Comparing Leadership to Driving – Interesting

I read an article a few days ago comparing leadership to driving.  As I read the article it began to make some sense.  In leadership you start out with a need, a purpose, or a mission.  Well in driving you also need purpose or mission.  You need to go to the store, work, or to visit friends.  Sometimes you’ve got to catch a flight or be at an appointment right on time.  If you pull out of your driveway with no sense of purpose, odds are you’re going to get lost and frustrated on your drive.

Leading your team is no different.  When you take on the mantle of leadership, you need to understand your purpose for doing so.  Are you there to improve a broken team?  To take a group of high performers to the next level?  Do you need to grow the business?  Stabilize it?  Sell it?  Are you leading a downsizing?  If you’re not clear on your purpose as a leader, you’ll be just as frustrated as you would be driving around town not knowing where you’re going.

Second, your vehicle must be prepared to drive.  You need gas, air in your tires, wiper fluid, and all your mechanical and electrical systems need to be in working order.

Are you personally prepared to lead?  Are you taking care of yourself physically?  Mentally?  Do you have all the resources your team needs to be successful (budget, time, tools, etc.)?  Your job as a leader is to ensure your team is ready to tackle the challenges it faces each day.

So what kind of driver (leader) are you?

There are all kinds of drivers out there.  Which one do you most closely resemble as a leader?

The shortsighted rusher: You know this guy – the one who zooms past you only to get held up by cars that were clearly slowed up in his lane.  And then another opening appears, he zooms off, and again you cruise past him at the same speed you were doing before.

Do you lead like this?  Chasing after the nearest opportunity to improve but not seeing the bigger picture of where things are headed?  It feels like you make a lot of progress at times but you never seem to get ahead.  If this is you, try some patience and take a longer view of things.  Observe what’s going on around you and try to thing two, three, or four moves ahead so you don’t burn so much energy and get so little reward.

The overconfident (reckless) speeder: ZOOM! This guy blows by you like you’re standing still.  He cuts across three lanes at a time cutting through traffic with apparent ease and nerves of steel.  He’s getting where he’s going and he’s doing it fast.  No one is going to catch him – except the cops.  He doesn’t see the chaos he leaving behind until it’s too late.

Leaders like this guy push themselves and their teams at an incredible pace.  They never seem to let up.  Invariably though, they anger others around them because they’re taking so many risks or just making other people look bad because it’s all about them.  At some point, the team will crash or the authorities (senior management) will pull this guy over and fix his behavior.  If you’re pushing too fast and getting feedback that you’re too selfish or focused on your own advancement, take your foot off the accelerator.

The slow and steady: This guy is the “perfect” driver.  Obeys all posted signs.  Never goes above the speed limit.  He actually resents others who break the rules and sometimes even tries to enforce the rules on his own (like doing 65 MPH in the left lane so faster cars can’t break the speed limit).  Sure, he’ll get there eventually but it’s uninspiring and somewhat stifling.

Do you always follow the rules?  Do you tell on others when they break the rules?  Are you more focused on the rules than the results?  If so, you might want to check your team’s morale.  I’d venture to guess they’re not having much fun and might be looking for another ride.  I’m not saying to break the rules – just question them.  Sure there are ones that must be obeyed but others are more guidelines than anything else and part of a leader’s job is to take risks.

The road rager: Screaming and obscene gestures are a way of life for this guy.  No matter what anyone around him does, it’s wrong and it gets him bent out of shape.  He screams and curses and cuts off other people without regard for their safety (let alone their feelings).

If people aren’t hanging out with you and if the staff cowers in fear when you walk down the hall, you might be the office equivalent of the road rager.  People aren’t following you – they’re complying out of fear.  If you find you yell (at all), get red-faced with anger, and that people generally shy away from you, you might consider some anger management strategies because in today’s workplace, road rage leadership is rarely tolerated for long.

So do any of these driver types resemble your leadership style?  Be honest with yourself and ask how you can improve your driving (leadership) style so you get to your destination quickly, safely, and do so in a way that everyone enjoys the ride.

 

Corporate Vision – Does your team need one?

The only things more painful to read than most corporate mission statements are corporate vision statements.  Many vision statements are written by committee.  They start out direct, clear and compelling but as everyone involved has their turn at contributing their input those visions lose their luster.  The direct parts of the vision get watered down as not to offend, exclude or intimidate people.  Also, things are added to the vision because people want to ensure that their pet function or goal is included in the vision statement and this lengthens the document and makes it more confusing.

Eventually some vision statements come to look more like a bill that has moved through Congress, where everyone involved has tacked on their personal amendment, than they do a compelling articulation of what the organization will be in the future.

Before you go skipping forward with the defense that you do not write vision statements at the corporate level, you must realize you are responsible for setting direction for your team.  You as a leader must create a vision statement for your team when your team is large enough to warrant having one.  Any team that is responsible for a discrete organizational function should have a vision.  It doesn’t matter if that team is as small as five people or as large as five thousand.  You can write a powerful vision statement as long as all members of that team are focused on delivering the same goals in the same functional area.

Whatever your situation or your title happens to be, the simple fact remains – you need to articulate a vision for the future state of your organization or team.  We usually leave this up to the C-suite but writing a vision statement at any level is a powerful exercise.  Your people want to be excited to come to work.  They want to be part of something bigger than they are.  If you can paint a compelling future picture for them, they will be more excited to follow you to that destination.  If you do not paint that picture, they are likely following you out of laziness or just morbid curiosity to see what is going to happen.  The earlier in your career you learn how to create vision statements the more successful you will be at writing them as your responsibilities expand.

Writing a vision statement requires a great deal of thought and an ability to step outside of your daily grind and into a time beyond the foreseeable future.  When you write it you need to make it concise and it must clearly explain how your organization creates value.  This value creation component is easier to articulate than you might think.  Ask yourself “what will the business outcomes and results be if I achieve this component of my vision?”  Your vision should include several key phrases and you should be able to link each phrase to a desired business outcome.

To create your vision, look five years into the future and ask yourself what your organization should look like.  Using a five-year planning window will generally help you balance between being achievable but not too ambiguous.  This is because it is a short enough time frame for you and your team to have a measurable impact and feel like you have made progress, but it is far enough in the future that you can be aspirational in how you describe that vision without protests of “we’ll never achieve that goal in that short an amount of time!”  Conversely, visions set beyond five years into the future can lead your team to feel like the world will change so much over that period that the vision will be neither achievable nor relevant.

Below are some thought starters to assist you with tackling this big question. Do your best to answer as many of them as you can even if at first glance the question does not apply.

– How big will your organization be?  How will you define its scope?
– What new skills will your team members have?
– What new capabilities will you build over this time period?
– How will the way you work with other groups change?
– What should your customers, both internal and external, expect from you?
– What will set your team apart and distinguish it when it is compared to other teams?
– What is your future vision for your team?
– Will they be excited by it?
– What aspects of it will they find inspiring?

Once you have drafted a preliminary set of answers to these questions look at all the answers as pieces of a bigger puzzle.  Create the most powerful elements into the simplest statement you can.  Write down the statement that captures what your team is all about.  That is your first rough draft of a vision.  As you evaluate the resulting vision ask yourself:

– Is my vision clear on how my organization creates value?
– Is the vision ambitious but realistically possible?
– Is the vision worth pursuing and does it win people’s commitment?
– Does the vision explain how we differentiate ourselves from competitors?
– Is the vision concise and does it consist of only a few critical words?

How does the first draft of your vision stack up against these questions?  If you are not happy with your vision relative to these questions, continue to revise it until you are.