Lifting the Lid on YourLeadership

Lifting the Lid on Your Leadership

© Elias Kanaris of 26 www.isgroup.co.nz

Lifting the Lid on Your

Leadership

How Ethical Values & Culture can Deliver Organisational Advantage

by Elias Kanaris



Introduction

If you are reading this, then you must have some desire to develop the leadership

knowledge and expertise that you use to lead others. This special report describes how to

build a world-class team that supports your organisation by promoting, selling and

complementing what you do ethically in the “real world”.

This report is based on my experience working with corporate businesses, volunteer

workforces and other non-for-profit organisations throughout New Zealand, Australia and

the United Kingdom.

Back to basics first!

You might hear a lot of hype about the global financial crisis and wonder why highly

educated, successful, and business savvy corporate professionals at Enron, Tyco,

WorldCom, and Adelphia got themselves into such a big mess. The answer possibly lies in

a profound lack of ethics. The mindset of a leader creates a mindset for his/her company,

which in turn sets the work culture of the organisation. The key is to focus on your culture

and your values first, and then create a business that supports them.

It doesn’t matter if you are leading a team of 30,000 or 3, the issues are the same.

Scale, in this instance, has no relative significance; except to amplify the mistakes that

you make from the top. At the end of the day, everything rises and falls on leadership.

Focus on your

culture and your values first, and

then create a

business that

supports them.



Building a successful business means that you’re focused on doing the right thing, as

opposed to doing things right. Do unto others what you expect to be done unto you. Then

the business success follows, and supports you in achieving your business goals.

On the other hand, if you try to chase the dollar, but do not pay heed to ethical values,

you can only earn short-lived success and you can easily come unstuck. You have to learn

a whole new set of skills; it takes time, effort and energy to make it work; and it will

probably cost you a bundle of money in lost opportunity & indirect expenses as well.

There is absolutely no doubt that ethical behaviour can be applied, but the longer it takes

to get established, the more time and money will be wasted.

Who is this report for?

This report is for you if you are leading a team or have aspirations to lead a team in the

future. Whether you are working in a commercial, government, non-for-profit or religious

entity, from classroom to boardroom, the phrase ethical business practice is becoming

more and more important.

That’s a bit vague, so you and your market might be more comfortable with the terms

what goes around, comes around or you reap what you sow. Again, you don’t have to

become a victim of the past, you just need to have a clear path to tread.



So this report is for you if …

1. You are leading a team that has more potential than its current performance indicates;

2. Your organisation is wasting resources that impact the profitability and productivity of

the organisation;

3. You are looking to improve those around you; or

4. You want to achieve more in life.

Does that sound like you? Great! Read on …

What will you learn?

Let me first tell you what you won’t learn from this report …

You won’t learn how to motivate a team to achieve a short-term gain.

You will learn how to align people to a vision that can deliver long-term benefits.

You won’t learn how to be creative with your accounting.

You will learn how to avoid waste and improve profitability.

You won’t learn about the inefficiency of knee-jerk leadership.

You will learn how to improve your efficiency and use your intuition to automate your decision making.



You won’t learn how to eliminate weakness from your staff.

You will learn how to amalgamate the strengths of your key people.

You won’t learn how to become the alpha dog in the pack.

You will learn how to empower people to allow them to grow.

You won’t learn how to beat your competitors.

You will learn how to acquire market share by maintaining a clear commitment to ethical conduct.

If you’ve read other reports about developing leadership, you will find this report to be

very different.

OK, so let’s get started …



The Five Levers of Ethical Leadership

The key concept I’m going to cover is the five leadership levers on your business. You

might have come across this concept before, simply referred to as cause and effect. But

I’d like to look a bit deeper than that, and suggest that every leader can influence five

business levers through their ethical leadership style:

⇒ Alignment

⇒ Avoidance

⇒ Automation

⇒ Amalgamation

⇒ Acquisition

Alignment lever

Most leaders get the best from their followers when they have their vision, mission and

culture aligned – that is, by singing off the same hymn sheet. In other words, you work

in harmony. When you work in unity with others, you look more credible to the outside

world. If you become misaligned, you start walking alone.

