Unconscious (Ethical) Incompetence: The Curious Case of SAC Capital Advisors

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Should Have Seen That ComingNoel Burch is credited with formulating the Four Stages of Competence model. It describes the psychological states involved in a progression of competence, as in:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence

The model has always struck me as one of those so-obvious ideas (like spreadsheets) that the miracle is no one ever thought of it before. It just makes sense.

It is usually applied to the mastery of skills, expertise, or knowledge. It is equally interesting, however, to apply it to the concept of moral development in people and in organizations. Which brings us to the curious case of SAC Capital Advisors.

SAC Capital: The Contradiction

Last week, SAC Capital Advisors was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in New York for insider trading. The firm pleaded not guilty, and of course nothing I say here should be construed as an opinion on the merits (and my legal credentials are zip-squat anyway).

In reporting on the story, New York Times financial reporter James B. Stewart highlights an interesting question:

According to SAC Capital Advisors, the wildly successful hedge fund now accused of systematic crime, the firm not only has “a strong culture of compliance” intended to “deter insider trading,” as the firm put it recently, but may also have one of the most rigorous and “cutting edge” hedge fund compliance programs in the country.
The firm said it spends “tens of millions of dollars,” on compliance, “deploys some of the most aggressive communications and trading surveillance in the hedge fund industry,” has hired big-name lawyers like Peter Nussbaum and Steven Kessler to oversee compliance, and has a staff of “no fewer than 38 full-time compliance personnel.
Which sets up the question: What were they doing?

What indeed.

Two Scenarios for Going Bad

Let me suggest a continuum of answers to that question, with the two extremes reflected in the following two purely hypothetical internal conversations at SAC following the indictment:

Version A: “Can you believe our bad luck? Just when everything was going so great, some flunky up and blows the whistle on the greatest inside deal since Teapot Dome. It was perfect! I guess it was too good to be true, something had to go wrong some day and we’d get found out.  Well, let’s fight the hell out of it and see what we can still walk away with.”

 

Version B: “Can you believe our bad luck? We take compliance seriously around here, nobody spends on compliance like we do, we’ve got the best systems in the business, the best programs, the best communications and the best lawyers to make sure we’re squeaky clean, and – a couple of lousy bad apples come in and ruin it. Not only for us, but for our clients as well. If they only knew the opportunities we pass up… For crying out loud, when is enough; blood from a stone. We are over-regulated to a T already, how much more compliant can you get?”

I don’t know about you, but I’d put money on the B end of the continuum. What looks like clear malfeasance from the outside all too often looks like business as nearly usual on the inside, with shrill grenades of  misunderstanding being lobbed in from the outside. Whether it’s SAC, Enron, WorldComm, or the generals in charge of preventing rape in the military, most frogs sitting in the water don’t notice the temperature rising to a boil.

Which raises the ethics conundrum – Scenario B is a form of Unconscious Ethical Incompetence. The doers of badness do not recognize that it is badness they are doing. Indeed, they often see it as goodness.

In the Four Stages model, unconscious incompetence is the first step in the process. That heightens the contradiction, because the evil-doers in such cases think they are actually at the opposite end of the scale – having already internalized the right behaviors so that they are unconsciously competent. Nothing could be more wrongheaded and insulting, they think, than to suggest they are actually at the bottom of the scale!

Hence the reaction – not guilt, or even remorse, but pained indignation. Moi?  Nous?  Surely you jest.

You Can’t Depersonalize Trust and Ethics

Cases of this sort highlight a vicious circle in managing for trust. Violations of trust are met with new processes or procedures for preventing it in future. Since so much of business is about processes and metrics, this is seen as a perfectly normal response.

However, by turning trust and ethical issues into issues of process, they are robbed of their context in a relationship, and therefore stripped of their human quality. The predictable result of this is to lower the internal standards of conscience and social behavior, which then leads to more violations. And on, and on.

This is the substitution of quantitative, transactional, impersonal focus for qualitative, relationship-based, human phenomena. Unless checked, it only gets worse. Financial services is only one of the most obvious industries in which this happens. You can see it in pharma, in many sales organizations, even in academia.

