Boundaries for Leaders

182 Pages·2004·0.96 MB·English

by  Henry Cloud

DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my clients, with gratitude,
for giving me the privilege of working with you.
You are an awesome bunch,
and I am always inspired by all you do.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There is always a lot that goes into the writing of a book, a great deal of which is
the help you get from others. I would like to thank several people for helping this
book come to fruition: First of all, as I said in the dedication, I must
acknowledge my clients. You are incredible, and never cease to amaze me with
your courage, growth, talents, and accomplishments. As the pages of this book
show, you teach me every day, and I love every minute of working with you.
My agents, Jan Miller and Shannon Marven, are the wind in the sails of
every project. They keep it moving across the finish line, and are the bridge that
helps ideas get to bookshelves or, more accurately nowadays, e-readers. Thanks
once again!
My assistant, Alexis Randall, who juggles a lot of activity and creates time
out of a hat. Thanks for helping me get it all done, and for the care you show to
everyone we work with.
My publisher, Hollis Heimbouch, who is a quadruple threat: painless, yet
great editor; experienced publisher; personal-growth devotee; and maven of
business content. You are a great match for everything this book needs.
My family, who bring me constant joy, even when wrestling with a
manuscript is not so much fun. Thanks for cheering me up on those marathons.
And finally, my spiritual partners who regularly pray for me . . . thank you,
and please don’t stop!
CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
CHAPTER 1 The People Are the Plan
CHAPTER 2 Ridiculously in Charge
CHAPTER 3 Leading So Brains Can Work
CHAPTER 4 The Emotional Climate That Makes Brains Perform
CHAPTER 5 Power Through Connection
CHAPTER 6 The Gatekeeper of Thinking
CHAPTER 7 Control and Results
CHAPTER 8 High-Performance Teams
CHAPTER 9 Trust Makes Teams Able to Perform
CHAPTER 10 Boundaries for Yourself
Conclusion
Index
About the Author
Back Ad
Also by Dr. Henry Cloud
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
To get results, leadership matters. Leadership matters for an entire organization,
and it matters in smaller contexts such as in teams or departments. Because of
that, we often talk about leadership disciplines that are essential to creating
results and making it all work—disciplines such as casting a vision, shaping the
future, developing strategy, engaging the right talent in the right places, fostering
innovation and agility, execution, and more. As you know, all of these leadership
competencies must be in place for a vision to become a reality.
But . . . there is another truth. Leaders lead people, and it is the people who
get it all done. And to get it done, they have to be led in a way that they can
actually perform, and use all of their horsepower. Said another way, their brains
need to work. You can cast a great vision, get the right talent, and yet be leading
in ways that people’s brains literally cannot follow, or sometimes even make
work, much less their hearts.
I learned this when I began practice as a clinician. My first job was in a
leadership consulting firm, as they wanted a clinician to work with leaders to
help them with their personal and interpersonal leadership style to become more
effective in leading people. As a result, I fell in love with the topic of leadership,
as it relates to the people side of the equation. For three decades, that has been a
major focus of my hands-on work: listening to and working with leaders, their
teams, and their organizations.
What I have come to believe is this: while leadership as a discipline is very,
very important, the personal and interpersonal sides of leadership are every bit as
important as the great leadership themes of vision, execution, strategy, and the
like. For what actually happens is that no matter how great a vision or a strategy,
the leader must get it all done with and through people. And there are ways that
leaders lead that make vision and strategy work, and there are ways that leaders
lead that get in the way or ultimately cause it all to not work very well.
Leaders can motivate or demotivate their people. They can propel them
down a runway to great results, or confuse them so that they cannot clearly get
from A to Z. They can bring a team or a group together to achieve shared,
extraordinary goals, or they can cause division and fragmentation. They can
create a culture that augments high performance, accountability, results, and
thriving, or cause a culture to exist in which people become less than who they
are or could be. And most of the time, these issues have little to do with the
leader’s business acumen at all . . . but more to do with how they lead people and
build cultures.
It turns out, as neuroscience has shown us, that there are reasons for all of
this. People’s brains, hearts, minds, and souls are constructed to perform under
certain conditions and dynamics, and when these are present, they produce and
thrive. They think, behave, and perform to their capacities. When these
conditions are violated or not provided, people cannot and do not bring visions
and plans to fruition. And they all depend on the leader’s style and behavior.
There are several aspects of a leader’s behavior that make everything work,
and one of those is his or her “boundaries.” A boundary is a structure that
determines what will exist and what will not. In the 1990s I co-authored a book
called Boundaries, which laid out the principles of boundaries for people’s
personal lives, and millions of people have found the boundaries principles to be
transformative in their personal lives. As I was working with CEOs and
management teams, I began introducing those principles into how they led their
people as well. The results were always profound for their business results, as no
