Actions Speak Louder Than Words

 

Shakespeare said, "Talkers are not good doers."

Early this morning I found the OpenView Labs newsletter in my in-box. Among a number of pretty interesting articles, I noticed one written by George Roberts titled As a CEO, How You Do Anything Means Everything. I'm a firm believer that any kind of leader should not only "Talk the Talk," but should also "Walk the Walk," so this caught my eye. Although Roberts is talking about CEOs, I believe what he's describing and suggesting is something we should be implementing too.

Quoting a recent interview on BusinessWeek's website, Roberts, a former member of the executive management team at Oracle, writes, "In the article [Why How We Do Anything Means Everything in Business (and in life)] Sideman says that a great leader is a model of behavior. They self-govern by a set of principles and inspire others to do the same thing. They embrace the conditions of the new world and turn it to their advantage."

In a nutshell, the common things shared by highly successful executives included:

1. It is not what you say, but how you say it
2. It is not what you do, but how you do it
3. Lead by example
4. Treat people the way you want to be treated

"Sure," says Roberts, "they're simple concepts and we've all probably heard them before. But they also collectively point to the fact that employees watch how company leadership behaves and take cues from their executive's behavior."

I couldn't agree more. I'm sure we've all had bosses that were really good at this and some that were really bad. What's more, I think this also applies to how we lead project teams. With that in mind, let me ask, what type of project leader are you?

Citing an article in the Harvard Business Review, Are You a Good Boss or a Great One? by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback, Robert writes, "...most managers, at some point, fail to continue working on themselves. As a result, as their professional development stagnates, so too will the development of their employees." He suggests that we ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Do you understand what's required to become truly effective?
2. Do you understand what you're trying to attain?

"As you begin to better understand how well you're doing in each of those categories [including: Managing Yourself, Managing Your Network and Managing Your Team]," writes Roberts, "it's important to discuss what you can do right now to perform better and then get into a daily rhythm to maintain that performance. That rhythm includes: Prep, Do, and Review."

I don't think it really matters what type of group or objective you lead—or even what type of leader you are—there is always room for improvement. Learning and skills development should be a life-long objective. I've always believed you should be in the middle of a book, taking classes or attending seminars on a regular basis. But I don't think that's enough. I also think it's important to do some regular (and honest) introspection to evaluate how we're doing in the real world of leading teams and managing projects.

As Roberts suggests, "...you're setting the example for the rest of the [team] to follow. How you do everything will mean everything to your [team]." I couldn't have said it better myself.