Navigating the rough patches of leadership

By VICKI JAYNE

It is easy to be a fair-weather sailor. Heading a company that is charging through a bull market is not the best test for leadership.

More instructive is what happens when the mizen-mast hits the deck - just one crisis weathered during the arduous southern leg of the Whitbread round the world yacht race in 1994.

How skipper Grant Dalton and his crew coped is on record as a result of their agreement to keep diaries (video and written) of the South America/Fremantle leg.

The candid exposure of what they thought and felt during the tough 28-day haul - especially the process of shock, loss, and self-blame before stitching together solutions (literally in the form of new sails) that pulled the team up again - provides interesting insights.

It is where a leader's emotional intelligence really comes into play, says Mike Keenan, who was consultant psychologist for the TVNZ documentary made from edited footage of that trip.

He says two of the most significant emotions leaders have to deal with are anger and anxiety.

"You need to know yourself well enough so that you're aware what buttons are likely to be pressed by particular situations and then to choose how you react."

How people handle their emotions and those of others is the best predictor of success in leadership roles. The higher up the leadership ladder people go, the better predictor it is.

Which is why companies cannot strap leadership skills onto their corporate psyche by dispatching a few people to weekend courses. That is what Mr Keenan calls the "sheep-dip" solution.

"I often make the distinction between intellectual understanding of something and behavioural competence in it," he says. "There's quite a journey from one to the other.

"Intellectual understanding is a wonderful thing, but I don't think there is any evidence to show it has produced sustainable behavioural change on an ongoing basis by itself. Yes, it's a prerequisite. But a solution? I don't think so."

The difficulty for a lot of managers/leaders is that they do not really know what all the "emotional intelligence"stuff means.

"It kind of sits there in some black box they would rather not open," Mr Keenan says.

"I think if you simply define it as using your emotions intelligently to aid whatever it is you have to achieve in terms of business, you could demystify it - remove it from the black box."

Mr Keenan has worked in psychiatric hospitals and prisons.

He now heads Keenan Consulting, which is involved in leadership consultation here and overseas.

Its aim is to shift businesses across the "cultural divide," from being hierarchical structures fixed on processes to people-centred, innovative work teams. In the new-look company, the manager is a leader-coach whose power comes from sharing information and straight talking.

Mr Keenan says the big challenge is how to transfer what is learned about leadership into the workplace. "You can't just sheep-dip people through some course and have them suddenly behaving differently."

He says they have to choose to change - and if it is superficial, that is quickly spotted because people keep a keen weather eye on their leaders.

"If there are inconsistencies, they notice and they make judgments about it. If you want people to follow you, they have to feel they're dealing with someone who is honest, has integrity, and is worthy of their trust. That is not something you can pick up in a sheep-dip experience."

One of the problems is that "we have divorced work and learning," he says.

"People tend to think about learning as something that happens when they go off to a course. The reality is that the most powerful opportunities for learning are the day-by-day ones.

"The more learning we can lock into what we do on an everyday basis, the more the likelihood of some real traction from the learning process."

Mr Keenan's experience is that while most people are happy to receive feedback on what they do well and (perhaps surprisingly) on where improvement is needed, hardly anyone can admit to providing it. "We all want feedback but, for a whole host of reasons, tend not to give it."

The worst possible option is to vent frustrations in the form of "negative third-party feedback." Trevor tells Kate that Bob the boss is being nasty; Kate is in a quandary about what to do with the information and before you know it team morale is shot to bits.

Confronting Bob is uncomfortable and dangerous if he has not created an environment in which it is safe to frankly discuss any problems.

For one management team, it took nine months and three workshops before they felt comfortable about exchanging open, honest and accurate feedback.

Leadership can mean making yourself transparent to the point of vulnerability, says Mr Keenan.

A shared sense of mission is also important. As in the Whitbread example, team loyalty has a lot to do with a leader's passion for the cause.

That could explain why someone might subject himself or herself to 28 days of freezing, wet, food-fixated, sleep-deprived, hard slog dodging icebergs in pounding southern oceans!

* Vicki Jayne can be e-mailed at vjayne@iconz.nz