered from an individual or team to another person, team, or organization. The successful delivery of these products, services, and communications constitutes accomplishment and determines our effectiveness. That is why we say “everyone is in the delivery business”. Ideally what is to be delivered and the conditions which constitute successful delivery are created by making agreements with the people who will be receiving the deliverables. These agreements establish the conditions of satisfaction that must be fulfilled if the delivery is to be considered successful. Accomplishment, therefore, involves keeping an eye on the deliverables we owe (and are owed to us) as well as all the agreements associated with those deliverables. Personal leadership effectiveness depends on the creation, management, and honoring of agreements for the successful delivery of the results and outcomes made real in our deliverables.
2. Expand Integrity. This foundation of personal leadership effectiveness reminds us that honoring our word is the basis of all successful operations. It is our commitment to: (a) keep our word, and do what we say we will do when we say we will do it, and (b) let all the people affected by our work know promptly whenever we realize that we will not be keeping our word. Expanding Integrity means increasing the level of integrity in all of our relationships and interactions in a way that is consistent with honoring our agreements for a future we have promised. Without integrity, our credibility and performance decline, limiting our effectiveness and accomplishment.
3. Generate and Build Accountability. This second foundation of personal leadership effectiveness reminds us to “own” what happens while we are trying to accomplish something and to avoid the pitfall of being a victim of circumstances. It is a call to engage and interact with people in a way that brings accountability present in our interactions and breaks the victim cycle when it occurs, e.g., when things don’t go as wanted or expected. Rather than seeing accountability as a personal trait, characteristic, or attribute, we recognize that Generating and Building Accountability is strengthened between people in the course of their interactions and conversations each other.
4. Communicate Productively. There are only two sets of tools available for delivering what we have promised. The first is productive communication, which is communication that actually moves people and their actions forward toward the accomplishment of intended outcomes. Four types of conversations are productive: Initiative, Understanding, Performance, and Closure conversations (see our book, “The Four Conversations: Daily Communication that Gets Results”). These four conversations are the key to creating, managing, and honoring agreements for deliverables and the actions that produce them. Closure Conversations, in particular, are central to keeping and completing agreements and setting the stage for future productive conversations. The effective and appropriate use of these conversations generates and builds accountability and expands integrity.
5. Manage Existence and Infrastructure. The second set of tools for delivering what is promised is developing the necessary and appropriate “existence and infrastructure”.
- Existence tools are the ways we keep something around so that we can work on it. For example, writing down a grocery list keeps the items we want to purchase in existence. Relying on our memory sets us up for the problems of forgetting. An “existence tool” – a shopping list – helps us remember what to buy when we get to the store. Existence tools let us know the agreements we have made, the state of those agreements, and what needs to be done to produce and deliver the products, services, and communications we have committed to deliver.
- Infrastructure tools include all of equipment, systems, and procedures we use to get things done. “Infrastructure” means “underlying foundation”, so it includes all of those things – computers, offices, email, databases, project teams, meetings, schedules, scoreboard, clock, and players map – that support us in doing our work and keeping our agreements.
Depending on the deliverables we have committed to delivering, there may be lots of things (information, records, etc.) that have to be kept in existence so that we know what has been done and what yet needs to be done. Managing the existence of a complex project can take many hours of work on the part of many people. Similarly, our ability to keep our agreements will depend in large part on the availability and appropriateness of the infrastructure we use. Both of these tool sets must be planned, implemented, and maintained appropriately throughout in order to for us to be reliable and consistent in delivering what we have agreed to.
*POWER = People Obtaining Worthwhile and Extraordinary Results
