Executive Podcast #228: The Four Prerequisites for Leadership

In their leadership classic, The Leadership Challenge, authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner shared what they considered to be the four prerequisites for leadership. The four are honest, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking. Learn how to embrace these characteristics in your own leadership and create powerful, positive change in your organization.

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice President with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for joining. As we get started, I just want to remind you the topics and the content that we talk about is coming straight out of partners that we have, and clients that we work with, and coaching calls that our coaches are having with other people. And so why I say all that is if your team or your leadership is something that we talk about or you’re like, man, that my team really needs to hear that, I want to encourage you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Fill out a form there. Our team will reach out. We’d love to talk about everything that we do that we can do to help you and your team and your culture and develop your leaders. Of course, all of it built off the number five or 5 Levels of Leadership since Perry has built that.

You’re going to be disappointed by the way I’m setting him up because he always sets me up on these titles. But it’s around the 5 Levels of Leadership, which is the methodology that we believe can build a common language that will drive different beliefs and then your behaviors when it comes to culture and leadership. So we’d love for you to do that, fill out that form, leave a question or a comment there, and we would love to address that. Well, today’s topic as I was setting Perry up because as our long time listeners know, he always throws me these curveballs of these titles that then I have to try to read and communicate to you, and I do a good job. But he’s gone away from number five, unfortunately. And we’re now going back down to number four, the four prerequisites for leadership. Talk a little bit about what’s on your heart here? What brought this to the table?

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Well, it’s not from me. This is not my title, but I asked a group on a coaching call to think of a leader they admire and would follow without question, and then I asked what characteristics did that person exhibit? And the discussion was it didn’t come flowing from them. I was thinking about people that they actually admire and would follow through the hard stuff.

And then I was reading, it’s a leadership classic, if you haven’t read the Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, it’s a great read. But in that book, they quote this, it said, “The four prerequisites for leadership, and they talk about honesty, competency, being competent, being inspiring, and being forward-looking.” And most people when they hear those four would say, “Oh yeah, I got that.”

Chris Goede:

I got that. Yeah, yeah.

Perry Holley:

I already do that.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

But then I had this call with these folks and I’ve done it a couple times in groups or in audiences that I’m in front of, and it doesn’t seem like we got this. And so I thought it would be just a little quick podcast review of these four. Are we doing these things that we say that we think we’re doing? And could we just bat them around for a moment? So let’s just go quick and start with honesty. This seems a little obvious to most, but you know, need to be honest.

Chris Goede:

That’s right. Okay, got it.

Perry Holley:

Okay. What would a leader do to make their followers question their honesty though? I mean, it seems kind of obvious that we need to be honest.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I think that this is, we’ve talked about in recent podcasts just about how do we connect with people and are you being authentic and are you being transparent? Your team knows when you’re holding back from them. Maybe you are not inviting questions, you’re making statements so you’re not being curious. Maybe the team feels like something’s up in the organization or even with the team, they’re aware of it, they can feel it, but the leader’s not communicating. They’re not hearing the leader’s voice. That brings me back to man, several years ago, Andy Stanley made the comment about your team wants to hear your voice even more than what you have to say at times. And so is that leader pulling back. And when all those things start to add up people, they’re aware and they observe that, and then they begin to question and say, is my leader being honest with me?

And we talk about them watching you all the time, and they’re watching your actions, they’re watching your reactions, your interactions, your behaviors, and they’re doing all that because they do want to give you permission to lead them. Level two of the 5 Levels of Leadership. They want to give you permission. They want to follow you, they want to do that, but they’re not going to do it if they don’t feel like you are being honest with them. And so who you are, your character determines each of these very, very easily when they observe you in watching you in action.

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Perry Holley:

You know, I heard author James Faust say that honesty is more than just not lying. That it’s truth telling, it’s truth speaking, it’s truth living, it’s truth loving. When you’re honest with people that there is no, and especially people you hope to influence, there’s no sign of deception or misrepresentation of things, that you embrace truth in everything you say and do, and you don’t trim edges to make yourself feel better or look better. And I think for me, it was no sign of misperception. No misdirection of things. It’s just total honesty. And people know that when you say something, that’s it. And I think sometimes leaders get caught up in trying to hold back things or seem secretive, and maybe there are times you cannot share everything.

Chris Goede:

Sure.

Perry Holley:

There definitely are, but oftentimes I just say that I can’t share a lot here, but here’s what I do know. And if people are questioning whether you know stuff that you’re not telling them, it’s going to be difficult unless you just address it. You don’t have to share it, but you can address it.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I love that statement that you just said, where this is what I know and I can share as of right now. And you’re feeding that information to them so that they don’t feel like you’re being deceptive. I also think that not only in a lack of communication at times, but there are leaders out there that will be like, well, if they don’t ask, I don’t need to tell them. I may or may not have had a child that way where it was, if they don’t … it’s okay if they don’t know. Now, if it comes up, we’ll talk about it. But then what ends up doing is that puts you behind the eight-ball as a leader, as a connector, as a communicator. And they know that you weren’t being fully honest.

