Scaling Leadership

Transform Your Organization by Scaling Leadership

How do senior leaders, in their own words, describe the most effective leaders—the ones that get results, grow the business, enhance the culture and leave in their wake a trail of other really effective leaders? Conversely, how do senior leaders describe the kind of leader that undercuts the organization’s capacity and capability to create its future? This book, based on groundbreaking research, shows how senior leaders describe and develop leadership that works, that does not, that scales, and that limits scale.

Is your leadership built for scale as you advance in today’s volatile, uncertain, dynamic, and disruptive business environment? This context puts a premium on a very particular kind of leadership—High-Creative leadership capable of rapidly growing the organization while simultaneously transforming it into more agile, innovative, adaptive and engaging workplace. The research presented in this book suggests that senior leaders can describe the High-Creative leadership with surprising clarity. They also describe with equal precision the High-Reactive leadership that cancels itself out and seriously limits scale. Which type of leader are you?

You scale your leadership by increasing the multiple on your leadership in three ways. First, by developing the strengths that differentiate the most effective leaders from the strengths deployed by the most Reactive and ineffective leaders. And second, by increasing your leadership ratio—the ratio of most the effective strengths to the most damaging liabilities. Third, by developing High-Creative leaders all around you.

Scaling Leadership provides a proven framework for magnifying agile and scalable leadership in your organization. Scalable leadership drives forward-momentum by multiplying high-achieving leaders at scale so that growth, productivity and innovation increase exponentially. Creative leaders multiply their strengths beyond technical competence by leading in deep relationship, with radical humanity, passion and integrity.

Drawing upon decades of solid research and experience enhancing individual capability and collective leadership effectiveness with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, the authors provide an innovative and efficient framework to help you:

• Take stock of your own personal balance of leadership strengths and weaknesses
• Scale your leadership in deep relationship and high integrity
• Proliferate high-achievers throughout your organization’s leadership system
• Identify ineffective leadership and course-correct quickly
• Transform your organization by transforming leadership

Scaling Leadership is an invaluable tool for executives, managers, and leaders in business, academia, nonprofit organizations, and more. This innovative resource provides effective techniques, real-world examples, and expert guidance for organizations seeking to improve performance, align and execute strategies, and transform their business with scalable leadership capability.

Foreword xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction xix

Chapter 1 Exposed at Scale 1

Leadership at Scale 2

The Development Gap 4

The Spiritual Journey of Leadership 9

Chapter 2 Profiles in Leadership 13

Optimal Leadership Circle Profile 15

Conditions for Scale 21

Bridging the Development Gap 28

Chapter 3 Getting a Street View on Leadership 31

Sample Demographics 33

How Different Are These Groups? 33

So What? 37

Chapter 4 High-Creative Leadership Strengths 39

Strengths of High-Creative Leaders 40

Top 10 Skills for High-Creative Leaders 41

Biggest Strength Gaps 43

What Surprised Us? 44

Contribution of Women Leaders 45

Scaling Leadership 49

Chapter 5 The Strengths of High-Reactive Leaders 53

Top 10 Strengths of High-Reactive Leaders 54

Non-Differentiating Strengths 55

Redefining Leadership 60

Chapter 6 Leader Liabilities 65

How We Interrupt Our Effectiveness 65

Top 10 Liabilities of High-Reactive Leaders 66

Case Example: President Edwardo 69

Leadership Ratio 71

What Is Your Return on Leadership? 73

Relationship-Task Balance 73

Chapter 7 The Canceling Effect 79

The Canceling Effect 80

Does Your Leadership Scale? The Impact of Non-

Differentiating Strengths 83

Seven Multiples, Seven Canceling Effects 84

Systemic Canceling Effects 87

Are You Amplifying Your Multiple or Your Canceling Effect? 89

A Matter of Development (The Peter Principle Revisited) 91

Chapter 8 How Leaders Scale Leadership 95

Case in Pont: Jeff Hilzinger 95

Scaling Leadership Beyond Yourself 96

Jeff Hilzinger: A Transformational Leader 111

Chapter 9 Full-Spectrum Leadership 115

The Middle Groups 116

A Pathway of Development 117

A Deeper Dive into the Data 118

So What? Key Conclusions 124

Where Are You? 127

It’s Time for an Upgrade 129

Chapter 10 Reactive Leadership 131

Canceled Gifts and Competing Liabilities 134

Heart-Centered Leaders 135

Will-Centered Leaders 140

Head-Centered Leadership 144

The Universal Model Maps Core Patterns 149

Chapter 11 Transforming Reactive into Creative Leadership 153

Shift from Reactive to Creative in Three Movements 155

Three Movements, One Symphony 161

Complementary Competencies 163

Developing Conscious Leadership 166

Chapter 12 Practices That Transform Leadership 169

How to Change 171

Establish Generative Tension 173

Tell the Truth About What We Want 173

Discerning Purpose 174

Distill Vision 175

Outcomes and Behavior 176

Telling the Truth About Current Reality 178

Be Intentional 182

Stop, Challenge, Choose 182

Practice 184

Intuition 184

Reflection 185

Feedback 187

Truth Telling 188

Lead the Change 189

Chapter 13 Integral Leadership Informed by Grace 193

Appendix A Leadership Circle Profile Summary Dimensions 201

Appendix B Leadership Effectiveness and Business Performance 207

Appendix C Research Methodology 211

Description of LQ Indicator and the Selection of Specific Samples Based on LQ 211

Description of Qualitative Analysis of Comment Feedback 213

Appendix D Definitions of Thematic Strengths and Liabilities 215

Appendix E Theorists Integrated into the Leadership Circle Universal

Model of Leadership 221

About the Authors 226

Notes 228

References 235

Index 243

ROBERT J. ANDERSON is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Creative Officer of The Leadership Circle, and co-founder of the Full Circle Group. Anderson created The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) (the first of its kind) a 360-degree feedback tool integrating behavioral competencies with underlying motivational systems.

