Dr. John Townsend

As a leader, are you able balance vision with reality?

Your organization requires you to have great vision for the future but it also needs your hard-nosed reality orientation. Great leaders know that if you bring in reality too early people become disheartened and discouraged.

One way to stifle vision with too much reality is to micromanage your people. They will respond in various ways as I discuss in this video.

The best leaders can integrate their vision with reality.

I love when leaders have great visions because:

• Organizations flourish when you show them how the company can capture another market, or perform at a new and unheard-of level.
• Teams are catalyzed to high-level action with good visions.
• At the same time, when you help teams face the negative, they are protected and stay sustainable with reality, not afraid to face financial, market, competitive or other obstacles.

For example, take team meetings.  We all know that the marketing person must present first at the team meeting. Then the financial expert must say what is in the budget, and what is not.  That simply makes sense.  But that is not enough for a great leader.  The best leaders I know and work with are able to do both tasks themselves, and integrate them.

• They know that you must start with vision, as it is the primary source of energy, focus and loyalty.
• They  practice the habit of bringing struggles, challenges and limitations to the conversation, instead of avoiding them, because they know that companies make bad decisions and experience empty promises when the problems aren’t brought up at the right time.
• They don’t in reality too early – before they have time for the vision to capture them, to engage with it, and to become emotionally committed to it.

I often hear from a leader, “I am the visionary.  I set the pace and see the big picture.  I’m not the analyst or the CFO.  I leave that work to them.”  And less so, but still more than I’d like, I also hear from other leaders, “I  keep reality in front so that we are always aware of it, and don’t end up with positive thinking that keeps us from having substance, and puts us in danger of missing important data points.”  Certainly, leaders can’t do it all. They need to hire and resource great analysts, financial people, and creative innovative talent as well.  But that doesn’t mean you aren’t still casting vision and interpreting reality.  Your people don’t need to see this bipolar-type leadership modeled for them, the unrealistic visionary or the head-down nothing-but-ops person.

• You need to be a mixture of both of these traits.
• You need to know when they need to be inspired to go beyond themselves with a story, or your own enthusiasm, or by guiding theirs.
• And you need to know when it’s time for them to buckle down and persevere, doing follow up and diligently working the plan.

Here is the best practice:  Before 5pm every day, bring something visionary to someone in your organization.  And, before 5pm,  face a tough reality with someone, either something the company is experiencing, something you are struggling with, or a problem they have.  Make that a goal.  It doesn’t have to be the same person.  But it must come from you as the integrated leader.

As a leader, in the end, you are what you do.  To lead well, you need the necessary elements of the right vision, values, resources and plan.  These are non-negotiables.

Ultimately, it ends up being about behavior.  You will succeed by what you actually do, and you will be measured by that as well.  Behaving in ways that lead you to the outcomes can’t be overstated.  Too many leaders with great ideas and talent end up with a glass ceiling because they simply didn’t “do” what they were supposed to do.

Don’t be that person.  Here are a few ideas to help you along this path.

Follow every significant conversation or meeting with an action step.  If you are taking the time and energy to meet, brainstorm, strategize or solve challenges, there needs to be some behaviors that happen as a result.  You might have a conversation that you have been avoiding, or get on the phone with a client, or jumpstart your sales team, or cut some costs.  But meetings are only as effective as the actions they produce.

Be accountable for those actions.  Leaders are busy people, often overwhelmed with competing demands for their attention.  I have seen so many leaders just get too buried to follow up on their action steps because the only person they were accountable to them lived in their own head.  Ask your assistant, or board member, or a trusted person, to remind you of the actions you have committed to.  My assistant told me she didn’t want to nag me, as she had done that when she raised her kids.  I told her I’m not a rebellious teen.  I need her to remind me, ask me, recommend to me and yes, nag me!!

Analyze, then act before analyzing again.  This is the famous “paralysis by analysis” problem. Leaders who are a bit perfectionistic, risk-averse and a bit OCD, tend to overanalyze situations.  Then they never take action steps, or by the time they do, the opportunity window has closed.  Here is a way to do this:  in areas you have good history of success with, jump out a little sooner than you are comfortable with.  In areas of struggle or failure, take longer.

