Leadership is a Sales Job

In the modern age, one key element, of developed countries, is freedom and mobility. For example, in America, people can come and go as they please. This has critical implications if you want to be a leader.

Most obviously, you should be able to see how sales is a key component of leadership. You need to earn the respect and devotion of your followers. You need to sell them on why they should follow you.

Employees have the freedom to work where they please. If you do not treat your employees well, they may just leave you. This applies in both the private and public sectors. It is most obvious with not-for-profits, where you do not even have employees, you simply have "volunteers."

One way, to treat people well, is to help them get want they want. Though we rarely view it in this way, what a person wants is their mission.

Leadership can be construed as "Managing for the mission." While an organization should have a clear mission (though most do not) individuals should think through their mission as well. Few people have done this, and they could use the help of a leader.

Though we all want money, is it unlikely to be your mission. You are much more likely, to discover you mission, by answering questions like "What is worth doing, even if I fail?" or "What do I want to be remembered for?"

One of my favorite sayings is, "Life applies friction." In today's example, the simple fact that different people, pull in different directions, creates friction. A key job, for the leader, is to manage that friction.

The goal should be unity through diversity. Your job, as a leader, is to channel the various followers, and create unity through a diversity of people. Because, as I have suggested, not all mission statements will line up. To compound the challenge, most people do not have a personal mission statement. They simply have desires, fears, and interests.

Identifying where you are headed (your mission) is an extremely important part (probably the most important part) of convincing people to follow you. By convincing, I mean selling people on joining you for the journey. It is not easy. But, who ever said leadership is easy?

The Jobs of Selling

Walter Isaacson is the official biographer of the late Steve Jobs. In 2011, soon after Steve's death, Isaacson's biography was released. In the book, Walter talks about the way Apple Computers, and iTunes, changed the music industry.

Being that iTunes has been now around, for more than 15 years, and is so ingrained into the way things are done, it can be hard to remember how the music industry used to operate.

To say the music industry was protective of its property would be quite an understatement. There were seven major record labels. And, if you wanted to use their music, you had to pay.

The poster boy for the industry's protectiveness (perhaps greed) was Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica. Ulrich famously participated in litigation against people who used the file sharing service, Napster, to illegally download music.

The music industry had been printing money for a very one time. And, change would not come easy. So, when Apple Computers came up with the idea of iTunes, it was not an was sell.

In fact, Steve Jobs, himself, had to put on his sales hat, and met with the various players. In his book, Isaacson talks about how Jobs personally met with Roger Ames of Warner Music, and Doug Morris of the Universal Music Group, to sell them on the idea of iTunes.

There were many elements to the genius of Steve Jobs. And, selling was definitely one of them. Because, as I have repeated, ad nauseam, selling is one of the main jobs of the entrepreneur.

Leadership Means Selling

Over the last two weeks (here and here) I have posted articles about leadership. The reason being, leadership is an integral part of entrepreneurship. Today, I wanted to continue along the lines of leadership. But, I wanted to do it from a slightly different angle.

If you have ever been in a position of leadership, you know that all leaders sell. Leaders sell their values, ideas, vision, mission, etc. Sometimes the selling is little more than promotion. However, to be a truly effective leader, your sales approach should be tailored and relevant to your audience.

And, sometimes (often) it is an audience of one. Face-to-face, focused engagement, is an important element of leadership. Leaders know where they are going. But, they also take the time to get to know what their followers are looking for.

I recently read an excellent book, by Charles Green, titled Trust-Based Selling. I highly recommend giving it a read. In the interim, one very fortunately thing the author did was, he wrote a marvelous postscript, which does a beautiful job of summarizing the book.

Here is Green's postscript:

Very simply, the only way to be trusted is to be trustworthy. The only way to be trustworthy is to have your customers' best interests at heart. If you are trustworthy, you will come to be seen as trustworthy. And if you are seen as trustworthy, you will also become very profitable.

The paradox is, you can't set out to be profitable by being trustworthy–it destroys the concept. You actually have to care. Profitability is a byproduct; it disappears if you treat it as the sole goal.

You can measure the effect of trust and profitability in the long run, and you should. But you can't manage it in the short run without destroying it. The measure of trusted relationships is at the relationship level, not the transaction level. The right measurement of customer of profitability is the lifetime, not the quarterly, time frame. The right focus of customer profitability is systemic, not customer-by-customer.

The most influence comes when you stop trying to influence and just help. The best measurements come when you stop trying to measure everything and just do the right thing. The best relationships come from acting from our humanity, not from our spreadsheets. In the long run, spreadsheets will tell the tale; in the short run, act from your humanness.

It may be obvious that to trust someone, you have to take a certain amount of risk. There are no guarantees in trusting; that's the nature of the thing.

