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Chapter 6

The title is: INSPIRING OTHERS TO FIND THEIR VOICE—THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG MAN, I had an experience with a leader that profoundly shaped the rest of my life. I had decided to take a break in my education to give some extended volunteer service. The invitation came to go to England. Just four and one-half months after my arrival, the president of the organization came to me and said, “I have a new assignment for you. I want you to travel around the country and train local leaders.” I was shocked. Who was I to train leaders two and three times my age? Sensing my doubt, he simply looked me in the eye and said, “I have great confidence in you. You can do this. I will give you materials to help you prepare to teach these leaders and to facilitate their sharing best practices with one another.” His confidence, his ability to see more in me than I saw in myself, his willingness to entrust me with responsibility that would stretch me to my potential unlocked something inside me. I accepted the assignment and gave my best. It tapped me physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I grew. I saw others grow. I saw patterns in basic leadership principles. By the time I returned home, I had begun to detect the work I wanted to devote my life to: unleashing human potential. I found my “voice.” And it was my leader that inspired me to find it.

I realized in time that I wasn’t the only one he treated this way. His affirmation of others, his ability to unite us in vision toward our work that inspired and motivated us, his pattern of providing us with enabling resources and empowering us as true leaders with accountability and stewardship became the norm in our entire organization. We began to lead and serve others in the same way, and the results were remarkable.

I’ve realized since then that the principles that guided his leadership are common to great leadership in any organization, regardless of the level or formal position of the person. My teaching, consulting and leadership experience in business, university, volunteer and church organizations, and especially in my own family, have taught me that leadership influence is governed by principles. When you live by them, your influence and moral authority increase and you are often given even greater formal authority. The biblical parables of the pounds and the talents illustrate that the more you use and magnify the gifts or talents you have been given, the more gifts and talents you are given. But if they are ignored or buried and remain undeveloped and unused, the very talents or gifts that you have been given will be lost and often given to another. So you end up not only losing talents but also losing influence and opportunities.

LEADERSHIP DEFINED

Simply put at its most elemental and practical level leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Think about this definition. Isn’t this the essence of the kind of leadership that influences and truly endures?! To communicate the worth and potential of others so clearly, so powerfully and so consistently that they really come to see it in themselves is to set in motion the process of seeing, doing and becoming.

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

What a way to think about and to define the irreplaceable role of grandparenting! The most essential role of grandparents is to communicate, in as many ways as possible, the worth and potential of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren clearly that they really believe it and act on that belief. If this spirit suffused our culture and society, the impact on the civilization of the world would be unimaginably magnificent and endless.

Let’s explore in depth perhaps next to relationships the most common and continuous means of communicating to people their worth and potential: the organization.

Organization Defined

As we move now to Part 2 of the 8th Habit Inspire Others to Find Their Voice we enter into the domain of leadership. Again, this is not leadership as a formal position but leadership as a choice to deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves. Regarding our focus on this kind of leadership in the organization, I would like to emphasize four simple points: 1. At the most elemental level, an organization is nothing more or less than a relationship with a purpose (its voice). That purpose is aimed at meeting the needs of one or more persons or stakeholders. The simplest organization would be two people who share a purpose, such as in a simple business partnership or a marriage.

1. Almost all people belong to an organization of one kind or another.

2. Most of the world’s work is done in and through organizations.

3. The highest challenge inside organizations, including families, is to set them up and run them in a way that enables each person to inwardly sense his or her innate worth and potential for greatness and to contribute his or her unique talents and passion—in other words, voice—to accomplish the organization’s purpose and highest priorities in a principle-centered way. We could call this the Leadership Challenge.

In short, an organization is made up of individuals who have a relationship and a shared purpose. You can see, then, how this organizational application applies to each one of us.

MANAGEMENT AND/OR LEADERSHIP?

Literally hundreds of books and thousands of articles have come out in the last few years on leadership. This points out how vital the subject is. Leadership really is the enabling art. The purpose of schools is educating kids, but if you have bad leadership, you have bad education. The purpose of medicine is helping people get well, but if you have bad leadership, you’ll have bad medicine. We could give illustration after illustration to show that leadership is the highest of the arts, simply because it enables all the other arts and professions to work. This is particularly true for a family.

