3 Questions Extraordinary Leaders Answer Correctly

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Developing a Lean Culture (46-slide PowerPoint presentation). This presentation has 46 slides and consists of: * What is culture and definitions * What is organisational culture? * How to develop OC * Leaders & Leadership * Great leaders strategies * Developing a culture statement * Employee engagement * Organisational alignment Also included with [read more]

Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Organizational Culture (OC), take a look at Flevy's Organizational Culture (OC) Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

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Editor’s Note:  The author Curtis Chocholous, a seasoned executive and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, has written a whitepaper on The 80/20 Law of Leadership, which is available for free on Flevy here.  This whitepaper is based on Lean Culture thinking.  

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Question 1.  Do You Understand What’s Really Important?

When a leader can truthfully and accurately answer this critically important question, the power of the 80/20 Principle can be tapped to motivate behaviors that unite organizational oneness in ways of purpose, attitude and labor.

The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.
– Johann W. Von Goethe

If everything is important, then nothing is. When an organization has too many urgent and important things routinely in process, the organization becomes disconnected and disables its ability to successfully keep real progress in motion.

Too many competing and changing priorities will naturally dilute and weaken employee focus; steal valuable time, talent and energy, and will consequently lead to high employee frustration, team dysfunction and an increased number of low-value-added outcomes. Relationships begin to wither, trust starts to wane, and as result the organizational community and business as a whole suffers.

Leaders that fail to set the right priorities and tone for their organizations accelerate the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that says, “Everything in the universe is running down, becoming less organized and more disordered.” In essence, these leaders become the primary source and cause of compounding distractions, chaos and dysfunction.

Why do so many organizations seem to live in a reactive mode? There are many reasons, but three major factors are:

1. The leaders in these organizations lack Self-Management Skills.
2. They have weak Leadership Management Systems.
3. The Organizational Structure counter-acts productive teamwork.

The combined negative effect of these three destructive forces will dramatically reduce employee relational-capacity, engagement, morale and organizational potential to the extent and proportion of their existence.

The key to overcoming these three negative factors is to develop and integrate an 80/20 Leadership Management System into your organization that will lead to identifying the issues that have the greatest possible impact on the success of your business. Then invest the majority of your time working on the one-fifth (20%) of the opportunities that will deliver four-fifths (80%) of the desired results. That is the power of 80/20 simplicity. I call it 80/20 Leadership™.

Question 2.  Do You Really Understand People?

It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Human design and health are intrinsically linked to a person’s emotions. You can really know and master a multitude of facts, but still be miserable if you are controlled by negative emotions.

Human emotionality has been studied for centuries and understanding how emotions work is a critical leadership skill as well as a key factor as it relates to one’s success in life. Emotions are commonly found at the heart of most workplace matters and are manifested as human behaviors in 100’s of ways.

Organizational fitness is predominantly a people issue – after all, people are the company. 80/20 Leadership™ recognizes that humans are genetically designed with an 80/20 DNA. Great leaders know and act on this fact because emotional balance is key in both the workplace and life. Therefore, it is wise to know how to manage human emotions because it is the pathway to emotional health and business success.

The human personality is said to consist of roughly four-fifths (80%) emotions and one-fifth (20%) intellect. To engage in confrontation or even a discussion without taking emotions into account is to be only 20% effective in your dealings with people.
– David Ferguson & Don McMinn, Emotional Fitness

Question 3.  Do You Know How To Become the Best Leader You Can Be?

The 80/20 Principle is simple to understand intellectually, but not so easy to implement organizationally.

80/20 Leaders know that intellectual preparation is not the same as emotional readiness. The mind and the heart work at different speeds and on different timelines. The 80/20 Leader is admission-minded master of singular-focus who honestly cares about the growth and development of people and is absolutely driven to improve total enterprise well-being. As result, the 80/20 leader discovers and realizes more of his/her own hidden leadership potential while simultaneously elevating and bringing out the best in others.

Theodore Roosevelt’s assertion; ‘nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care’ can be a reality built on authentic words and actions. 80/20 Leadership™ provides a way for leaders to engage all their people on an emotional and intellectual level that motivates them to take inspired action that consistently achieves positive results.

80/20 Leaders realize that their role and purpose is not about them so they aren’t obsessed or worried about matters of presentation. Instead, they diligently pursue an ongoing conversation with their people demonstrating an earnest desire to make deep genuine connections (i.e., remember, humans are 80% emotional beings). 80/20 Leaders see themselves much like a flywheel working to maintain momentum. They continuously build and store productive organizational energy that becomes self-sustaining and proportional to the growing employee interaction created and fueled by enthusiasm and focused action.

Buckminster Fuller said, “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”

The BIZ/OP/EX, 80/20 Leadership™ Management System was designed and created to serve the entire leadership team and their associates. It lifts the veil and bridges the gap between embracing 80/20 concepts and making them real, actionable and transformational in your business. Your GREATEST OPPORTUNITIES lie with simplifying your company and unlocking the hidden potential of your team.

To your true success!

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Organizational Culture, also referred to as Corporate Culture or Company Culture, is the set of underlying and shared beliefs, vision, assumptions, values, habits, business philosophies, and ways of interacting that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of the organization.

Organizational Culture permeates the organization, affecting all functions and all levels. It starts with what employees do and how they do it—and ultimately drives why employees do what they do. Culture is like the DNA of the organization.

That is why a healthy Company Culture leads to strong Performance, Growth, and Excellence—and the opposite is also true. For any initiative to be successful, we need a Corporate Culture that inherently supports that initiative.

Learn about our Organizational Culture (OC) Best Practice Frameworks here.