Unfortunately, most outside consultative solutions to institutional trust issues tend to focus primarily on traditional change management factors – incentives, structures, communications (or culture, which I tend to see as the result of all the other things). But those traditional change management factors, which work so well when introducing quality or customer focus initiatives, have limited range when it comes to issues of trust and ethics. In fact – they make it worse, by implicitly suggesting the issues are ones of incentives, structure and communication.

What is sorely needed is something that sounds too old-fashioned – personal role-modeling of character-based behavior by leaders. Personal actions at the most minute level – comments, reactions, shading of language, confidence of decisions, personal displays of integrity in the moment. These are the things that employees notice, absorb, and emulate.

Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt had done some consulting for SAC. He told reporter Stewart that he “Came away from his visit to the firm unimpressed. ‘My sense was that it was a check-the-box mentality, not a serious commitment,'” he said.

Whether he was right or wrong about SAC, the distinction is powerful. As Mr. Pitt also said, “When it comes to compliance, you have to live, eat, breathe and drink it. It has to be embedded in a firm’s DNA.”

And the route to the firm’s DNA (metaphorically) goes straight through that of the leaders (literally).

S&P and the New Challenge of Integrity in Business

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We’ve all read tales of corporate wrongdoing – think Bernie Madoff, Enron, LIBOR. In most cases, managers engaged in nefarious behavior, knowing they were doing wrong. There are a few cases where the miscreant could plausibly argue ignorance, or good intentions – Martha Stewart, perhaps.

But a recent courtroom defense by Standard & Poors in response to a Federal charge of fraud, opens up a whole new threat to corporate ethics.

Subordinating Ethics to Legal Arguments

Back in April, S&P responded to a Justice Department’s complaint that S&P’s claims of ratings objectivity, independence and integrity were false, and part of a scheme to defraud investors.

S&P’s creative approach was to argue that such statements were only “puffery,” and that a reasonable investor would not depend on them.

Let’s underscore this. S&P, as a legal strategy, decided to disavow its own declarations of objectivity, independence and integrity, saying in effect, “everyone knows we’re just blowing smoke.”

  • Picture Boeing saying, “About that 787 safety stuff – you didn’t really think we were serious, did you?”
  • Picture Legal SeaFood saying, “Oh, you thought we meant genuine bluefish?  Ha ha, silly you.”
  • You get the picture.

This is not a company trying to avoid being caught. It’s not a case of extenuating circumstances, or offsetting benefits.  It is not even arguing an interpretation of what is wrong.

S&P is arguing – as part of a legal strategy – that “integrity” is just a marketing tool. This subordinates “integrity” to both marketing and legal considerations. It puts it somewhere on a par with market research or creative ad spots.

 The Name of the Problem

It’s not just S&P that is confused – the media is implicated too. In his Bloomberg News story on the issue, Jonathan Weil characterizes the problem this way:

The problem is that sound legal strategies sometimes create public-relations nightmares…Often PR and legal professionals end up pursuing conflicting agendas if they don’t work cooperatively. There’s an old test that everyone in the public eye should use when making important decisions: How would this look if you read about it on the front page of a major newspaper or website?

Where S&P’s lawyers confuse ethics and legal arguments, Weil is reducing ethical issues to ones of reputation and PR.

At least Bernie Madoff had a moral compass. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and tried to hide it. But if “integrity” is a marketing tool, justified by ROI or PR, then we are in uncharted waters.

A Simple Problem

This should not be hard to manage. If someone brings a legal strategy of “integrity as puffery” to the Chief Counsel or CEO, this is what they should say in response:

“Excuse me – you are deeply confused.  This is not a legal or marketing strategy issue. There will be no analyses of riskiness, ROI, or trade-offs with reputation. Integrity is not something we bargain with. It is a core value. That means precisely what it says.

“Throw away immediately any work you were doing in that direction. And I want to know tomorrow at 9AM, in writing, why it was you were even thinking in this misconceived direction. Am I clear?”

Which would you trust?  A company with leadership that answered this way? Or a company that went to court with integrity for sale?

Judge Carter, who heard the case, was clear:

The court cannot find that all of these ‘shalls’ and ‘must nots’ are the mere aspirational musings of a corporation setting out vague goals for its future. Rather, they are specific assertions of current and ongoing policies that stand in stark contrast to the behavior alleged by the government’s complaint.

Exactly.

