The topic of tonight’s #leadfromwithin chat on Twitter was foresight. The hour long discussion was led by Lolly Daskal and Greg Waddell, and hundreds participated.

I talk about foresight in my MBA classes on Organizational Behavior as part of our class discussion of leadership. I share with my students this quote about foresight from Robert K. Greenleaf’s 1977 book:

This is the central ethic of leadership.  The failure (or refusal) to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure, because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgment on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today’s events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action we label unacceptable in the present moment is often really one of no choice. (Greenleaf, 1977, emphasis added)

Foresight is a learned habit, not a mystical gift that only a few oracles possess. Foresight is the discipline of systematically thinking through the unintended consequences of every decision you make. It requires the wisdom to purposefully surround yourself with people that you know won’t always see things the way you do and will have the courage to challenge you when they disagree. It requires the humility to admit publicly when you failed to foresee an unintended consequence of a decision and the grit to continually learn from your mistakes. Foresight demands real accountability and integrity.

Leaders that are more intent on telling than on listening care about themselves more than they care about you. I’ve learned from experience that foresight is not a high priority for leaders lost in the fog of their own hubris.

As the central ethic of leadership, leaders covet the development of foresight for the benefit of those they’ve been given the privilege to lead.  Leaders that fail to assume responsibility for developing the discipline of foresight will eventually forfeit the moral authority to lead.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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The title of this post is a line from one of my favorite books on leadership, “Leadership is an Art,” by Max DePree. DePree goes on to say:

We also enable the future by forgiving the mistakes we all make while growing up. We free each other to perform in the future through the medium of trust. (p. 114-115).

I must confess that I have a hard time forgiving people I don’t trust. But I find it impossible to trust someone I refuse to forgive. Unforgiveness disables the future by shackling us to the past. Forgiveness is a discipline of liberty, learning, and purposeful growth.

Trust does not require that we forget the performance failures or wrongs done to us by others. Trust simply requires that we factor an individual’s predictable behavior into our future expectations of that person. All of us have the capacity to be predictably untrustworthy at something.

For example, if someone you work with has a history of being deceitful, it would be foolish to pretend this person will never be deceitful again. It’s the resentment of, rather than the knowledge of, the individual’s mala fide behavior that is the real threat to your future development.

Today’s forgiveness enables the trust required for you and your team to create its future. Forgiveness is an inherently prudent professional virtue.

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The Merriam-Webster online dictionary offers two main ways to think about compromise:

1. settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions

2. a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial <a compromise of principles>

Reasonable people often disagree about “the right thing to do.” If you are never willing to compromise with people that don’t see things exactly as you do, you probably won’t accomplish much as a leader.

I’ve found there is a big difference between someone that asks me to compromise, and someone that tells me I have to compromise. The person that asks me to meet somewhere in the middle usually cares about me even if they disagree with my position; the person that tells me all the compromise has to come from me usually cares more about himself than anyone else, and he is either unable or unwilling to see this perilous vice.

I’m totally willing to compromise, but I absolutely refuse to be compromised by compromise. I can work with anyone that I believe has the greater good of the group in mind, even if we slightly disagree on group goals or how to achieve them.

But I will always unapologetically oppose the folks I believe are blinded by hubris and selfish ambition. I’m thankful that for me, it’s personal.

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I’d like to share with you one of my favorite descriptions of meaningful work. Don’t miss the fact that the leader in this example learned the power of purpose from her employee. This passage can be found in Richard Daft’s textbook “The Leadership Experience”:

Servant leadership can mean something as simple as encouraging others in their personal development and helping them understand the larger purpose in their work. When Linda Burzynski became president of Molly Maid International, she learned about servant leadership from one of her cleaners. Posing as a new member of the cleaning crew, Burzynski entered a home with her partner, Dawn, to find dishes piled high, food spilled on countertops, clothes and magazines strewn about, and pet hair everywhere. Surveying the mess, Burzynski was ready to walk out, but Dawn explained that the woman who owned the house was going through a divorce and dealing with three rebellious teenage sons. “She’s barely hanging on.” said Dawn, and having a clean house gave her a sense of order and control. Burzynski noticed that Dawn seemed to take extra care because she knew she was helping the woman with more than just her household chores. Burzynski says she learned that day about the power of being a servant to her employees and helping them find larger meaning in their difficult jobs. (pp. 232-233, 3rd edition).

People like Dawn both inspire and challenge me. As much as I know and write about leadership, I wonder if I have the character and presence to behave as Dawn did when similar situations present me with the opportunity to give myself permission to be excellent.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Does engaging in political activity via such things as campaign contributions, lobbying, or executive testimony before legislators and regulators affect an organization’s performance? Yes, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Management entitled “Mixing Business with Politics: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Corporate Political Activity.”

The meta-analysis in this study incorporated the findings of 78 previously published studies on corporate political activity from 1976 to 2010. Firm economic performance was measured using accounting-based outcomes like return on assets and return on investment.  The authors point out that while political activity can affect the performance of your organization, the effect is no larger than other things that can also affect organizational performance, such as human capital investment and strategic resources.

The study also found that firms were more likely to engage in political activity if they were large and in an industry where government regulation could significantly affect the company. The politicians they were most likely to attempt to influence were incumbent Republicans.

If you own or operate a business, the results of this study suggest that it is smart for you to be politically active on behalf of your company. At a minimum, you should ensure that your state politicians and those that represent your state in Congress know your name, face, e-mail address and phone number.