Do the best actions, not just any actions.  A busy leader is not always an effective leader.  You may be busy deleting emails or putting out fires, or having compassion fatigue because you are enabling and rescuing too many people. Always, always, always, start back to your mission and your strategy.  Ask yourself two questions:

1. “Is this action serving the mission and the strategy?”  That is, is your action step driving your organization toward the right goals?
2. “Is this action the best use of my time and energy?”  There are lots of positive things you can do.  But do what only you can do.

Take initiative.  Be active.  Be a leader who does what you believe.

By the way, being active doesn’t mean that you say “Yes” to every challenge as I talk about in the video below.

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Good leaders are basically positive people.  They dream of a better future.  They see opportunities within problems.  They inspire people to team well and follow a vision.  They create great solutions to challenges.  That positivity can transform an organization to perform at very high levels.

Yet, as they dream, brainstorm and plan, leaders often miss data points about reality that aren’t so positive, but are critical to deal with.  These data points will keep them from making large mistakes.  But the “always positive” leader often minimizes or ignores these realities, to the organization’s detriment.  Here are some realities that you do well to align with and adapt to.

• Negative market realities.  The market is always speaking, and you need to always be listening to it.  People’s needs and interests change, and you need to know when to make the changes necessary to it.  When I owned and operated a healthcare company, the market shifted because of a disruptive technology called HMO’s.  That new insurance entity changed the landscape of health care forever.  We, the owners, adapted to the new market for a while, until we realized that our model of health care was unsustainable with the new normal, and we sold the business.  It was not a fun move, but it was the right move, and time proved that.  Just because you love your product or service doesn’t mean that the market does.  Listen to the market.
• Problems due to tactics without strategy.  I see this sometimes  in companies I work with.  They are creative and forward-thinking, but are always in a cash crisis or a process/systems crisis.  Often it is because they are driven by a tactic (a new marketing plan, an improved comp package, or a new software commitment, for example), but not by a strategy.  Tactics are very helpful, but the strategic plan must rule the tactic.  Don’t get the two confused, I have seen companies lose great amounts of revenue in confusing the bright shiny objects from a well thought out, and adhered-to plan.  When this is a problem, what happens is the company is always patching itself up like an old leaky roof, and the longer it goes like this, the more expensive it is to truly fix it.  Spend time on the strategy plan and keep coming back to it.  Tactics must bend the knee to strategy.
• Cultural issues.  Research has shown that culture, or how people engage in the company, is just as important as strategy, if not more.  A poor strategy can be strengthened by a solid culture much easier than the reverse.  Yet growing a healthy culture means listening to lots of non-affirming negatives: people’s complaints about your leadership; their complaints about each other;  and their own struggles.  A poor leader will simply accuse these people of being SNL’s Debbie Downer and ignore them.  That is not a good idea.  A great leader will lean into the negative data points, explore them, respect them, and if necessary, make decisions based on them.

Align yourself with negative realities and don’t resist them.  They can save your organization.

Leaders who are out of touch with reality may need to “land the plane” as I refer to in the video below:

I was in Phoenix during Super Bowl weekend partnering with a ministry I work with, Athletes in Action (AIA), who have a very high impact sports presence.  I spoke and trained leaders, and also attended an AIA  breakfast where Peyton Manning received the Bart Starr Award.

Like all quarterbacks, Peyton Manning is a tremendous offensive player.  But to have a great team you must have great defensive players, too. The same holds true in leadership. When your offensive skills overshadow your defensive skills it throws the game out of balance. Good leaders and organizations are able to balance both skills to remain strong competitors in the game.

To use the sports analogy, organizations must be able to play both offense and defense to win. Both require different skills and attitudes from you as the leader.

Offense
Offense is the opportunity part of your job. It is the aspect of being able to move ahead and take initiative, and take the hill. Keep this in mind to become an offensively competent leader:

• See an opportunity that is not yet, before others do. In your industry, be constantly scanning the horizon for a new idea, product or service. You are tasked to literally see the future. You must see something that is not now, but could be in time. Lots of people in your area are doing that right now. Get to that next big thing before it’s the next big thing.
• Think leader thoughts. Seeing the future is very difficult when you are in the midst of the daily grind, or solving issues, or dealing with a crisis. This week, calendar 3 hours for yourself in which you can do what I call “thinking leader thoughts” with no distractions. Do what only you can do from the 50,000 foot level. Think about what is not yet, that could be.

