We have heard a lot about resilience lately. Pressure creates diamonds – fire removes the dross and builds character.

I would like to expand upon the fire analogy and share a few thoughts with you.

If a flame is weak and gets hit by a big wind – it goes out. It’s clearly not resilient.

But if the flame has protection (e. g. a glass dome) and a big gust comes up – the flame continues as normal. The conclusion is that protection mechanisms produces resilience. I stood strong in the storm and was unwavering! It looks strong – but is it?

I would like to introduce a third concept – Adaptive Resilience. This time, when the big gust comes, it fans the flame, and it burns brighter, spreads/flexes, becomes hotter, and more effective. This is an advanced form or resilience – we adapt, grow and change – we don’t just stand strong.

The character of leaders is being revealed during Covid-19. They are leading in extraordinary ways at an extraordinary pace. There is no playbook – great leaders are adapting quickly and showing enormous resilience. They have been doing hard things – that have involved layoffs, furloughs and other cost cutting measures. This is never easy, and if you have not earned the trust of your people, they can be damaging to culture.

As leaders, we need to work on both personal and professional resilience. They are clearly intertwined – because to do better, you often have to be better. Leadership characteristics that spring to mind are authenticity, inclusiveness, being aware of impact, listening, openness, humility, and vulnerability.

The dark side of my analogy is that fire is dangerous. If a fire gets out of control, it can burn down the house! There are clearly some restraints you need to put in place to keep your fire under control, and here are some counter-intuitive actions that demonstrate how leaders adapt and flex, to become more effective.

My top 2:

• Strategic Patience. We are all going super-fast – we are in a crisis, but some things you can’t force, and leaders need to exhibit patience in the face of fear and panic. If you push too hard, you can burn the house down! So, you plant, you water, but you can’t harvest until it is ready.
• Leaders can’t know everything and need to ask for help, flatten their leadership structures, and empower those deep in the organization to be creative. “Help me!” – is what it sounds like, and that is OK. Folks prefer to work for authentic leaders. Asking for help, and trusting the outcomes, builds loyalty and commitment.

How has Covid-19 refined you? Are you growing, flexing, burning brighter, being strategically patient and vulnerable? Or are you about to burn the house down?

What have your learned about yourself and where do you still need to grow?

In the previous blog posts, I discussed various aspects of the ‘whole person’ and the first 4 levels of Leadership Maturity. If you have not yet read those, please visit www.tonyleng.com, as this blog post builds on the previous ones.

Maturity Level 5:

Openness is the hallmark of an ML5 person. As I mentioned in my prior blog, it is a hard place to get to; only about 10% to 15% of the population achieve it, and it typically only kicks in at around age 55. ML5 people have the ability to rise above themselves, take an objective view of their current paradigms, and are receptive to the paradigms, thoughts, and views of others who are unlike themselves.

At this level, your focus is on the growth and well-being of others. It is where we would like our top civic, political, and business leaders to be.

ML5 people are self-aware, self-reflecting, authentic, and rigorously honest – all of which requires humility: a hallmark of ML5 leaders. They seem wise and are not set in their ways. They still have the internal GPS I referred to in the prior blog, but they recognize its limitations: knowing that to achieve a desired outcome they might need to trust others, and work to build a new road/bridge that the GPS never envisioned.

They are grounded in, and lead through, higher order values: openness, honesty, courage, justice, selflessness, service, respect, empathy, authenticity, vulnerability, mercy, goodwill, kindness, and generosity. As you read this list you might think, ‘I have had these values since my 20’s’ – and you may be right. But the way that an ML5 leader understands empathy is very different. The values might remain the same, but your way of understanding and knowing them deepens significantly over time.

ML5 leaders are all about growing others – meeting others at their level, maintaining humility, being open to understanding the perspectives of others, and intentionally helping them move up (often at the expense of their own welfare).

