Transform Your Organization by Scaling Leadership
How do senior leaders, in their own words, describe the most effective leaders - the ones that get results, grow the business, enhance the culture and leave in their wake a trail of other really effective leaders? Conversely, how do senior leaders describe the kind of leader that undercuts the organization’s capacity and capability to create its future? This book, based on groundbreaking research, shows how senior leaders describe and develop leadership that works, that does not, that scales, and that limits scale.
Is your leadership built for scale as you advance in today’s volatile, uncertain, dynamic, and disruptive business environment? This context puts a premium on a very particular kind of leadership - High-Creative leadership capable of rapidly growing the organization while simultaneously transforming it into more agile, innovative, adaptive and engaging workplace. The research presented in this book suggests that senior leaders can describe the High-Creative leadership with surprising clarity. They also describe with equal precision the High-Reactive leadership that cancels itself out and seriously limits scale. Which type of leader are you?
You scale your leadership by increasing the multiple on your leadership in three ways. First, by developing the strengths that differentiate the most effective leaders from the strengths deployed by the most Reactive and ineffective leaders. And second, by increasing your leadership ratio - the ratio of most the effective strengths to the most damaging liabilities. Third, by developing High-Creative leaders all around you.
Scaling Leadership provides a proven framework for magnifying agile and scalable leadership in your organization. Scalable leadership drives forward-momentum by multiplying high-achieving leaders at scale so that growth, productivity and innovation increase exponentially. Creative leaders multiply their strengths beyond technical competence by leading in deep relationship, with radical humanity, passion and integrity.
Drawing upon decades of solid research and experience enhancing individual capability and collective leadership effectiveness with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, the authors provide an innovative and efficient framework to help you:
- Take stock of your own personal balance of leadership strengths and weaknesses
- Scale your leadership in deep relationship and high integrity
- Proliferate high-achievers throughout your organization’s leadership system
- Identify ineffective leadership and course-correct quickly
- Transform your organization by transforming leadership
Scaling Leadership is an invaluable tool for executives, managers, and leaders in business, academia, nonprofit organizations, and more. This innovative resource provides effective techniques, real-world examples, and expert guidance for organizations seeking to improve performance, align and execute strategies, and transform their business with scalable leadership capability.
Table of Contents
Foreword xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xix
Chapter 1 Exposed at Scale 1
Leadership at Scale 2
The Development Gap 4
The Spiritual Journey of Leadership 9
Chapter 2 Profiles in Leadership 13
Optimal Leadership Circle Profile 15
Conditions for Scale 21
Bridging the Development Gap 28
Chapter 3 Getting a Street View on Leadership 31
Sample Demographics 33
How Different Are These Groups? 33
So What? 37
Chapter 4 High-Creative Leadership Strengths 39
Strengths of High-Creative Leaders 40
Top 10 Skills for High-Creative Leaders 41
Biggest Strength Gaps 43
What Surprised Us? 44
Contribution of Women Leaders 45
Scaling Leadership 49
Chapter 5 The Strengths of High-Reactive Leaders 53
Top 10 Strengths of High-Reactive Leaders 54
Non-Differentiating Strengths 55
Redefining Leadership 60
Chapter 6 Leader Liabilities 65
How We Interrupt Our Effectiveness 65
Top 10 Liabilities of High-Reactive Leaders 66
Case Example: President Edwardo 69
Leadership Ratio 71
What Is Your Return on Leadership? 73
Relationship-Task Balance 73
Chapter 7 The Canceling Effect 79
The Canceling Effect 80
Does Your Leadership Scale? The Impact of Non-
Differentiating Strengths 83
Seven Multiples, Seven Canceling Effects 84
Systemic Canceling Effects 87
Are You Amplifying Your Multiple or Your Canceling Effect? 89
A Matter of Development (The Peter Principle Revisited) 91
Chapter 8 How Leaders Scale Leadership 95
Case in Pont: Jeff Hilzinger 95
Scaling Leadership Beyond Yourself 96
Jeff Hilzinger: A Transformational Leader 111
Chapter 9 Full-Spectrum Leadership 115
The Middle Groups 116
A Pathway of Development 117
A Deeper Dive into the Data 118
So What? Key Conclusions 124
Where Are You? 127
It’s Time for an Upgrade 129
Chapter 10 Reactive Leadership 131
Canceled Gifts and Competing Liabilities 134
Heart-Centered Leaders 135
Will-Centered Leaders 140
Head-Centered Leadership 144
The Universal Model Maps Core Patterns 149
Chapter 11 Transforming Reactive into Creative Leadership 153
Shift from Reactive to Creative in Three Movements 155
Three Movements, One Symphony 161
Complementary Competencies 163
Developing Conscious Leadership 166
Chapter 12 Practices That Transform Leadership 169
How to Change 171
Establish Generative Tension 173
Tell the Truth About What We Want 173
Discerning Purpose 174
Distill Vision 175
Outcomes and Behavior 176
Telling the Truth About Current Reality 178
Be Intentional 182
Stop, Challenge, Choose 182
Practice 184
Intuition 184
Reflection 185
Feedback 187
Truth Telling 188
Lead the Change 189
Chapter 13 Integral Leadership Informed by Grace 193
Appendix A Leadership Circle Profile Summary Dimensions 201
Appendix B Leadership Effectiveness and Business Performance 207
Appendix C Research Methodology 211
Description of LQ Indicator and the Selection of Specific Samples Based on LQ 211
Description of Qualitative Analysis of Comment Feedback 213
Appendix D Definitions of Thematic Strengths and Liabilities 215
Appendix E Theorists Integrated into the Leadership Circle Universal
Model of Leadership 221
About the Authors 226
Notes 228
References 235
Index 243
