Leaders Set the Tone

As with everything else in the workplace, leadership is constantly evolving. The problem, Blanchard CEO Scott Blanchard told attendees at his Monday afternoon session at ATD25, is that many organizations today don’t understand how leadership creates value.

That fundamental misunderstanding creates a loop that’s difficult to break.

“Companies are underinvesting in people,” Blanchard said. “It’s this vicious circle. If you don’t understand how leadership fundamentally works and how it draws value, and if you can’t share that language that a CFO can understand—business terms—then they’re not going to see the value.”

Blanchard has been working on this particular presentation for 26 years, dating back to when a major retail client stopped working with his company. Since then, he is determined to figure out how to communicate to “cranky CFOs” why leadership is important and how it works—leaders are more apt to make smart business decision when they have all the information. Blanchard believes that, with such information, his client would have stayed.

There are two types of leadership, explained Blanchard: strategic and operational. Strategic leadership concerns vision, culture, and strategic imperatives. Operational leadership, on the other hand, concentrates on execution, priorities, systems and processes, and behaviors.

“It’s not popular to tell your CEO or chief executive that the value [leaders] add on a negative basis directly correlates with [company] success,” he admitted. “But on a positive basis, strategic leadership is there to influence operational leadership.”

Blanchard called operational leadership the “fundamental lynchpin” of every organization. Essentially, operational leaders need to understand how and what motivates people from a neuroscience perspective.

“If you have employees who have high levels of engagement, they’re performing well, and they’re providing nothing but value, they’re not providing friction,” Blanchard noted. “When great leaders are present, the friction seems to go away because they eat the friction for breakfast.”

Employees who don’t feel safe, valuable, and useful can’t behave in a selfless way, which hurts the entire company.

“It matters that our leaders are accessible and human,” Blanchard stated. “The key to being a really great leader is you have to trust people before they’ve earned your trust.”

Read more about ATD25 at conferencedaily.td.org.