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Combating Negativity

By Adriaan Groenewald

To encourage positive forces within an organization, leaders should implement the universal law of movement: motivate, direct and make sure there is structure to serve the former two.

One of the greatest challenges that the corporate leader, or any leader for that matter, faces is negativity. So many variables impact their followers on a daily basis that it becomes increasingly difficult for them to remain positive. Furthermore, from many interviews with MDs and CEOs in South Africa, it seems that there may be even more variables in the South African environment impacting on the corporate employee’s attitude than was previously thought.

Negativity of your followers has a huge impact on your success as a leader. You may have the ability to rise above the negativity, and therefore assume that those all around you can and should do the same. Do not make this mistake.

Ladragh Cozens, CEO, Cozens Recruitment, says: “I think that negativity does draw, and people do get embroiled in, the negative aspect of communication. I think it is a fine human being that can stand above the negative energies that are there, and can actually float within the positive.”

We call this fine human being a “Profitable Leader”. Rarely are people taught how to overcome negativity, yet often leaders manage to do so themselves, and great leaders often manage to do so with others.

Negativity creates an environment that is the exact opposite of passion, energy, commitment, accountability and, above all, high motivation. Ask yourself how many of your staff have a passion for the business they are in. How many of them accidentally landed inside your organization, and simply work to pay the bills at the end of the month? If every one of your employees were asked what career they would follow if they had their life over again, how many would want to be in a different place, career or job?

The truth is that few of your employees are actually passionately following their aspirations. Add to this factors such as mergers, acquisitions, retrenchments, change in leadership, legislative requirements or injustices of the past. As a leader who wants and needs a positive, motivated workforce, you therefore start with a drawback.

Compare this majority of your workforce with the minority who passionately want to be there. They are typically the ones who are motivated, who take ownership, who have energy, who are committed to the business and your direction as a leader, who come up with innovative ideas to improve.

The truth is that when one is not following one’s aspirations, and therefore not naturally highly motivated, it is much easier to be drawn to the negative pole, view or perception of a given situation; to seek and find other variables that can be blamed for a negative attitude. Negativity is the enemy of optimal performance.

How do you as a leader ensure that your “minority” remains positive and motivated? How do you as a leader get the “majority” of your people to be positive? How do you get them into passionate mode?

The greatest way to combat the challenge of negativity, and other challenges, is to refine your leadership capability continually. If negativity is on the increase, then so too should be your ability to combat it as a leader.

Roy Andersen, CEO, Liberty Group, explains: “To me, the key requirement of a leader is to ensure that the vision is set, and that people are motivated to achieve that vision. That’s your job description ...

“Now, sometimes you don’t have the people around you to do that, so one of the things you have to do is divert into structure to get the right people, and come back again, and thereafter steer the new team to the vision. My role is to ensure the vision is set, and that people are motivated and committed to it.”

Ted Woods, recently retired CEO of Deutsche Bank, said the following about leadership: “Well, a door [to become CEO] opened, and I had a look through the door. I knew that the job involved two big things. The one was to motivate the people you led, and the other was to build a strategy that was rational and likely to succeed. So, these were the dual thrusts to the new job — having a look at two things: people and strategy.”

Both Andersen and Woods are seasoned leaders, yet I wonder if they realize just how right they are. During many qualitative interviews and coaching sessions with leaders, we at Moditure, a consultancy that develops profitable leadership, have come to the conclusion that it is easy to confuse yourself on this critical topic.

Just browse through your local bookstore and try to decide which book on leadership you should invest in. There are so many from which to choose.

We maintain that leadership is simple if you look at, and understand, the golden thread of universal principles that underpin most leadership models. It need not be complex.

Leaders are in the business of “movement”. It is required of the leader to move others from point A to point B, wherever it may be. Cozens says about leadership: “I think leaders go into action, and they are not afraid to go into action.”

Frik Vermaak, CEO, Computershare, explains: “A leader is probably the central figure that would pull along, or push along, people towards a common goal.”

These statements indicate movement by their very nature. Vermaak explains further that he sees “push” in a positive sense, where you encourage people to get there themselves, and “pull along” sometimes means you have to get them to break their own mold and get over those initial fears of change.

“Once they have grasped what the new vision or thoughts are about, they actually go down that path quite comfortably.”

If the leader is at the head of an organization, certain stakeholders expect him or her to move the organization to greater profitability. Growth (movement) is expected. Change (movement) must occur. The organization cannot stand still or remain stagnant, and neither can the people.

How does this impact on your role as the leader? Understand that there is a universal law that states the following: “All movement in life is governed by integration of motivation, direction and structure.”

