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The Leadership Exam

The current economic downtown has forced us to look at our corporate leaders with a more critical eye. It is not enough for the CEO to project confidence internally and externally. In uncertain times, senior executives across the company are called upon more than ever to help ensure their leadership practices are creating confidence for investors, customers, employees and communities.

Are you doing enough? Exceed recently caught up with U-M Executive Education Professor and HR guru – Dave Ulrich – to draw on his insights and help you examine your leadership practices.

Exceed: Can you paint us a picture of better leadership?

Professor Ulrich: Too often our corporate leaders dutifully arrive at their offices every day but ignore leadership basics. In today's economy, senior leaders need to be selfless, transparent and honest. They need to not only know and understand the customer and financial markets they serve, but also learn and grow, admit mistakes and balance vision and action. And they must enable people to succeed, while allowing others to fail.

Exceed: How do you recommend senior executives examine their own leadership?

Professor Ulrich: While there is no silver bullet to success, business leaders can start by reaffirming and reminding themselves of these five leadership basics.

• Accountability. Leadership cannot be a derivative activity. It is accomplished by having clear accountability, transparency and stewardship of what should be done, by whom, and by when.
• Vision and action. Vision helps turn aspirations into goals and build values. However leaders must also act. It is their day-to-day behaviors that turn ambition into reality.
• Create value from the outside looking in. Translate external expectations into internal actions. Effective leaders can only achieve this by really understanding the customers and markets they serve.
• Learning and responsiveness. Great leaders acknowledge that they make mistakes AND then demonstrate that they learn from these errors. Learning comes from inquisitiveness, creativity, reflection and responsiveness. We need leaders who replace arrogance with a commitment to learning.
• Character. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need leaders whose judgment is rooted in values and integrity. Stakeholders need to trust that their leaders are “other-oriented” with less self-interest. Servant leadership begins with a foundation of character.

Ask yourself if you are living up to and going beyond the standards in each of these core areas every day. Are they serving as your compass for making decisions, helping you lead confidently and transparently?

Exceed: Is that enough?

Professor Ulrich: No, we need to go beyond self examination and demand better leadership from both business and government. As leaders, we need to hold each other accountable. Challenge and question our colleagues' actions. And, most important of all, live by a moral code that evokes confidence in the futures we propose.

Learn more about upcoming programs in Leadership at U-M Executive Education and gain the necessary skills to guide your organization through today's uncertain economy.

Have a question you'd like to ask the U-M Executive Education faculty? Send us an e-mail at kcalandr@umich.edu and the answer to your question could appear in an upcoming issue of Exceed.

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