Consider this startling finding: a poll of 2,058 adults reported that 69% of managers are often uncomfortable communicating with employees. Isn't communication a basic part of the job? Lou Solomon, CEO of Interact (the company that conducted the survey), elaborated, noting, “Many managers are uncomfortable with becoming vulnerable, recognizing achievements, delivering the ‘company line,’ giving clear directions, crediting others with having good ideas, speaking face to face, and having difficult feedback conversations in general.”13
Leading well is extremely difficult. If it were easy, more people would be doing it. Think back on your own life experience. Of the leaders you've worked with, how many would you rate as excellent? How many were middling? How many were eminently forgettable?
If you find that most of your memories fall on the negative end of the spectrum, you can take comfort in the fact that you're not alone. For most people, working in organizations with lousy leaders is just another day at the office.
But it doesn't have to be this way. There's a path out of the muddle of mediocrity. Great leaders aren't born—they're made. If you're committed, you can learn and apply specific tools to improve how you lead.
THE PURPOSE OF CRACKING THE LEADERSHIP CODE
The goal of this book is to shorten your leadership learning curve and accelerate your leadership growth. Its content is drawn from two decades of fieldwork. I've had the good fortune of getting to work with and learn from a tremendous number of leaders and teachers, and this book represents a distillation of that knowledge. My hope is that the insights and tools I offer in this book will help you reap the rewards that exceptional leadership brings.
In this book, I won't stick to the flat, two-dimensional world of leadership theory. I'll share what works and what doesn't work. At times, it's going to get messy and ugly. Above all, it's going to be real. Because leadership—authentic, conscious leadership—is hard work. But it's a journey that's worth the effort.
You'll read stories and learn concepts that are straightforward and practical. You'll have an opportunity to look in the mirror, take stock of your current skillset, and improve on it. You'll gain tools that you can apply immediately in your work for tangible results. These tools will enable you to accomplish the following:
Improve employee engagement
Increase productivity
Decrease levels of employee turnover
Expand influence
Decrease stress
Improve overall work-life satisfaction
KEYS TO READING THIS BOOK
Cracking the Leadership Code is divided into four sections. Part I provides context for the challenges faced by today's leaders. In Chapter 1, you'll be introduced to the framework of the master keys: connection, communication, and collaboration. Chapter 2 shares a brief history of organizational leadership, and explains how you've unknowingly inherited the bad habits of previous generations of leaders. Chapter 3 discusses the cultural and societal forces that caused that Old-School leadership to stop working, and why leaders are struggling to keep up with the speed of changing times.
In Part II, you will learn how to decrypt the first of the essential leadership principles: connection. Chapter 4 discusses empathy, and explains why improving this soft skill can deliver huge business benefits. Chapter 5 details the daily challenges leaders face in practicing empathy and how to overcome them. Chapter 6 unscrambles the concept of leadership credibility—what it is, why it's important, and how you can build it.
Part III takes aim at one of the most challenging parts of leadership: communication. Chapter 7 untangles the confusing conundrum of communication. Chapter 8 cracks the communication code, giving you six keys to improve your communication immediately.
Part IV dives deep into the third essential leadership principle: collaboration. Chapter 9 clarifies motivation—what it is, what it isn't, and the common traps that leaders fall into when trying to motivate others. Chapter 10 offers a new model for motivational leadership: being a motivational choice architect. It shares the two primary needs all people have: safety and energy. Chapter 11 describes the two essential needs that need to be met to enable high performance: purpose and ownership. Chapter 12 explains the employee experience and how you can influence it to improve teamwork and collaboration. Chapter 13 addresses the question no one wants to ask: how can I implement these great ideas when I'm already too busy? This chapter shares tools, tips, and techniques on how to make things simpler. At the end of each chapter is a resources section that distills the big ideas. You can use this to begin crafting your own personal leadership development plan.
Since the new millennium, I've worked with thousands of teams, and tens of thousands of leaders in 25 countries around the world. I've coached people from frontline employees to C-Suite executives to titans of Wall Street to dog food factory workers. I've worked with teams as small as two and have led workshops for more than 2,000 participants. I've worked with every industry you can think of, as well as some industries you probably don't know exist.
In my role, I've been given an all-access pass to hundreds of companies. While working behind the scenes, I'd get confidential briefings on a team or the company's most pressing business issues. I'd meet with key players, who'd confess their deepest dysfunctions and admit what was broken and needed fixing.
After gathering all that data, I'd search for clues, on the hunt to truly understand these people and teams. I fervently wanted to find out what made them tick, because I wanted to help them to tick better. Then, I'd go back and work with the individuals, teams, and/or whole companies.
On the surface, each team's and company's situation and issues were unique. However, as I began to work with more and more clients, I started to see that they weren't so unusual after all. Because each company had people, the key to improving their performance ultimately came back to the same set of root causes: some dimension of leadership. My task was to figure out which dimension and how to help them apply it in their work environment.
THE STORY BEHIND MY STORY
My entire life, I've been gripped by the question, “Why do people do what they do?” No matter how challenging or stressful the situation, I've always wanted to make sense of it. The need to make sense of stress goes way back for me. It started in my early childhood.
To preface this, my family loved me and fed me and housed me and did the best they could. However,