But it's also risky for the seller, the one aspiring to be trustworthy. It requires that you give up control over the short term of your secrets and your belief in tit-for-tat competitive economic models. It takes a bit of courage to behave in a trustworthy manner with no guarantee that every action will be met with an equally positive reaction.

And individually, they won't. But in the aggregate, they will. What you put out in trustworthiness gets more than repaid. You just don't know exactly when or from whom.

The ultimate risk–and return–lies in giving up control over your customers and clients. For your customers to trust you, you must trust them as well.

The "How to Be" Leader

Since I mentioned leadership last week, I figured, what the heck, let's talk about it again. Back in 1996, Frances Hesselbein published a wonderful article on leadership. The article was titled, "The How to Be Leader." You can read the entire article, below. (By the way, if the name Hesselbein rings a bell, it is likely because I have mentioned her before. Click here to read the previous post.)

Chief Executive magazine asked a number of corporate chief executives "to look over the horizon of today's headlines," "size up the future," and describe the most pressing tasks that lie beyond the millennium for chief executives. I was invited to do so as well. In my response I wrote, "The three major challenges CEOs will face have little to do with managing the enterprise's tangible assets and everything to do with monitoring the quality of: leadership, the work force, and relationships." After the magazine came out, a corporate leader wrote to me and said, "Your comment make great sense to me.I believe that the three challenges you describe are like legs on a stool. Yet I see leaders attending to just one, or perhaps two, of the legs!"

In the tenuous years that lie ahead, the familiar benchmarks, guideposts, and milestones will change as rapidly and explosively as the times, but the one constant at the center of the vortex will be the leader. The leader beyond the millennium will not be the leader who has learned of how to do it, with ledgers of "hows" balanced with "its" that dissolve in the crashing changes ahead. The leader for today and the future will be focused on how to be–how to develop quality, character, mind-set, values, principles, and courage.

The "how to be" leader knows that people are the organization's greatest asset and in word, behavior, and relationships she or he demonstrates this powerful philosophy. This leader long ago abandoned the hierarchy and, involving many heads and hands, built a new kind of structure. The new design took people out of the boxes of the old hierarchy and moved then into a more circular, flexible, and fluid management system that released the energy and spirit of our people.

The "how to be" leaders builds dispersed and diverse leadership–distributing leadership to the outermost edges of the circle to unleash the power of shared responsibility. The leader build a work force, board, and staff that reflect the many faces of the community and environment, so that customers and constituents find themselves when they view this richly diverse organization of the future.

This "how to be" leader holds forth the vision of the organization's future in compelling ways that ignite the spark needed to build the inclusive enterprise. The leader mobilizes people around the mission of the organization, making it a powerful force in the uncertain times ahead. Mobilizing around mission generates a force that transforms the workplace into one in which workers and teams can express themselves in their work and find significance beyond the task, as they manage for the mission. Through a consistent focus on the mission, the "how to be" leader gives the disperse and diverse leaders of the enterprise a clear sense of direction and the opportunity to find meaning in their work.

The "how to be" leader knows that listening to the customer and learning what he or she values–"digging in the field"–will be a critical component, even more so in the future than today. Global and local competition will only accelerate, and the to focus on what the customer values will grow stronger.

Everyone will watch tomorrow's leader, as we watch today's, to see if the business practices of the organization are consistent with the principles espoused by the leader. In all interactions, from the smallest to the largest, the behavior of the "how to be" leader will demonstrate a belief in the worth and dignity of the men and women who make up the enterprise.

Key to the societal significance of tomorrow's leaders is the way they embrace the totality of leadership, not just including "my organization" but reaching beyond the walls as well. The "how to be" leader, whether he or she is working in the private, public, or social sector, recognizes the significance of the lives of the men and women who make up the enterprise, the value of a workplace that nurtures the people who performance is essential to furthering the mission, and the necessity of a healthy community to the success of an organization. The wise leader embraces all those concerned in a circle that surrounds the corporation, the organization, the people, the leadership, and the community.

The challenges presented from outside the walls will require as much attention, commitment, and energy as the most pressing tasks within. Leaders of the future will say, "This is intolerable," as they look at the schools, at the health of children who will make up the future workforce, at inadequate preparation for life and work in too many families, at people losing trust in their institutions. The new leaders will build the healthy community as energetically as they build the healthy, productive enterprise, knowing that the high-performance organization cannot exist if it fails its people in an ailing community.