Defense
No company or organization is without problems. They are part of reality, and must be faced. But the defensively competent leader goes beyond this, and takes action to deal with problems.  Use the following to develop your defense skills:

• Anticipate speed bumps before they become major accidents. Look for problems, kinks, weaknesses and threats in your organization.
• Analyze, review, evaluate, and ask people about all the bad news. You do not want to be blindsided by a storm because you didn’t pay attention to it.    

You will find yourself better at one of these than the other. No one’s needle is right in the middle. But spend some time and energy creating a balance. It’s much better to be able to think in both directions, and be agile enough for any reality, good or bad. Don’t get caught missing an opportunity, or being surprised by a crisis.

Have you ever walked on eggshells around someone, been over concerned about how bad they will feel if you give them bad news, or avoided constructive confrontations as a leader?  If you have done any of these, are “fragilizing”, and it will hinder your leadership power.

Fragilizing is the tendency to treat another person as if they are brittle and easily derailed, thus a “fragile” person.  The result of this attitude  is that leaders do not bring important truths to their directs about performance problems, attitudes, goal issues and cultural meltdowns.  Problems don’t get solved, and the person is actually done no favors. He becomes, actually, more defensive, disempowered, in denial or entitled.  And your mandate is decelerated, not accelerated.  Fragilizing is a common leadership problem, and it is destructive to your goals.  Here are some tips to help you move toward a healthier engagement with those in your organization.

•  Own the problem.   The person you are walking on eggshells around is not the problem, it is some trigger inside your head. Spend less time worrying about how to say something “just right” so they won’t be disappointed, and spend more figuring out where your tendency came from (family of origin?  an important person in your life?  School?  Church?  Another organization?).  This will give you more reality, so that you are not so worried.  A leader should never harm anyone, but she must hurt people (that is, bring them out of their comfort zone) on a regular basis.  The more you own this, the better your behavior will become.
• Draw the line.  There is a big difference between someone who is fragile, and someone who is sensitive or reactive.  A truly fragile person simply cannot handle tough realities, and literally falls apart.  I’m talking about nervous breakdowns, not being able to get out of bed to go to work the next morning because they are clinically depressed,  or having to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility.  As a psychologist, I have dealt with many fragile people, and, even if they want to hear hard truths, they are too damaged to hear them, and need intensive healing over time.  A sensitive or reactive person, however, has deep feelings and may get upset easily, but he can still rally, adapt, function, perform and stabilize his feelings.  So draw a line between the two. Sensitive and reactive people need to be understood, but they also need to take responsibility for the sensitivity and work on it themselves.  To give them special treatment because they have emotional reactions is not a good thing in an organization. Point this out and offer resources:  HR, a book, counseling or a support group.  Sometimes, simply being aware of the tendency is enough for the person.
• Think about how you respond to negative realities.  When someone gives you bad news, disappoints or confronts you, how do you  yourself handle it?  When the fast food restaurant didn’t have your french fries, did you drive off a cliff or have to take off  work for the rest of the day?  Of course not.  You were disappointed, had some bad feelings, then adapted and found another way to behave.  In other words, you were resilient.  If you can handle negative realities, so can they.
• Respect others enough to give them the truth.  Simply put, telling the truth means “I respect you that you can handle this.”  No directness means “I don’t respect you and think you’re weak.”
• Make healthy confrontation one of your cultural norms.  High performing organizations are supportive, productive and also confrontative with each other.  They simply tell the truth directly, but with warmth and no harshness.  Simply start doing this behavior, several times a week, in your sphere of influence.  You will find that people respond well, perform better, and best of all, feel empowered to not fragilize those who are also reporting to them.  Build the muscle of telling the truth as simply “what we do” in your organization.  Let it become viral.

Fragilizing in leadership is resolved by simply treating people as adults:  kind, warm but direct and to the point. This works. For more info, my and Henry Cloud’s book How to Have That Difficult Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding is a good resource as well.

Best to your leadership.