How - Dov Seidman [144]
Though I call it the Leadership Framework, you can also think of it as a lens, the Lens of HOW. When you see the world through it and act accordingly, you will engender more trust, build a stronger and more enduring reputation, become more actively transparent, think more clearly, act more spontaneously, and make more Waves with those around you. You won’t have to worry about all those things individually, because they will make perfect sense when seen as a whole. You will begin to affect culture, to lead and model a standard of conduct that will speak to the higher selves of those around you, and lift their efforts as well. The lens of HOW will inspire you by rendering clear the terrain you must navigate on your journey to climb the Hill of A, and many hills beyond.
This framework is not the only possible framework you could construct for this journey; it was designed for the types of high-information, person-to-person efforts that go on at LRN every day. It represents the amalgamation of many of the thoughts and concepts I have picked up or developed over the years, and that apply well to our core activities. 3 If you work on a shop floor or in some other specific environment, some of the ideas here might be superfluous to your efforts. No matter what you do, however, understanding the behaviors and dispositions described here will begin to give you a visceral experience of what getting your HOWs right is all about.
WALKING THE TALK
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Leadership Framework draws some of its power from a disposition toward language. We know from the research we discussed in Chapter 5 that language exerts a powerful influence on the way we think about things. There is, for example, a vast difference in the influence of the word enlist versus the word sell. When you sell, the object in play is the product, a thing that lives outside both you and the buyer; when you enlist, you invite a relationship in which the product is but one stage today on a journey of innovation tomorrow. The behaviors, thoughts, and consciousness that follow from being in touch with enlist are entirely different from embracing sell. Similarly, do you have customers or do you have partners ? What does the word partner say about that person across the table from you differently than the words customer, vendor, or supplier ? Will that affect how you negotiate? How you define success in that negotiation?
Like can versus should, language has the power to contain or inspire, and the language you adopt and employ either locks you in rigid relationships or frees you to new possibilities of connection. In other words, if we broaden our vocabulary, we have access to a bigger world with more options. I also believe that the people who will become the leaders of tomorrow—those who will thrive and excel in our hypertransparent, hyperconnected world—will be the ones who embrace this language and unlock its transformative power.
THE FIRST FIVE HOWS OF LEADERSHIP
To help you see how the concepts in the framework interrelate and build upon one another, I have assembled them in graphic form in Figure 12.1.
You see that it is organized into three concentric spaces. At the center of the lens, at its point of sharpest focus, lies a set of Core Values. In the illustration, I have used the values that we embrace at LRN as central to our mission. You can easily substitute your own, but they must be the deep sorts of values like justice, honesty, integrity,