Today's concern about a lack of workers' loyalty to the corporation and a corresponding lack of corporations' loyalty to the workforce are sending a clear message to the leaders of tomorrow. The pit bulls of the marketplace may find that their slash-and-crunch and hang-on-till-death philosophies are as dead as the spirits of their troops. In the end, as organizations reduce their workforces, will it be the leader of a dispirited, demoralized workforce who leads the pack or will it be the new leader, guiding from vision, principle, and values, who builds trust and releases the energy and creativity of the workforce?

The great observers are not forecasting good times, but in the very hazards that lie ahead for leaders, remarkable opportunities exist for those who would lead their enterprises and this country into a new kind of community-a cohesive community of healthy children, strong families, good schools, decent neighborhoods, and work that dignifies. It is in this arena that leaders with new mind-sets and visions will forge new relationships, crossing all three sectors to build partnerships and community. This will take a different breed (or the old breed sloughing off the tired, go-it-alone approach), made up of leaders who dare to see life and community whole, who view work as an amazing opportunity to express everything within that gives passion and light to living, and who have the courage to lead from the front on the issues, principles, vision, and mission that become the star to steer by. Leaders of the future can only speculate on the tangibles that will define the challenges that lie ahead. But the intangibles, the leadership qualities required, are as constant as the North Star. They are expressed in the character, the power within, and the "how to be" of leaders beyond the millennium.

Leadership Over Fear

Terrible, terrible news. I think we have all seen what happened, last night, in Las Vegas. Hopefully you have been able to contact anyone you may know in the area. Being that the news is so fresh, I do not have any editorial comments to add. I simply feel sick to my stomach. Yesterday, I had planned to post a certain article, for today's blog post. Based on the title, alone, I think it is still appropriate to post that article.

The article is titled, "Leadership Over Fear." And, it was written by John Edwin Mroz. Here is the article, in its entirety:

President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the national despair of the Great Depression was simple and direct: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Today, much of the world lives in fear. Many tens of millions of young people around the world fear they will never secure a job. Increasing numbers of people, including many in the middle class, fear the destruction of their way of life due to global warming, or the powerful and unwelcome influences of globalization. Others fear that the so-called “clash of civilizations” between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds will become an inevitability. Ever-increasing terrorism around the globe, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and a renewed fear of global pandemics have added new uncertainties about our safety. Fear breeds a search for simple truths, which in turn contributes to intolerance, alienation, and extremism. This problem is a global phenomenon. A world increasingly devoid of hope and trust is an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable one.

Peter Drucker reminded us a decade ago that the world had entered a prolonged period of profound change every bit as dramatic and turbulent as that ushering in the Industrial Revolution. Since 9/11, we have had to deal with an additional layer of unexpected complexity and uncertainty. Our world is an extremely unpredictable place in which asymmetric threats make it difficult for governments to guarantee the safety of their citizens and the well-being of their economies.

Franklin Roosevelt boldly attacked the hopelessness of his nation in his first inaugural address, when he declared “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” FDR convinced the despairing victims of the Great Depression that the only way to gain control of their lives was to overcome fear. He challenged the American people to move beyond their fears and inspired them to take those seemingly impossible first steps forward, thus rekindling the spirit and strength of the nation. In short, he led.

While tens of millions of Americans crowded around their radios, the new president, in one mighty stroke, empowered the populace to take risks and believe again that their lives could and would get better. Millions of self-appointed citizen-leaders rose to FDR’s challenge. As that first wave of risk-takers stepped forward, the nation pulled itself out of its deepest abyss since its Civil War some seventy years before. The willingness of one leader to stare down fear worked because he was able to challenge countless would-be leaders across the nation to join him. And those leaders joined their president not only in overcoming the Great Depression but also in fighting and winning the world war that followed.

In today’s globalized world, top-down leadership by politicians and governments is simply not sufficient to cope with the challenges of keeping the global ship afloat in such turbulent waters. The public sector must partner with businesses and the social sector in meeting these challenges. A key task is to identify, mobilize, and challenge naturally embedded leaders in our societies to stand up and lead in a world that is increasingly seen by its citizens as being adrift. There are four things we must do: first, natural leaders in a world of fear and change must step up and lead themselves. Second, such women and men must imagine the possibility of change. Third, they must seek out other natural leaders who, like themselves, have had enough of watching and are willing to assert themselves. Fourth, they must set a pace that fits the context.

I am heartened to know that this same pattern of empowering naturally embedded leaders to step forward and take the risks of leadership is alive and well around the world—even in places where fear is the norm and hope a fleeting dream. For example, six years ago in the war-ravaged former Yugoslavia, the EastWest Institute, an independent and privately supported international “think and action tank,” recruited a dozen and a half women and men to try to do something that governments and experts said could not be done. Following years of bloody killing based on religious and ethnic lines, families living in these border areas faced their own great depression with no possible hope of life getting better. Moreover, their hatred for families just a town away was intense. They could not forget memories of the wanton killing and destruction inflicted upon one another just a decade previously. Our team of women and men had a single common mission: to mobilize citizens in these war-ravaged regions to work together across borders to build trust and help local communities begin the painful journey of exiting their world of poverty and hopelessness. To accomplish this goal would require our leaders to help build bridges over many years’ growth of deep-rooted fears, and to inspire people to themselves become leaders within their communities. What they accomplished during the past six years is well-known to the local populations and to governments all over Europe. It’s a story of enormous hope and testimony.