 

 

 

The Tricky Relationship Between Auditing and Ethics

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We should all do the right thing. Yet the wrong thing often gets done. Indeed, you can’t always trust everyone to do the right thing.

And so we have evolved enforcement mechanisms – laws, guidelines, agreements, protocols, commandments. Frequently, those mechanisms depend on some form of auditing – pop quizzes, random drug testing, probable cause. And videotaping.

Enforcement is typically put in place to augment trust, or to take over where trust can’t do the job alone. The implicit assumption is that by having some form of auditing in place, the net amount of ethical behavior will increase.

But what if it doesn’t work that way? What if auditing for enforcement destroys trust? Can the medicine be worse than the disease?

The Filmmaker’s Dilemma 

Kevin Breslin is a filmmaker and location scout for commercials in New York. From a New York Times article about him:

I used to be able walk into a building, talk to a guard downstairs and say: “You know, I’m here. I’m scouting a commercial. I need to get to the roof. I need a shot.” He’d say, “Ah, the building is closed.” I’d say, “I need two minutes,” hand the guy a $20 — and you’d be on the roof. You got the shots.

Now with surveillance cameras everywhere, no one can help you in any way even if they want to. Now it’s impossible. You have to call — speak to the building manager, speak to the real estate agent, speak to the public relations department, speak to this one. So, now you’ve got to make 40 calls just to do anything.

The cameras aren’t just auditing, they’re recording full-time. Their data isn’t a sample, it’s a complete survey. Their enforcement power is huge.  Yet so is the destruction of trust.

The results are lower social efficiency – and an atrophying of the trust muscles of a citizenry. Yet another possibility of ethical decision-making is taken away from the level at which the ethical issue arises, and replaced by a cold, bloodless policy. An opportunity to practice trust is lost.

The Convenience Store Manager’s Dilemma

I once did a consulting assignment for a convenience store chain. They had 150% store manager turnover, and wanted a better profile for recruiting. Recruiting, however, turned out not to be the problem.

The problem was that the chain gave every store manager a lie detector test every month. After being tested this way for months, clearly store managers were deciding that many of their peers were getting away with something, and proceeded to pocket store funds. Then they were caught, and terminated.

The lie detector tests were audits, imposed regularly and frequently. Their net effect was like the Heisenberg Principle – the testing for trustworthiness altered the level of trustworthiness itself.

The Leader’s Dilemma

Creating an environment that encourages ethical behavior is desirable – up to a point. Beyond that point, social engineering begins to negatively affect the very thing it was designed to help. So – how can a leader determine the right balance between personally driven trustworthy behavior and auditing for enforcement?

Here are three guidelines:

  1. Be a role model. Role modeling of all desirable behaviors by leaders is a good thing, but when it comes to trust, I think the importance doubles. Hypocrisy kills trust – but exemplifying it creates even  more trust. Live the values yourself.
  2. Use random sampling, not regular surveying. Bernie Madoff might have been caught earlier had spot auditing been practiced rightly. And the convenience store would have had less turnover if they didn’t remove all ethical decision-making power from the managers.
  3. To get trust, give it. One of the best ways to make people trustworthy is to trust them. Don’t engineer trust out of interpersonal situations – leave some room for humans to act humanly.

Know Yourself. Wait, what does that even mean?

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"To Thy Own Self Be True"In college, I majored in philosophy. I underlined all the important parts in my texbooks – the hard, the empirical, the deductive, the categorical. I underlined about half of each  book. What I skipped over were the soft and squishy parts: know thyself, be virtuous, metaphysics, that kind of thing.

Years later I deigned to go to the School for Practical Philosophy. After a class or two, I realized it was powerful stuff. I also realized it was about the other half of the book – all the things I hadn’t underlined.

I still eschew the metaphysics stuff in favor of David Hume, but I have become a complete convert on the subject of Know Thyself.

In fact, self-knowledge is one of the five trust skills that my co-author Andrea Howe and I describe in the Trusted Advisor FieldBook. In fact, it’s the capstone skill of the five skills we describe in that book, as well as in our workshop program Trust-based Leadership.

If “know yourself” strikes you as squishy, soft, fuzzy, left coast suburban buddhist hippie-talk homilies – like it used to strike me – then let me break it down and toughen it up for you. Because when you get it, it’s a lot tougher than the analytical subject-mastery behavioral neuro-babble that is too often celebrated in business today.

