Resisting the crushing pressures of leadership
Annie McKee talks to John Warner about the practical steps that leaders can take to avoid setting their organisations on a path to destruction, and ensure that they survive the personal stresses and pressures of being at the top.
Three years ago, Daniel Goleman,
Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee wrote the management
book Primal leadership (published in
In particular, Primal leadership examined the categories of competencies that are needed to produce strong, healthy and effective leadership. These include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management - complex competencies that at first sight may not appear to be easily developed.
"We hold a strong opinion, backed up by our research and corporate consultancy work, that even though developing these competencies may be hard, it is entirely possible to do so - they can be learned," McKee says. "The way to develop them is to engage in a process of 'intentional change'. In other words, if you're going to develop complex competencies that have a neurological basis as well as a behavioural basis, you have to want to do it."
This may sound obvious, but McKee believes that many people simply do not recognise the need for this personal commitment. Organisations may carry out performance reviews that identify several competency development needs for an employee over the next couple of year but it cannot be assumed that the individual particularly cares about their development needs or will fully engage in developing their weak competencies.
An individual has to have a desire for change before any development can take place. First, they need to create a vision of the ideal state once the competencies have been developed at both personal and professional levels. Second, they need to analyse their current state in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and how the analysis fits with their ideal vision for themselves as a leader. Third, the individual should develop a learning plan to which they adhere and they should determine what practicess they will adopt as a result of the enhanced competency. "This is common sense, but it's not necessarily common practice," McKee says.
Who gives the leader feedback?
When the leaders of organisations are responsible for negativity and are causing dissonance, there needs to be a mechanism to alert them to the impact this is having on the business and the workforce. The further a leader rises in the organisation, the less likely it is that they will receive completely honest feedback from subordinates. The term "CEO disease" has been coined to describe this personal information deficiency suffered by many leaders.
In their latest book, Resonant leadership1, Richard Boyatzis and McKee examine ways to overcome the vicious cycle of stress, sacrifice and dissonance that eventually overcome so many people in senior positions (See document extract). These conditions may build up slowly and surreptitiously and be unrecognised by the individual at first. Before the penny drops, or a colleague plucks up courage to point out that not all is well, the detrimental impact on an organisation may have already taken a hold.
"Imagine the career path of a leader who lands up at the top. He or she has achieved results, successfully met stakeholders' expectations and received positive feedback on performance along the way. However, it's very easy for such people to become trapped in a vision of themselves that on the one hand is accurate, but on the other is not an entirely complete picture," McKee says. "On the positive side, their self-confidence is high - a competency that is important to leadership, although it can turn to arrogance if taken to the extreme. In excess, it can also mean the individual is unable to take in feedback or any other information about his or herself that is contrary to the self-image they've created for themselves over the years."
Avoiding a vicious circle
As a long-term aim, McKee says that leaders should develop a "resonant" climate in which the goal is for feedback to become a normal "give-and-take" part of everyday business life among employees at all levels. In the short term, leaders should be highly vigilant and more self-aware than any other person in the organisation. As they are unlikely to receive feedback from anybody else if a resonant climate is not in place, it is down to individual leaders to "ferret" out for themselves if their energy and enthusiasm is beginning to lack lustre. Self-awareness, in other words, is a critical competency for effective leadership. If individuals are unable to monitor, understand and recognise strengths and weaknesses in themselves, then they are likely to become "trapped in a bubble that is not reality".
"One of the things I've noticed in the last couple of years is that some of the business debacles in the US of the 1990s that resulted in a new movement to monitor financial transactions have meant that organisations are under much closer scrutiny for business performance and financial management," McKee says. "This is also leading to boards of public companies taking a closer interest in their leadership. They're asking themselves if the CEO is really capable of building a team to take the organisation forward and leading it in the way he or she should and, if not, what type of development intervention they need. From personal experience, it's a growing phenomenon in the UK (and also in the US). I've seen it in action and, while it offers potential for help, the scrutiny is one more pressure for the leader to bear."