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

And so I’ve had several conversations where I said, “Hey, just be, tell me the truth up front,” right? And it’s our job as leaders to define reality, and part of that is having the truth. And so there’s a way to go about it. To your point, there are times as leaders and leadership teams that there’s only certain things you can share at the moment, but you can say, “Hey, here’s what I can share that I know 100% right now is for sure.” And be able to do that, to be able to be honest.

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Perry Holley:

The second of the four prerequisites for leadership is competence. And really we talked, I think we just talked in a recent podcast about IQ versus EQ. And that EQ is so important, your emotional intelligence is so important to being able to lead, but IQ is the ticket to admission, your competency in the role. If you’re not competent, you’re not going to influence people very much. They’re not going to buy into you. So why is competence so important and how do leaders display it or get more of it? Do I have to be doing something? Help me with competence and why is, how does it show up in my leadership?

Chris Goede:

We are all in a leadership position. We believe that leadership is influence, and we progress through different leadership positions because we were an individual contributor. So we had competence in some part of what we were doing. And then most of the time people go, “Oh, well look at so-and-so. They have a little bit of competence. They’re doing well, they’re contributing, hitting their KPIs. Let’s go ahead and promote them.” So you need to have a little bit of competence as you begin your journey.

Now, I think the longer that you go in leadership, there are certain areas on your team that you probably don’t have a whole lot of competence around, but what you need to do is fully understand what is involved in making those things happen. One of my biggest pet peeves, this is just in life in general, not even in leadership. When people come up and say, “Hey, would,” you love to woodwork and grill, and I’ll say, “Perry, would you build me a bookshelf? And it shouldn’t take you very long. It shouldn’t be too hard to listen. I’ve never built a bookshelf in my life, and it would be painful,” but when leaders or communicators or people that I have influence come up and say, “Hey, this shouldn’t be a problem when you go ahead and knock this out,” when they don’t even know had, they don’t have that full understanding-

Perry Holley:

Over-commit for you.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. Over-commit for you. So I say that to say, okay, you don’t have to be 100% competent in as your team grows in everything that your team is doing, but you should be fully aware of what’s involved in it for them to be able to live that out. Does that make sense?

Perry Holley:

Yeah, I love that. And that actually I’m trying to hire people smarter than me that are better at it than me.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

But I love it, you framed that I need to at least be on the big picture.

Chris Goede:

That’s right.

Perry Holley:

I need to make sure.

Chris Goede:

And as a leader, you need to continue to work on your competence in your role, and that is something that leaders, I think fail to do. I think the longer we’ve been in leadership positions, the more complacent we get with not only what I would say the skillset of leading people, the emotional intelligence, but also we get very complacent on the IQ side of things of really what it takes for our team to be able to grow and the competence behind that.

Perry Holley:

Do you think the grow, I’m just thinking, we talk a lot about growth plans and I’m trying to grow my leadership competencies, but how about my work, the industry we’re in, the niche we’re in, and the industry, what the products and services we have? I mean, should we be as leaders, investing in ourselves, growing in ourselves, doing things daily to, things a team may not know, things you can bring to the table. You don’t need to know how to execute the way they execute perhaps.

Chris Goede:

Right.

Perry Holley:

But are there other things you can bring to help add value to the execution of [inaudible 00:11:33].

Chris Goede:

100%, yes. And then share that with them.

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

One of the things that I try to do is read articles about different parts of the leadership development space in the culture space. And when I feel like it’s relevant to what some of my team are working on or doing as their competence, I’ll be like, “Hey, I read this article over the weekend. I just want you to be aware of it. It may help you, it may not.” I don’t say, “Well, I don’t know exactly what you’re doing,” but I just try to pass that along because it’s contagious. And if I’m learning something that’s not even in my wheelhouse as a competence and I’m passing that along, when maybe they learn something that’s outside their competence, they may pass it along to a different team member as well.

Perry Holley:

Well, you’re modeling and now we’re figuring, hey, maybe I should be reading some of that.

Chris Goede:

That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Perry Holley:

All right. Number three on the four prerequisites for leadership is about being inspiring. I love this one. Dr. Jack Zenger says, “The skill of inspiring and motivating others is different from leaders who simply drive and demand results.” And this I love, I’ve been waiting to ask you about this one because he said, instead of pushing people that we, inspirational leaders, know how to pull people in the right direction. And I love this idea about are you pulling or pushing? How do you see this?

Chris Goede:

This goes level one leadership for me in the five levels. I think we see a lot when leaders, and you know this from all the work that we do around the world, and this is breaks my heart, is that even as people become exposed to what influence is and what leadership is, 70% of leaders probably still leave out of the level one, which is the kind of command and control, which then goes right to what you’re talking about, where I feel like that becomes the pushing part of that, right? That’s the detailed directions, because I said, so I’m going to tell you to do this, versus when it comes to the pulling, you move them into level two where they want to be a part of what they’re doing, and then level three, they want to produce with you guys as a team and hit the KPIs.