Know yourself means four things.

  1. To know yourself, you have to be able to see yourself objectively. The “you” that knows yourself cannot be the same as the “self” that you know. If you can’t do this, you’re doomed to always just doing and feeling the stuff that you always did and felt. You can’t do anything about it if you’re always in it.  (Hang on, I’ll tell you how later).
  2. If you know yourself, then you know what makes you the same as, and different from, the other 7.091 billion humanoids on the planet. And you are more same than different. Get over your terminal uniqueness. You are better than some billions, worse than other billions, on billions of continua. You fall into the broad middle billions of humanity. You ain’t all that.
  3. Seeing who you are and recognizing your right-sized place in humanity, you can now find freedom. You don’t owe anybody anything, nobody owes you anything. Everything is a gift, or nothing at all. You make your own luck, you create your own suck. Your life is what you make of it, nothing more, nothing less. Success is heavily an inside job –  happiness, completely.
  4. Once free, you can decide what to do with your freedom. Since you no longer need anything, you are free to give, and to make the world a better place. And the collateral damage of doing good is that you get good back in return.

Because the universe has a way of paying you back.  I’m not talking about metaphysics and karma, I’m talking human nature. Way more often than not, people return good for good and evil for evil. By leading with good, you greatly increase the odds of receiving good. It’s not a cosmic principle thing – it’s just how people work. That’s concrete.

And it’s a powerful enough rule that you can make book on it – and do business based on it. It’s not guaranteed in every situation, instance or transaction – but it is ironclad in the long run across multiple events.

What Good is Knowing Yourself?

You mean, besides making you happy and free and attractive to other people?  Well, OK, here’s just one concrete specific item.

You know how sometimes you find out that someone thinks way more highly of you than you thought they did? Or that they think much worse of you? Either way, you know the shock when you discover the disconnect?

Knowing yourself prevents those shocks, because there’s no disconnect. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. By knowing who you are and aren’t, you can maximize your potential. You don’t cause friction, waste and slippage by under- or over-shooting, or by seeking more or less from others than you should. When you know who you are, you can calibrate exactly what impact you will create in any given situation – no more guessing, wishing, hoping. That is empowering.

How Am I Supposed to Do This?

I know, I know – how do you do this stuff? Where’s the tips and tricks, top ten lists, business processes and metrics that you need to do things?

Andrea and I give you three concrete actions to take in The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. They are:

  1. Look inward – basically, introspection. Lots of ways to do that. Write it down and share with others as you discover.
  2. Convert blind spots to insights – get feedback. Simple. Just go ask for it.
  3. Experiment – create learning opportunities. Put money where mouth is. Try stuff; evaluate; recalibrate; try again.

You can break each one down further – into processes, timeframes, sequences, metrics and milestones – if that’s your preferred style. Or, you can just swim in it. Both ways will work.

One last thing about knowing yourself. It’s not a step function, it’s incremental. You can always get better, and as you do, you reap the benefits at the same time. It’s a progressive thing. And anytime is a good time to start.

When You Can’t Get No Respect

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You Gotta Give Some, To Get SomeSome will recall comic Rodney Dangerfield’s catch phrase. Others may remember Aretha Franklin’s iconic spelling, R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

When you respect someone, it’s a verb.  When you get respect, it’s a noun. Either way, it has positive connotations.

But what’s the connection between respecting someone, and receiving respect from them?

Is it a chicken-egg thing? Does one cause the other? Is it inevitably one-sided, as in “respect for one’s elders,” where the relationship between respecter and respectee is a permanent one?

Is it like trust, where the trustor and trustee exist in a constantly reciprocating relationship? Is it like Jesus’s saying, “It is more blessed to [respect] than to [be respected]?”

Is it a Beatles-like thing, where “the [respect] you take is equal to the [respect] you make“? Is it like exercise, where no pain, no gain is the rule? Or is it like Bonnie Raitt sang, “I can’t make you [respect] me, if you don’t?”

And finally, what’s the connection with buying, selling, and the modern workplace?

Respect is Unconditional

We agree that we should respect others where respect is due (never mind who judges “due”). It’s much harder to agree that others should respect us. Particularly when the “others” are the ones we may be disagreeing with.