Where did it all go wrong?
Primal leadership acknowledged that emotional intelligence is important and contributes to effective leadership. In the years following its publication and successful reception, McKee and her colleagues have been investigating why people who have developed emotional intelligence, and have been effective leaders in the past, so often "go bad". They have sought answers to these two questions:
What triggers leaders to become insulated by their own arrogance?
Why do some leaders create working climates that are not conducive to employees giving their best?
"We personally know many people who've lost their leadership edge. They're perfectly capable of sustaining emotional intelligence and developing good working environments," McKee says, "so why aren't they doing it any more? Where did it begin to go so wrong?"
Self-resonance
The investigation has involved re-evaluating existing data gathered about leaders' performance and conducting new research in the field. It has also included studying other research in the fields of neurophysiology, psychology and philosophy in order to formulate an answer to the questions:
What is it that causes good leaders to go bad?
And more positively,
What do leaders need to do to sustain good practice all the time?
The conclusion from the research is that there are a number of clues, which can be identified, that enable leaders to remain permanently effective. The ability to identify these clues has been termed by McKee and her colleagues as "resonance".
"We use the word 'resonance' in the sense that leaders should be holistically attuned to themselves - in mind, body, heart and spirit. It requires them to be emotionally intelligent and able to act appropriately on this, to be 'street smart', physically healthy and grounded in their own values," McKee explains. "Allied to leaders' personal resonance, they should create a working environment that is characterised by enthusiasm, optimism, excitement, hope and a commitment to the goals of the organisation that is both real and visceral."
A substantial link is perceived between a resonant environment and achieving successful results efficiently. In a resonant environment, conversations happen, decisions are made and the results are acted upon. On the other hand, a dissonant environment contributes to inefficiencies - for example, decisions are made in a meeting that are subsequently modified owing to an initial lack of consensus.
Under pressure
Leadership is difficult, by its very nature. It is subject to multiple pressures, such as the competing demands of stakeholders, and it carries enormous responsibilities. Boards of directors want both results and effective leadership. Investors and business analysts look for growth on a quarterly basis. Employees want meaningful work, with career opportunities, in a organisation that is successful.
What this all adds up to for leaders is "power stress", a particular form of chronic stress identified by Annie McKee and Richard Boyatzis in which work is spiked with acute periods of crisis on a regular basis but is, nonetheless, an inevitable part of business leadership.
Stress results in physiological changes in, for example, muscles, blood pressure, heart rate and hormones. These changes are necessary in moderation to ensure that we are motivated on a daily basis. However, chronic stress has an adverse impact on human bodies and on minds. Research has shown that it can close down cognitive abilities, reduce creativity, inhibit an ability to see novel solutions to problems and lead to less tolerance of deviation.
"As humans, our physiology is not equipped to live with this kind of pressure day-in and day-out. Despite this, most people carry on working reasonably well for quite a long time," McKee says. "Unfortunately, you'll often see the fall-out from the pressures of leadership in the breakdown of personal relationships and in family life, before it ever shows up at work in a definitive way."
Sacrifice syndrome
Annie McKee believes that the pressures on leaders produce many knock-on effects. These are often manifest outside the workplace in the form of failed marriages, disturbed children missing parental attention and personal lives that lack any real meaning - other than through business. Leaders constantly give of themselves in the service of the larger vision but, ultimately, this can spin out of control and they become victims of what McKee terms the "sacrifice syndrome".
Although it is to be hoped that leaders do not descend to the full depths of the sacrifice syndrome, if they do, they are likely to be alerted by one or more "major wake-up calls" on the way down. These may include health problems, or substantial business failures. At such times, people respond in different ways. They may enter into "defensive routines" - a psychological term - in which they find ways to cope with the symptoms. Alternatively, they become better at defending themselves against the truth of their situation by, for example, staying in a failed marriage but expending their energies elsewhere, or blaming business failures on other people and sacking entire teams of employees - rather than accepting responsibility for the situation themselves.