I’ve spent a lifetime studying, teaching and writing on both leadership and management. In fact, as a part of my preparation for writing this book, I initiated a literature review of leadership theories of the twentieth century. I’ve included it in the back of the book as Appendix 2: Literature Review of Leadership Theories, which can be found on page 352.

As a part of the literature review of leadership theories, we gathered statements from leading authors who described the differences between leadership and management. Here is a small sampling. The full collection can be found in the back of the book as Appendix 3, Representative Statements on Leadership and Management, on page 360.

This literature review has reinforced to me that both management and leadership are vital and that either one without the other is insufficient. At times in my life, I’ve fallen into the trap of overemphasizing leadership and neglecting the importance of management. I’m sure this is because it’s become so evident to me that most organizations, families included, are vastly overmanaged and desperately underled. This gap has been a major motivating force in my professional work and has led me to focus on principles of leadership. Nevertheless, I’ve been powerfully reminded of the vital part that management plays.

I learned (painfully) that you can’t “lead” things. In fact, it wasn’t until I turned over the management of my company to my son, Stephen, and a team of people with strengths that compensated for my weaknesses that it really became profitable. You can’t lead inventories and cash flow and costs. You have to manage them. Why? Because things don’t have the power and freedom to choose. Only people do. So you lead (empower) people. You manage and control things. Here’s a list of the kinds of things that need managing.

This literature review has also reminded me how profoundly I’ve been influenced by many of these great minds and teachers over the years. To them, I owe a debt of gratitude. My experiences and teaching have also led me to conclude that the key to understanding organizational behavior is not to study organizational behavior, per se. It is to study and understand human nature. For once you understand the fundamental elements of human nature, you possess the key to unlock the potential inside of people and organizations. This is exactly why the Whole-Person Paradigm—symbolized by body, mind, heart and spirit—is supremely relevant to understanding organizations, as well as individuals. In a very real sense there is no such thing as organizational behavior. There is only individual behavior collectivized in organizations.

“So what?” you may ask. What does all this theory have to do with the challenges I face day in and day out? Why is it so necessary to understand organizations to better understand and solve my problems?

The simple, almost obvious, answer is that they are so interrelated. We all live in and work in one organization or another, including that of the family. We need context to understand ourselves.

As mentioned earlier, all organizations, even the best of them, are absolutely filled with problems. I’ve worked with thousands. Even the organizations I admire most struggle to some degree. And the interesting thing is that most of the problems are about the same. Certainly, there are unique personalities and circumstances connected to the problems. But when it comes right down to it, at the core, most problems have common roots. Peter Drucker put it this way: There are of course differences in management between different organizations missions define strategy after all and strategy defines structure. But the differences between managing a chain of retail stores and managing a Roman Catholic Diocese are amazingly fewer than retail executives or bishops realize. The differences are mainly in the application rather than principles. The executives of all these organizations spend for instance about the same amount of time on people problems and the people problems are almost always the same.

Whether you are managing a software company, a hospital, a bank, or a Boy Scout organization, the differences apply to only about 10 percent of your work. This 10 percent is determined by the organization’s specific mission, its specific culture, its specific history, and its specific vocabulary. The rest is pretty much interchangeable.

My goal in Part 2: Inspire Others to Find Their Voice is to help you discover how, by working and struggling to solve your personal challenges and problems, you can greatly increase your own influence and the influence of your organization whether it be your team, department, division or entire organization, including your family.

Let’s begin by looking first at the dual nature of the problems we face. Before we do, I invite you to gear up your mind for the energy it will take to really get your arms around our complex organizational challenges. I do so with two quotes. The first is again the observation by Albert Einstein: “The significant challenges we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” You have been given a new paradigm of human nature the whole-person paradigm body, mind, heart and spirit. You have learned that it stands in great contrast to today’s Industrial Age “thing” paradigm of control. You will need this “whole-person” view to understand and solve the problems you face in your organization.

