Try the Morale Constructs Strategy to Build Great Teams: Part II

As we continue on with the series, "Building Great Teams using the Morale Constructs Strategy," part two goes into the "Law of CARE: (Communication, Affirmation, Recognition, and Examination)." This law also examines the difference between management and leadership. Leadership is not management and most of all; good managers don't always make great leaders. Leadership and management skills are two very distinct and different paradigms, but they each possess complementary capabilities. In some cases, environments are faced with difficult challenges as they affect the individuals who are a part of the team and environment, but the success on both the individual and organizational level depend greatly on the ability of 'leaders' to manage and 'managers' to lead. The Law of CARE allows us to examine the effects of leadership, management, and the individual within a community.

Challenge: There seems to be a serious disconnect in the way individuals are chosen to lead. As we look at the Peter Principle, it examines how individuals are promoted throughout a system until he/she has reached a level of incompetence. This presents a classic demonstration of the inherent difficulties for individuals to manage and/or lead a system into greatness. In most scenarios, people become upwardly mobile based upon their past experiences. This can be seen as recognition for a job well done. The problem lies in the grooming factor. Under the Peter Principle, the very skills that allowed for growth will only lead to an individual's demise as they move into greater levels of their careers.

The Law of CARE has four characteristics that both increase and/or limit anxieties when the human endeavor experiences growth and becomes responsible for influencing others. One of the significant benefits of the law is trust and credibility. The law places all of its focus on the individual aspect as we look at building great teams that lead with excellence and manage with discipline. The individual element is the quintessential component that drives teams into greatness. This is the main reason for identifying this law, which looks into the depths and the heart of a true leader. Understanding the difference between leadership and management helps individuals to keep the blood flowing throughout a community.

Traditional management ideologies focus on the hard skills of business (accounting functions, operations, sales, marketing, etc). Management is both quantifiable and tangible and has significant processes to instruct on ways of executing protocol. However, leadership places a focus on the soft skills (team building and development, multiculturalism, corporate responsibility: aligning trust with the vision and mission, etc). These skills are qualitative and intangible and are difficult to place a rate of return on the investment.

This is an absolute misnomer for people who have not come to the realization that great leadership improves upon the results that are based on the tangible and quantifiable processes. Great leadership creates new perspectives to influence change; overcomes tough, complex, and uncertainties across the environment; develops positive organizational behaviors; increase competency levels and strategy execution to inspire a shared-vision; encourages individuals to remain on a continuum for achieving professional development; creates a bridge between the "what" (theory) and the "how-to" (practice) of organizational dynamics; increases communications, critical thinking, project management, and solution-centric processes to stimulate growth; and makes the "impossible" "POSSIBLE." So, as you can see, the potential to increase revenue while decreasing losses (not always relating to financial gains and losses) can be achieved at greater levels through leadership and not management. Although some people may be born with the required talents to lead effectively, others have to be taught. Without practice, training and discipline, the talent to become a great leader remains dormant. Leadership, therefore, is an active rehearsal of skill that can be learned.

The Law of CARE introduces six characteristics, known as the 6C's, which goes into the constructs of great teams from the individual leadership perspective. They help to transform the talents of a leader into capabilities that they can and will rely upon in critical situations. They seem to offer common sense and subjective anecdotal experience that reveals how without practice, they are not so common in a leaders daily functioning. The characteristics are also used to outline best practices for great leadership to follow: They are outlined as:

- Consistency

- Courage

- Conviction

- Commitment

- Contrite

- Captivating

They are essential to the behavioral and attitudinal approach taken and experienced by everyone within the community. They make it perfectly clear to themselves and to other individuals that leadership is "being" before "doing." To some, this simply means that leadership is the absolute meaning and defining attribute for achieving objectives. For others, it is a road map that lays the direction to excellence. Either way, each characteristic clarifies a means for growing individually and as an organization. They are key components that establish how people deal with one another. Increasingly, how we service each others needs is a powerful source of differentiation for all types of behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, people are very different in their approach for getting things done and how they seek to be treated. As time goes by, the circumstance in their personal lives and professional careers cause for service levels to constantly be adjusted.

The six characteristics can also be looked at as a form of technical assistance experienced in service calls when dealing with the people that make up a community. Education on the outlined characteristics makes clear an individual's reputation, character, and relationship functionality (behavior and attitude). The level of education and quality of information expressed through its learning makes clear how the community will react to changing paradigms that lends to specific growth.

Democratic Leadership uses the six characteristics as the quintessential essence found within the Law of CARE. They are simplistic in nature but conforms behavioral and attitudinal perspective for dealing with people over a period of time. Achieving the six characteristics builds a Democratic Leader's level of trust and the four core disciplines that also increase credibility.

1. Consistency. Individuals steadily act to influence greatness. Achieve all accomplishments through collaboration by fostering a warrior culture and the ultimate obligation of a winner rather than an uninspired drive that results significant under-achievement.

2. Courage (Challenge the Established Processes). Individuals must never run from doing what is right. Individuals must be prepared to step out on faith, removing themselves outside of popular culture, while searching for the courage and understanding to win over failure. This characteristic is where the rainmakers reside.

3. Conviction. Individuals communicate their convictions boldly.

4. Commitment (Model the Way). Individuals understand that the only thing necessary for the triumph of greatness is for the chosen to fail at not trying! Allowing your walk to mirror your talk demonstrates by example "what" should be done and "how" it must be done to execute task and responsibilities flawlessly.

5. Contrite (Encourage and Inspire the Heart of a Winner). Individuals know when to be humble and willingly demonstrate ability for being flexible in their way of thinking, hence transformational thought. Be prepared to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate the contributions from all persons involved in the winning process.