If I respect you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll respect me. Many cultures show respect for elders; it doesn’t follow that the elders must respect the young. Nor is it necessarily disrespectful if they don’t.  So respecting someone is no guarantee that they’ll respect you (sorry, John Lennon).

Though frequently, it does work that way. To show respect to another can be a form of etiquette.  This function is powerful in sales, where it’s easy to disrespect customers’ knowledge, even if we don’t intend to.

Demonstrated respect for the customer is rare enough that respect can be a source of differentiation.  Too many sellers don’t follow the Kantian rule of treating others as ends in themselves, treating them instead as means to our own ends. That’s disrespect, and it’s not uncommon, given that selling is potentially a manipulative, secretive black art – if not handled from trust.

Respect should be unconditional. If I respect you only on condition that you respect me, that is faux respect. If you merit respect, I should respect you, regardless of whether you return it to me.

Disrespect

So far, you’re likely agreeing with most of what I’ve said.  But how about this. What happens when you should, by any objective measure, be respected – and someone disrespects you?

The key question is: do you return disrespect for disrespect? Let me be a little controversial here:

  • If you are holding a resentment against someone who has disrespected you, the salient point is that you are holding a resentment.
  • If you are upset by the lack of respect from others, as should be your due, the only relevant point is that you are upset.
  • If you lose all respect for someone who has disrespected you, then either you misplaced your respect in the first place, or you gave in the desire for revenge.
  • If you demand respect, you will most likely not get it. If you continue to demand it, you will continue to drive down the odds of getting it.

Respect is a virtue – when paid.  When respect is received – treat it as a gift, a gift of grace.

Act so as to earn respect – but give up attachment to the outcome.

Be grateful for the respect you earn – but don’t treasure it.

Respect others – but do so without conditioning it on being respected in return.

It is better to respect than to be respected.

If you can’t get no respect – that’s your problem. And you can fix it anytime you want, by detaching from the outcome.

Go respect someone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Destroying Trust with Just a Verb

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The Associated Press decided to drop the term “illegal immigrant” from its reporting. Their point: the term ‘illegal’ should be applied to actions, but not to persons. It’s the immigration equivalent of, “hate the game, not the player.”

Of course, that’s red meat to a lion for some. Senator John McCain said, “You can call it whatever you want to, but it’s illegal. There’s a big difference…I’ll continue to call it illegal.” And so the battle is joined. Where one side sees respect, another sees absurd political correctness.

This is a worthless, useless, and totally unnecessary argument. It is also typical of a great many pretend arguments – full of energy and fury, truly signifying nothing.

And who’s the culprit? A verb. To be precise, the verb “to be.” I’m not kidding.

The Tyranny of the Verb “To Be”

In Spanish (and other Romance languages, I think), the English “to be” actually has three forms: estar, tener, and ser. Estar refers to a temporary condition: he is tired, she is in Europe, I’m sick. Tener refers to “having” a passing state – I have hunger, you have thirst, he has luck. Ser, the third form of “to be,” has to do with permanence: he is a man, you are virtuous, she is from the US.

In English, all those forms translate into one word, to be: I am, you are, he is.

Why is that a problem? Consider these interactions:

“The new Bond movie is great.” “No it isn’t, it stinks.”

“He is always negative.” “No, he’s just realistic.”

“You’re not serious.” “I am totally serious!”

“He’s an illegal.” “How can you be so judgmental?”

Because we have only one verb in English to cover so many situations, we end up bludgeoning each other. Since we can’t distinguish our several meanings, we assume others mean the same thing we do.  And when it turns out they meant something else, we chalk it up to obtuseness and  bad will on their part.

Which explains why I always have good intentions – but you! You’re always working some angle.

The American Burden

We’re not about to add two new verbs to American English (I can’t speak for the British or the Strines). But it’s not like we’re handcuffed. All we need is a little clarity of thinking.

1. Distinguish between actions and actors. The AP had this one right. You can still morally condemn people if you want – just don’t be sloppy about your definitions of morality.

2. Distinguish between your preferences and the other’s characteristics. I am not annoying – you are annoyed.

3. Avoid using personal pronouns with “to be” except for “I” and “it.” We have a right to say “I am __.”  We don’t have the same right to say “you are __” or “he is __.”  Only a rocking chair is oblivious to the difference.