Here are some of the differences between ML4 and ML5 leaders:

• Feedback: An ML4 leader uses feedback to RE-fine him/herself, as we spoke about in the previous blog, but an ML5 leader uses feedback as an opportunity to model receiving feedback for the lower levels. (By the time you get to ML5, you should have received enough feedback to not have any surprises). So, the ML5 leader demonstrates honesty, openness, respect, and gratefulness in receiving the feedback of others.
• Problems: ML4 leaders will tend to talk through the problem with staff, shape their thinking, help them solve it on a white board perhaps, or tell them what to do. An ML5 leader will focus on the developmental opportunity behind the problem. They may step back (even if they know exactly what to do) and potentially let someone fail (but they won’t ‘bet the company’), so that the person can learn.

Here are some things that can stop you moving from ML4 to ML5:

• Achievement of your objectives is more important than being selfless.
• Self-protection is more important than vulnerability.
• Maintaining your system (internal GPS) is more important than being authentic.

What can you do to move up?

• Set out to intentionally serve others and seek to understand the way they see and do things. We then start to realize that our way is not the only way.
• Ask your staff – what is the one thing I can do differently to make you more effective?
• Question your paradigms and embrace things that appear to contradict your current mindset. For example, if you are Republican, find a Democrat you admire, and seek to understand their perspectives. If you are a Christian, find someone of another faith, and seek to understand them. Find someone of a different ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and seek to understand how they view/experience the world. I am not asking you to change what you believe, but to understand and be open to the beliefs and experiences of others.

Hopefully you can start to imagine how the Cognitive Levels and the Maturity Levels play off one another. (You may need to go back a few blogs and refresh yourself on the Cognitive Levels). Note that it is almost impossible for someone to be a CCL 6 or 7 and be at ML2 or 3 – you almost have to be at ML5. At CCL7, you are considering the future needs of society – what institutions will best serve human flourishing – but if you are not open (ML5), how will you integrate the world views and paradigms of different societies and belief systems?

Minor editorial: There are a lot of challenges in society today because people have set belief systems and are not open to the perspectives of others. This is exacerbated when they get their sense of belonging and worth from a particular group, and polarization, plus a lack of willingness to meet other people where they are, has only made the world more divisive. Sadly, we seem to lack leaders who are capable of holding the tension and contradiction between different perspectives and building a shared understanding of how to move forward to a new and more inclusive place, while at the same time respecting everyone.

In the previous blog posts, I discussed how to understand the ‘whole person’ and the first levels of Leadership Maturity. If you have not read those, please go to www.tonyleng.com as this blog post builds on the previous ones.

Maturity Level 4:

At ML4, you take ownership of your life and become ‘self-authored.’ The average age for ML4 is around 44 – you can get there by age 35, but it may take until age 55 or later – depending on how quickly you have matured. By ‘self-authored,’ I mean that you have decided who you are.

At ML3, you were constantly looking outward for validation and decision making, things were ‘done to you,’ and you didn’t really take responsibility for your actions/reactions. At ML4, is it not where you are leading ‘to,’ it is where you are leading ‘from.’ Today, the ‘to’ is constantly changing as businesses rise, change, and adapt to meet challenges, and if your team is to follow you, they need to know you are authentic – that your values are integrated into your identity.

When ML4 leaders makes decisions, they look ‘inside,’ not ‘outside.’ It is not about, “What would so-and-so (boss, affiliation group etc.) say?” Instead, it is, “How can I look at myself in the mirror after making that decision?” ML4 typically comes across as gravitas – leaders know who they are, what they stand for, and are able to communicate that.

ML4 leaders set the vision, they self-initiate, and self-correct along the way. They are concerned with goals, standards, and objectives. They also show compassion for others without owning their well-being. Whereas, at ML3, we are so concerned about making the other person feel okay or good that a tough decision about having to let someone go is incredibly stressful or hard – see the ‘effectiveness transition’ in the prior blog post.

ML4 leaders know how to delegate – they grant others autonomy and help them grow. They use feedback to RE-fine who they are — not DE-fine who they are. At ML3, tough feedback can be devastating because it challenges who they are because they determine their sense of worth from outside reference points. But at ML4, the thinking typically goes like this: ‘Mmm, that part of the feedback is valid and useful, so I will work to up my game in that area, but the other stuff is probably more a reflection of the individual giving the feedback, so I am going to listen, be polite, and file it away.’