The second quote is by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on the near side of complexity; but I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” What this means is that our significant challenges cannot be solved with simplistic little quick-fix programs-of-the-month or psyche-up slogans and formulas. We must earn a comprehension of the nature and root of the problems we face in organizations and likewise earn our learnings about the principles that govern the solutions by incorporating the new mind-set and skill-set they represent into our character. This will require some real effort. But I promise you if you will hang in there, you will be empowered with a powerfully simple and clear combination of KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, and SKILL the three elements of HABIT that will make you equal to the new challenges of the new world. You will have developed the 8th Habit that unleashes human potential.

GLOBAL SEISMIC SHIFTS

As we move now to seek a deeper understanding of the organizational challenge, I invite you to consider seven seismic shifts that characterize the new Knowledge Worker Age. In them you find the context of today’s workplace and of your personal challenges.

• The Globalization of Markets and Technologies: New technologies are transforming most local, regional and national markets into global markets without borders.

• The Emergence of Universal Connectivity: In the book Blown to Bits, Evans and Wurster state, “The narrow, hard-wired, and proprietary communication channels that bound people or companies together have become obsolete almost overnight. And with them, the very business structures that created or exploited those channels have also become obsolete. In short, the glue that has traditionally held all of our economic activities together is rapidly melting in the heat of universal connectivity. And this will separate the flow of information from the flow of things for the first time in history.2 • The Democratization of Information/Expectations: No one manages the internet. It is a sea change of global proportion. For the first time in history the pure voice of the human spirit rings out in millions of unedited conversations unfettered by borders. Real-time information drives expectations and social will, which ultimately drive the political will that impacts every person.

• An Exponential Increase in Competition: The internet and satellite technologies make anybody who is hooked up a potential competitor. Organizations must constantly develop better ways of competing against lower labor prices, lower material costs, faster innovation, greater efficiency and higher quality. The forces of free enterprise and competition are driving quality up, driving cost down and driving increased speed and flexibility in order to do the job the customer has hired us to do. No one can afford to simply benchmark against competitors or even so-called excellence; we must benchmark against “world class.” • The Movement of Wealth Creation from Financial Capital to Intellectual and Social Capital: The wealth-creation movement has gone from money to people from financial capital to the summary notion of human capital (both intellectual and social), which includes all dimensions. More than two-thirds of the value added to today’s products comes from knowledge work; twenty years ago it was less than one-third.

• Free Agency: People are becoming more and more informed, aware and conscious of options and alternatives than ever before. The employment market is turning into a free agent market and people have more and more awareness of choices. Knowledge workers will resist management efforts to label them, and they are increasingly determined to brand themselves.

• Permanent White Water: We live in a constant, churning, changing environment. In turbulent white water, every single person must have something inside them that guides their decisions. They must independently understand the purpose and guiding principles of the team or organization. If you try to manage them, they won’t even hear you. The noise, the roar, the immediacy and urgency of all the dynamic challenges they face will simply be too great.

FILM: Permanent Whitewater

We’ve developed a short, engaging video that describes the white-water conditions and complexity we now live in. It contrasts the past and the present and points to three constants we can rely on in dealing with the challenges you’ll learn more of in this chapter.

I invite you to view the film now by going to www.The8thHabit.com/offers and selecting Permanent Whitewater from the Films menu.

CHRONIC AND ACUTE PROBLEMS

There are two kinds of problems in both the physical body and in organizations: chronic and acute. Chronic means underlying, causal, continuing. Acute means painful, symptomatic, debilitating. Organizations, like people, can have chronic problems that are not yet acute. Treating these acute problems may mask the underlying chronic condition.