Nothing in life moves without some motive, or something motivating it, to move. Test this universal truth on yourself. You yourself need a motive (reason) to move, and if you are passionately committed to the motive, you will move with energy, commitment, dedication and absolute accountability.

Every single day of your life you are driven by motives that are strong enough to move you. You get out of bed for a reason. That reason (motive) could simply be that you have to go to work in order to have the means to pay the bills, or it could be that you want to go out there and make a difference in people’s lives, resulting in higher motivation.

We have found that the greatest challenge of a leader lies in the motivation step of the universal law of movement, and we believe it is the most important one. The ability to motivate is an important weapon in the combat against negativity.

Andersen says: “I find that if you come up with a vision that is clear and exciting, people actually want that leadership. What motivates them is clarity of vision, and being part of a team.”

What makes a vision clear? It helps to understand the reason, purpose and motivation behind the vision. Explain what your aspirations behind the vision are. It gives followers the opportunity to integrate with your desires and aspirations, which really is the driving force behind the direction.

If you don’t give them a motive or purpose that is exciting, or even plain urgent, they will simply go into the direction because you tell them to do it. This means passion, energy, dedication, commitment and accountability will be lacking.

And how does one feel part of a team? When one’s aspirations are integrated with the other members of the team, and the team as a whole. The profitable leader generates aspirations that at least the majority of the followers want to integrate with.

This does not necessarily mean a common vision, but a common driving reason and motivation for the vision. People have a universal need to know why they must do something, or move somewhere.

Cozens explains: “There has got to be a basic need that matches the leader to the follower. There has got to be a meeting of needs between the leader and the followers.

“There has got to be an ability where the leader and the followers satisfy each other’s needs, and once they satisfy each other’s needs, it’s easy for the leader to pull forward, and for the followers to get into gear and motivate themselves into the direction that the leader wants them to follow.”

Bill Sears, MD, Dairymaid-Nestlé, is driving a project known as “Tirisanani”, which is Tsonga for pulling or working together: teamwork. It encourages involvement, identifying problems and solutions together, in an environment where people are free to challenge.

They are developing a culture of “Aspiration Integration”, which will add to high motivation levels. I would back such an organization.

Referring to Vermaak’s earlier statement of a “common goal” — what more is a common goal than aspiration integration?

Woods says: “When people really believe, through your actions, that you are trying to create the win for them, plus, the vision or business model that you explained to them appeals to their logic, they are behind you.”

This statement confirms the importance of making sure there is integration of the motives or aspirations (“create the win”), and purpose for having to move (“appeals to their logic”).

Kevin Wakeford, the former CEO of the South African Chamber of Business, says: “A good leader who understands will connect with the heart — not the mind — of the customer base, the heart of the employee.

“The biggest problem is that we provide people with the tools of management, and not the imperatives of leadership.

“An MBA is certainly not the whole answer. It provides the tools, and everybody needs tools, but everyone needs to know why they are doing something, for what purpose, and what their role in that context is, and what informs them and drives them.”

Most of your staff members have never learned the art of generating positive aspirations, and then following them. They don’t really know what passionately motivates them, yet following aspirations that you really believe in is what actually motivates.

Your job as a leader is to show as many of your employees as possible that your motive behind the direction that the company is following, or will follow, will benefit them greatly. This leads to buy-in, which creates high motivation.

Having a clear motive, and being committed to it, is not enough. You need to know what direction to steer that energy into. Energy without direction can actually be dangerous.

Andersen says: “If you’ve got a common vision, you will land up in the right place. How you get there is sometimes the challenge. If the vision is clear, everybody knows where the target is. So, how do you get the buy-in at the bottom?

“Through communication, communication, communication, and then by the alignment of the incentivisation with the desired goal. You can never over-communicate, particularly in stressful situations like mergers or takeovers.”

Communication is the integration process. Make sure, however, that you not only communicate the vision (direction), but that you motivate the reason for it, as well as how integrating with it would benefit every employee.

Wakeford also commented about a leader: “It’s that person who is probably most connected to his or her values, and who says, ‘This is the direction we are taking.’ No-one else knows quite what to do. They are not really connected to the degree that they are willing to chart a course.”

A leader must be absolutely sure of what his personal aspirations, desires and motives are. He must be sure what in life, or in a specific situation, he values most. Such a person draws followers. All of us feel secure when the leader has confidence in the motive, purpose and reason for following a specific direction.

