Posts Tagged ‘quintessential leader’

Are We Green Apple Leaders (Unquintessential Leaders) or Ripe Apple Leaders (Quintessential Leaders)?

Posted: August 15, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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green apple unquintessential leaderIn Dan Rockwell’s latest blog post, he describes the characteristics and the effects of “green apple” (unquintessential) leaders on organizations. He contrasts that with the attributes and effects of “ripe apple” (quintessential) leaders.

Please take a few minutes to read Rockwell’s post.

Then, as always, because this is what quintessential leaders do, let’s each assess ourselves to see whether we are green apples or ripe apples. As individuals. As team members. As leaders.

As Rockwell states, we all can exhibit green apple traits at times. That’s part of being human, unfortunately. But my request of each of us today is not to evaluate someone else – as Rockwell proposes at the end of his post – but to evaluate ourselves.

Then via comments here on the blog, share with us a green apple trait that you have successfully turned into a ripe apple trait and tell us how you accomplished that. There is much we have to share with each other in our collective journeys to become quintessential leaders.

I’ll put the first one out there. I’ve struggled with anger – sometimes rage – all my life and still do at times. I’ve always worked hard, thanks to a late-night heartfelt talk with my mom when I was around eight years old about it, to contain, control, and eliminate my anger in every part of my life. Sometimes I’m successful. Sometimes I’m not.

But in the course of doing some really stupid and potentially dangerous things during my life when anger and rage got the best of me, I realized along the way that not only was I hurting myself by getting so worked up, but I had the potential to hurt others because of my lack of self-control.

So, I learned and am still learning that anger is my dangerous emotion. I always need to be conscious of that and be aware when it makes its sudden and flashpoint appearance. I immediately extricate myself from the situation that causes it. I walk away. I breathe deeply. I walk and talk myself through it until I get calmed down. Most of the time, this takes less than half an hour today (it used to take a whole lot longer, so I know I’m making progress here overall).

But, within the last year, I got a needed reality check that this is something that still is a pretty deep-rooted green apple trait that I have not completely succeeded in turning into a ripe apple trait.

I had a deeply personal situation where it took months to get over my anger and rage about the events surrounding it. red-appleEvery time I thought I was over it, it came back in full force – and, at times, even more strongly than when the situation and events happened – and consumed me all over again.

But the upside of this is that I was aware of it and my wholehearted desire was to eventually overcome it. So instead of giving up, quitting, and accepting it, I really worked very very hard and diligently on changing it, and with time and diligence, I made progress in ripening this trait.

But I know it’s still there and I know it’s a green-red apple trait, so my work is not done.

What is the green apple trait you are actively working on to turn into a ripe apple trait?

Psychopath (Unquintessential) Leaders or Real (Quintessential) Leaders?

Posted: July 25, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership
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Are a lot of the people you know – and answer to on the job – in leadership positions psychopaths? Are you a psychopath in a leadership position? Am I? Tough questions for us personally to answer, but not very tough to answer if we’ve worked with psychopaths.

I have worked with several in my career. Each one had a different personality and temperament, but they all shared the same destructive traits of psychopaths.

There seems to be a disproportionate number of psychopaths, compared to the general population, who end up in leadership positions. In “Sometimes the boss really is a psycho,” one researcher found that about 4% of the 203 executives he studied were psychopaths, while psychopaths make up only about 1% of the general population.

Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears PradaWhen I think of the epitome of a psychopathic person in a leadership position, I think of Meryl Streep’s character, Miranda Priestly, in The Devil Wears Prada.

Some of the characteristics of psychopaths in leadership positions include:

  • Skillful and continual manipulation – bullying, threatening, and intimidating subordinates and charming, flattering, and fawning over superiors – of everyone in the organization
  • Over-inflated ego and sense of self-importance
  • Pathological lying
  • Absence of a sense of right and wrong
  • Absence of remorse and regret
  • Absence of empathy and sympathy
  • Toxicity

liam neeson oskar schindler schindler's listWhen I think of the opposite of Miranda Priestly, sticking with the movies here, I think of Oskar Schindler, portrayed by Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List.

Some of the characteristics of real leaders are:

  • Trustworthiness in everything
  • Strong convictions about right and wrong
  • Willingness to do whatever it takes to do the right thing, regardless of personal or professional cost
  • Humility
  • Strong sense of empathy and sympathy
  • Fairness with everyone

Have you worked with a psychopath in a leadership position? How did it affect you and the organization? What characteristics can you add to the list of psychopath traits as something we all need to be aware of?

Have you worked with a real leader? How did it affect you and the organization? What characteristics did he or she have that you learned and can add to the list of characteristics of real leaders?

Your turn.

How Quintessential and Unquintessential Leaders Deal With Crises

Posted: July 24, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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It is easy to distinguish quintessential leaders from unquintessential leaders by the way they deal with the pressure of a crisis or crises. 

