Character, Competency & Commitment: Leadership Lessons of Lombardi, Daniher & Seijts
I find leadership fascinating; good leadership, poor leadership, it’s all a wonderful rabbit hole to fly down. As I’m sure is true for many of you, it is the stories of leadership that resonate most strongly. Models of Leadership provide one way in which to explore what it takes to be a quality leader — and they can be found in abundance, from self-help books to academic research. This article explores three such models; one is a story-based model built as an amalgamation of reflections from industry experience, one comes from an academic research paper developed via survey of top executive leaders in a variety of business fields, and the third, whilst not designed as a model of leadership, provides some powerful insights into how we can transform our experience.
In Gridiron Genius (2018), author Michael Lombardi explores what it takes to construct a team and to win at the “highest level”; Lombardi extrapolates his learnings from tutelage under some of who he refers to as the ‘Great Men’ of the National Football League (NFL) to broader success. Lombardi defines the characteristics of great leaders as follows: Command of the Room (ability to engage, to build connection and to influence by presence), Command of the Message (ability to communicate in a context-specific manner), Command of Self (ability to hold your own self accountable — not to be confused with fake humility), Command of Opportunity (ability to process, reflect and iterate based on what has either just happened or what is in-front of you) and, Command of the Process (ability to understand the goal, devise a structured and balanced / equitable approach to work towards this goal, and be unwavering in the pursuit of this). An important element of Command of the Process is the ability to set aspirational goals (a topic for another article perhaps). As NFL coaches, ultimately the ‘Great Men’ that Lombardi is reflecting on, the Bill Walsh’s and Belichick’s of the world, they are working towards winning, however, the difference perhaps is more that they were not short-sighted in this pursuit — they did not look to design a process that was tailored to a single season, but rather was aspirational in a quest for legacy-defining success.
There are parallels between Lombardi’s discussion and those of Seijts, Gandz, Crossan and Reno (2015) in Character matters: character dimensions’ impact on leader performance and outcomes. The model that Seijts et al put forward explores Character (defined as values, virtues & traits — Lombardi’s Command of the Room & Self) + People Competencies (Lombardi’s Command of the Room & command of the Message), Organisational Competencies (Lombardi’s Command of the Room, albeit in a different context), Business Competencies and Strategic Competencies (Lombardi’s Command of Opportunity and Command of the Process), and Intellect + Commitment (aspiration, engagement & sacrifice — Lombardi’s Command of Opportunity) as one model to understand and explore effective leadership.
A cross-exploration of survey, literature review and measures of character led Seijts et al (2015) to identify 11 character elements (Figure 2).
In discussing their survey of executives about Character, Seijts et al (2015, p. 70) note that “Across the five measures of leader performance, Drive, Accountability and Integrity stood out” as the most frequently highest ranked, while “Drive, Accountability, Integrity and Judgement” were seen as those most beneficial. Interestingly, considering the differing nature of leadership positions, whilst “Transcendence scored lowest across all performance measures”, it was both Transcendence and Courage that were seen as more beneficial by executive leaders relative to the leadership of leaders. Seijts at all conclude discussing the notion that character development is where good leaders start their process, noting that
“Character is developed over one’s lifetime, and individuals can enhance the development of character through goal setting, deliberate practice and reflection… every situation that we encounter in our personal or professional lives offers opportunities to exercise, apply and develop character. Developing good leadership is a lifelong journey.”
Recently, I re-read Neale Daniher’s beautiful reflection ‘When All Is Said & Done’. As I had the first time round, I laughed, cried and pondered as Neale steps the reader through his journey; allowing us all insight into the lessons he wishes to pass onto his grandchildren.
Daniher has led in all areas of his life: as a young man playing country footy, at Assumption College as a border and leader of their football team, as a player in the VFL/AFL competition for Essendon, and since as an AFL coach, executive and now leader of the FightMND Campaign. There are 25 chapters in When All is Said & Done, all filled with enthralling anecdotes from Daniher’s life, and with the theme of each being reflective of what Daniher identifies as important in living our best lives. Many of these chapters would fit in a leadership manual: Chapter 1 — Hold your beliefs to the Bunsen burner, Chapter 6 — Grow through what you go through, Chapter 8 — Sometimes being smart is admitting you don’t know something, Chapter 13 — Stuff it, do it anyway, Chapter 23 — Success is never final, failure never fatal.
