Article written by: Rita Burgett Martell
“Leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders.” — Tom Peters
I was a shy sixteen-year-old, afraid of my own shadow, the summer I worked at our local hospital. The Director of Nursing was a strong, loud, powerful, woman dressed in the white, starched uniform that the nurses wore back then. She intimidated me more than the doctors. Whenever I saw her coming, I would turn and go in the other direction. One day, she stopped beside me, put her arm around my shoulder, and said: “I want you to look at my shoes.” I immediately thought something was wrong with mine and expected to be reprimanded. Instead, her words taught me a valuable lesson in leadership that has served me well throughout my career.
She said: “When I get up in the morning, I put my shoes on the same way you do – one foot at a time. You have no reason to be afraid of me. The only difference between us is that I have a different title. You could be running this hospital one day, and I would be working for you.”
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At that moment, she became a leader I no longer feared.
She became a leader I wanted to follow. Wow, I thought, there’s nothing wrong with my shoes? She doesn’t think I’m young and stupid? She believes that someday I could be a leader as successful and powerful as she is.”
She did what effective leaders do. She saw potential that I couldn’t see and a future that I couldn’t imagine. She made me feel important, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wanted to rise to the level she believed I could achieve. At that moment, my self-image changed from a shy sixteen-year-old to a young woman confident she could achieve whatever she desired if she was willing to work for it. My title reflected my current role, not my future possibilities.
That experience influenced the type of leader I wanted to be. I didn’t want to limit my employees based on their titles. If I saw potential to do more, I created opportunities for them to stretch and grow in their current role and prepare for their future role.
I wanted to be a leader who doesn’t need to use the power of her position to power over her employees to feel important but to use her power to create future leaders. I wanted to be a leader that people wanted to follow, not one they feared.
I agree with Jack Welch, who said: “A leader’s main job is to develop talent.”
Let’s take a trip down your Leadership Memory Lane.
- Think about the people you’ve worked for throughout your career.
- Describe one who is an example of the kind of leader you aspire to be. Leader A+
- Describe a leader you never want to work for again. Leader F
- Think about how you felt when you were with Leader A+ vs. Leader F.
Did you have any of the following experiences that affected how you saw yourself and your capabilities?
- Leader A+ gave you honest feedback, viewed mistakes as teachable moments, and left you believing you’d do better the next time.
- Leader F’s criticism made you feel diminished and fearful you’d be fired. You became reluctant to offer ideas. Why put yourself in the position of feeling stupid again?
- Leader A+ believed in you before you believed in yourself. They saw potential beyond what you believed was possible for you and trusted you enough to allow you to stretch beyond the limits of your job description. They took a risk on you, and you didn’t disappoint.
- Leader F wanted you to stay inside the box of your job description.
- Leader A+ didn’t need to be the star and created opportunities where you could shine. They were thrilled when you accomplished what they always knew you could. They believed their role as leaders was to develop future leaders.
- Leader F had all the answers. They may have even taken credit for yours because they believed your job was to make them look good, and theirs was to keep you in line.
- Leader A+ focused on results. They trusted you to do your job in the way that worked best for you and didn’t need to control how or where you did it.
- Leader F wanted you to trust them without questioning but showed little trust in you. They needed to control where you were and what you were doing during your eight-hour workday. If they couldn’t see you working they didn’t believe you were working.
I hope you’ve avoided the Leader F experience and only worked for A+ Leaders because in today’s world we need someone to look up to who doesn’t look down on us.
Much has been written about employees trusting leadership but little about leadership trusting employees. Isn’t trust a two-way street? How can you expect to have employees blindly trust you if you don’t show trust in them?
Covid as a rolemodel
COVID proved that employees can adapt to rapid change, be productive, and achieve results working remotely. During a time of great uncertainty, organizations implemented a huge change practically overnight, which would have taken months or years to achieve without the sense of urgency that COVID-19 created. Think about your experience during the crisis COVID-19 created in the workplace. Did you feel your leadership trusted you to do your job without them looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move? If you were in a leadership position during that time, how did you show trust in your employees?
Now that we’re operating in a post-COVID world, have we reverted to a command-and-control leadership style by telling employees they must come to the office 3 to 5 days a week and tracking if they do? Are we monitoring the time they spend logged onto their computer to verify they work an 8-hour day? What message are we sending?
Command and control are not leadership. They’re a fear-based dictatorship that may have worked in a production economy but won’t work in a knowledge-based economy. Fear stifles innovation; without innovation, businesses won’t survive in today’s competitive marketplace. Of course, we must acknowledge cultural differences that influence our leadership style and learn how to bridge the differences when working in a multicultural environment. Cultural diversity is not limited to different geographic locations, however. Industries, professions, and business functions each have their own culture. In my work with various industries, including Technology, Retail, Health Care, Biotech, Life Sciences, Public Utilities, Federal, State, and Local Government, and Education, among others, I’ve had to tailor my approach to work with the culture and leadership style of that industry and the culture of the business functions within the company.
If you compare the culture of an IT Department with an HR Department or an Engineering Department with a Sales Department in the exact geographic location, you will see differences in how they work, communicate, and make decisions that can leave you feeling like you are interacting with a foreign country that doesn’t speak the same language you do.
Lead large cross-functional multicultural teams
My transformation leadership work requires me to lead large cross-functional multicultural teams in multiple locations. One such project was a $900M global HR process standardization project with Chevron that included establishing and leading a project team with employees from Chevron offices in Nigeria, Latin America, Indonesia, Australia, the United States, Manila, and Europe.
One of the HR processes Chevron wanted to standardize globally was how performance evaluations were done. Because of the tribal culture in Nigeria, it wasn’t possible to do the performance evaluations the same way other countries did, and was actually dangerous.
The multicultural team had to acknowledge the differences and agree on a design that would meet Chevron’s corporate requirements and succeed in a different culture. So yes, we must recognize there are cultural differences and often go for 80% agreement instead of 100%.
Another global project was a multi-million-dollar SAP Implementation and process standardization initiative with Siemens in Munich. The Transformation Team I led consisted of Siemens employees from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, the United States, and Belgium. In addition to global representation, we had functional representation with employees from IT, HR, Finance, Supply Chain, Procurement and Marketing. Despite the cultural differences, we developed a one-team mindset and worked together to achieve our common goal.
The leadership approach I used to bridge cultural gaps on this project was to ensure we had a shared vision, everyone understood their role in achieving our vision, we identified and respected cultural differences and saw them as strengths, we defined and agreed on our processes for making decisions and communicating, we celebrated our success and had fun.
Based on my experience, I believe that leaders who succeed in spite of cultural differences of industries, professions, and countries, are the ones who treat their employees with respect, support their progression to the next level, and trust that they will do their jobs whether remotely or on-site until they prove otherwise.
As leaders, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to develop the next generation of leaders who will make the world better for future generations.
As Brian Tracey says: “Be the leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” Show trust in your people, and you will become a leader they want to follow, a leader who creates leaders.