I am fairly confident it’ll work for you. Unless you’re seriously pigheaded, that is.

Leadership Development: the Trust Perspective

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Leadership and Development, Trusted Advisor, Trust-Based LeadershipI rarely write blogposts promoting the services we offer. But since we have something new to offer – this is one of those times.

Are you involved with issues of leadership in your organization? Then you may be interested in our newest service offering, Trust-based Leadership.

And if learning and developments is not your thing, please pass it on to the appropriate person.

Trust-based Leadership joins our two other flagship programs – Being Trusted Advisors and Trust-based Selling. Here’s how it came about.

The Case for Trust-based Leadership

In 2011’s The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust, Andrea Howe and I articulated the central role of trust in leadership. That may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s not all that obvious. Historically, the idea of “leadership” has been all about vertical relationships – leaders and followers, the high-potential few, charisma. Not so much anymore.

Now, critical business relationships have moved to the horizontal dimension: partners, joint ventures, alignment, startups, remote teams. In such environments, leaders have no direct control – they can’t give orders, they often can’t even offer incentives. What they can do, and must do, is influence people to move in the same general direction. And the number one driver of influence is – trust.

(For a longer discussion of this issue, see The New Leadership is Horizontal, Not Vertical).

Trust-based Leadership – the Program 

We’ve had this program in development since early summer 2012, and it’s finally ready. A one-day program, it’s almost entirely experiential. It is aimed at supervisory to mid-level  groups in all kinds of businesses and organizations. It comes with diagnostics and sustainment plans. See more details here.

It is based on material contained in The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. Trainers have been certified, the program has been piloted (to rave reviews), and it’s available for train-the-trainer for larger organizations, starting now. (Available at first in the US only; but stay tuned).

Email me [email protected] or call me directly at 1-855-TRUST01, ext. 1001 (that’s 1-855-878-7801, ext. 1001) for more information, and I will reply to you personally. I’d like to talk more with you about this exciting new program.

The New Leadership is Horizontal, Not Vertical

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Several decades ago, when “leadership” became a Big Thing, it was heavily personality-based. It posited Leadership as something done by Leaders, who had learned the art of how to Lead. As a consultant friend of mine, Renee Wingo, put it, “It’s a subject whose proponents can’t figure out whether it’s a noun, a verb, or a gerund.”

Leaders were thought of as those who were followed by others. This dichotomy fed the idea that there are two kinds of people in this world – those who lead, and those who follow. Besides reinforcing the personality-based view of leadership, it raises the classic make or buy question – are Leaders just born, or can their secrets be unlocked and learned by others?

Finally, this distinction between leaders and followers fed a natural assumption that those roles were vertically related within an organization. Think military chain of command. Think bosses and subordinates.  To this day you’ll find many business writers harping on “the difference between leaders and managers,” as if the terms carried some ordained meaning.  In any case, it meant that leaders outranked followers.

Warren Bennis was (and still is) the [leading] guru of leadership. Much of what he has written is about Great Leaders, whether as exemplars, or as subjects in their own right. He held conversations with Leaders, who basked in his attention as much as he did in theirs. The majority of Bennis’s many book titles on the subject center around the noun “leader.”

Leadership development, in this personality-based view of the subject, was something that companies offered to elite groups – those with “high potential,” who had the inner capabilities to become leaders of others. The few, the proud, the Leaders – those were the ones granted the key to the next level.

Away from Personality-based Leadership

That was then; this is now. Things have changed, gradually but firmly. The concept of a hierarchical, vertical relationship between “leaders” and “followers” or “managers” has become less and less descriptive of the world of business. In its place we have networks, webs, relationships, alliances, collaborations, joint ventures, ecosystems, cultures, and communities.

This is not just a function of web-based aggregations, or faddish vocabulary. It is built into industrial structure, with much greater global sourcing, modular supply chains, and focus on core businesses. Language follows structure, not the other way ’round.

Enter Horizontal Leadership

What that means for leadership is simple but profound: the essential relationships are no longer the vertical relationships contained within corporate silos,  but the horizontal ones that link people across organizational boundaries. The New Leadership isn’t vertical, it’s horizontal.