This is like playing rugby, but not the having touchlines painted or knowing the rules

“Boring work

has never resulted in a

prison sentence.

Poor

timekeeping practices have.”

Shona Seifert



Avoidance lever

Another consequence of unethical leadership is manifested through the avoidance lever.

This is where the leader cuts corners and decision making is based on selfish outcomes;

but now you have to pay the price with rework and rebuilding the relationships.

Perhaps you have ended up wasting time and energy, or worse still resources and money.

Or you don’t pay attention to detail and make a mistake; your customer rejects your work

and you have to throw it all away and start again.

Or you rush into a decision, without consulting others and end up choosing the wrong

path, which just bites into your profit margin or dents your reputation.

Now you know the rules, but you start giving away unnecessary penalties.



Automation lever

Your ability to lead becomes easier when you enable the automation lever to be

influenced by ethical decisions. Instead of being driven by the winds of change, you learn

how to use your moral compass to intuitively make the right decisions.

For example, you consider the impact of failing to live up to your published code of

conduct and stop the erosion of trust and connection with your followers.

Or you think more about earning long-lasting relationships in business ahead of earning

money.

Or you take part of your profits and invest it in community initiatives that can add value

to those less fortunate. Make the decision once and then put it on auto-pilot.

If we look at the rugby metaphor, you’re still playing to the rules but instead of having to

double check every tactic, you learn how to run some set pieces so that they become

instinctive and you can run them in your sleep over and over again.



Amalgamation lever

You can lift your leadership potential to bigger heights by building up the self-esteem of

your team and focusing on what they do best. This amalgamation lever can produce

the biggest results for your organisation, with a 40-fold increase in employee engagement

as a potential reward.

This can start out with the simple action of “walking amongst the people” and from the

seeds of genuine interest, you can harvest the strength of an individual to get their full

force behind the plough.

Leaders that exhibit ethical behaviour powerfully influence the actions of others.

Employees who are treated ethically are more likely to behave ethically themselves in

dealing with customers and business associates.

From a rugby perspective, you’re now playing to the strengths of your team. People are in

the right place and you focus on lifting them up as opposed to pulling them down.



Acquisition lever

The final leadership lever is the Holy Grail for people who pursue leadership excellence:

acquisition. If you’re running a truly ethical organisation, you’ll be winning the accolades

of your customers. You will gain life-time customer loyalty that money alone cannot buy.

You might have raving fans that will always give you a glowing testimony and are happy

to recommend and refer you to others. You’re probably known as a “can-do” organisation

that tells it straight and rectifies the problems that occasionally appear on the rocky road

of life that derail the rest.

Now you no longer have to qualify for the big competitions, because you are now granted

automatic entry to the World Cup!



Which leadership lever are YOU failing in?

Look at your leadership now. Where are your biggest issues coming from?

If you’re new to leadership, perhaps it’s across the board. Even if you have been in a

leadership role for some years, you might have focused only on strengthening some of

the levers that you are most comfortable with, whether or not that was a conscious

choice.

Most leaders start with the avoidance lever only and gradually build their leadership

muscles to remedy the other levers.

The key idea I’m going to discuss in this special report is that you must know your

current lever weaknesses, and then you must build a personal development strategy that

supports the strengthening of the other levers.



Building the Right Leadership Culture

One of the traps many leaders fall into – especially young leaders – is assuming that

everyone on the team is already aligned. Worse, they assume that having a positional

title will immediately dictate that others should follow them.

Wrong! And that’s one of the main reasons why positional leaders have such a bad name.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with having a title; but focusing on it alone can be

dangerous if the fundamental building blocks of the other levers are not established

within the organisation.

(And, to be fair to the up-and-coming leader, most people don’t have a clue about this,

and just assume that the title will motivate others to follow.)

If you take just one idea from this report, take this:

Everything rises and falls on (ethical) leadership.

