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JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century
Lecture Notes
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JWI 510 – Lecture Notes (1194) Page 1 of 4
Week 8: Achieving Results
Although achieving results through lateral and upward leadership is important, “you need to tend to your
subordinates with the same level of attention and concern” (Welch, 2005, p. 280). The first step to
achieving results through your team is to get the right players in the right positions, something you will
learn more about in your People Management course. This week, the focus is on empowering people to
execute and avoiding leadership errors that can derail a career and an organization.
Getting it Done!
In Winning (Welch, 2005), Chapter 6, Jack describes the 4E’s + P framework for hiring employees. The
fourth E stands for execute, the ability to get the job done. Jack’s Eight Rules for what leaders do,
covered earlier in the course, describe an approach to leadership focused on building an organization
where people can effectively execute a winning strategy. Specific characteristics underpin this kind of
leadership, including a relentless drive to never settle for good enough (Bossidy & Charan, 2004). All of
these traits require courage, and demand that leaders:
• Energize others: aligning with Jack’s rule about getting into everyone’s skin, exuding positive
energy and optimism. They create energy in others, they hire energetic individuals, and they help
people maintain their momentum by celebrating short-term wins.
• Are decisive: facing tough decisions head-on rather than procrastinating and avoiding them.
Doing this requires emotional strength.
• Are good at getting work done through others: setting milestones and watching for follow-through.
• Follow through: constantly clarifying what needs to be done, who will do it, and when they will do it.
They provide the resources to meet milestones and monitor progress.
In becoming a leader who knows how to win, it is important to be aware of – and avoid – common
leadership errors that can derail your career and your organization. These errors are the Six Sins of
Leadership.
The Six Sins of Leadership
In this course, we have already devoted thousands of words to discussing what leaders should do. But
before we get much further along, there is much to be learned from exploring what leaders commonly get
wrong. For it is in their failures that leaders often have the most impact, both on individuals and
organizations.
JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century
Lecture Notes
© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be
copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.
JWI 510 – Lecture Notes (1194) Page 2 of 4
Consider the following material with a critical eye. Do any Sins apply to your own behaviors? If so, self-
awareness is the first step to corrective action. And for those of you who are not yet leaders, scrutiny is
advised. Understanding where leaders you have worked for might have gone astray will serve you well in
the future.
Being a leader is perhaps the hardest challenge anyone will ever face. No matter how long you work at it,
practicing the right behavior is a never-ending task. Knowing and avoiding the wrong behavior are never-
ending tasks.
1. Not Giving Self-Confidence Its Due
Self-confidence is the lifeblood of success. When people have it, they’re bold. They try new
things, offer ideas, exude positive energy, and cooperate with their colleagues instead of
attempting to get ahead by bringing them down. When they lack self-confidence, it’s just the
opposite. People cower. They plod. They spread negativity with their words and gestures. You
cannot unleash the creative power of individuals who doubt themselves.
Leaders can never stop striving to develop self-confidence in their teams. The ways to do so are
myriad. Make sure goals are challenging, but achievable. Give positive feedback. Remind your
direct reports of what they do right.
2. Muzzling Voice
Perhaps the most frustrating way that leaders underperform is by over-talking. That is, they act
like know-it-alls. They can tell you how the world works, what corporate is thinking, how it will
backfire if you try this or that, and why you can’t possibly change the product for the better.
Sometimes, such blowhards get their swagger from a few positive experiences, but usually,
they’re just victims of their own destructive personalities. Ultimately, the company ends up being
a victim, too, because know-it-alls aren’t just insufferable – they’re dangerous. They don’t listen,
and that deafness makes it very hard for new ideas to get debated, expanded upon, or
improved. No single person, no matter how smart, can take a business to its apex. For that, you
need every voice to be heard. Know-it-all leadership creates a deadly silence.1
1 As CEO of GE, Jack decided to launch an initiative called “Work-Out,” where every employee of the company was
given the opportunity to speak his or her mind about how work was done. The output was shocking. Terrific new ideas,
long buried in bureaucracy or under the weight of know-it-all bosses, were set free, leading to an explosion of
productivity and employee buy-in. After one such session, a middle-aged appliance worker approached Jack. “For 25
years, you paid for my hands,” he said. “You could have had my brain, too – for free.”
JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century
Lecture Notes
© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be
copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.
JWI 510 – Lecture Notes (1194) Page 3 of 4
3. Acting Phony
Can you spot a phony? Of course, you can, and so can your people. Indeed, if there is one
widespread human capability, it is sniffing out someone who is putting on airs, pretending to be
who they are not, or just keeping their real self hidden.
Too many leaders spend way too much time creating personas that put a wall between them
and their employees. What a waste! Authenticity is what makes people love you. Visibly
grappling with challenging problems, sweating the details, laughing, and caring – these are the
activities that make people respond and feel engaged with what you’re saying. Sure, some
people will tell you that being mysterious grants you power as a leader. In reality, all it
generates is fear. And, who wants to motivate that way?
4. Lacking the Guts to Differentiate
You only have to be in business for a few weeks to know that not all investment opportunities are
created equal. But some leaders can’t face that reality, and so, they sprinkle their resources like
cheese on a pizza – a little bit everywhere. As a result, promising growth opportunities too often
don’t get them the outsized infusions of cash and people they need. If they did that, someone
might get offended during the resource-allocation process – someone like the manager of a weak
business or the sponsor of a dubious investment proposal.
But leaders who don’t differentiate do the most damage when it comes to people. Unwilling to
deliver candid, rigorous performance reviews, they give every employee the same kind of bland,
mushy, nice job sign-off. Then, when rewards are doled out, they give star performers little more
than the laggards. You can call this egalitarian approach kind or fair – as these lousy leaders
usually do – but it’s just weakness. And when it comes to building a thriving organization where
people have the chance to grow and succeed, weakness just doesn’t cut it.
5. Fixation on Results at the Expense of Values
Real leaders deliver! Oratory without results equals nothing. But leaders are committing a
dereliction of duties if all they care about are the numbers. They also have to care about how
those numbers came to be. Were the right behaviors practiced? Was the company’s culture of
integrity honored? Were people taken care of properly? Was the law obeyed, in both letter and
spirit?
Values are funny items in business. Companies love to talk about them. They like to hang them
up on plaques in the lobby and boast about them to potential hires and customers. But they’re
meaningless if leaders don’t live and breathe them. Sometimes, that can take courage. It can
mean letting go of a top performer who’s a brute to his colleagues, or not promoting a star who
doesn’t share her best ideas with the team. That’s hard. And, yet, if you are a leader, this is a sin
you can’t ignore. When you nail your results, make sure you can also report back to a crowded
room, “We did this the right way, according to our values.”
JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century
Lecture Notes
© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be
copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.
JWI 510 – Lecture Notes (1194) Page 4 of 4
6. Skipping the Fun Part
What is it about celebrating that makes managers so nervous? Maybe throwing a party doesn’t
seem professional, or it makes people worry that they won’t look serious to the powers that be,
or, if the office is too happy, people will stop working their tails off. Whatever the reason, too
many leaders don’t celebrate enough.
To be clear here, we do not mean celebrating by conducting one of those boring company-
orchestrated events that everyone hates, in which the whole team is marched out to a local
restaurant for an evening of forced merriment when they’d rather be at home. We’re talking
about sending a team to Disney World with their families, or giving each team member tickets to
a show or movie, or handing each member of the team a new iPad. What a lost opportunity!
Celebrating makes people feel like winners and creates an atmosphere of recognition and
positive energy. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Grab
as many of these as you can. Make a big deal out of them. That’s part of the leader’s job – that’s
the fun part!
Your Leadership Journey
• If you are new to leadership, think about how you can be the kind of employee who is a doer –
someone who makes life easier for their boss
• If you are a team leader, consider whether you have an effective evaluation system in place
• If you are a senior/veteran leader, consider whether the Six Sins of Leadership have been taking
hold in teams throughout your organization