WILLIAM A. ADAMS is the CEO of the Leadership Circle, and Co-founder and CEO of the Full Circle Group. He has worked with CEOs, senior leaders, and boards of directors as a leadership consultant and trusted advisor for over 30 years. Clients include the CEOs and teams of major Fortune 500 corporations (public and private), non-profits and private equity start-up businesses. He works with executives in the areas of business transformation, leadership effectiveness, performance improvement, strategy alignment and execution.

Transform Your Organization by Scaling Leadership

"You are good at what you do, but then you are promoted to a level of scale and complexity for which you feel unprepared. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. You are likely reaching the limits to scale of your own leadership, individually and collectively."

—From the Introduction

How do you navigate our increasingly complicated and volatile world such that you scale new and innovative solutions to complex business, organizational, and global problems? The answer is leadership! Scaling Leadership offers a challenge to today's leaders—to evolve your leadership at the pace needed to meet the demands of today's increasingly complex and constantly disrupted global environment.

Scaling Leadership is the just-in-time guide for those in positions of senior leadership who need to transform their organizations. You do this best when you start with yourself. Leadership is the deployment of self into circumstances to create the outcomes that matter most. You are the key to transforming your organization. You do this by mastering and scaling transformative leadership.

Scalable leaders are capable of leading growth. More importantly, they are able to evolve their leadership to remain effective with the increased complexity that comes with rapid growth. They also scale their leadership, getting a multiple on it by developing other mature and capable leaders. Successful leaders scale and transform the organization by scaling leadership—by being the kind of leader who develops other conscious and effective leaders.

Scaling Leadership draws on a huge international database of senior leaders providing 360-degree written feedback to fellow senior leaders. Through their written comments to each other, the reader gets to "listen in" as leaders describe the kind of leadership that is capable of scale in today's world and the kind of leadership that is not. Rather than resting on a high-minded theory, Scaling Leadership relies on the words of effective leaders throughout the world as they describe, in compelling detail, what they have learned that works, what does not, and how they have progressed in their individual leadership journeys.

Scaling Leadership distills lessons from successful leaders into a powerful and universal leadership framework that will let you chart your specific path of development. This book will get your attention. It will evoke and provoke you.

It will ask you to deeply reflect on your own personal balance of leadership strengths and weaknesses. It will challenge you to evolve your leadership in deep relationship with others and with exceptional integrity.

Written by two noted experts in the field of leadership, this book draws on decades of solid research and the authors' personal experience enhancing individual capability and collective leadership effectiveness with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Scaling Leadership shows how senior leaders successfully transform and scale their leadership as they transform their organizations. The book explains how these men and women proliferate high-achievers throughout their organizations' leadership system. It will show you how they scale the kind of leadership that is capable of rapid innovation and the high levels of adaptability, agility, and engagement that puts their organizations on a sustainable growth strategy where all stakeholders thrive.

Scaling Leadership is an essential guide that offers senior leaders the information needed to develop conscious leadership at scale within their organization. It also supports your learning by including two companion products—a Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) Self-Survey and a Leadership Development Plan (LDP).

Praise for Scaling LEADERSHIP

"Pixar is a creative company that has made it a priority to constantly re-examine itself, but even in a company like ours, certain leadership impediments can become impossible to see, and detrimental calcification can set in. As a consultant to me, Bill Adams has been an astonishingly quick study who was able to identify leadership issues and put me on a constructive path to remedy them. Bill's ability to see complex problems and help me generate gettable, actionable solutions has been both remarkable and pivotal in allowing us to bring a fresh leadership reset to a company in its 30th year. Bill and his partner Bob have captured the essence of the wisdom and the tools they bring to helping leaders in Scaling Leadership. I cannot recommend the book strongly enough—especially if you think you don't need it!"

—Jim Morris, President, Pixar Animation Studios

"The Leadership Circle lens is a gift that keeps on giving! Its enormous database has long provided unrivalled quantitative power. Now, in Scaling Leadership, Anderson and Adams open up the corresponding qualitative treasure-trove to further illuminate the paths to truly transformative leadership. A must-read for all leaders, and those who help them!"

—Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, Harvard University faculty and co-authors of

Immunity to Change and An Everyone Culture

"The future of capitalism is conscious capitalism. A conscious business can only emerge through conscious leadership at scale. Anderson and Adams, in Scaling Leadership, clearly and practically show you how to become a more conscious and effective leader, how to replicate that in your teams, and how to scale conscious leadership throughout the organization. Read this book and put it into practice!"

—John Mackey, Co-founder and CEO, Whole Foods Market, Co-founder, Conscious Capitalism Inc.

"Scaling Leadership is an excellent read—really on the mark. I am enthused to endorse. It hits any number of themes that are essential to leading well. I will call out two that resonate strongly with my experience. First, we lead people, not balance sheets or machines. In the end, our ability to call forth discretionary energy is what distinguishes us as leaders, and the ability to do that is learnable. This book will challenge you to do just that and will show you how. Second, as I transitioned into the President and later the CEO role, I needed to rethink my role and understand where my leverage came from. The migration was from what had gotten me there—business/financial acumen, strategic skill, problem solving, focus, etc.—to a far greater focus on understanding how to create a highly engaged culture tied to purpose/aspiration and cultivate leaders who could do the same. The prior skills are really important (I still use them routinely) but would have been limiting if I hadn't augmented them with new skills. The emphasis this book places on these themes—and the way the authors develop the case—makes great sense. I strongly recommend this book to anyone in (or aspiring to) a senior position of leadership."

—Gerry Anderson, Chairman and CEO, DTE Energy