I have detected a Code in successful leaders. One they never state as a strategy, per se, but that emerges like the sun breaking thru the clouds on a foggy day.
It is so clear and simple that it would never be heralded as an innovation. Because it isn’t. It is an insight that leads to a powerful practice– an invisible one that simply presents itself as a facet of the leader’s personality.
The code is success = learning mindset + making a difference.
It struck me like a 2×4 between the eyes last week when I was interviewing the executive team of a global chemical company. The first executive I interviewed last week was very accomplished. He was a top salesman and top leader at an industry giant before he came to this company. He told me about many of the challenges he faced. When we started talking about his dream job, I began to understand his invisble code for success. The next interview was a PhD research scientist leading R&D. She also faced many challenges but shared with me her code for success. “Hmmm. Interesting,” I thought. “That is the same as the first person.” When I reached the third, fourth and fifth executives, and they all told me the same code, I knew that this was special. I had seen some executives operating from this code before, but never everyone in the entire executive team. Sometimes executives parrot their leader’s philosophy or the company values. But I had never heard THESE words repeated verbatim. By the end of the day I realized that these words, these ideas that they were articulating, are the secret to great leadership
Let me be clear – after working with executives around the world for over a decade, there are common patterns of thinking in executive’s minds. They are all driven and as a result they all work hard and long hours. Some are more humble than others, but by and large they all know deep in their hearts that their success and the company’s success is in their hands. They expect results to be earned not given.
I asked each of them about 10 questions- about their team, about their dream job, about their performance levels, and other things – all meant to get to the heart of the issues. And while no one answered each question the same, at some point in each of the interviews, they all said the a version of the exact same thing: “I got here by being focus on learning and growing” and “I want to make a difference in the company.” They all spoke from the heart about how good they feel when they are positively impacting the lives of the people in the company. And they all spoke about how their careers were built, not on being smarter than the next person, but on the insatiable desire to learn and grow. This was not a line they were feeding me. Part of my job is to be a BS detector. This was them speaking their truth.
It didn’t surprise me to hear these answers from successful business people. However, that they all said it in their individual interviews crystallized for me an important pattern I have seen over the years.
The executives that are operating from the belief that success = learning + making a difference are the happiest and most productive. They are the ones who find the joy in the rough challenges they face. And they are the ones who can easily inspire their people from their actions and their words.
The leaders who are considered great all created great cultures and great results living by this same code: Steve Jobs, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Alan Mullay, Indra Nooyi, and Richard Branson, for example
Yes, leaders must be driven, work hard and have talent too to succeed. But to be great, to raise their people and their organizations to new heights, you need to live by the code of learning and making a difference in everything you do.