ML4 leaders are secure enough to listen to input from others, and confident enough to make decisions. They are OK with conflict and encourage constructive dialogue en route to a good decision. Here are a few typical things you will hear ML4 leaders say: ‘The buck stops with me.’; ‘That is something I am not willing to do – we are going to do the right thing.’; ‘Let’s agree to disagree.’

By now you hopefully recognize yourself – and can peg where you are. I do, however, want to make a few points clear:

• The journey is not linear. You move up and down on the line. I sometimes have ML3 ‘moments’ when someone says something hard to me, but I can recognize that and then move back to where I should be. This is normal.
• People mature at different rates. You can have a 35-year-old ML4 individual and a 55-year-old ML3 individual. Age does play a role, but life experience and how you interpret and deal with those experiences drives maturity. It is important to reflect on your life journey and how it has matured you. I often ask candidates to discuss a failure or hardship, either at work or personally – e.g. getting fired, huge work failures, divorce, being let go (laid off), losing a loved one, etc. – asking how they viewed ‘people and things’ before and after that event, and if they noticed a difference.
• Your position may not define your level. I have met bosses at ML4 who have EA’s at ML5!

Some final thoughts on ML4:

• It is where most C-level executives operate from – and is a great place to be.
• You have developed an internal GPS – you know how to ‘get stuff done.’ You are confident, effective, a good leader, and have gravitas. You plug the destination desired into your internal GPS and it gets you there.
• At ML4, you are successful. You have probably made good money, have a great EA who keeps the hordes at bay, belong to some great clubs/societies, live in an exclusive community, and hang with other powerful and successful people.
• But there is a trap. You are in an echo chamber and tend to screen out those ‘uncomfortable, dissident voices/trends’ – which would help you get to ML5.
• ML4 leadership thinkers move to ML5 when they realize the inadequacy of their current understanding and start taking a more objective view of themselves and their current paradigms.
• An older ML4 person often shows up as a ‘grumpy old man/woman,’ stuck in his or her ways, and lamenting at how bad things are getting. They are not ‘open.’

Now I have you curious about ML5, I will discuss the attributes regarding ML5 in my next blog post.

(Note: If these notes on Maturity intrigue you and you want to go deeper, I recommend Keith Eigel’s pioneering work in his book, The Map, and his work at The Leaders Lyceum, from which I draw much of this content.)

This blog post should be read in conjunction with the 3 prior posts – as they build on one another. Visit www.tonyleng.com to review.

All adults grow up, some more quickly than others, and the endpoints are often different. It is important to understand where someone is on their maturity journey, as it is an effective predictor of their effectiveness in the workplace.

Adult development has been studied for years by people such as Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg and Robert Kegan – and my particular favorite – Keith Eigel, on whose work much of what I say below is based. The basic premise is that adults mature with their cohort, at the same rate, but that the circumstances of life cause some to grow/mature quickly, and others to grow/mature more slowly. It is our experiences, and how we take perspective on those experiences, that drives our maturity growth rate. As I start to talk you through the Maturity levels, think back and see if you can recognize your journey, and how you matured from level to level.

We learn and grow from both positive and negative experiences – at work and in our personal lives. We are whole people who can’t compartmentalize and hope to be authentic. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it is the big personal events that mature us most: those that involve relationships, health, and finance (e.g. death, divorce, sickness, loss of job/money, etc.). While these events are painful, as we walk through the levels of maturity, try and think back to those events as catalysts for your personal growth/maturity. And don’t overlook the positive experiences: promotions, marriage, birth of kids, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind is this: adult growth is a bit like walking through wet cement. It is tough to not get stuck; but if we press on, we move forward. The challenge comes when we stop and the cement sets. At that point we typically need a big “event” to break up the cement and get us moving again.

The diagram below sets up the basic premise:

Maturity Level 1:

This happens from birth until about 8 years old and is not our focus. We pick up the plot at Maturity Level 2 because there are leaders who function at this level.

Maturity Level 2:

At this level, “It’s all about me.” We are typically at ML2 between the ages of 10 and 17, and life is pretty simple. We operate from our own self-interest, are selfish, and work to win – no matter the cost – there is no compromise. We only see things from our perspective, which makes life simple in a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” sort of way.

