1: “Eliciting people’s internal commitment to pursue a common goal is the job of every leader,” writes Fred Kofman in his terrific book The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.
We seek “the internal commitment of our followers to pursue a common goal, giving the best of themselves because they want to, because they find it intrinsically valuable beyond external incentives.”
So how do we do that?
“By making a transcendent offer that gives people a sense of significance,” Fred writes.
“If you give the mission your best,” a leader proposes, “you will get not only material rewards but also pride, fellowship, freedom, and meaning in your life. You will go beyond yourself and connect with something larger and more enduring than your physical existence.”
As transcendent leaders, we seek what we cannot demand:
Internal commitment. Not compliance.
Enthusiasm. Not obedience.
Love. Not fear.
“These are precious gifts,” Fred writes, “given only to a leader who is truly worthy of them, and who reciprocates with an equally precious gift: Meaning.”
“You may think that your job is developing a killer strategy,” says Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile. “But you have a second, equally important task: enabling the ongoing engagement..of the people who strive to execute that strategy.”
We do that, Fred believes, by offering a set of non-financial incentives: “Such as a noble purpose that people feel proud to pursue, ethical principles that people feel proud to enact, a community of like-minded people to which employees feel proud to belong, and a sense of power to make a difference in the world.”
As leaders, we set the tone. To build and lead a highly engaged organization, we must “go beyond intellectual understanding,” he notes. We “need to have heroic integrity in the face of corrupting power, working honestly, respectfully, fairly, openly, humbly, caringly, and inspiringly every day.
“Without that, there is no chance of engaging our followers,” Fred writes. “These behaviors cannot be faked. Unless they arise from our core values and are enacted through skillful means, the odds are high that we will not succeed.”
2: Being a transcendent leader requires us to look in the mirror to regularly review our behavior.
We “will need to check the consistency of the signals the organization is receiving from us in order to avoid contradictions that destroy engagement. Remember,” Fred recommends, “what matters is not so much the message you think you are sending but the one that they think they are receiving.”
Smart leaders create an environment where our colleagues are empowered and encouraged to challenge us when they experience gaps between our espoused values and actions: We “must invite them to speak freely, and thank them for doing so. To lead effectively, we cannot have taboo topics.”
Moreover, our leadership behaviors are not just our direct actions.
“As a leader, we express our values through the choice of systems, strategies, and processes,” Fred notes. “We have the power to define—or at least significantly influence—how people get recruited, selected, and hired for our organizations, how they get socialized and trained, how and why they get rewarded and promoted, and how and why they get reprimanded, demoted, or fired.”
Because all of these processes and systems exist with our de facto endorsement.
“Similarly, all the managers in our organizations hold their office with our sanction,” Fred observes, “so their behavior reflects our values and beliefs more than anything we write or say—and perhaps even more than anything we do ourselves. . .
“Leadership is a team sport. Every manager’s authority is derived from the CEO, who therefore underwrites and is ultimately responsible for the manager’s behavior. Any manager who behaves inconsistently with the purpose and values of the company places a black mark on the entire leadership team. All the managers need to be consistently great, since the leadership will be assessed by the performance of its weakest members.”
3: That said, being a transcendent leader, the type of leader people passionately want to follow, does not require perfection.
“The good news is that to win,” Fred writes, we “don’t need to lead perfectly. We just need to do it better than our competitors. I guarantee that every competitor our company faces has exactly these same problems.”
There is more positive news. The rewards for those leaders who hold themselves to high standards and inspire others are significant. As we “model ethical behavior and provide opportunities for employees to flourish, they will reward our company with their best efforts—which properly harnessed will turn into extraordinary growth and profits.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How do I inspire my team or organization to work in unison? How do I integrate accountability and cooperation? How do I reach beyond the operational issues, beyond profits and losses, into something that all our stakeholders will not only support but also wholeheartedly love?
Action: Journal my answers to the questions above.
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