Welcome back everyone!  We have arrived – 4/4 – the finale – the last of the 4 intangibles of Successful Leadership.

First, a quick refresher of the first 3 intangibles along with a summary (in 8 words or less).

1. Humility – Fail with grace (Do you?)
2. Honesty – Always be truthful – and diplomatic (This is tricky)
3. Empathy – Aspire to understand others (Genuinely)

With these three things behind us, what rounds all of these off like a fine full bodied red wine with a perfectly prepared 12oz Filet Mignon?

Integrity.

Yep, that is it, the 4th and final intangible of successful leadership can be achieved by performing your responsibilities as a leader with unwavering integrity.

By one definition, Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes.

Let’s look at the pieces above and throw some questions out there to further explore why each piece of integrity is so critical.

Consistency of Actions – Is your behavior something to model after? Do you do and say the same thing?

Consistency of Values – Are your values well understood? Do you waiver on tough subjects? Can you be counted on to act out of eyesight the same as when you are being watched?

Consistency of Methods – How do you lead? Do you treat people the same? Do you play favorites? How do you approach adversity vs. prosperity?

Consistency of Principles – One question, Do you do the right thing when no one is looking?

Consistency of Expectations – I’m adamant about this one.  Expectations must be clearly understood.  Do you do this? Do your teams know what is expected from them and how they will be evaluated on this?

Consistency of Outcomes – The proof is in the pudding.  What are your results?

To truly be a “High Integrity” leader, the questions above must be asked and answered correctly. Then they must become part of your inner leadership, to be in your everyday routine, and they must be implanted in your soul where the core of leadership lies.

In a minute, can you become a great leader? I would say no, but the intangibles we have discussed over the past several weeks.  Those I say with confidence are the key.  Better yet…

It only takes 4.  That is it.  Great education, aptitude, and acumen can only be fully realized if they coupled with these intangibles.  These 4 however, are not achievable just by talking about them.  They take discipline and a commitment to excellence.  However, if you do the work to realize them all, the payoff is well worth the effort.

So when do we start? Like every other worthwhile endeavor – “Fire when ready.” I assure you will be glad that you did.

Over the first two weeks we covered Humility and Honesty.  Both critical to understanding and more importantly succeeding in leadership.

Profoundly (perhaps conveniently) in the statement above I use the word “Understanding,” a word that serves as the core component of the third intangible, EMPATHY.

By definition, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.  To me, this is so important to leadership that failure is eminent without it.

Being understood is not only a need for people in their professional life, it is one of the basic needs for health and wellness. Numerous studies have been published, even in the New England Journal of Medicine, that show the act of empathy by health care practitioners actually improves patient outcomes.  Meaning patients show a greater rate of improvement and recovery when they feel their Doctor takes a genuine interest in their needs. (Bedside manner sounds a bit more important now?)

Let’s translate this back to business and leadership.  How does empathy effect the relationships we deal with in our daily grind…

As an employee – The happiest and most successful employees work for companies where beyond their direct compensation they feel they are understood, their work respected, and they have more than a job. All of which require empathy.

As a manager – When you are trying to motivate performance and drive tasks, influence is earned through your character and competence.  Your team responds to you because you have the know how, but more importantly they listen because they believe you care. A belief that is rooted in empathy.

As an executive – Driving the vision, mission, and long term execution for a company takes courage, intelligence, and perhaps most importantly organizational support. While your all of those aforementioned traits drive results, few executives will claim they can do it alone.  That required support will stabilize and grow when your team feels appreciated and understood by an empathetic leader.

As a customer – Think about your own buying experiences. Especially purchases that are not necessities.  When you have a choice, you almost always choose to buy from people you like.  What is it that you like about them? I would submit that often times it is you like that they appear to care about your needs.  That understanding – empathy at its finest.

All boiling down to…

As a human being – Whether employee, manager, executive, or customer, the bottom line is we as people want to be understood.  Not only in our careers, but in our lives.  Our careers being a section of our larger being, we take that section and apply it across everything we do.