In Chapter 6 — Grow through what you go through — Daniher introduces through stories of his life, what he refers to as the ‘four modes’ of life: survive, strive, thrive & arrive. It is through recognising these modes and regulating the engagement of our ego, Daniher argues, that we are truly able to experience life, and thus lead. He asserts that at first we need to survive the new outside of our previous experiences, then we can move to strive (self at centre) or thrive (beyond self; a cause as our central focus), with our final space being to arrive; to live fully in the moment, with an acceptance that you can’t change the past, and that the future does not exist as yet. Feser, Mayol and Srinivasan in their 2015 study “Decoding leadership: What really matters” identified 20 top kinds of ‘leadership behaviour’; from these they further identified the top 4 behaviours that account for “89 percent of leadership effectiveness”: be supportive, operate with strong results orientation, seek different perspectives, and solve problems effectively. It is Daniher’s assertion that without being in thrive mode, we are unable to truly exhibit such leadership characteristics.
Daniher, by his own reflection, miserably failed to exemplify these qualities in his leadership at a VFL/AFL level of Essendon. In 1981, at the age of 20, he was appointed captain by the coach, another VFL/AFL great, Kevin Sheedy. He notes in Chapter 8 — Sometimes being smart is admitting you don’t know something — that Sheedy was looking for “an agent of change — generational change — and was trying to send a message to some of the established players who enjoyed a good time socially and were not necessarily fussed about the making the slight changes required to become elite” (pg 102). Daniher reflects that his leadership style at the time was to lead by actions as opposed to words, but now “feeling enabled by a position of authority, I went from thinking it to saying it. And that was very unwise” (pg 105). It is towards the end of this stanza about leadership that Daniher makes possibly his most profound reflection about leading:
As a player and briefly as Essendon captain, my ego told me not to show vulnerability… it takes courage to be vulnerable” (pg 106).
Chapter 8 goes on to reflect on the leadership style of Kevin Sheedy, and Daniher reflects that Sheedy was a “vibrant reminder about the difference between acquiring knowledge and gaining wisdom” (pg 109), through the passion he held for the game and for problem solving. It is a poignant difference.
There is little doubt that Daniher, as leader and public-face of the FightMND Campaign, embodies this ‘Great [Person]’ competency that Lombardi discusses; few would contest that his profile and the manner with which he openly leads conversations about vulnerability and ego (Command of the Message) are significant contributors to the Big Freeze campaign raising in excess of $3mil annually. He has shown great capacity to adapt to his context as it shifts and changes, both positionally and with his diagnosis, and he actively re-established himself by framing his new context. Neale Daniher in When All is Said & Done is raw and humble; and through his journey and reflections on life, inspires deeper thinking about the character that underlies genuine leadership in any aspect of life.
Seijts et al (2015) conclude their paper with a powerful statement:
“We need individuals who demonstrate a disposition to lead regardless of the position they hold. Competence alone is not enough. Individuals need to develop strength of character to fully engage their competencies and activate their leadership to reach their full potential.”
The activation of leadership occurs through the development of character — this notion has me buzzing!
Summary
1. Lombardi’s 5 Commands of Leadership:
a. Command of the Room
b. Command of the Message
c. Command of Self
d. Command of Opportunity
e. Command of Process
2. Seijts et al (2015) assert that character is where great leadership starts. These are your values, your virtues and your traits, which can be, and need to be, developed over time.
3. Neale Daniher provides a model for lived leadership development, and his reflections provide a powerful guide for us about the importance of moving to a stage of arrival; that is, we have the capacity to be fully immersed in the present and connected to our tribe around us.
I’d love to connect and to continue the conversation.
T: @DLinoss