Leadership as performance art

Note: This originally appeared as a client and colleague e-letter.

March 28, 2014


Dear Clients and Colleagues:

With new seasons come new inspirations. Or at least that's the hope. This year's winter weather has been enough to make anyone want to flip the switch on more daylight.

One of the joys of constantly searching for better narrative is when someone you've known for a long time brings a fresh unexpected perspective. This person recently sat down over coffee to extol the value of performance art as a differentiator in leadership. Performance art? Really? What do you mean?

Well, for starters, it's knowing when it's time to perform and knowing when it's time not to, which usually involves active listening. In this friend's words, "how to work the room" vs. when not to. This is fast becoming a dying art in leadership circles as more rise from financial ranks and other places that value tangible competency over the often intangible ability to connect to the occasion. We throw around the term, "authentic" so much now that's getting harder to discern who is and who isn't. Twitter doesn't seem to help with this endeavor. Capacity for performance art is having informed awareness both of who you are vs. who you are not and why you're present in a situation in the first place. It does not mean peforming only to gain an unseen advantage as some who think they should already be CEO often do.

The next step is understanding what the actual performance requires and being prepared for that moment enough to the point where balance is struck vs. going too far to the extreme of performance for performance sake. How many times have you sat through long winded speeches that try to find a point of view without ever doing so? Questions that make the points are always effective tools, but mastering that skill requires curiosity, another fading factor in the equation.

Back to my friend who has worked in several different Fortune 500 companies all with different sets of leadership. The leader who performed the best turned out to be the one who presented the strongest capacity for relationship, trust and access when it mattered the most (read this last part carefully, always being accessible isn't the same thing as access.) This CEO's story also was original without the need for fabrication and included being passed over for a major job prior to filling the role that would prove to be his crowning achievement. Granted it doesn't always work out that way, but this example provided pause.

Here is the inspiring part. My friend felt so strongly about the leader's influence that he wrote to him when his son graduated from high school, thanking his former boss for helping make it possible through jobs that compensated well enough to fund the kid's college education. In an age when it's easy to criticize and judge leaders, this story proved to be quite refreshing. There are countless others out there where individuals are making a big difference in the lives of those who work tirelessly for them. Gratitude is truly a two-way street even long after the transaction, which in this case, was a long-term job.

This is the lost story of leadership. Those leaders willing to make difference, be in relationship and fully invested in people will always rise to the occasion; the ones who don't won't because they can't get out of their own way. Or least that's my belief. Something tells me when that belief goes away yours truly will follow suit.

Happy Spring and thanks for reading. My perennial hope is that the messages contained here help make a difference with what you may be facing. All the best,

Jeremy C. Garlington
Point of View LLC
4060 Peachtree Rd./Suite D-#117
Atlanta, GA, 30319
Phone: 404-606-0637
Email: jeremy.garlington@hotmail.com
TGR web log: www.povblogger.blogspot.com