Several years ago I had a fascinating experience that illustrates this point. A friend of mine was head of surgery at a hospital in Detroit and specialized in cardiovascular medicine. I asked him if I could spend a day observing surgeons perform surgeries. The experience was absolutely mind-boggling. During one particular surgery that my friend performed, he replaced three vessels. When he finished, I asked, “Why did you have to replace the vessels? Why didn’t you just clean them out?” He explained in layman’s language, “In the earlier stages you can do that, but over time, the plaque builds up until it eventually becomes part of the content of the wall itself.” “Now that you’ve corrected these three places,” I asked, “is the man clear?” My friend replied, “Stephen, it’s chronic. It’s all the way through him.” He guided my gloved hand to feel the vessels. You could feel the brittleness of the cholesterol material. “But notice,” said my friend, “this man is an exerciser; he’s developed some supplemental circulation that provides oxygen to muscles, but there’s no supplementation to these three occluded vessels. He could still have a heart attack or stroke if a blood clot were to form. He has extensive chronic heart disease.” Not all chronic conditions have acute symptoms. Before the first acute symptoms ever appear, diseases such as cancer can spread until it’s too late.* Just because you can’t see surface symptoms doesn’t mean the underlying problems are not there. Sometimes people suffer heart attacks when they suddenly stress their bodies—like shoveling heavy snow after the first winter storm of the season. They don’t realize they have a heart condition until the stress conditions reveal the acute symptoms.

The same is true in organizations. You can have serious chronic problems in an organization that shows no acute signs because some organizations do not compete in a tough, global marketplace; they compete locally or in a protected market. They may be financially successful sometimes very successful. But, as you know, success is relative. The competition’s problems may be worse. So why change?

PREDICTING FOUR CHRONIC PROBLEMS AND THEIR ACUTE SYMPTOMS

The power of an accurate paradigm lies in its ability to explain and predict. If, then, this Whole-Person Paradigm of human nature is accurate, it should give you an uncommon ability to explain, predict and diagnose the greatest problems in your life and in your organization. It should not only help you recognize the more obvious acute symptoms of the problems but it should also help you see the underlying chronic “root” causes. Then you will be able to use this paradigm to start resolving your problems, expanding your influence to create a high-performance, high-trust organization or team an organization that is able to consistently focus on and execute its highest priorities.

This is why you will continue to see the same diagram in every part of the book (see figure 6.2). I simply add new words or phrases to reflect a new application of the four areas of choice body, mind, heart and spirit. In this case, you’ll be able to see that this Whole-Person Paradigm gives you the developing capacity to see both the chronic and acute problems that arise when an organization neglects the mind, body, heart or spirit of its people.

Let’s just test it in an organizational setting. The same thinking would apply to a team, a family, a community or any relationship. Try to specifically identify the problem in each case before reading on.

Let’s start first at the center of the diagram with spirit. If the spirit, or conscience, is consistently neglected throughout an organization, what problem will result? Think about it. What happens in relationships when people are treated or act in ways contrary to their conscience? Won’t an obvious loss of trust result? Low trust is the first chronic problem that all organizations face. What would its acute manifestations be? Low-trust organizations that operate in tough market conditions are filled with the acute, painful symptoms of backbiting, in-fighting, victimism, defensiveness, information hoarding, and defensive, protective communication.* Second, what chronic problem results when you neglect the mind or vision in an organization? You will have no shared vision or common value system. Under these conditions, what symptomatic behavior would you expect to see? You would see people acting with hidden agendas, playing political games, and using different criteria in decision making. You would see an ambiguous, chaotic culture.

Third, what problem results in an organization when there is widespread neglect of discipline in the body politic (skeletal structure, systems, processes)? In other words, what condition would you expect to see when there is no execution or systemic support behind the priorities of the organization? There will simply be no alignment or discipline built into the organization’s structures, systems, processes and culture. When managers possess inaccurate and incomplete paradigms of human nature, they design systems including communication, recruiting, selecting, placing, accountability, reward and compensation, promotion, training and development and information systems that fail to draw out the full potential of people. Neither individuals, teams, departments, nor the whole organization will be aligned with a core mission, set of values and strategy. This will create profound misalignment with the marketplace and with customers and suppliers outside the organization.

All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.

