Simply put, followers want more than a strong leader. They also want to relate to the person in charge. So to be a good leader, you have to be okay with occasionally looking bad, or at least imperfect. You must be able to admit mistakes and accept help from others. As John Furlong, head of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, noted in my book “Good Leaders Learn,” pretty much every human being has experienced the feeling of “being in way over my head,” so the more willing any leader is to be vulnerable, the more willing people will be to accept he or she as a leader.
Nevertheless, the development of humility involves a mix of success and failure. Indeed, as pointed out in a HBR article on leadership development by Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas, “the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.” In other words, facing crucibles, meaning setbacks that force people to find a larger meaning in what might otherwise be a disheartening experience, is key to the development of effective leadership.
Failure, of course, is easiest for the young, when the stakes are lower. Unfortunately, educational systems often foster success at the expense of failure. Students applying to top colleges and universities clamor to make the cut, packing resumes with as much achievement as possible. New Republic writer William Deresiewicz raised this issue last year in a provocative article that argued today’s Ivy League schools do a bad job at fostering a value system in undergraduates. “So extreme are the admission standards now,” wrote Deresiewicz, who graduated from Columbia and taught at Yale, “that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk.”
Despite being on a fast track to becoming part of America’s privileged “one per cent,” this risk adverse mindset sticks with these students after they graduate. Instead of following personal passions or working for something greater than themselves, many see themselves in a never-ending tournament for extraordinary rewards. In the business world, they constantly worry that anything less than success at everything they try will consign them to a mediocre career. This is a problem that all educational institutions need to address.
So how do we teach future leaders to embrace the experience of failure? As I noted in an earlier blog on a unique business school course called “Leadership under Fire,” Ivey has moved to address this risk aversion by co-designing a course with members of the Canadian Forces. The course offers business school undergraduates the opportunity to experience a modified version of the Canadian Armed Forces’ basic officer training program. Students enrolled in this course, which was introduced two years ago, are kept busy by professional soldiers, who push them out of their comfort zones as they face a series of demanding physical and mental challenges over several days. It doesn’t take long for friction to emerge. As a result, personal crucibles are created because everyone ends up having to lead and follow under exhausting and stressful conditions, and almost all of them fail in some public way.
Crucibles, of course, work only if people take the time to reflect on their experiences. We give the students readings on leadership before and during the ordeal, along with some pointed questions. Afterwards, they give each other feedback, receive feedback from the military staff and then assess their own performance and character. The deliverable is a lengthy self-reflection paper on their ordeal both as a leader and follower. As one student reflected, “I think the stress factor was needed to remove the guise that we often put up and see our true character.” Another student wrote, “When faced with a difficult situation that I don’t seem to be succeeding in, I need to find a solution rather than an excuse.”
That self-understanding, and the readiness to seek help from those with compensating strengths, is just the kind of learning we’re hoping to achieve. The only way to shake students out of the tournament mentality is ground them in who they are individually. It is also exactly the kind of character development that we need to see more of in business education, leadership courses and workplace development programs.
This doesn’t need to be complicated. Ed Clark, the recently retired head of TD Bank Group, believes that personal mistakes are always harder to correct than mistakes made by others. And as a leader, he focuses on them. In fact, he would not promote anyone at TD, even highly talented people, unless they could demonstrate a learning moment related to being forced to correct mistakes they had admitted making on the job.
We want people to be firmly confident of their specific strengths — and humble about their mistakes and weaknesses. Only then will they have the force of personality to inspire other imperfect human beings to join them in great endeavors.
By Ivey Business School, Contributor https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ivey-business-school/why-vulnerability-leads-t_b_6531192.html
Gerard Seijts is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour, holds the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Chair in Leadership, and is Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute of Leadership at the Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario. He can be reached at gseijts@ivey.ca.
It looks like the worst COVID-19 crisis is over. Mankind has already outlived that unprecedented fear and uncertainty, the incertitude about the future. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced the pain of loss – the loss of a job, our own business, our health and our loved ones. What could be worse than that?
We do not know yet the aftereffects of the pandemic. But gradually we begin to feel them. 36% of people say they have signs of depression (two years ago this number was 10%). The need of self-care is constantly growing – both at home and at work. Working with irritated and tired by the pandemic people is becoming an extremely difficult challenge for employers (whether it is business or government).
There is an obligatory for implementation task – to take responsibility for improving people’s mental health, to increase employees’ sense of well-being. Who should do it? First of all, it is a task for leaders. These are people who will understand how to manage organizations in a new, post-Covid era.
True human leadership is the key to success. The ability to show that you [as a leader] are like everyone else and can be wrong, vulnerable, imperfect and willing to learn from your own failures is a sign of good leadership. On the one hand, a leader who is meek, accepts and admits his/her own mistakes, improves ethically and morally, and acquires competencies and skills. Such a leader is capable of utmost and his positive influence is greater. On the other hand, the ability to demonstrate weakness shows the followers that it is quite natural and that everyone has the right to make mistakes. In this case, the leader inspires and gives support (perhaps without even realizing it).
Being a meek and vulnerable leader and having authority over the followers at the same time is not easy. This is especially true for Ukrainians. After all, very often our society takes meekness as a demonstration of weakness and deficiency of character (many factors are the reason for that). Even a study conducted by the Center for Leadership of UCU found that, while evaluating leaders, meekness ranks last among all 11 virtues of the Leadership based on character concept. So, it is a challenge to be ready for that and to prepare your team for such perception. Moreover, it is important to show this meеkness at the right time, in the right situation. To do this, leaders need to develop another virtue, critical judgment, which is central to the concept of leadership and “regulates” all the others.
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Center for Leadership of UCU is a joint project Lviv Business School (LvBS) of UCU, Institute of Leadership and Management of UCU, and School of Public Management of UCU, brought into action in partnership and cooperation with Institute of Leadership at Ivey Business School.
HBR1
“The New Republic”2
3 Л́іга плюща́
4TD Bank Group