Digital Dealer - September 2017 - 8

By Dan Schxneider
Partner/Director,
The Rawls Group

// Ownership

Increasing Leadership
Effectiveness: It's Simple
(but Not Necessarily Easy)!
Think of the most
effective leader
you've known or read
about? What characteristics made that person
come to mind? Pick up
any magazine, journal, or
periodical and you'll
probably find one or more
articles that talk about
desirable leadership best
practices and/or about
becoming a better and
more effective leader.
Most of those articles
make leadership sound
like a mystical process
that blends heart and
head into someone who
magically morphs into a
super powerful, charismatic, influential, and
bottom line human being.
And the authors sometimes seem more
concerned with whether a
leader is good or bad than
with whether or not the
leader actually makes
something happen.
Let's take "good" and
"bad" out of the picture
for a moment. Instead,
let's focus on effectiveness and ineffectiveness.
Can the same leader be
effective and ineffective?
Does it matter who's being
led? Do skill levels of the
followers make a difference? Does individual
willingness to follow make
a difference?
8

SEPTEMBER 2017

Well, the answer to
all four questions is
yes. What comes first,
however, is understanding
what leaders actually do.
In simplest terms, leaders
use power and influence
to produce results. Period.
And everyone leads one
or more someones, even
if it's only themselves.
When led effectively,
people and organizations
grow. When led ineffectively, people labor and
organizations can feel like
a prison.
Part of what makes this
tricky is that each of us
has a natural preference
to one of four leadership
styles: Direct: command
and control; Persuasive:
inspirational; Persistent:
patient and determined;
and/or Traditional: by the
book. These styles can be
used independently, interdependently, or exclusively. Whichever choice you
make, as a leader you still
use power and influence
to produce results.
Sounds simple enough;
so why isn't it easy to
increase your leadership
effectiveness? Here's
the answer: because
people and organizations
find themselves having
different skill sets, different
levels of commitment,
and different levels of

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

challenges or opportunities. In short, it isn't
easy because the human
beings and business
organizations are dynamic
- they change! And, as
Old Lodge Skins says
in Little Big Man, some
days the magic works
and some days it doesn't.
If you want the magic to
work more frequently,
here are a few principles
and techniques that have
proven to be successful in
helping leaders become
more effective.
1. KNOW WHERE
POWER AND
INFLUENCE COME
FROM. Power comes

from the organizational
chart - can you make
people comply with your
directives (sometimes
called accountability).
Influence comes from
inside the person - do you
have what it takes to get
people to commit to your
dreams (sometimes called
dependability). How well
and how often you choose
between those two factors
- power (accountability - I
do something to you if
you do not deliver) and
influence (dependability
- you do something for
me that goes above and
beyond because you get
and want what I want)
usually determines your

effectiveness as a leader.
2. KNOWING HOW
TO BALANCE AND
WHEN TO USE POWER
AND INFLUENCE,

which is mostly driven
by the type of talent you
have recruited. If you've
populated your employee
base with people who
currently lack the
behavior, attitudes, skills,
knowledge, experience,
and talent to meet your
expectations then you
will more than likely find
yourself believing the
local unemployment
index is too low. You also
may be convinced that
someone else must have
all the good people who
live and work in your
business communities.
As a result, you may find
yourself relying almost
exclusively on power
and accountability as
a way of forcing your
staff to comply with your
directives to get even a
close approximation of
the results you want in
terms of productivity and
profitability.
3. MAKE SURE YOU
RECRUIT CAPABLE
PEOPLE. As a child, you

more than likely had a
game of some kind that
required you to match
pegs with holes. As an
adult, we sometimes
forget the very simple
lesson learned decades
ago: square pegs, square
holes; round pegs, round
holes. The next principle/
technique gives you a

Continued on pg. 10
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