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"Save Me the Plums," New York Times bestseller, portrays a fantastic woman who uses real-life examples of what leadership could be if we lead with commitment and passion. Ruth Reichl reflects on her development into an outstanding leader while sharing her leadership memoir. There are at least four different leadership styles, but only two types of leaders: those who lead with compliance and those who lead with commitment. Compliance leaders are who the public has been calling a boss, using their authority and title to direct teams into doing and producing. Unfortunately, this style of leadership causes many issues, low team morale, high turnover rate, and cost, and simply a totalitarian and toxic culture. In her book, Ruth describes how leading with commitment is more productive and rewarding.
Committed leadership is not a set of processes someone can follow to succeed. Instead, it combines knowledge, intuition, passion, and humanity. Many articles we read today focus on the ideal traits’ leaders should exhibit. They need to be strategic thinkers and visionaries, know the industry, influence their team, and be a good communicator. However, not many educational materials describe how to combine these ideal traits while leading with commitment, passion, and humanity, linking the art and science of influence. "Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while Leadership is about inspiring people to do things, they never thought they could." -Steve Jobs What does it mean to lead with commitment? In her book, Ruth's dedication to her team was to transpose the Gourmet Magazine, but she knew she could not do this alone. It was a team effort. Although Ruth was hired as an Editor in Chief for Gourmet Magazine, she was not a seasoned leader who had led such transformations multiple times. However, she was a passionate editor, obsessed with good food, a good story, and a pretty magazine. In Corporate America, Leaders are often hired only if they demonstrate years of experience in a role and industry, but is it healthy for the organization? How often these leaders are leading with commitment and passion? Leaders who want to lead and demonstrate their commitment to the team should start by getting to know their team and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, it is unlike team members' strengths outlined in a database. Successful leaders like Ruth get to know their team members by inquiring about their lives outside of work, actively listening to what motivates them, and simply understanding the WHY and WHAT. Active Listening becomes a key as it means pausing their assumptions and needing to lead every conversation, and letting others take over. Getting to know the team, analyzing strengths and weaknesses, enables leaders to influence by maximizing individual strengths vs. pounding on their shortcomings. This promotes an environment of personal empowerment and reward. Ruth was a diverse leader, divers in thought and creativity. Exercising a diverse talent selection to transform the magazine, which she combined with a successful structure to optimize team’s productivity. So how do we develop the optimal structure in a committed leadership style? This part incorporates the leader's knowledge and prescribed traits with science. Using Ivan Steiner's formula to measure team’s productivity is a scientific process that merges potential productivity with synergy while identifying and eliminating process loss. This simple equation generates the actual productivity of the team. Leaders who can effectively do this while creating their teams develop a clear path for success. However, this is easier said than done. Let us break this apart. Potential productivity is also known as stage setting. From futuristic strategy with clear goals and objectives, and diverse talent with soft and technical skills, to software and hardware selection, a complete structure will make the team operate at its fullest potential. Some of the most complex problems require a team of teams. The hierarchically arranged goals exhibit an overarching strategy while each team is pursuing distinct team goals and objectives. To successfully generate a team of teams, committed leaders can communicate and connect different work efforts and how they are attached, creating a sense of belonging in the multiteam system. They can also produce communication channels where teams share information between teams understanding interests and priorities. While potential productivity is process orientated, establishing structure and procedures to follow is where leaders who combine knowledge, commitment, and passion excel. Synergy is simply an environment where team members' creativity is encouraged and leveraged to produce collective intelligence. "Creativity involves many people from different disciples working effectively together to solve a great many problems" (Catmull, 2008). This quote is powerful and brings out the notion that it is not a responsibility or strength of one person, a leader, but a collective effort of the entire team. Catmull (2008) further combines the importance of having a team with diverse experiences, cultures, and strengths to develop a large volume of ideas creating an environment where these ideas can be openly shared; risk-taking is encouraged. Leaders of such environments