As extraordinary as I think each one of my colleagues is as a human being and a leader, they are “ordinary” women and men. One had no university education; another was a young mother of two small children living in a town where some of the heaviest fighting took place. The first was a Christian, the second a Muslim. Others came from other tough parts of the Balkans, with a few from European countries or the United States. All were driven by a personal commitment to do something larger than themselves. Most of these leaders took on serious personal risks, from the real possibility of becoming alienated from their own communities to endangering their personal safety—all as they worked to build bridges of trust between the two sides. Leaving their war-torn communities was unthinkable. They were men and women who had had enough and were ready to fight fear by taking the risks of going where others feared to go.

I sat with twelve of these brave leaders recently in a remote village hall that billed itself as a restaurant. As the evening progressed, I asked each to explain exactly how they had succeeded in bringing together communities devoid of hope and trust. I told them I thought the key must have been their ability to find others like themselves who shared a common vision for a future of peace. They respectfully begged to differ. They reminded me that for the longest time, no one in any of their communities would speak of peace or a common vision. Everyone believed that more violence was imminent.

Their initial success came in finding individual men and women within their communities who, like themselves, had come to the conclusion that the only way out of the quagmire of poverty and isolation was to try to find somebody—anybody—who also was tired of this hopelessness and wanted change. A tough initial hurdle was persuading communities to trust that the sponsors of this cross-border work were truly committed to impartiality and had no hidden agendas. Would we not take sides when the chips were down? Our leaders in the field and the EastWest Institute itself were tested once again.

The story of how our leaders were able to inspire everyday people to face down their own very real fears and to take leadership roles within their communities is instructive no matter what kind of organization you lead. The smallest incremental steps taken by the local populace became their building blocks to larger initiatives. Because they listened and continued to talk about and probe their most basic common interests, barriers continued to fall. When one previously hostile man proposed that he might let his son play in a sporting event for younger children with boys of a neighboring village of a different religious belief, our team on both sides of that border decided to try to organize a soccer match for younger children. Many months later it happened, although most families escorted their children to the playing field with weapons at their side. Several games later, they came without arms. Eventually they would bring food from home and share a community table after the match.

The initial risks people were willing to take were ones based on plain old self-interest. Could we together find the source of a polluted stream that was tainting drinking water for families on both sides of the border? Could children be given a normal experience of playing sports with other children? Success came by having our staff locally based and of the community; by not rushing; and by being fiercely independent as a sponsoring institution, remaining outside of the politics and focusing solely on the bottom line— improvement of the human condition. In the end, our teams were able to accomplish things no one dreamed possible in three difficult areas of the former Yugoslavia. Their inner drive and sense of purpose at first was tolerated, then came to be respected and even embraced by a growing number in the communities they served.

As I listened to their passionate discourse that evening, I thought about how diverse these leaders and their backgrounds were. In most cases, their success was due not to their particular educational backgrounds or special training, nor to their nationality, religion, family status and upbringing, age, or gender. It seems the only thing that really mattered was that these leaders shared innate leadership strengths springing from a fierce inner drive to face down fear and be part of a force for change that was larger than themselves. This resonated in others who stepped forward, every bit as much leaders as the initiators.

I asked our team of leaders whether their experience had taught them lessons that could be applied elsewhere—perhaps to how we in the West could do better in bridging the growing divide between Muslims and non-Muslims globally. Their enthusiasm then went to an even higher level, and the ideas started spilling forth. At the core was a baseline of shared values, especially a desire for fairness and integrity in others. I wondered what would have happened if we in the Institute had not decided to face our own fears and undertake the seemingly impossible task of cross-border work in the Balkans. In what kind of world would these women and men have found themselves? I thought of how comfortable President Roosevelt would have been at the table that evening some seventy years after he spoke his words that inspired so many.

Leaders willing to take risks to overcome fear are all around us. Therein lies our hope for dealing with the seemingly overwhelming challenges on our planet in this twenty-first century. A key leadership challenge today is how to mobilize sufficient numbers of these naturally embedded leaders across the divides that breed fear and extremism and threaten our future and that of our children. It all starts with our willingness to face up to our own fears, stare them down, and find the emerging natural leader within each of us.