ML2 people are motivated by reward and punishment. It is appropriate for a 10-year-old – “If you pass with an A, then you can have a bike.” – but not so suitable for a 40-year-old!

Most people move to ML3 in their late teens after discovering that pursuing their own agenda at all costs limits their success, and they start putting themselves into the other person’s shoes. There are very few leaders who remain at ML2 – sports stars, rock stars, and individuals who inherited Dad’s wealth/business. The rest of us have our selfish instincts knocked out of us by our peer group – which brings us to Maturity Level 3.

Maturity Level 3:

At this level, we are “overwhelmed by outside influences”. This happens from high school through our early working years, where you are basically a portfolio of learned responses and outside inputs from peers, teachers, coaches, professors, bosses, political affiliations, religious/spiritual leaders, social media, etc. Our circumstances determine our well-being and we need to be known, liked, accepted, and included. It is a tough place to be.

What ML3 people stand for is limited by what others will think of them, and they are reliant on outside sources to make sense of a situation or know what to do. They have very high affiliation (to their group), are motivated by connections and acceptance, and unity of their group/team is paramount. They are defined by the roles and relationships they have, circumstances often determine their wellbeing, they seldom take responsibility for mistakes, and tend to blame others.

ML3 is not a great place to lead from, as we are so concerned for the wellbeing of others that we can’t make good business decisions. I interview a lot of people and allow candidates one or two “that is a really good question” statements; but if they say it all the time, I get concerned that they are trying to make me feel good – a typical trait of ML3.

There is an “effectiveness transition” as we move from ML3 to ML4. It is hard to be a leader at ML3, as we are so dependent on our outside influencers that making business-oriented decisions is stressful. This example may help: An ML3 leader who must let someone go finds it tough, as she is constantly worrying about what the person being let go (and others) are thinking because group unity, acceptance, and making sure everyone is “OK” are paramount. So, they tend to blame others; telling the person being let go they were told to do it, etc. They cannot have empathy without owning the other person’s well-being.

ML4 and ML5 are where we become effective leaders and I will unpack those two levels in my next two blog posts.

(Note: If you are enjoying the maturity level discussions, get Keith Eigel’s book, The Map. I borrow most of this from him and he gives tremendous context and depth to the subject.)

This is the third blog in this series. It should be read in conjunction with the first two before and ideally should be read in order, as they build a story. Go to www.tonyleng.com to review.

The ability to understand complexity can be roughly approximated with IQ, and we know that not all people have the same IQ. The difference, however, is that people mature in their ability to understand complexity (or use their cognitive capability) over time, and at differing rates. The yardstick that Elliott Jacques used to measure complexity is “time”- so using this construct, the complexity (time horizon) that a CEO deals with as she manages an organization is far higher than the complexity (time horizon) required of the person managing AR in the finance department.

Here is a useful diagram to understand Cognitive Complexity Levels (CCL) – set out below:

This diagram shows that at CCL 1 – the individual is focused on a task that should take between one and 90 days to complete. We all start our careers here. We then move to CCL 2 where we typically supervise several people doing CCL 1 work and manage a process that requires coordination as we move toward a longer-term goal (3 months to a year).

From there, we then get promoted to CCL 3 where we manage the entire system. For example, this may be the Controller of your organization who is optimizing the system that comprises revenue, cost, and profit. The controller works within this “box” to optimize and institute best practices to achieve the goal. She is not thinking about innovation or going outside the box; the task is focused on optimizing the box. The time horizon complexity here is typically 1 to 2 years.

Some folks happily spend their careers here. In fact, some folks are at CCL 1 their entire career – think of a master carpenter – and there is nothing wrong with that. But for our purposes, I am discussing a framework that helps us understand complexity within an organizational setting, so that we can better understand our own career trajectory and determine the complexity of the organization where we work.