This forces us to do a better job of defining leadership.  It never wasabout getting people to follow; it was about getting things done. It still is. Except now you get things done less by lining up the troops, and more by generating movement around a common goal. Horizontal leadership might be defined as “persuading others over whom you have absolutely no direct control to join you in a common cause.”

The “skills” of old and new leadership certainly overlap. You can’t lead horizontally or vertically if people think you’re dull, or an ass-kisser, or hopelessly insecure. But there are differences. The skills of horizontal leadership rhyme with influence, persuasion, and trust. Particularly trust.

Because the biggest difference between vertical and horizontal leadership is reciprocity. To be a vertical leader, you don’t have to be a good follower. But to be a good horizontal leader, you must know how to be trusted – and how to trust. It is not enough to be trustworthy; you must also be a risk-taker, and know how to be vulnerable, two prerequisites of the ability to trust.

Vertical leadership, like command and control, largely goes one way – from top down. But horizontal leadership is best practiced through trust, and trust is bi-lateral; you have to be good at trusting, and at being trusted. “Leader” is not a permanent attribute – it is a mindset/skill-set/role that is played at a given time by a given person, who the next day must play, equally well, the role of follower.

Which means, in today’s world, we each have to behave as leaders, or we simply don’t succeed. This is not New Age pablum-talk; it is a meaningful statement. In a networked, connected world, the skills of playing nicely together in the sandbox – horizontal leadership – cannot be squandered on an elite “high-potential” group; they have to be broadly taught. The concept of leadership development needs democratizing.

The future of leadership is horizontal, not vertical; and the future of horizontal leadership is learning the ways of trust. That means teaching trusting, and being trusted. And it means an approach to teaching leadership that is far more broadly-based than it has been.

The New Leadership is Horizontal, Not Vertical

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Horizontal LeadershipSeveral decades ago, when “leadership” became a Big Thing, it was heavily personality-based. It posited Leadership as something done by Leaders, who had learned the art of how to Lead. As a consultant friend of mine, Renee Wingo, put it, “It’s a subject whose proponents can’t figure out whether it’s a noun, a verb, or a gerund.”

Leaders were thought of as those who were followed by others. This dichotomy fed the idea that there are two kinds of people in this world – those who lead, and those who follow. Besides reinforcing the personality-based view of leadership, it raises the classic make or buy question – are Leaders just born, or can their secrets be unlocked and learned by others?

Finally, this distinction between leaders and followers fed a natural assumption that those roles were vertically related within an organization. Think military chain of command. Think bosses and subordinates.  To this day you’ll find many business writers harping on “the difference between leaders and managers,” as if the terms carried some ordained meaning.  In any case, it meant that leaders outranked followers.

Warren Bennis was (and still is) the [leading] guru of leadership. Much of what he has written is about Great Leaders, whether as exemplars, or as subjects in their own right. He held conversations with Leaders, who basked in his attention as much as he did in theirs. The majority of Bennis’s many book titles on the subject center around the noun “leader.”

Leadership development, in this personality-based view of the subject, was something that companies offered to elite groups – those with “high potential,” who had the inner capabilities to become leaders of others. The few, the proud, the Leaders – those were the ones granted the key to the next level.

Away from Personality-based Leadership

That was then; this is now. Things have changed, gradually but firmly. The concept of a hierarchical, vertical relationship between “leaders” and “followers” or “managers” has become less and less descriptive of the world of business. In its place we have networks, webs, relationships, alliances, collaborations, joint ventures, ecosystems, cultures, and communities.

This is not just a function of web-based aggregations, or faddish vocabulary. It is built into industrial structure, with much greater global sourcing, modular supply chains, and focus on core businesses. Language follows structure, not the other way ’round.

Enter Horizontal Leadership

What that means for leadership is simple but profound: the essential relationships are no longer the vertical relationships contained within corporate silos,  but the horizontal ones that link people across organizational boundaries. The New Leadership isn’t vertical, it’s horizontal.

This forces us to do a better job of defining leadership.  It never was about getting people to follow; it was about getting things done. It still is. Except now you get things done less by lining up the troops, and more by generating movement around a common goal. Horizontal leadership might be defined as “persuading others over whom you have absolutely no direct control to join you in a common cause.”