Great leaders know that EMPATHY is a requirement of their success, and that is why it is the third of four intangibles great leaders must possess.

I heard a maxim once before. “You think you see through others so well, what makes you think they can’t see through you?”

To this I suggest… Half truths, are also half lies, and worse yet, being disingenuous is lying to yourself.

As a proponent and student of leadership, I have found that people want to engage with others that they see as honest. Further coming to find that honesty may be more critical than any of the other four intangibles. (Humility, Honesty, Integrity, Empathy)

In business we naturally gravitate toward meaningful partnerships and relationships with those that we can trust.  As we all know, trust can take a long time to build and it can be destroyed in moments.

At times in leadership positions, we may become aware of difficult situations in our businesses and it is instinctive to be dishonest.  Sometimes it may seem like the right thing to do.  The downside to that decision is if/when the truth is unveiled, regardless of the reason for your dishonesty, you still lied!

My approach to these situations is to be perfectly honest and brief.  It isn’t a lie or a half truth to say…

• I’d prefer not to discuss this right now
• I will provide you with the details that I can when I know more
• Unfortunately, this is a personal matter

This seems logical right? It does to me too, maybe even simple, yet so many choose to lie and deceive anyway.  Why do that?

Bottom line: Don’t (I don’t see further explanation required, email me if you need more here)

In the foundation and continuation of your professional (and personal for that matter) relationships.  Make it a focus to be honest with those around you.  As Stephen M.R. Covey says in his book Speed of Trust, (Excellent Read) “building meaningful trust is based on two things, character and competence.”

If you are dishonest, or even if people see you that way, (being disingenuous) it will be almost impossible to gain that ever so important trust.

Simply put, without trust, you can never successfully lead.  Honesty will put you on the road to trust, and the expressway to great leadership.

Each week the subject matter will change, and these minutes will cover the content on a very high level. Perhaps serving as an intro/idea to a future blog. Over the first four weeks, we are going to cover what I refer to as the 4 intangibles of successful leadership.

In the first edition of “The Leadership Minute,” we will dive into the first intangible…HUMILITY

First, let’s take a quick look at a simple yet effective definition of humility -> Humility is the quality or condition of being humble; a modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.

Why is it so important in leadership?

In the real world, the evaluation of leadership is often measured entirely by the outcome. Those who net successful results are deemed as great leaders, and those that are less successful fall somewhere else in the spectrum.

What is often left unsaid, is the process by which the successful leader achieved greatness? How many times did that person strike out, fail, fall short, or run into major road blocks in their individual road to great leadership? The continued effort to perform by that leader is reflective of their perseverance, which is often found in successful leaders. However, most great leaders have endured some horrific failures, and they were humbled by those failures. It was this helped them to become stronger leaders and to better appreciate their ultimate success.

There is no question that some people of great arrogance and/or inflated self image are able to achieve individual success (By their own measure of success of course). This is often seen in pro sports (Terrell Owens, Jay Cutler), hollywood (Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen), business (Top Sales, Engineers, Inventors), and social communities (Think about the nosey neighbor that knows everything about everyone). When you consider the above examples, these personality types destroy franchises, shows, sales teams, businesses, families, and communities with their self serving antics.

As a leader of others, arrogance needs to be replaced with humility. Being humble does not mean that you cannot have self confidence or be acutely aware of your strengths. People who are humble often are very cognizant of their contribution and value, but they don’t feel the need to put themselves ahead of the goal of the team. That very belief is why humility is one key to great leadership.

Are you a Humble Leader?  Thoughts, Tips, and Tricks:

• Do you constantly feel the need to take credit for your contribution? Try to avoid this behavior, credit given always supersedes credit taken
• Are you willing to take ownership of your mistakes and learn from them? Great leaders tend to embrace their mistakes as to not repeat them and to improve future performance.
• Do you recognize whether you are perceived as arrogant? Sometimes, a lack of self awareness can be the difference with an intangible such as humility.  You may believe you are humble and others think you are arrogant.  Perhaps speak with someone you trust and ask their feedback on this.