In other words, if most or all of your issues stem from an independent-minded workforce,

build your alignment lever to help them to get more actively engaged in your vision &

culture. If you’re starting to lead people, gradually increase your investment for each

additional lever. Over time, you will be able to take your team on the journey together

and then identify the issues and embark upon the winning leadership strategies, one lever

at a time.

If you influence

a child, you

affect a life; if

you influence a father, you

affect a family; if

you influence a

leader, you affect all those

people who look

to that leader.



The single biggest mistake that leaders make when they start out is to ignore sage

wisdom that has been handed down the ages in preference to our modern day quick-fix

remedies. They’re playing rugby against ruthless opposition, with people out of position,

using inappropriate techniques and incorrect knowledge.

So now let’s look at the sort of things you could do with your leadership for each lever.

Alignment lever

The key ingredient for leading a team is to ensure that the team is aligned to the same

mission and vision. This is achieved when everyone shares the same values and

culture. In other words, you’ve got to sing off the same hymn sheet.

So make sure your team shares the values that you offer. Here’s how:

Mission Define and clarify your mission and make it public.

Vision Share the vision and paint the picture continuously.

Values Identify the key values for your organisation and publish

them.

Culture This starts from the top, so walk the talk. Your walk talks

louder than you talk talks!



Ethical Behaviour Reward & recognise the correct behaviour and reprimand

inappropriate behavior.

Trust Trust is earned, not given. This is essential, to make sure

that you can keep gaining credibility with others.

Buy-In Work one person at a time to gain acceptance of your vision.

Respect Do unto others as you expect to be done unto you! From the

lowest to the highest, treat everyone with respect.

Integrity Integrity is doing what you say you will do, when you say you

will do it. Integrity is doing the right thing even when no

one is watching. Integrity is honesty and motive in motion.

Honour Start by keeping your word & talking positively of others – e.g.

don’t gossip or bag others.

Solid-Ground Plainly put, if a leader is fearful, the people will be concerned

that he/she will, under pressure, compromise their security by

selling out on core values and convictions.

Honesty This is not simply the absence of lying, but a commitment to

tell the truth.

“No Legacy is so

rich as honesty” William

Shakespeare



You will notice that this lever does not include some of the “traditional” leadership

functions, like influence and motivation. That’s because it’s supporting your values and

culture, and these other functions are more appropriate for other leadership levers.

Avoidance Lever

To move from the alignment to the avoidance lever, you require planning skills, so that

you pay more attention to your decision making and produce better results first time.

When you start moving into the planning phase, your leadership can add the following

features:

Planning Start with the end in mind. Develop a style of thinking, a

conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation

system which will ensure future success.

Counselling Make sure that you seek alternative views and input from other

successful individuals and stakeholders. Two heads are better

than one.

Measuring Monitor your progress along the way. Constantly measure

progress and be ready to adjust the activities if needed.

Big picture Always keep the big picture in front of you and your team.



Quality Assurance Ensure that you have checks and balances in place. Measure

twice and cut once!

Accountability If something goes wrong, take full accountability of the issue

through to resolution. Never blame others!

By implementing these features, you can ensure that as an organisation you are known

as a team that does the right thing and gets it right first time. This can lead to improved

productivity and – more importantly – greater profitability. There will be less wastage,

others will work more enthusiastically and you will become a better steward of your

resources.

Automation lever

Now you’re at the stage where you would like to become more efficient with your

personal exertion. The focus at this stage is on your processes, because they will be the

source of that efficiency. Your leadership will have all the features already mentioned

above, as well as these:

Systems Now essential, so you can become efficient, cut costs and increase

profits.

Automate Identify areas where you can improve effectiveness through

technology.



Review Undertake a “time & motion” study on how you undertake things

& identify areas where time is wasted on unproductive actions.

Tactic Develop a number of potential tactics to rectify unproductive

behaviour and evaluate them before heading into implementation.

Execution Get into action! It’s hard to steer a parked car.

Empower Allow others to take the lead. This isn’t just delegation, but letting

go of the reigns. Sometimes it is good to let them fail, so that

they can learn.