Innovation starts to occur at CCL 4, where the leader starts challenging existing frameworks and product/market fit to create differentiation. This mostly happens because the leader is scanning outside her paradigm, to discover technologies/trends/sentiment (and anything else), that will cause market disruption or product differentiation. To extend the example above, the CCL 4 leader redefines/differentiates/changes the “box”. This kind of thinking requires that the CCL 4 leader have a time horizon of approximately 2 to 5 years so that the market will be receptive to the new product/service when it is introduced. We see many Silicon Valley startups that have totally disrupted industries in this manner.

At CCL 5, we typically find the CEO of an organization. This leader needs to understand how the whole system works, what innovation needs to be put in place to keep the organization competitive, and is focused on the wider stakeholder community, reputation, purpose, and ambition of the organization. I will give you the classic example. Uber (CCL 4) used new technologies to disrupt a stable industry (Taxi) that was optimizing at CCL 3. The senior executives were extremely smart but were not yet thinking at CCL 5, which got them into trouble, so a new CEO came in and made it clear that he was focusing on reputation and purpose. Here is an example of a typical CCL 5 purpose/ambition from Airbnb – “to help create a world where you can belong anywhere, and where people can live in a place, instead of just traveling to it.” With technology, this is made possible without investing billions in real estate. They were not necessarily trying to disrupt so much as trying to create a new world/paradigm of their own. The timeframe at CCL 5 is typically 5 to 10 years.

At CCL 6, we find the “Captain of Industry.” This individual has multiple CCL 5 organizations/divisions that she oversees. This leader needs to understand which organizations will meet the evolving needs of the markets in which they operate and make trade-offs as to which businesses to invest in, which to use as cash cows or sell, etc. The added dimension that a CCL6 leader brings is that her organization must act in a way (or develop products) that are meaningful to people and contribute to the betterment of society. This is where Corporate Social Responsibility/Purpose starts to fit in. (Example – a food company at CCL 5 moving toward nutrition and healthy living in CCL 6). The time horizon here is 10 to 20 years.

At CCL 7, the leader is concerned with societal progress. This is what I call the “Davos crowd” – where leaders should be thinking about how to make society better through institutions, organization, or businesses that help citizens from every culture flourish for the global good. The time horizon for CCL 7 is 20+ years – as they are addressing how the value systems of different societies, ecosystems, countries, and cultures can be harmonized for a better world.

The President of a country should be thinking at this level. Here is what one great CCL 7 leader said; “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela.

We don’t all grow at the same pace.

The other significant point that Elliot Jacques made, is that not everyone’s cognitive capacity matures at the same rate. Certain individuals might get to CCL 4 at age 55 and stay there; others may get there at age 35 and continue up to CCL 7.

Jacques spent time assessing people, identifying high potential candidates, and then nurturing them upward. Some of this will be addressed when I write about Leadership Maturity, but there is definitely an element of IQ in the mix. It is not surprising that really smart, mature people get ahead if their personality/values are requisite. There is, however, a dark side to all this, and I have seen executives derailed by a lack of maturity, humility, or authenticity who could have gone on to great things if they had matured suitably. So, the question is – how do you mature suitably? I will cover this in a future blog.

Why is all this relevant/important?

It is important to understand where you are, where your organization is, and where you can get to. As a leader, your task may be to push your organization forward and embrace new technologies and business models (move up in complexity). Or if you are joining a company, make sure you are a fit; not only from a values perspective, but also from a complexity and maturity perspective.

The next few blogs will unpack Maturity. The whole person will then come into focus.

This blog should be read in conjunction with the previous blog – as they build on one another. Go to www.tonyleng.com to review.

In my last blog post, I spoke about Personality and Values. This post will focus on Knowledge and Skills, and also touch on Complexity. In subsequent blogs, I will unpack Complexity and Maturity in detail, as they are crucial.

Knowledge and Skills address our education and work experience – which are most easily captured in a resume. Qualifications (and experience) help us land our first job and are often the drivers of our early career, but seldom predict where we will end up. They launch our career, but it is how we use our Knowledge and Skills, our ability to connect the dots, to deal with complexity and lead that ultimately determine where that career may take us.