McKee says that leaders who become victims of the sacrifice syndrome and go deeply into defensive routines, which of course exacerbate the difficulties for the organisation, may fail and resign or may be allowed to remain in post. If the latter is the case, they may be responsible for a great deal of damage to the people under them and to the organisation in general.
A more positive scenario is that, in the face of a wake-up call, the leader recognises their position and takes personal responsibility for what has occurred. They begin to look inwards to identify what it is about themselves that has caused a dissonant situation to develop.
"This self-analysis involves making some courageous steps to change things that need to be changed and to fix things that need to be fixed," McKee explains. "In order to do this successfully, we believe that you have to take a look holistically at yourself. It's not just about getting the business right and being smarter at it than in the past. It's about looking at how your emotions were driving the actions over a period of time and asking: 'Has it got me anywhere?' 'Am I engaging my whole self in the act of leading the organisation?' 'Am I letting myself go physically?' The answers to such questions determine if you are creating resonance, or allowing dissonance to continue in yourself and, in consequence, in other people."
Mindfulness
People display "mindfulness", according to McKee, when they have the ability to monitor their personal and business lives so that they recognise the early symptoms that things are either going in the right direction or the wrong direction and are able to make corrections along the way to their chosen course.
The term is applied in a similar way as cognitive psychology and Buddhist philosophy - it merges the two approaches. To McKee and her colleagues, mindfulness means an ability to tend to self, others and the larger environment, understand what is occurring in oneself and the world at large, and to use this awareness deliberately and consciously in order to make decisions.
"A mindful person is able to attend to those quiet little voices that say 'this is a mistake', or 'go for it'. Also, they can read other people well enough to obtain information that isn't readily available and may not even be articulated," McKee explains. "For example, you walk into a meeting, you're five minutes late and you're leading the meeting. The mindful person will instantly notice the emotional undercurrents that are alive in the room. 'People seem a little cosy today: What's going on?' 'There's a tension in this room: I wonder what it's about?' 'They've started the meeting without me today: That's interesting'. Rather than just putting it aside as silly random thoughts, you generate some hypotheses about what you're noticing."
McKee sees mindfulness as a cognitive process that attends to thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviours, interpersonal relationships and the wider environment and also the ability to make sense of each of them. It is considered a "hard" concept - a technical, measurable skill - rather than a "soft" one based purely on intuition, feelings and behaviours, and requires a combination of cognitive and analytical abilities on the part of the leader.
Hope
Research indicates that stress involves the sympathetic nervous system. The experience of positive emotions - like hope, compassion, happiness and laughter - engages the nervous system and counteracts the physical effects of stress. "Individuals who experience optimism have a belief that they can really accomplish their goals, who make a realistic assessment of their situation, believe they can manage obstacles and leverage opportunities to reach their goals actually experience changes in their personal physiology," McKee says. "Likewise, compassion, empathy, contact with other people individually or in groups invoke very similar responses in our bodies."
McKee's experience, gained from working with leaders who demonstrate hope in their everyday business dealings, suggests three key lessons for leaders in general:
they need to have dreams and aspirations, and they also need to be in touch with others around them. The combination of the two helps them to create an image of the future;
they should be optimistic and believe in their ability to precipitate change; and
they should perceive the desired future as being realistic and feasible to achieve.
Compassion
Quoting from Resonant leadership: "Compassion is empathy and caring in action. Being open to others enables us to face tough times with creativity and resilience. Empathy enables us to connect with people. It helps us get things done, and to deal with power stress and the sacrifices inherent in leadership."