Connection To get the best out of your team, make sure that you get to know

them, their families and their aspirations. You often have to touch

a heart before you ask for a hand.

Code of Conduct Define this and ensure that every team member lives to the code.

Timing Be aware that some actions need to be instantaneous.

Donating Set aside something towards charity. It could be time or money,

but tithing is a multiplier, not a subtractor. If it worked for John

D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Oprah, then maybe it can

work for you.



Amalgamation lever

To lift your team to greater heights, you have to be good at leveraging strengths. Until

now, you have relied on your own personal exertion for a large part of the growth of your

organisation, but now it’s time to have the growth coming in without your effort.

Your leadership style can support you in these ways:

Strengths Identify the strengths of your key people and learn how to focus

on them and leverage them.

Communication Keep regular dialogues going with your key people. Make it face

to face whenever possible and keep it relevant.

Engagement Increase the engagement of your team by implementing the

previous two points with integrity and consistency.

Delegate You sometimes have to give up to go up. Some of the tasks you

have historically undertaken might actually be holding you back.

Identify those tasks and allocate them to the right people.

Self-Esteem As with any insecurity, you need to see yourself beyond where you

are now. See yourself at the next level of living, whatever that

may be for you.

“You know what makes

leadership? It is

the ability to get

men to do what

they don’t want to do and like

it.”

Harry S. Truman



Influence You sometimes have to be a compelling force to effect the actions,

behavior or opinions of others. To do this, you need to develop

your passion for people and relationship skills.

Magnetism Look at those you have historically attracted to yourself. They are

the biggest reflection of your current leadership ability. Now look

at attracting a higher calibre of person than those you attracted a

year or two ago.

Victory Always point to your successes and ensure that you and a way for

your team to win.

By now, you should be moving your leadership to new levels. We live life on levels, and

we arrive in stages. Don’t expect to leap from alignment to amalgamation in one single

bound. After all, Superman is a fictitious cartoon character.

Acquisition lever

To develop a truly world-class organisation, you have to be good at developing leaders.

You have to surround yourself with people who can replicate you and your thinking. It’s

almost like having somebody who could step into your shoes and go through the same

thinking process to come to the same ethical conclusion.

You can develop other leaders by growing your own leadership skills in these ways:



Inner Circle Start by defining your closest team of leaders that you can work

with and mentor. They will be the decision-makers within the

organisation and are critical to your long-term success

Sacrifice You must be willing to do whatever it takes, including sacrifice, in

order to move your team to the next level. Identify what sacrifice

you have avoided, that if you “bit the bullet” you could launch to

the next level – and address that.

Reproduction Develop mentoring programmes for your key leaders. As apple

trees produce apples, you need to produce good leaders to

succeed.

Explosive Growth It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.

Therefore, invest a generous amount of money into leadership

training, or training of any kind. If not in place, remedy this now.

Legacy Ask yourself if you are a solo operator or a team-oriented person?

To leave a legacy, become a team player and develop others.

As you can see, the list of leadership features here is very different from the earlier

leadership levers. In fact, if you look back at the leadership features for supporting your

alignment lever, you will see lots of differences and not much in common. This is

because you are building upon each lever.



Moving Between Leadership Levers

I’ve described each of the five leadership levers separately, but that’s only for clarity. It

doesn’t mean that you will only ever have to focus within one lever at a time. In fact, it’s

quite common for you to have a mix of strengths and weaknesses across all five.

Here’s a summary of what you can achieve in each lever:

To develop … Leads to…

Alignment Buy-in and growth

Avoidance Efficiency & profitability

Automation Productivity & order

Amalgamation Engagement & influence

Acquisition Reproduction & explosive growth

The problem arises when you try to address all five areas simultaneously, particularly if

you try to lead a team that doesn’t share your values and culture right now.

“Control your

own destiny or someone else

will!”