matter what role they played, whether a CEO, a VP, or a team or department
leader, the leader sets the boundaries that will determine whether the vision and
the people thrive or fail. The leaders determine what will exist and what will not.
Which brings us to the topic of this book, Boundaries for Leaders. While the
concept of “boundaries” has been a familiar term in people’s personal
functioning, there is not much written on it in the field of leadership.
That is what this book is about. You will learn how seven leadership
boundaries make everything else work and how they set the stage, tone, and
climate for people’s brains to perform. Literally. You will learn how to set
boundaries that:
Help people’s brains work better
Build the emotional climate that fuels performance
Facilitate connections that boost people’s functioning
Facilitate thinking patterns that drive results
Focus on what behaviors shape results
Build high-performance teams that achieve desired results
Help you lead yourself in a manner that drives and protects the
vision.
And you will be reminded that, as a leader, you always get what you create
and what you allow. So join me as we look at how to take charge and implement
the powerful concepts great leaders use to create organizations, teams, and
cultures that thrive and get incredible results.
CHAPTER 1
THE PEOPLE ARE THE PLAN
My client, CEO of a $20 billion company, looked at me with one of those
expressions that smart people get sometimes when something extra smart goes
off in their heads, the kind of thought that captures even their own attention.
Head tilted and eyes squinted, he said something profound: “You know what is
weird?”
“What?” I asked.
“Everybody out there is always trying to figure out the right plan. They
meet, they argue, they worry and they put all of their energy into trying to come
up with the ‘right’ plan. But the truth is that there are five right plans. There are a
lot of ways to get there. The real problem is getting the people to do what it
takes to make the plan work. That is where you win or lose. It’s always about the
people.”
He was right. Ultimately, leadership is about turning a vision into reality; it’s
about producing real results in the real world. And that is only done through
people doing what it takes to make it happen. So, as a leader, how do you get
that to happen? What are the things that you have to do to ensure they will do
what will make it work—with a team, a direct report, or an entire organization?
That is the focus of this book.
This book is about what leaders need to do in order for people to
accomplish a vision.
WHEN THE “PEOPLE” SIDE OF THINGS DOESN’T WORK
This particular CEO had come to me for help with his team. They had become
disconnected from one another, and their divide had begun to manifest itself in
the rest of the organization. At the root of the problem was a breach between the
leader of operations in the home office and the leader of the sales force out in the
field. Communication had broken down, and results were slowing down too—all
for no good reason, other than that the “people” side of things wasn’t working.
Even though the “plan” was good, the team was not functioning like a good
team, with shared objectives and healthy relationships that would help make the
plan work. Similarly, the culture was at risk, with negativity creeping in where
positive energy should have been. The dilemma for the CEO was that even
though he had a good “plan,” as he said, and he had “really great people,” they
were just not working together.
As I meet with leaders and their companies, I find that more often than not,
they have smart plans. They know their business, or they would not be where
they are. They are strategic, talented, gifted, and experienced. Their “business”
expertise got them to where they are, but as they rise to more significant
positions of leadership, they need other skills in addition to what their business
smarts can provide. They need to be able to lead people to get results.
What usually got them there was being good at the business, devising and
executing “the plan.” But now, as leaders, they also have to be good at
something else: getting people to do what it takes to make the plan work. It is
about leading the “right people,” empowering them to find and do the “right
things” in the “right ways” at the “right times.” That is what will bring a plan to
real results.
As one leader told me, “I wanted this position because I love the hunt, the
strategy, the winning. I love focusing on how to make it work and getting there.
But the longer I am at it, the more and more of my time is spent on the people
leadership issues, and less on the work. I have great people, but getting them all
on the same page and working together takes more time and energy than it seems
like it should. Some days I feel more like a psychologist than a business leader.”
How much time and energy it “should” take is debatable, but the key
takeaway is this: the time and energy that you do invest in people issues should
produce better results and create teams and a culture where momentum and
energy thrive. And the work of building a great team should feel personally
rewarding instead of draining. Put simply: the people side of it should not be
what he was experiencing. It should be an investment with a high rate of return
for you and for the business, not a constant drain on your personal and
organizational resources. It should produce positive, not negative, energy.
As a leader, you probably spend a lot of time on the “people” side of
business already—even more time when results are poor. You are always
building teams and culture, leading direct reports, driving initiatives and change
through your organization, and pushing for innovation, adaptation, and agility.
And what you want is for all of that effort to produce results, and for people to
be positively energized as they help drive the vision forward.
GREAT PLAN, GOOD PEOPLE, BUT POOR RESULTS