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Scott Mautz, a long-time Procter & Gamble senior executive and now consultant, set out 30 years ago to answer a question that haunts many of us in the workplace: What makes great leaders great?
One set of studies involved asking 3,000 employees about the attributes of key leaders of high-achieving organizations they worked for that overcame the most challenges. He was skeptical any themes would emerge but was wrong. “To my surprise, a whopping 91 per cent of respondents described the same dynamic, the same profile: A self-disciplined, even-keel leader difficult to rattle,” he writes in The Mentally Strong Leader.
Those memorable leaders had control of their emotions, thoughts and actions. That intentionality and discipline sent an encouraging message in their organization, as did their unswerving confidence. They drove forward with decisiveness and boldness, resolute and ever-focused on the goal.
Mr. Mautz calls them mentally strong leaders. They have the ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts and behaviours to achieve exceptional outcomes, despite circumstances. They manage internally so they can lead externally.
He stresses he is not talking about toughness. Nor solely about emotional intelligence, although that’s a part of it. “They’re a calm port in the storm, in control of themselves and their environment, somehow getting sharper when adversity arises, brandishing self-discipline and endurance as a beacon of light,” he says.
To emulate them, you must build six habits that help you meet these tests of leadership:
- Fortitude: The times are becoming more challenging so the demands on leaders keep intensifying. You need the fortitude and resilience to press on, regardless. One helpful tool is for you and your team to continually reframe how you view setbacks. Start to see adversity as an opportunity rather than a threat or hardship – he calls it the agreeable adversity lens – by asking what can be learned and whether a pivot is the best way forward. Back that with gratitude for your forward momentum rather than obsessing over what is currently being lost. Also, respond rather than react: Reacting to adversity, he says, involves emoting whereas responding involves focusing on taking action.
- Confidence: Steve Kerr, four-time champion coach of the Golden State Warriors NBA team, says leaders must understand that their team needs to see them as confident: “Anything less, and you’re capping your group’s potential. After all, a team is never more confident than its leader.” Confidence, Mr. Mautz stresses, is not the absence of doubt but the ability to manage your relationship with doubt. We all experience doubt at times, but mentally strong leaders push past it. He recommends regularly assessing where you are on a “doubt continuum” from paralyzed by fear to over-confident. Stay out of the danger zones at either end, within the zones of healthy doubt to perfect confidence. “Your fear of failure shouldn’t scare you,” he adds. “It’s there to tell you that something must be worth it – or you’d be feeling nothing.”
- Boldness: Give yourself permission to think big. What’s a big problem worth solving? What would competitors be afraid you might do? Boldness paves a direct pathway to growth. To do this, you must uncover the beliefs holding you back – the internal resistance, assumptions, labels and stories – and question their veracity. What different behaviours would help you push ahead … boldly? What super strengths – things you are good at – might propel you forward?
- Messaging: As a leader, you live in a fishbowl. People are watching you – your reaction to negativity, how positive you are, and your intent and presence. Avoid losing your temper. Imagine a camera watching and sharing your reaction to events and what image you are projecting. Accept different points of view. Find humour – laugh and crack jokes – in tense moments rather than lashing out. Separate the person making an irritating comment from the point, defusing tension for the ongoing relationship. Seek a balanced tone: Demanding and empathetic, calm yet showing urgency, confident yet humble.
- Decision-making: Mentally strong leaders avoid the biases that can distort decision-making, such as the inclination to confirm other people’s thinking, or obsess about sunk costs or the possibility of loss. They cut off the bad habits that get in the way of decision-making, such as perfectionism or the desire to please others. Reflect on your own bad habits when decisions arise. Ask co-workers, friends and family what they have seen. Invite them to help when you seem to be slipping. Stopping these bad habits, he says, is like eliminating some competitors in a race before you start.
- Goal focus: Wayward thoughts and emotions can distract you and your colleagues from the goal at hand. “One of the most powerful ways to keep people focused on a goal is to set goals they care about achieving in the first place,” Mr. Mautz writes. Start with the purpose behind the goal: Why should people work so hard to achieve it? Then set the large, macro-goals, and finally the micro-goals to get there.
He believes the secret to great leadership is no mystery. It lies in these habits and how they can help you operate in a disciplined, even-keel manner.
Cannonballs
- You are inside your business, looking out while the customer is outside looking in, notes advertising specialist Roy H. Williams. Your inside-out perspective makes you blind in one eye, he argues, and confirmation bias makes you blind in the other eye. That leads to this first principle for advertising: Don’t try to convince the customer to think and feel like you do. Learn how to think and feel like the customer.
- A test of ideas from human beings and artificial intelligence to eliminate waste and pollution for a circular economy found the ideas from humans were more novel, with more “out-of-the-box thinking,” but the AI suggestions were more valuable and feasible. Harvard Business School professor Jacqueline Ng Lane, one of the researchers, says the best ideas in future may come from humans and AI collaborating, with people writing prompts that push AI to develop more original ideas.
- The most important person in your organization is the project manager who drags the most important projects over the finish line, argues consultant Mike Shipulski. The second and third most important people are the two individuals the project manager relies on.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.