- Jack Welsh



For example, there’s no point in trying to lead a team if you don’t have their buy-in. And

there’s little value in promoting your values if you don’t adhere to them yourself. And

even if you’re a brilliant leader, you require a motivated group of people to lead;

otherwise you are simply going for a stroll by yourself.

Focus on your current lever weaknesses

The chances are that you have reached a natural lid in the effectiveness of your

leadership. If you can, identify the lids and work on lifting them.

What happens if you get the chance to play rugby in other (higher) division? For example,

if somebody stumbles across you and wants your help to develop as a leader, do you

decline just because you’re not focussed on developing others? No, of course not! Take

the challenge; just don’t go chasing those opportunities until you’re ready to focus on

that part of your leadership.

Some things are useful in all leadership levers, and you should start developing them

right from the start. For example, wherever you are in your organisation, put time and

effort in developing ethical values and culture. This is an essential tool, not just for self-

esteem, but for establishing your credibility and demonstrating your value.



Your leadership style can help you make the move

Although I’ve said all along in this report that your leadership style should only be

supporting your current lever issues; there is a way that it can help you move between

them.

Simply, you start adding levers to your leadership style that support your next lever

issue.

For example, if you’re currently dealing with 100% alignment issues, you can easily move

into avoidance by adding a process to your leadership style, which makes you seek

additional counsel prior to making important leadership decisions. Use this lever as part

of your ability to improve efficiency and profitability within your organisation.

Similarly, if you’ve got people that you are interacting with, there’s nothing wrong with

making an effort to connect with them and identify their strengths, even if they’re not

directly reporting to you yet.

And there’s certainly nothing wrong with helping the team to win and celebrating victory

at any time, even before you get to the acquisition lever stage.



So what now?

No matter where you are on your path as a leader, a leadership development programme

can help you grow. The trick is to make sure that you’ve got the right programme for

what your organisation requires right now.

I suggest you take some time now to determine what leadership issues you’re currently

facing in your business, and – more importantly – what leadership levers you would like

to remedy within the next 90 days, 12 months and 10 years.

Then look through the features that I’ve recommended for each type of leadership lever.

Make a list of those that would be the most benefit to you right now – that is, those that

support your current organisational issue(s) and the leadership challenges coming up.

If you’ve already got a development plan, go back to it and look at whether it has all

those features included now. If it’s missing some important features, add those now. If

it’s got additional features that aren’t required yet, you can leave them there, but don’t

focus time and energy on them until you’re ready to move into those leadership levers.

If you haven’t already got a leadership development plan, your list of levers is a powerful

blueprint that you can show a mentor, to make sure that your leadership style truly

supports your business.



The “Lifting the Leadership Lid” Development Package

I’ve been working with leaders for a long time, and over time I’ve developed the “Lifting

the Leadership Lid” development package, which can support your current lever issues

and help you move into different lever levels.

A “Lifting the Leadership Lid” development package is especially designed for leaders, and

has all the essential components I’ve described in this special report. All of these features

are bundled into the programme, so you don’t even have to decide which levers to get

now and which to defer.

To find out more about the programme, visit my web site:

www.isgroup.co.nz/lifting-the-lid

Now it’s up to you!

I hope you’ve learned something from this special report. But more importantly, I’d like it

to spur you into action – because, of course, it’s difficult to steer a parked car!

If you read this and do nothing, that’s just as bad as not reading it at all. In fact, it’s

worse, because you’ve wasted your time!

So please take action, and start now.



About Elias Kanaris

Elias Kanaris is a business consultant, speaker, author and entrepreneur – with clients

throughout New Zealand, and in Australia, the U.K. and USA. He works with professional

speakers and trainers, consultants, business owners, CEOs and strategic leadership teams

to lift the lid on their leadership skills in one-on-one meetings, group presentations and

via the Internet.

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Copyright © 2010 Elias Kanaris.

Disclaimer

The material contained in this publication is general and is not intended as advice on any

particular matter. The author expressly disclaims all and any liability to any persons

whatsoever in respect of anything done by any such person in reliance, whether in whole

or in part, on this report. Please take appropriate legal advice before acting on any

information in this report.

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