If followers buy into the motivation behind the direction, you as a leader will be able to uphold “Directional Integrity”. This simply means you and your followers feel the direction is an honest one, the right one to follow. The motives behind it are clear. There is openness in the air, which means it is a part of the culture.

Now, looking back at the universal law of movement, structure comes into the picture. You have a motive to get out of bed in the morning. You know what your direction to the office is, but how will you get there? What do you need to realize or give substance to your motivation and direction?

You will probably use your vehicle as a structure (resource) to actually “move”. The reason (motive) and the direction come to nothing if you have no means at all to get to the office. You need something tangible that will serve your direction and motive. If you don’t have transport, or if your vehicle breaks down, then the structure obviously does not serve you.

Once again, Andersen’s first statement sustains the universal law. He mentions that there are times that the leader must divert back to structure and make sure things are in place, before he can steer the organization back on course.

Vermaak says you have to look at the big picture “way beyond the company, perhaps even in an international context, and then bring that home and structure the company around what the possible needs are”. In other words, make sure the structure serves the direction and motivation.

I asked Andersen how the leader gets structure to integrate with direction and motivation. “I think there is no magic formula. Obviously you design the structure after you’ve got the strategy. You’ve got to keep continually challenging it.

“The first thing I did when I got to Liberty was to stop the regular meetings of various committees for two months, and then got everybody together again and said, OK what did we really miss? Which meetings were critical? Which were just excuses for people to make collective decisions and not accept responsibilities for their real jobs?

“I would say we kept 60 percent, but we dropped 40 percent. In our organization we try to cut the bureaucracy, and ask ourselves whether we really need these levels of controls.”

What he was doing was making sure the structure serves the leaders, and not the other way around. In other words, as a true profitable leader he fights bureaucracy.

So, what is the role of a leader? Your role is to aim not only to be a leader, but to become and remain a profitable leader who continually strives to simplify things in a world where complexity seems to take over.

I asked Cozens whether or not leadership is complex. “I think it is actually simple. I think people make it complex, but I don’t think leaders are complex. I think that leaders have got a simple way of cutting to the thrust of the situation. That’s what makes them different.”

She is so right. As a profitable leader you have to simplify things. See yourself as a “mover and shaker”. You have to move yourself, employees, employee attitudes and the organization to greater heights. You therefore have to implement the universal law of movement. You have to motivate, direct and make sure there is structure to serve the former two.

Profitable leaders adopt an integrative style in the process of arriving at the universal components of movement. Alan Woolfson (MD, Charter Life Insurance) explains a motive (reason) behind being an integrative leader well: “You know if you are a leader who is right 80 percent of the time, you can afford to be a dictatorial leader. The fact that it would be hard to retain bright people working under these circumstances is an issue, but most of the decisions made would be right.

“But with the incredible complexity of our work environment, a leader’s decisions would probably be right about 50 percent of the time. So, you can up that percentage by getting input from other people. The main thing is to get as much input as possible before making a decision, pushing up your ‘hit rate’ as high as possible.”

Russell Loubser, CEO, JSE Securities Exchange, is a positive and motivated person who believes a leader gets 100 percent output from his people when they run with an idea they feel they themselves manufactured substantially. The alternative is that they implement his idea only because they are told to do so. Such an approach, he says, leads to a reactive rather than a proactive culture.

The integrative (profitable) leader will achieve a healthy “report card” (balance sheet) at the end of the financial year. However, to get there he or she will make sure that relationships with all other stakeholders are moving profitably in the process.

In other words, employees will feel that they are benefiting or gaining from the movement. The clients or customers will feel that they too are benefiting.

The profitable leader will ensure he and the organization have a motivated relationship with each stakeholder by integrating aspirations.

From such a position, it will be far easier to ensure that direction is integrated, and also that the structures that will ensure movement are integrated. If not, the relationship with a specific stakeholder will not be profitable, and therefore movement will be hindered.

Remember that people who stagnate will become negative. People who do not grow will become negative. People who do not change will become negative.

In essence, people who do not move profitably become negative. Your saving grace as a leader is to refine the skills necessary to move your followers profitably.

Comments to: editor@leadingtoday.org

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About the author:

Adriaan Groenewald is managing director of Moditure and Co-author of the CEO Leadership Handbook.

The Moditure methodology for transferring profitable leadership skills is focused on the aspirations of the leader.
Moditure provide services in four areas:
1.Augmented coaching of the leader and top executives
2.Fostering a profitable leadership culture in the organization
3.Attitude management
4.Aspiration Integration of teams

You can check out their site http://www.moditure.co.za
Or purchase the CEO Leadership Handbook from www.ceoleadershiphandbook.com