The “skills” of old and new leadership certainly overlap. You can’t lead horizontally or vertically if people think you’re dull, or an ass-kisser, or hopelessly insecure. But there are differences. The skills of horizontal leadership rhyme with influence, persuasion, and trust. Particularly trust.

Because the biggest difference between vertical and horizontal leadership is reciprocity. To be a vertical leader, you don’t have to be a good follower. But to be a good horizontal leader, you must know how to be trusted – and how to trust. It is not enough to be trustworthy; you must also be a risk-taker, and know how to be vulnerable, two prerequisites of the ability to trust.

Vertical leadership, like command and control, largely goes one way – from top down. But horizontal leadership is best practiced through trust, and trust is bi-lateral; you have to be good at trusting, and at being trusted. “Leader” is not a permanent attribute – it is a mindset/skill-set/role that is played at a given time by a given person, who the next day must play, equally well, the role of follower.

Which means, in today’s world, we each have to behave as leaders, or we simply don’t succeed. This is not New Age pablum-talk; it is a meaningful statement. In a networked, connected world, the skills of playing nicely together in the sandbox – horizontal leadership – cannot be squandered on an elite “high-potential” group; they have to be broadly taught. The concept of leadership development needs democratizing.

The future of leadership is horizontal, not vertical; and the future of horizontal leadership is learning the ways of trust. That means teaching trusting, and being trusted. And it means an approach to teaching leadership that is far more broadly-based than it has been.

Brutal Honesty Isn’t

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I have to be brutally honest

Oh it’s brutal, all right. But it’s not honest. Real honesty is empathetic.  Here’s how.

I suppose you could be honest in a vacuum – but who cares?  Was Robinson Crusoe honest?  Until Friday came along, that was just a silly question. You can’t be usefully honest, except in relation to or with someone.

Honesty Implies a Relationship

If you’re honest with someone, then suddenly it’s about a relationship. You might be honest with them, or you could lie to them; both are a form of relationship.  The quality of your honesty affects the relationship, just as do the quality of your appearance, your manners, or your powers of observation.

If you’re in relationship, you may intend to honor and promote that relationship – or, you may choose to work against the relationship,  to take advantage of it for your own purposes, or disavow it, or destroy it. If your intentions are to further the relationship, then honesty – and any other theme – must serve that goal.

Positive Honesty

This is what we usually mean by honesty; telling someone something they will find helpful, sharing information with them in the hope that knowing it will give them a broader view, being open so as to be of service to them. And when we behave honestly with these motives, a collateral benefit is that the relationship itself improves.

If these are your motives in being honest, then you will strive to make the information useful, and able to be heard and understood by the recipient. After all, if the information you present is rejected, or causes resentment, then it cannot help the other person. Additionally, the relationship will be damaged. In being honest, you intend your message to be accepted. If the medicine needs a spoonful of sugar to go down, keep the sugar bowl handy.

Brutal Honesty

But what if your motives are other than to help the other person?  Suppose that, for reasons perhaps obscure even to yourself, your motives are to be right; or to prove that you had been right all along; or to provoke a violent reaction; or to cause pain. What is the effect in those cases?

The effect is almost always negative. The person rejects the advice, and the relationship is damaged, with each party going off muttering imprecations under their breath about the other.

But what about the times when we simply have to confront someone to get them to see the error of their ways? When there’s just no substitute for rubbing their face in it, for conducting an intervention, for shocking them into seeing the truth, which shall then of course set them free? This is what goes by the name of Brutal Honesty.

My experience is that for every 10 of those cases, maybe one works out. The others fizzle out and create havoc. The brutalized party rarely comes to full consciousness and thanks us for saving their soul. Instead, they just stop talking to us. At best.

Brutal honesty, then, is an oxymoron. If you are to be brutal, you will not long stay in relationship. If your view of improving relationships involves brutalizing them, you will not find many willing to travel that road with you.

If someone says to you, “I have to be brutally honest with you, ” say, “No, actually, you don’t. And I don’t have to hear it, either. Now, what was it you wanted to say?” And don’t overly weight what they tell you.

If you are ever tempted to tell someone, “I have to be brutally honest with you,” go hit yourself upside the head with a closed fist, to remind yourself how it feels to be brutalized.

Then ask yourself, “Do I care about this person and this relationship?  Then what do I have to share with them that is constructive, useful, and builds the relationship based on positive honesty?”