ARTHUR W. JONES

This misalignment will manifest itself in a thousand ways, contributing to even lower trust and more politicized behavior and interdepartmental rivalries. Rules will take the place of human judgment because as things get out of hand, managers will feel the need for increased control. Bureaucracy, hierarchies, rules and regulations will become like prostheses for trust. Any talk of people or leadership development will be considered soft, “touchy-feely,” unrealistic, wasteful and costly. People, like things, will become an expense, not an investment. The need for more management and more control will become increasingly evident, producing the codependent condition of “wait until told” in the vast majority of the people, as we discussed earlier. This will serve as further evidence to the so-called formal leaders that nothing is going to happen until they externally carrot-and-stick, motivate, control, and even bring down the iron fist when necessary passivity justifying external motivation and control justifying more passivity. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Managing (controlling) people never inspires them to their greatest work and contributions around their true voice or passion. These are volunteered.

Fourth, what happens when you neglect the heart? What happens when there is no passion, no emotional connection to the goals or work, no internal volunteer enthusiasm or commitment inside the organization? The result is a profound disempowerment of the people. The whole culture is in a funk. What acute symptoms would you expect to see? Pause and predict it. You will find a great deal of moonlighting, daydreaming, boredom, escapism, anger, fear, apathy and malicious obedience.

Can you see the predictive, explanatory power of this model or paradigm? Neglect body, mind, heart or spirit, and you get four chronic problems in an organization low trust, no shared vision and values, misalignment and disempowerment and all their acute symptoms (see figure 6.3).

The collective result of these chronic problems and their symptoms is the acute pain of failure in the marketplace, negative cash flow, low quality, bloated costs, inflexibility, slowness, and a lot of finger pointing: a culture of blame instead of a culture of responsibility.

If you think back on the film Max & Max, you will be able to identify every one of these four chronic problems.

THE PARADIGM IN PRACTICE

Let me illustrate the explanatory power of this paradigm.

I remember once having an initial visit with the top executives of a large organization and asking them about their mission statement. Hesitatingly they pulled it out. It basically said, “Our goal is to increase the assets of the owners.” I asked them if they put that on the wall to inspire their employees and customers. They all smiled and said, “Well, no, we have another statement that’s hanging on the wall, but this is what we’re really aiming for.” Even though I was just becoming acquainted with their industry and company, I said, “Why don’t I tell you what your corporate culture is like. You’re split apart. If your industry is unionized, you’re plagued with labor disputes. You’re hovering over, checking up, and carrot-n-sticking your employees to do their jobs. There’s an enormous amount of negative energy spent in interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, hidden agendas and political games.” Amazed at my fortune-telling skills, they asked, “How could you know so much? How could you describe us so accurately?”

I said, “I don’t have to know much about your industry or you. All I have to know about is human nature. Your real purpose focuses on only one of the four parts of our nature—the body (economic)—and on only one stakeholder—the owners. You completely neglect the other three parts—mind, heart and spirit—and all other stakeholders. You can’t do that without suffering dire consequences.” I went on to predict, “When this meeting breaks up, half of you will talk about the other half. There’s no trust here. The duplicity is evident.” They were sadly amazed by the accuracy of the observations, and they were considered a “successful” organization. The truth is you can never succeed with stockholders until you first succeed in the marketplace, and you can never succeed in the marketplace until you first succeed in the workplace.

“Well, what can we do to change?” they asked.

I said, “You have to seriously go to work on all four parts. Involve everybody’s mind so that people get on the same song sheet. Live by the universal principles of fair play, honesty, integrity and truth so that you can develop a bedrock of trust on which to build that song sheet. Use the criteria embodied in your vision and values to guide all strategic, structural and operational decisions. You must create the conditions of both personal and organizational trust before you’ll get any true empowerment or release of human potential.” I suggested that they might even begin by developing a mission statement for their own executive team.

They asked me how long these things would take.

I said, “How bad are you hurting?”

They said, “Not very bad.”

I replied, “Then you probably won’t be able to accomplish it. There isn’t enough pain, enough force of circumstance, enough humility.” I suggested they forget the whole project.

They said, “Yes, but we hear good things about what’s happened in other places you’ve worked. We also have a sense that because the marketplace is changing and competition is going to become fierce, we may have some real struggles on the horizon. We probably do need the help. We want to make changes.” I suggested that if they were truly sincere and would really work together, they could make these changes; but it would probably take two or three years or more.