There is almost an inverse relationship between Knowledge and Skills and Complexity as we move up in our careers – this is best described in the diagram below:

What this diagram conveys is that as we move up in our careers, our ability to solve future problems depends less on what we know/learned in the past, and increasingly depends on how we understand and interpret complexity. Taking this thought to its logical conclusion, disruption occurs when we are able to synthesize multiple data points (technology, societal trends, consumer sentiment etc.) and create new insights and business models, which challenge the current set of products and services, or ways of doing things.

We’ll get to detailed examples of this later, but to illustrate: think of the taxi industry, add technology (smartphones and location services), unused capacity (cars and drivers) and you get Uber. Someone connected the dots.

I don’t want you to think that Knowledge and Skills are unimportant. Life is a journey — our Knowledge and Skills are crucial and should be continuously advanced. A learning proclivity and curious mind are as essential as our ability to connect the dots, and we should always be attempting to master something new. You must be aware of the dots if you want to connect them! Always try to be learning something new – keep your mind agile. After all, how will you change your company if you can’t change yourself?

In the next blog, I am going to focus on Complexity. The number of variables that need to be taken in to account by a strategy executive compared to an AP clerk are vast. There is a way to measure different levels of complexity, and in the next blog I am going suggest how to do it, and why it is important for senior executives to understand.

One of the most impactful things leaders do is build teams – hiring other leaders and enabling them to deliver to their potential. We so often get it wrong, and when we do, it is seriously disruptive.

I believe that most people want to create value and do the best that they can, but it doesn’t always work out. People excel in different roles and environments, and it is a leader’s job to maximize potential by getting their members into the right job, at the right time, and then leading them well.

Success in a role is dependent on several variables: the ability to handle complexity, knowledge and skill, personality, values, and maturity. I am going to spend the next few weeks/blogs unpacking these variables, which will hopefully give you a framework to better understand your own career trajectory, as well as enabling you to more effectively hire and develop your own team members.

I want to say right at the outset that nothing I’m about to convey is either original research or original thought. It is a synthesis of the thoughts of the following leadership thinkers: Elliott Jacques and Fabiaan van Vrekhem (Complexity and Cognitive Capability), Jean Piaget, Robert Kegan, Keith Eigel (Maturity and Adult Development), Hogan, Belbin, DISC, Schwartz, and many other leadership gurus on Values and Personality. All I’ve done is attempt to simplify their thinking into a model that I can understand. Hopefully, you will too!

People are value creators. I like to think in pictures and here is a simple illustration of this:

This picture conveys the “whole person”, and in this series I am going to discuss each piece of this diagram so that you build up your understanding of what makes you, and others around you, effective.

In this first blog, I am going to talk about Personality and Values. They are important when it comes to “fit” for a role and integration into culture, but they don’t often predict long-term performance. Performance is more dependent on Knowledge and Skill, Cognitive Capability, and Maturity. Values and Personality can determine what kind of career or job is most suited to a candidate, but by the time they reached the executive ranks, they should be on a path that matches who they are as a person. For example, the typical accountant is introverted, analytical, detail-oriented vs. the typical salesperson who is extroverted, passionate, persuasive, etc. This doesn’t mean they are all like that, but personality, style, and values often tilt a career path in one direction or another.

Personality and Values:  There are a great many conventions/measures/tools to define these and I don’t want to debate the merits of one vs. another. I think you know the names: Hogan, Myers-Briggs, DISC, Value Preference Indicators, and Personal Value Assessments, etc. Take as many as you can.

My advice to any aspiring leader is to understand who you are as a person, play toward your strengths, work on remediating any weaknesses or derailleurs, and understand your impact. Be curious about yourself, constantly seek feedback and input.

Values are strongly tied to authenticity and trust. Higher order values can lead to success if combined with maturity and cognitive capability – which I unpack later. Here are some examples of higher order values: Openness, Honesty, Courage, Justice, Selflessness, Hard work, Service, Respect, Mercy, Kindness, Generosity, Authenticity, etc. I find it intriguing that the younger generations tend to index on these and I can’t wait for them to reach their full potential!

The more you know and understand yourself as a person, the more authentic you become, and authenticity is a key ingredient to success. If you want to read my blog on authenticity, please click here.

In the next blog, I will unpack the “Knowledge and Skill” aspect of the whole person.