need to be open-minded to combine the most creative ideas into one cohesive outcome, promoting diversity of thought. True leaders, like Ruth Reichl, are not afraid to lead by example, inspire new ideas, and ask for forgiveness vs. permission. For example, after 9/11, Ruth came up with an idea in using the amazing kitchen of the Gourmet Magazine to cook for the rescue workers in New York City. She invited cooks from the entire city, those who have not even worked for the magazine, to cook together and exhibit the act of kindness and something Gourmet has never done before. Despite being criticized by others, Ruth was willing to do something new and inspiring, asking for forgiveness vs. permission. Such an act exemplified risk-taking and empowered all her team members to do the same in times of crisis and when trying new and innovative solutions. How many times have you, as a leader, promoted such an environment? Does your team feel safe doing something new, or do all new solutions and ideas need to be discussed in a series of meetings, approved by authoritarian leaders, and rolled out with a step-by-step manual? Committed leaders create a new and innovative meaning of synergy, increasing the team's productivity, maximizing individual strengths, and promoting diversity of thought. Finally, robust process loss identification, utilizing quantitative and qualitative measures of the team's operational efficiency to pinpoint gaps in the process leading to a loss in productivity. For example, process loss could be caused by team conflict, ineffective and unclear communication, inadequate project management, shifting goals and priorities, or shortcomings in the subject matter within the leadership team. According to Dreu and Weingard (2003), team conflict is how team members perceive incompatibility in their ideas, strategies, work styles, or personalities. Team conflict is either task or relationship-based. Leaders NEED to address task-related conflicts, but they should NOT address relationship conflicts related to working styles, personality, and/or emotions. Interest, rights, and power are behaviors used to manage conflicts among team members. These behaviors are most effective with task-related conflicts, where team members differ in opinion, ideas, or goals. The most effective solution is to reconcile interest by appealing to team members' goals, aspirations, values, and principles, addressing fears and the "why" behind team members' positions. Occasionally it is needed to determine who is right by referencing independent standards, laws, contracting policies, or procedures. Grabbing power to resolve team conflicts is not practical or productive; coercing others to do something they otherwise would not do is not solving anything. It is only making conflict more complicated. Committed leaders maximize interest in solving team-related conflicts, using rights when necessary, and seldom grabbing power. Process loss also due to ineffective communication, inadequate project management, and shifting goals and priorities, should primarily be addressed in the stage setting phase and evaluated frequently. Communication can be both spoken and unspoken. Leaders communicate stories with every email, gesture, comment, and presentation; whether they realize it or not, these stories are what team members hear and observe. "Your actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying" - Ralph Waldo Emerson Innovative technology allows for quantitative measurement of team-related productive metrics, pointing out inadequate project management when used and organized correctly. Maximizing strengths and creating psychological safety for the team to speak up promotes effective project management and eliminates any related issues. However, it is only possible when synergy among team members is high. Shifting goals and priorities also lead to productivity loss if not communicated effectively, as the team members cannot understand how their work contributes to an overall strategy. Shortcomings in the subject matter of teamwork within leadership is another component of productivity loss, creating confusion and efficiencies. Like Ruth in "Save Me the Plums," committed leaders overcome their shortcomings by empowering others to generate ideas and execute to deliver. When Ruth was approached for the Editor in Chief position, she was told that she can "clean the house," but rather she focused on her leadership team instead. She selected and promoted leaders with different backgrounds and strengths to supplement her weaknesses and promoting a diversified experience. But more importantly she empowered these leaders to execute and help her transform Gourmet. When a team operates at its fullest potential, it achieves actual productivity but more importantly it has an environment of belonging and creativity. However, this is only possible when the stage is set correctly, synergy and psychological safety are enabled, and process loss is eliminated. Leaders who combine their knowledge and ideal prescribed traits with commitment and passion are those that are combing art and science of influence. Dear CEO do you have committed or compliance leaders in your organization? Leaders –have you done some self-assessment lately? Do you lead with commitment or with compliance? Is Your Team Operating at Its Fullest Potential? What is your leadership memoir?