Common Traits of Great Leaders (Part 3)

by Guy Picken, Guy Picken Consulting

Following this week's blog, we now delve into more qualities that make great leaders.

Great Leaders

6. Great Leaders apply relentless discipline

In 2020 McKinsey and Company conducted a study on Execution vs strategy finding 45% of the performance differential between high and low performing companies came down to execution quality. The strategy (mostly market positioning and bold choices) contributed 55% of profit growth with the other 45% coming down how the strategy was executed.

“A vision or strategy without execution is a dream, execution without strategy is a nightmare”.

Great leaders are clear about what needs to be done. They understand the need to prioritise the most important tasks in a very disciplined way. They are relentless.

“Constant dripping hollows out a stone”. Aristotle.

Great leaders are always in execution mode (finding a way to get the job done) not explanation mode (explaining how difficult the job is) An example is complaining how hard it is to get good staff while the high performer found a way to get the job done.

“Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently” – Colin Powell

Discipline is doing what you must do when you must do it, not what you want to do when you want to do it. Great leaders hold the team and themselves responsible for getting the job done. It is personal.

“There are two pains in life, the pain of discipline and the payment of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, you will never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.” - Nick Saban

7. Great leaders are at their absolute best in adversity

“You will be defined by how you handle adversity”.

Great leaders not only persevere but thrive in adversity. They are force multipliers, and in any crisis, they focus their time on the tasks that will add the most value. They are always conscious of the value they can add and lead their team forward in a positive way.

“Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems”. – Sun Tsu

In the military they talk about living in a 3-foot world. The concept is to isolate and ignore the big scary ‘what ifs’ and concentrate on things that matter and that you can control. When climbing a cliff don’t worry about how far you could fall or how far it is to the top but concentrate on the footholds in the next 3 feet. In a firefight don’t worry about the extraction that went wrong or even the potential of a sniper 500 meters away. It is the enemy around the next corner (3 feet away) that is your greatest danger and within your control to deal with.

In a business sense it means when you feel overwhelmed don’t overthink the ‘what ifs’ or spend time on what you cannot change – Do something thing right now to improve the situation.

“Work the problem!” Gene Kranz

If your to do list has become unmanageable and you have 15 urgent tasks, do the most important one and you will only have 14.

Everyone including great leaders make mistakes, it is what they do next that differentiates them.

“Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be”

8. Great leaders are resilient

Great leaders are not crippled by previous failures. If they fail, they analyse why, adapt, evolve and do it better next time. They know you cannot change the past, but you can change the future with what you do next.

“Rounds Downrange stay downrange. Don’t let your last shot impact your next one”. – Navy Seals

So many of life’s great achievers have failed or been rejected before they became a success:

• JK Rowling Before becoming a household name, J.K. Rowling faced numerous rejections for her Harry Potter manuscript. Despite the discouragement, she persisted, and her determination led to one of the most successful book series of all time

• Oprah Whinfrey. Winfrey was fired from her first TV job as one of the news anchors for Baltimore’s WJZ-TV because she got too emotionally invested in her stories. She was told she was “unfit for television news”

• Steve Jobs. When he was in his 30s, the company he created fired him. “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.” during the next decade he founded computer company neXt which was later acquired by Apple and launched Pixar Animation Studios. When he returned to Apple nearly a decade later, he brought the world the innovation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

• Walt Disney. In 1919, Walt Disney was fired from one of his first animation jobs at the Kansas City Star newspaper because his editor felt he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. That wasn’t the last of his failures. Disney then acquired Laugh-O-Gram, an animation studio that quickly went bankrupt

• Harland Sanders (KFC) Colonel Harland Sanders faced over 1,000 rejections before finding a franchise partner for his fried chicken recipe. His story reminds us to stay confident in the value of our ideas and to keep seeking opportunities

• Vincent van Gogh is now celebrated as one of the greatest artists of all time, but during his life, he only sold one painting, despite his prolific output.

• Jerry Seinfeld. The first time the young comedian walked on stage at a comedy club, he looked out at the audience, froze and was eventually booed off of the stage, but a determined Seinfeld went back the next night and performed a successful set.

• The Beatles When the Beetles were just starting out Decca Recording studios, who had recorded 15 songs with the group, said "we don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. They have no future in show business."

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed” -Michael Jordan

The concept of resilience does not just apply to individuals but companies as well. Some of todays greatest companies had their challenges early on. Here is what some industry icons said about companies that went on to be the biggest ever:

• “It would be a daunting task requiring tens of billions of dollars in capital and years to build sufficient scale and density to replicate existing networks like FedEx” – Mike Glenn Executive VP of FedEx March 2016 commenting on the threat Amazon posed

• "I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers” – Thomas Watson President of IBM in 1943

• "There is no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance” Steve Ballmer Microsoft CEO in 2007

• “Google is not a real company; it is a house of cards” – Steve Ballmer Microsoft CEO in 2009

  

  Common Trait of Good Leaders

“Failure is success in progress” - Einstein.

In difficult times, things that have worked in the past may no longer work. Great leaders know the role requires them to adapt to the circumstances to achieve their goals.

Come back next week as we explore our final two insights on what makes great leaders. www.guypickenconsulting.com#commontraitsofgoodleaders Common Trait of Great Leaders