One remarked, “You don’t know how fast and efficient we are.” Referring to the idea of producing an improved mission statement, he continued, “We’ll whip this baby out this weekend.” In other words, he was thinking they could go offsite for some kind of vision workshop and develop a mission statement with new purple phrases that would be more appealing to the people.

Gradually these executives came to see that short-term thinking and short-cut techniques would never produce the long-term results they desired. Slowly they came to grips with the underlying chronic issues, starting with themselves, and developed great respect for all four parts of human nature. They eventually came to see that leadership was everybody’s business, and that each person needed to take an inside-out approach.

The organization strengthened itself from the roots. It took three to four years. In the end, they had such strength, such levels of empowerment and trust that they were able to deal with the vigorous new competition that emerged and also maintain their successful patterns in the marketplace. Many of the top executives took CEO positions outside the company, but the organization’s culture and bench strength were so deep that the company continued growing profitably.

THE INDUSTRIAL AGE RESPONSE

Now what would the Industrial Age response to the four chronic problems be?

If trust is low and there is no moral authority, then the boss is at the center—the leader knows best and makes all the decisions—“It’s MY way or the highway.”

As for a lack of shared vision and values, rules will take the place of vision and mission. “Don’t worry about anything but your job. Just do what you’re told, follow the rules and leave the thinking to me.” Misalignment? Just make things more efficient—machines, policies, people, everything. Efficiency is the name of the game.

Disempowerment? You’ve got to keep control. You can’t trust people. The only way to get much out of people is to use the carrot and stick—dangle the carrot (rewards) for performance out in front of them to motivate them, and keep a healthy amount of fear going with the stick (punishments or loss of your job) if you fail to perform.

THE LEADERSHIP SOLUTION IN ORGANIZATIONS

The decision to inspire others to find their voice takes you right into the thick of the four chronic organizational problems that result from today’s Industrial Age control model.

Every one of us who has found his or her voice possesses the power to rewrite the bad Industrial Age “boss, rules, efficiency, control” software in their organization. The process involves four roles that become the antidote to the four chronic organizational problems (see figure 6.6). They are the positive manifestations of body, heart, mind and spirit in an organization, whereas the four chronic problems are the negative manifestations of neglecting them. Realistically, how do you solve these four chronic problems? Where there is low trust, we focus on modeling trustworthiness to create trust. Where there is no common vision or values, we focus on pathfinding to build a common vision and set of values. Where there is misalignment, we focus on aligning goals, structures, systems and processes to encourage and nurture the empowerment of people and culture to serve the vision and the values. Where there is disempowerment, we focus on empowering individuals and teams at the project or job level.

I call these four roles the 4 Roles of Leadership—again, not leadership as a position but leadership as a proactive intention to affirm the worth and potential of those around us and to unite them as a complementary team in an effort to increase the influence and impact of the organizations and important causes we are part of. Remember, in a complementary team, individual strengths (voices) become productive and their weaknesses become irrelevant because they are compensated for by the strengths of others.

The 4 Roles of Leadership are simply four qualities of personal leadership—vision, discipline, passion and conscience—writ large in an organization (see figure 6.7): • Modeling (conscience): Set a good example.

• Pathfinding (vision): Jointly determine the course.

• Aligning (discipline): Set up and manage systems to stay on course.

• Empowering (passion): Focus talent on results, not methods, then get out of people’s way and give help as requested.

Those in formal positions of authority in an organization may see these four roles as a challenging but natural way to fulfill their stewardships. But seeing them as roles for senior executives only would perpetuate the prevailing codependent mind-set that says, “the boss does all the important thinking and decision making.” These four roles are for everyone, regardless of position. They are simply the pathway to increasing your influence and the influence of your team and organization.

My colleagues at FranklinCovey and I have been teaching the 4 Roles of Leadership model since 1995, but many other experts in the field of leadership have independently come to models that are grounded in the same principles. For instance, in the insightful book Results-Based Leadership (1999), authors Dave Ulrich (University of Michigan), Jack Zenger and Norm Smallwood developed, after years of research, observation and consultation, a four-box leadership model that is almost identical to the 4 Roles model.3 The main difference is the words used, but you can see that the meaning is essentially the same.