This does not mean that you should try to influence the political activity of the employees you’ve been given the privilege to lead. I think you should be open and transparent about your political activities on behalf of the company, but allow your employees the freedom to draw their own conclusions about how they too might or might not want to engage in political activity on behalf of the organization.

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I can’t stand people, especially leaders, that don’t deal with others in good faith. I took my two business law classes almost 20 years ago, yet the concept that has stuck in my mind over time is that of the good faith transaction. Wikipedia defines good faith as “sincere, honest intention or belief.” What I never knew until yesterday was that the term “bona fide” means in good faith.

Bona fide leadership does not play games. If you find yourself competing with those you’ve been given the privilege to lead to “win” on an issue, you are not a bona fide leader. I have no respect for leaders that lack a heart for important issues, or lack the courage to voice their real opinions when the heat is on. But I abhor leaders that manipulate, deceive, or otherwise disrespect their constituents during decision making or negotiating. That’s simply inexcusable.

Bad faith “involves rationalizing to form a belief in which there is deception, duplicity, insincerity, or dishonesty, due to failing to take certain facts into account or using invalid argumentation.” (Wikipedia). Mala fide leadership might get you tactical wins over your constituents in the short term, but as soon as they discover your game you will lose whatever trust they had in you.

Bad faith leaders are liars, not bullshitters. The bullshitter’s main purpose is to impress us by exaggerating or otherwise “stretching” the truth. Liars, on the other hand, know and care about the truth but in bad faith purpose to deliberately mislead us instead of telling the truth.

Your leadership is honorable only to the extent it is bona fide. Sacrifice your honor and you surrender the moral authority to lead.

What do you think? Please share your comments below!

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I view social media platforms as tools, not toys, we use to document and communicate our value. If you are serious about personal branding and not just playing around, you should never post anything, anytime, anywhere that you would not be comfortable allowing anyone to view.

Be an open book online. You want people to examine you so that they can see who you are, what you are about, and how you might be able to help them address opportunities or solve problems that matter to them.

If you are opaque instead of transparent online, I think you send a mixed message about yourself and your brand. If you behave online as if you have something to hide, should you really expect people to trust you?

Don’t buy the bad advice. Forget about looking around to see what others are doing. Let good judgment and professionalism define your behavior, both in person and online.

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My new post at The Leader Lab looks at new peer-reviewed evidence on what drives employee engagement. The post is entitled “Engaging Corporate Citizenship and Trust“. The new research I review in this post is valuable because the measure of engagement was a good one, and it shows that corporate level actions affect employee engagement. This is an important contribution because we now know that employee engagement is complex, affected by the personality of the employee, actions taken by the boss, and actions taken by the organization.

Please visit The Leader Lab to read the full text of my article, or listen to me read the text at the podcast below.

Engaging Corporate Citizenship And Trust by BretSimmons

Michael Hyatt wrote a great blog post today entitled “How Leaders Make Tough Decisions.” The inspiration for the post was interviews former President George W. Bush has been giving recently about his new book. Michael stayed away from politics in his post and listed five things about decision making that he gleaned from the interviews. It’s a great list, so I strongly encourage you to read the full text of Michael’s post by clicking the link above.

Number 2 on his list was “You Must Surround Yourself With Trusted Advisors.” According to Michael:

You can’t research every aspect of important decisions yourself. At some point you have to depend on the expertise of others. Ultimately, your leadership will stand or fall based on the quality of the advise you receive. Bush made some great decisions here and some unfortunate ones.

I strongly concur that leaders need trusted advisors. In practice, the problem with that idea is that trusted means they are loyal and won’t rock the boat. When that happens, the leader creates a culture of personality instead of a culture of performance. A group of trusted advisors too often provides a solid foundation for the walls of groupthink.

Leaders must include in their group of advisors people that can be trusted to have the courage to disagree even if they stand alone in their dissent. You need to have people that will tell you what you need to know, not what they think you want to hear. Standing on principle is tantamount to blind stubbornness if you systematically eliminate and exclude the voices that challenge your principles.

If your people never tell you no, you can trust that you are in trouble.

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Yesterday I participated in a chat about leadership over on Twitter hosted by Lisa Petrilli and Steve Woodruff. The topic was power and the intent was to discuss the ideas of Jeff Pfeffer from his new book Power: Why some people have it and others don’t.  There were so many people participating in the chat that I personally can’t call it a conversation, but suffice to say the leader’s use of power to get things done was overwhelmingly viewed to be undesirable. I understand what folks were trying to say in quick-fire bursts of 140 characters or less, but I was frustrated.

Power is not a four letter word. Like it or not, power is the heart of leadership. No achievement or failure of any significance has ever been or ever will be accomplished void of power.

As I have written here before, your beliefs about power differentiate your behavior and character as a leader. What are you willing to do to get power?  What are you willing to do to keep it?  Do you use your power to serve yourself and your inner circle, or do you use your power to serve others regardless of what they think of you? Do you treat those that have no power and authority differently than you treat those that do?

Give me a week to watch what you say and do at work as you interact with your boss, your direct reports, and your peers, and I can tell you exactly what you believe about power. Your words and actions will manifest your beliefs and assumptions independent of your level of awareness of your power paradigm.

Beyond what you think about power, your words and actions toward others will also reveal your feelings about them and yourself. Is your leadership primarily about your personal passions and insecurities, or is it about something bigger and better than yourself?

Power is the heart of leadership. Is yours an opaque and selfish heart, or is yours an open one, where the people you’ve been given the privilege to lead are invited to examine, challenge, improve, and share a purpose worthy of everyone’s highest contribution and sacrifice?

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