caring more than others thought was wise,
For dreaming more than others thought was practical,
For risking more than others thought was safe,
And for expecting more than others thought was possible.
Those are the words of a community of people who felt connected, cared for, and challenged to do great things.
As HP has since shown, you can damage and lose such vitality. Historically, the problem with the Connected Leader model is that it is dependent upon the presence of unusually gifted people. When those people depart, the deterioration of vitality often begins.
With The Vitality Imperative, we make connected leadership learnable. The principles and practices serve those who choose the Connected Leader approach to organizational success. It is an important choice between two very different methods of control: the personal brilliance of a few or the connected contribution of many—a choice that can literally change the entire course of an organization.
As one executive told us, “I got to a place in the growth of this company where I needed to change. We had succeeded because a few of us were smart, vigilant, and demanding. That was our era of ‘hands-on control.’ However, as we got bigger there was a lot of unsupervised work going on and hands-on control was not enough. We’ve spent the last few years changing how we lead so the company continues to grow. These Vitality principles have helped us enter the era of ‘remote control.’ It has been uncomfortable, sometimes difficult, and well worth it. We are getting more done with less time, money, and stress.”
The Damaging Impact of the Superior Leader Model
We have analyzed thousands of employee surveys across the world and conducted live interviews with employees on six continents. We have discovered that when the Superior Leader approach has outlived its value, the employee experience includes three damaging impacts: fear, mechanics, and manipulation.
1. Fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of retribution, and general fear of disappointing someone in a position of power. When people experience fear, they tend to avoid conflict and suppress open dialogue. That lack of candor, as we will discuss later, is a major cause of waste, stress, and mistrust. Criticism and threat feel normal.
2. Mechanics are the rule. Rather than feeling supported by processes that make the right thing easy, people report how bureaucratic rules and habits keep them from getting work done. They feel dominated by out-of-date processes and measures that impede contribution. Those processes seem to lack a living spirit because they make employees feel like inanimate objects rather than human beings who want to help.
3. Manipulation results in widespread mistrust in the communication coming from leadership. Authenticity feels like the exception, not the norm. Leaders are falsely positive instead of open and honest about the problems facing the company and them personally. Leaders lecture employees about better behavior instead of demonstrating the behavior themselves. The company makes brand promises in marketing campaigns that feel nothing like how it operates day-to-day.
We are not saying that these leaders are committed to fear, mechanics, and manipulation; we are saying that the Superior Leader approach frequently generates these experiences as the enterprise outgrows the personal brilliance of its leaders. If any of your associates are reporting these types of experiences, it is good evidence that Vitality is at risk or already seriously damaged in your organization.
The Positive Impact of the Connected Leader Model
Employees of a Connected Leader organization report very different things than those of a Superior Leader organization. The former group reports a culture of energized high performance, which is The Vitality Imperative in action. When asked what explains their energy, commitment, and success, they report three things:
1. Community is a sense of belonging, rooted in common values and common purpose—the experience of being “in this together,” and looking out for one another on the journey to a shared achievement. In a genuine high-performance community, our differences combined with trust produce brilliance. Whereas most leaders only think about trust when it is at risk, Vitality leaders create trust ahead of time so there is always more trust in the relational bank when they need to make a withdrawal.
2. Contribution means making a meaningful difference. The enjoyment of contribution is deeply human. Have you ever stopped in the middle of mowing a lawn and admired the difference between the short grass and the long grass? We all love being valuable and leaving things better than we found them. When vitality is the norm, people report feeling like the solution rather than the problem. They feel recognized for their contributions and believe that their leaders work to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard in support of those contributions.
3. Choice is the victory of commitment over compliance. Each of us chooses to be devoted or not; it cannot be demanded. When vitality is present, people report thoroughly understanding strategy and priorities and personally choose to support success. They report a personal relationship to organizational values and adopt them as their own. This deep clarity and ownership lead to more decision-making discretion. Colleagues feel trusted, and it takes less time to get things done. Connected leaders have the awareness and skill needed to inspire committed choice rather than merely demand compliance.
Vital organizations reliably achieve more with less time, money, and stress. When that energized performance is present, people report experiences of community, contribution, and choice.
Betting on vitality, however, requires different awareness and skill than betting on personal brilliance and position power. For the last twenty-five years, we have appreciated that awareness and skill in leaders around the world, and we now know this: there is a design to vitality, and a committed leader can learn the design and put it to work—both personally and organizationally.
Fanning the Flame of Vitality
Eons ago, humans valued fire and yet could not create it. When lightning struck (literally), people captured the fire and tended to it carefully to keep it available for warmth, protection, and cooking. Keepers of the flame sustained the precious resource. When the fire went out, it was gone until lightning struck again. Eventually, we learned to create fire, not just catch it, and the human experience was transformed.
Vitality is a bit like that. Most leaders are grateful when it strikes but are not all that great at conjuring it at will. From our research into vitality, leaders who reliably create and fan the flame of vitality have organized their awareness and skills into seven promises that are divided into two categories: igniting vitality and sustaining it over time.
In our experience, the defining difference between those who employ the Superior Leader model and those who champion the Connected Leader model is the willingness to engage with and keep these seven vital promises.
Igniting the Fire
Igniting the fire of vitality takes creating the right conditions. Just as you can’t start a fire in the rain without the proper spark or without combustible materials, you cannot create vitality in an organization without inviting connection. This takes intention and commitment. In our experience, there are four key elements that create an environment conducive to igniting vitality:
1. Presence: Awareness without prejudice
Presence is to vitality what oxygen is to fire. Each of the other