Further validation of this leadership model can be found in a recently published five-year study conducted by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce, and Bruce Robertson (see “What Really Works,” Harvard Business Review, July 2003). In what they call The Evergreen Project, they “examined more than 200 well-established management practices as they were employed over a ten-year period by 160 companies.” This research enabled them to distill which management practices truly produce superior results. Their compelling conclusion is that without exception, companies that outperformed their industry peers excelled at four primary management practices: 1. Strategy—Devise and maintain a clearly stated, focused strategy.

1. Execution—Develop and maintain flawless operation execution.

2. Culture—Develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture.

3. Structure—Build and maintain a fast, flexible, flat organization.

The Evergreen Project concluded that these companies also embraced two of four secondary practices—talent, innovation, leadership, and mergers and acquisitions. But just think about the first four primary management practices they identified. Aren’t these practices that enabled companies to dramatically outperform their competitors essentially another way of describing the 4 Roles of Leadership? Again, different words for the same underlying principles.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SEQUENCE: A Sports Metaphor

These four roles are also highly interdependent. In a sense, they are sequential. But in another sense, they are simultaneous. Both senses are correct. They are sequential because you must have trust from trustworthiness before you can really move into the other roles that will release human potential. They are simultaneous in the sense that once the culture based on this leadership has been established, one must pay constant attention to all four processes, all four roles.

I would like to illustrate the significance of sequence in these four roles by comparing it to professional sports, where, like the business world, competition is very intense. When a player goes to professional training camp out of shape—lacking muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance—he is simply unable to develop the intended skills. And if he can’t develop the skills, there is no way he can become a useful member of a team and part of a winning system.

In other words, muscle development precedes skill development, and skill development precedes team and system development. The body is a natural system and is governed by natural laws. The sports metaphor is a very apt and powerful image that we can relate to the broader area of enlarging capacity and finding our voice. Personal development precedes the building of trusting relationships, and trusting relationships are an absolute prerequisite to developing an organization characterized by teamwork, cooperation and contribution to the wider community.

For instance, let’s say that a person is unable to even keep the promises he makes to himself—his life is inconsistent, flaky and mood-based. Is there any way that he’d be able to develop healthy, trusting relationships with others? The answer is obvious. And if there was a lack of trust in his relationships with others, would he have any foundation for an effective family or team organization that makes significant contributions? Again, the answer is obvious: no.

Just like a child can’t run before it can walk or walk before it can crawl, just like you can’t do calculus until you understand algebra, and you can’t do algebra until you understand basic math, some things of necessity come ahead of others. Once you understand the importance of this sequence, you will see why, even though the two are interdependent, it is vital to first pay the price of striving to find your voice personally before even attempting to develop the skills of building high-trust relationships and creative problem solving. The synergistic work of high-trust relationships then becomes the foundation for creating a team or organization of cooperative people—teams that are on the same page regarding purpose and values and are willing to play their role inside that context. Ultimately, individuals, teams and organizations are then able to spread their influence by serving and meeting the needs of those in their stewardship. To put service above self gives meaning to all three levels and leads us into the Age of Wisdom, the fifth age of civilization.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the tremendous importance and power of this sequence would be to share the experience I frequently give audiences I’m teaching. I invite a man who looks very strong and healthy to come up in front and do twenty straight-back push-ups. If he is truly strong and practiced, he can do it fairly easily. But very few can; even many who appear strong and healthy hardly make it past five or six.

Using this physical analogy, I suggest that until people can do twenty emotional push-ups at the personal level, they won’t have the power or freedom to do the thirty emotional push-ups required to meet the challenges and demands of relationships. And until they can do the fifty push-ups at both the personal and relationship levels, there is no way they can build a team and produce a high-trust, high-performance organizational culture.

Keeping this sequence in mind, we move now from the character development involved in finding your own voice, to the skill development and the team and system development required to inspire others to find their voice in organizations.