It’s where you describe what’s needed, the 10/80/10 principle, here’s what we’re thinking, here’s what’s needed, man, go get it. Go after that 80% and then let’s get back together for the 10% so that we can kind of finalize that project. That to me, is something that I think drives inspiration in people versus me walking in and being like, “Perry, I’m going to manage you today. I can’t wait for you.”

Perry Holley:

Actually, I’m a micromanager.

Chris Goede:

I’m going to micromanage you today, and I can’t wait till you get here. I got 14 things you’re going to do for today.

Perry Holley:

Push, push, push.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. Yeah.

Perry Holley:

Yeah. That idea just got me thinking on about we teach about being inspiring leader, about pulling people, come with me and getting out in front of that. All right. Number four on the prerequisite for leadership from Kouzes’s and Posner’s Leadership Challenge was be a forward-looking leader.

Chris Goede:

Yeah.

Perry Holley:

John says, “A leader is one who sees more than others, sees it before others sees, and sees further than others see.” And I love that great leaders not only envision a future worth having, but they bring people the resources and bring them together to move in that direction. What’s your thought about the role of being a forward-looking leader in our busy, fast-paced world that we’re in?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I think this is something that is not pressed on hard enough. This is something as we talk about the, hey, are you really thinking and working on the business versus working in the business? I know some people, leaders, executive leaders, men and women that you have coached and some of our other coaches have spent some time with, where they’ve challenged them to say, “Hey, one day a month, you’re going to go up somewhere secluded and you’re just going to think on the business. Maybe it’s one hour a week, whatever it might be, but you got to calendar it and you got to be intentional about it. Because if you don’t, listen, your calendar is going to determine what you’re doing.” And I have a bad habit of this. I’ll even break my own rule. I might put something on the calendar and then something else comes. And I think it’s more important than really, I should be working on the business to be able to do this.

As leaders, I think that you have to be forward-facing. You have to have new ideas, but that doesn’t come if you’re not pouring into yourself and developing yourself.

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

I have one other thought I have on this. So we just took the great assessment that Pat Lencioni brought out, The Working Genius, and one of those geniuses, and you probably know where I’m going with this, is the Wonder, right? Well, we have an incredible teammate on our team, but she is the only one on our team that has wonder, and we really didn’t realize how much frustration we were causing her because she wants to at times step back and think on the business, think about why are we doing this and could we be doing this better?

And all of us are just like, instead of aim fire, we’re all fire, fire, fire, and running around. And so we’ve talked about it, and I asked her as we kind of wrapped up the year last year, I said, “Hey, how can I do a better job of leading you around this working genius you have of wonder?” So we kicked around some ideas, and what we came up with was, hey, on every other week, you’re going to spend an hour or two hours, and I just want you to go wonder on the business. Now, I didn’t say wander around, what can we do better? What are we missing? And then I said, “My only request is that then in our followup one-on-one, you share with me what is it that you thought about and then let us kind of beat that up to see.”

Perry Holley:

Yeah.

Chris Goede:

And that’s just part of that, especially she’s gifted at that, but we were causing her frustration. So I want you just to be aware of this as an application piece. There are going to be some people on your team that may have a natural tendency to be forward-looking in their role, that will then benefit the team, that will then benefit the organization. So my only little caveat here is that as leaders, well, we define leadership as influence. So this would be for our entire team, but if you think it’s more hierarchical, then what you need to do then is be open to other people on your team being able to look forward as well. And if that’s their natural wiring and their working genius, then give them the space to be able to do that.

Perry Holley:

Fantastic. That’s a great tie in. And then my last thought on it, and I’ll let you wrap up, was about forward-thinking. One of the callings on a leader is to be a change agent. Status quo is good enough, and we don’t really need leaders. The team can have us handle status quo on their own. So you as a leader, we need to be looking out, looking ahead needs, how do we improve, what needs to change? And really owning that change agent mindset to think, where are we going, how we’re going to get there, and do that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. Well, as we wrap up, one of the things that kept coming back in each one of these four points to me was it starts with self. And I think back on what I said just a minute ago, the longer that we have led, the more complacent we can, the lack of growth that we have in ourselves, whatever that might be in each one of these prerequisites. And so I just want to challenge you, maybe write down each one of the prerequisites and then say, “Where am I at on this?” Now, if you’re brave enough and we haven’t challenged you to do this in a while, maybe ask those that you work closest with, where am I at on this? And then what do I do about it, in your perspective? How do I go about being a better leader around this area? And let them speak in to that.

Perry Holley:

Great. Thank you very much. And just a reminder, if you’d like to have the learner guide for this, with all these notes, you can find that as well as more about our offerings, as well as leave us a question or a comment, do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We love hearing from you and we’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.