One of the most effective and socially acceptable ways of achieving "compassion" is for leaders to mentor other people in the organisation or, perhaps, coach a sports team in the local community. Coaching and mentoring can be a satisfying experience for all parties and helps transfer experience, wisdom and techniques. Being involved in a relationship like this usually feels good; it positively engages the sympathetic nervous system and facilitates mutual learning for the parties involved. For a leader, it can be part of the physiological renewal process. For McKee and her colleagues, compassion has three crucial components:
an understanding and empathy for others' feelings and experiences;
an ability to care for others; and
a willingness to act on feelings of care and empathy.
All three can be achieved through mentoring and coaching.
Renewal
In order to overcome the negative impact of the sacrifice syndrome, leaders need to engage in practices that allow for renewal by having overall positive emotions and experiences. The practice of renewal, according to McKee, should be exercised daily. It is an opportunity to address one's own physiological, emotional and spiritual needs. It can take different forms for different people. For example, it may involve making time to sit and think with no interruptions and no telephone calls, going for a swim, taking part in structured meditation, or taking a quiet walk in the countryside. "In order to recuperate from the stresses of leadership, the trick is to discover renewal practices that work for you, and that you make them a regular part of your life."
Contagious emotions
To underline how emotions can be contagious, McKee cites some research carried out in Italy that located neurons in the human brain that are responsible for reflecting back the emotional cues given off by other people. She says that this accounts for us all constantly monitoring facial expressions and body-language signals during our interactions with other people. Not only do we monitor these cues, but also we are good at reading what they mean and making sense of them.
"In the face of an antagonistic, anxious and aggressive leader, we switch into a self-protective mode. Our human instinct is to close down, get ready to fight, flee, protect ourselves - whatever it takes," McKee explains. "In organisations, people around such leaders are, inevitably, less creative, less effective and less able to find unusual solutions to problems. They simply focus on survival. The last thing somebody is going to do when in self-protective mode is to ask in a meeting, 'Excuse me Mr CEO, did you really mean what you just said?' That would be verging on a self-destructive career act."
Behaviours do not necessarily have to be overtly aggressive or passive. Day to day, people can read "minor currents" from a leader to determine whether they can be informal in their approach to them, or whether it would be prudent to hold back and be more reserved. It is through such cumulative responses that the emotional tone of the workplace is set and spreads throughout the organisation. In the long term, the leader's influence invariably determines whether the environment is dissonant or resonant, or a position somewhere in between.
Heeding advice
Talking with McKee is a vivid demonstration that emotions are contagious. Her own enthusiasm, unassuming manner, dignity and evident knowledge, which she conveys without a hint of arrogance, put a smile on one's face and provide reassurance that the social sciences can be grounded in practicality, but also have heart, compassion and optimism for the future of leadership. Leaders who currently are making an effective impact should heed her concerns about their ability to sustain their momentum long-term and take the advice that McKee and her colleagues are offering.
1. Resonant leadership: Renewing yourself and connecting with others through mindfulness,
hope and compassion, by Richard Boyatzis and
Annie McKee, is published by the Harvard Business School Press,
For further information: Dr Annie McKee, co-chair and managing director, tel: (+00 1) (215) 569 4630; email: amckee@teleosleaders.com .
|
Doctor Annie McKee co-founded the Teleos Leadership Institute with Frances Johnston in January 2001, and is its co-chair and managing director. Their vision is of a values-based, professional consulting firm that encourages and develops values-based leadership around the world. McKee works
collaboratively with clients, students and co-faculty to design and deliver
innovative interventions to foster leadership development and organisational
transformation. In Fortune 100 organisations, she works largely with the most
senior-level executives as an adviser, focusing on the intersection of
leadership, culture and strategy. She also serves on the faculty of the
Graduate School of Education at the McKee is an active public speaker and
writer, presenting to executives around the world. Most recently, and in
collaboration with Richard Boyatzis, she has
completed the book Resonant leadership: Renewing yourself and connecting
with others through mindfulness, hope and compassion, published by the
Harvard Business School Press and available in the |