6. Captivating (Inspire a Shared-Vision). Individuals are tactical in their ability to positively influence a journey within the community that helps the stakeholders to find their voices. Individuals must envision the future picture that includes a sense of vitality and creativity that appeal to the desires of all stakeholders who act and contribute to the realization of an established vision.

The characteristics found within the Law of CARE help individuals to become the maverick conformists that stimulate a community's ability to change a perspective to current reality if needed. As time matriculates as a changing paradigm, so does a vision and the expected outcomes within an environment of trust. An individual in a position of leadership asserts or affirms positive influence that culminates excellence to others in their dealing with each person in the community. In doing so, recognition is achieved at all levels and places individuals on a continuum for future examination of proactive change.

What Leadership Is, but Is Not!

Although the six characteristics are considered to be soft skills, the failure to utilize them in leading individuals into greatness yields bottom-line results in decreased productivity, increased customer complaints, high attrition rates (retention difficulties), poor selection of team associates (recruitment defects), a reactive (rather than proactive) approach to the development of team-centric environments, and limitations within the development of a learning organization that possesses creativity and innovative ways to grow. Leadership is not about the touchy-feely aspects of human interaction, while management focuses on the serious issues.

Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler and an American industrialist, best known for his ability to bring failures back into greatness, is universally recognized for his outstanding leadership skills and most widely recognized as the top businessman in the world in the 1980's. Mr. Iacocca would never be known as incapable for addressing the serious issues plaguing modern business. He recognized that to achieve organizational greatness, and its corresponding high stock value and market share, requires overall commitment from his teams. He knew that the main ingredient for being the best pitch man for his brand required the knowledge of knowing that the individuals within Chrysler were fully committed to his vision. If they were not, the organization and the individual aspect would fail. Anyone can look back and see that his leadership became a credo at Chrysler and catapulted the company and its leading executive into greatness not passable performance, but truly great, transformational performance. He truly understood the Law of CARE and its importance to his style of leadership and to Chrysler as a whole.

But what is leadership? And how is it different from management? Leadership focuses on the long-term, but management places its focus on the short-term. Leadership keeps their eye on the horizon, while management keeps their eye on the bottom-line. Leadership will tolerate failure or missteps as long as the direction provides instruction toward the goal for both the individual, and the organization to learn from the failure. Failure, therefore, is viewed as a significant opportunity to learn. It is therefore safe to say that when thinking about how individuals comprehend an ability to influence environments to become successful at meeting their objectives, it would be OK to acknowledge the current state of leadership does not fit into a single mold.

The Law of CARE points out to its user that leadership, by its very nature, is an entity of influence through choice and changing environmental reality. As we think about popular culture and its belief for what leadership may be, the conclusion would bring most individuals to the conclusion (and not an assumption) that there is a greater state that achieves leadership itself. The six characteristics outlined by the law develop abilities for individuals to achieve a state of understanding, prediction, and management of human behavior in and out of the organization. They lay foundational structure for leaders to no longer just give words to lofty, ethical values; now they are required to walk the talk and deliver at high performance levels with significant implications for effective results.

Leadership must reinforce the values of the mission outlined by positive organizational behavior. Because all actions are based on internal and often unexpressed motivation and behavior, leaders recognize that achieving buy-in from their associates is the way to success. In contrast, management focuses exclusively on the actions and behaviors of their associates with little or no interest in the reasons behind those actions. One of the greatest attributes for effective leaders is that they are unafraid of looking vulnerable to their peers when they don't have the answers that others are seeking. In the same light, some managers when they don't have the answers to the information seeks tend to place emotional distance between themselves and those seeking information. Leaders will listen to the people around them, knowing that they may learn lessons from their peers. Managers will talk at the people thinking that they can not learn from people who may not be on their level. Leaders quickly and effectively learn to openly embrace diversity and multiculturalism, while managers might try to encourage traditionalism. Effective leaders inspire the heart of a winner, while a manager may focus exclusively on the mind of a player. Leaders will courageously embrace change if they feel that change is eminent for the system to experience growth.

Managers will have a difficult time overcoming resistance to change and might hold the reins tightly to preserve the status quo. Great leaders inspire and develop emotional bonds to the mission at hand, but managers will tend to create compliance issues and stick closely to the status quo that might lead to a commanding perspective. Leaders create, inspire, and support ideation within their peer groups, while managers dictate based on the inflexible approach to leading.

Leadership, therefore, is crucial in creating exceptional performance. Leadership and management skills are complementary. Leadership combined with management creates synergistic opportunities and engage the mind, body, heart, and soul of the associates influenced by the actions of a winning team of great leaders of positive influence. Success in the 21st Century requires not only leaders who can manage, but managers who can lead systems, people, and environments into greatness.

This being the case, Democratic Leadership eliminates opportunities of enlisting archaic perspectives, offering a body of knowledge that channels enthusiastic initiatives without stifling potential for greater human and operational endeavors. Democratic Leadership offers a collective commitment for winning, using educational leadership as an everyday event; a state with "fluidity," ongoing and always in motion and the "vitality" within a system through its vision (and common orientation point) that finds a "voice." This discipline of leadership works to develop an intense, custom learning experience that enables top executives and managers to increase their leadership ability – personally and professionally; then how to applying new knowledge paradigms and tools within their workplace.

Democratic Leadership helps individuals to drive fundamental change and to achieve communal commitment by applying unified frameworks that wins! Democratic Leadership inspires and encourages a shared-vision that wins great behaviors and attitudes for building dynamic teams. The Law of CARE presents a theoretical underpinning for achieving such an accord.