Below I will give a short list of characteristics that quintessential and unquintessential leaders do when a crisis or crises arise.

Each of you who reads this has a two-fold assignment. First, as always, look at your own leadership characteristics in a crisis or crises and see which leadership style you, in general, fall under. The second assignment is that if you read this, I want you to give me input, via a comment, with an additional characteristic for both quintessential and unquintessential leaders’ crisis-management styles.

I’m going to move, for the most part, to shorter blog posts of this interactive format, because if you’re reading this, you have information to share with me and to share with the other readers of this blog, and I want to encourage us to communicate with and help each other grow as quintessential leaders.

quintessential leader crisis crisesSome of the characteristics of an unquintessential leader in a crisis are:

  • Pretend it doesn’t or deny that it does exist
  • Ignore it
  • Avoid it
  • Procrastinate doing anything about it
  • Blame it on someone else
  • Make it someone else’s crisis

Some of the characteristics of a quintessential leader in a crisis are:

  • Acknowledge it
  • Tackle it quickly and honestly (this means the quintessential leader expects and is prepared for a crisis)
  • Take responsibility
  • Be accountable for resolving it

Obviously, these are not comprehensive lists. Now it’s your turn to contribute with a characteristic for each type of leader in a crisis.

What can you to add to these lists?

Recommended Quintessential Leadership Articles from the Web – 5/2/13

Posted: May 2, 2013 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art, Team Building & Development
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As is the case with all quintessential leaders, I read a lot and I read widely. I read very little fiction, but when I do, I’m very selective, looking for substance and relevant rather than fluff and popularity. 

As an aside, I am one of those rare, it seems, people who eschews the idea of escapism and “feel good” when I am investing my time, energy, and effort into something.

If I don’t learn something or there are not some deep and meaningful principles I can come away with to think about and apply, then I’m simply not going to spend my time with it.

Because I am human, there’s a limit on time for me. I certainly don’t want to come to the end of my quota to discover that I wasted the majority of it.  

In pursuit of my commitment to quintessential leadership and my desire to be, at all times, in all ways, a quintessential leader, I am constantly reading articles on leadership and thinking about how and if they fit the quintessential leadership criteria.

Here is a summary of some articles I’ve read recently that certainly point to the quintessential leadership model in some way. I’d like to share those with you and encourage you to read them.

This article on 8 ways leaders undermine themselves from Forbe’s is a good overview of the subject I discuss in-depth in Building Trust and Being Trustworthy.

In conjunction, part of building trust and being trustworthy includes the ability to admit we are wrong when we are and taking responsibility for fixing what we’ve broken quickly, without blame, without excuses. This article by Amy Rees Anderson on this quintessential leader trait is excellent.

Mike Myatt’s article on why organizations suffer from leadership dysfunction offers a very good tie-in to the subject of organizational dysfunction, which I elaborate on in the Quintessential Leader blog post, “Organization Dysfunction – A Total Absence of Quintessential Leadership at the Top.” I encourage everyone to read both articles because, as Myatt correctly observes, we’re seeing leadership dysfunction become the organizational norm, instead of the exception.

Another must-read article from Mike Myatt demands that each of us examine our commitment to be quintessential leaders. Why? Because he discusses the 10 things every leader should challenge. These 10 things must be on our minds continually and the challenges to them must be continual.

This separates quintessential leaders from everyone else. As I ask myself constantly, I urge you to ask yourself: am I a quintessential leader or am I everyone else?

As I discuss in “Quintessential Leaders and Investment, Action, and Authenticity,” what you and I do and are reveals how great our investment in quintessential leadership is and how authentically we are living and being quintessential leaders.

A thought-provoking article by Manie Bosman on how unquintessential leadership traits – bullying and micromanaging among others, which I cover comprehensively in “Unquintessential Leadership” – affect us neurologically and lead to measurable negative outcomes, and if not changed or eliminated, will eventually lead to catastrophic and total failure.

An atmosphere of fear, intimidation, threats, and power plays is not something a quintessential leader will either create or tolerate. This is all around us in every part of our lives to one degree or another. What do you and I, as quintessential leaders, do about it?

The last article, by Dan McCarthy, is entitled “Is it Time to Create Your Own Succession Plan?” As quintessential leaders, this must be an integral part of our team-building process. For a framework of what this looks like in practice, I recommend “Building Teams for Performance.”

Each time I acquire a new team to build and lead, this is one of the first things on my to-do list: to identify the person or people who have the qualities that, combined with my coaching and leadership, will enable them to replace me.

No one is irreplaceable. And nothing is certain in life but death and taxes.

Therefore, a quintessential leader who wants to ensure that the legacy and foundation he or she is laying continues after he or she is out of the picture, must identify, coach, and grow his or her potential successor(s). To do anything else is unquintessential leadership. 

This post gives some good resources for quintessential leaders. I hope they will provide benefits, insights, and growth as we continue on the path of quintessential leadership.

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