Who you are as a human
being determines how well you
perform
A commonly-held belief is that to
become a better leader, you have to improve your performance at work. While on
the face of it, it does make sense, Robert (Bob) Rosen presents another point
of view. “Who you are as a human being is what drives you in the workplace and
that is what determines how well you perform,” says Rosen, founder, Healthy
Companies International and author, Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an
Uncertain World. Rosen has spent over two decades studying and advising CEOs on
how to build better companies that balance results as well as the human side of
the business. “Having studied leaders, I noticed two things. One, that the
world was changing faster than the ability of leaders to re-invent themselves,
and that the model of leadership was based on the paradigm that it is what you
do as a leader that drives you as a person,” says Rosen. With the gap between
the leaders we have and leaders we need increasing and the focus firmly on what
these leaders did in terms of performance but not as human beings, Rosen
realized the need for a different perspective on the issue. According to him,
leadership is facing an existential crisis with high levels of distrust and
cynicism against many leaders. The combined forces of competition, complexity,
constant change and information overload all work together to box the leader
in. How he responds to this crisis will define how he, and the company he runs,
will perform. This is where a healthy leader comes in. Healthy leaders are
disciplined, self-aware and committed to personal growth for themselves and for
those around them. They are attuned to four agendas. The financial agenda helps
them ensure that they have the capital and results required for continuity,
success and growth. The operations agenda, which focuses on efficiency and
processes. The market agenda which keeps them tuned to their customers and
competition, and most important, the human agenda. Using the metaphor of a tree
that stays grounded in a storm, Rosen says that there are six dimensions to a
healthy leader:
Physical Health: Being strong enough to cope with the pace of growth
Emotional Health: Being self-aware and having the hope and resilience to
bounce back Intellectual Health: Asking hard questions, curious,
constantly assessing yourself and adapting to change and innovating
Social Health: Being authentic and building mutually nourishing
relationships
Vocational Health: Having a passion for success and a meaningful calling in
life
Spiritual
Health: Not whether you are religious, but
whether you have a higher purpose and a sense of being part of something bigger
than yourself.
“These six elements have always been
around. People talk about driving high performance but not leadership health.
They look at factors like shareholder value and reputation as a measure of
success but don’t go down to the beginning of the value chain to see what kind
of leaders are creating these companies,” says Rosen. Who you are is grounded
in your roots, and that in turn determines the kind of team and organization
you will build. And this applies not only to CEOs but leaders at all levels.
“Healthy leaders are self-aware, conscious and committed to their own
development. If they aren’t, then its not possible for them to run a
sustainable business or organization,” he says. Other characteristics of
healthy leaders include being open to feedback and developing their own skills,
at the same time working at building healthy executive teams. “Healthy leaders
have a higher purpose and talk about that, awaken passions and get people on
the same page. They unleash human energy,” says Rosen. According to him, Ford’s
Alan Mulally is one such healthy leader. Closer home, he ranks Kumar Mangalam
Birla as a healthy leader. “He’s a master at intellectual health, curious and
always learning and unleashing human energy and growing business and seizing
opportunities,” he says. In his work with CEOs over the last two decades, Rosen
has found that most great leaders show a mix of these elements in varying
proportions. He also believes that spiritual health is the most important
metric, especially given the current economic and business environment. Does
the leader have a higher spirit and a global connectedness mindset? Does he
realise that his employees, suppliers and customers are located all over the
world and that it’s important to be sensitive to cultural differences and at
the same time pick up best practices from everywhere? Rosen believes this is
something Indian leaders seem to do well at. It’s not easy, he cautions, and it
takes practice to get better at these factors, but when you do, you are on your
way to building a highperformance organization of the future.
b
y Priyanka Sangani CDET140314
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