The New American Leadership System™ is a complete system of management. It has a point of view. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It is truly a two-way approach in every way. It applies to you and those you manage. It is:
•Based on research and 30 years of experience in working with effective and ineffective leaders, managers and organizations.
•Not an easy-to-do-manual—not a fad — but a common-sense approach to victory.
•Hard-nosed. It is tough love in action. It ensures a mutual commitment to Empowerment. No nonsense and no surprises are expected and delivered.
•More effective over a long run than other management approaches.
•A product derived from the most successful high-technology managers, information resource managers, service industry managers, sales and marketing managers, international bank managers and Federal government managers.
What does it contain? What is it based on?
The New American Leadership System™ contains the essential concepts and skills for leaders and managers. It is Character-Based management. It is philosophy, processes, relationships, unique motivation management, performance management, Team Excellence™ management, constructive conflict management, interpersonal communications, and productivity and quality management. It also provides tools to identify and select managers, keys to improving the functions of management and practical ways to master stress and manage time to achieve your goals. It describes precisely the necessary skills to do the job. And it defines the six critical Principles of Leadership and the ten vital Qualities of Leaders.
It also provides tools to measure your progress on all of The New American Leadership System™ concepts and skills. The theory underlying The New American Leadership System™ is Theory L Management, which was developed, tested and refined with thousands of real-world leaders, managers and individual contributors. It needs you to use your heart and mind to make it work. You are on a journey with checkpoints along the way.
Enjoy it and you will be healthy, successful and in control.
A Look Back and A Look Forward
In our book, Beyond 1984, published in 1984, my son Scott, a Vassar College Senior, and I dealt with how close the USA came to George Orwell’s predictions in his own epic book 1984 published in 1953. The incredibly intelligent Vassar College faculty that provided portions of our book back then have been proven prophetic 26 years later on most predictions that they made in response to my request. I am proud of them as I re-read their thoughts now. I was also prophetic about one massive concept that I termed back then ... ‘Impersonism’. I saw it emerge in the 1970’s and apparently it is present in spades today. These are excerpts from the book:
“Most people now spend most of their waking lives at some kind of work. One view of working and personal life in this year, 1984, is that it has become impersonalized. The excellent corporations seem to be the ones that have minimized this trend.” [Peters & Waterman: In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper Row, 1982]
“Yet the others prevail. They tend to be characteristic of high-level management that has lost touch with the human needs and the creative energies of the people down below. And so, important decisions affecting so many lives are made impersonally. Robert Townsend has made this point effectively in Further Up the Organization.” [Townsend, Robert: Further up the Organization. New York: Knopf, 1984.]
“We see that in 1984 people need a more personalized and participative connection to their lives and work. Years of divorce, television, loud music, drugs and the mobility and non-availability of parents have caused ‘Impersonism.’ Guidance, coaching, and feedback have been replaced with ‘doing’ many things without solid, authentic relationships. People have adapted. They do not expect too much from their leaders in government and organizational life.
“In 1957, S.I. Hayakawa predicted that there would be places where people would go for sex without communication, and Plato’s Retreat came into reality in the 1970’s. They would not expect good relationships, he predicted. Has that come to pass? He believed, then, that extreme amounts of television watching would pull people away from each other. Many people have fallen into television viewing as a simple, relaxing alternative to personal relationships. Relationships at work or at home take work while television does not. Surely it has some merit and value. Yet a good thing taken to the extreme can and will become a weakness, and it has become that for many.”
What Is Impersonism?
It is the inability and/or unwillingness to see human relationships as crucial in work, business, and family life, church and in social settings. Technology today flourishes as does impersonal leadership in politics, finance, service and most human endeavors. In the book I was optimistic because I believed that people were vigilant to the phenomenon but now, I see that I was wrong, as I review leadership in technology-based companies. There are dramatic exceptions to this generalized observation. Only with the herculean leadership and management in some of the outstanding companies referred to in this NALS course did we see ‘Impersonism’ beaten. It is our hope that many ... not few managers will see the need to provide and promote NALS as the solution to ‘Impersonism’ in organization life for today and all time. It seems obvious, as I talk with 25-38 year old people who earn a living wage that they strongly feel that they have missed some basic education in learning how to communicate with peers and colleagues, customers and clients, neighbors, family, relatives and friends. Instead of nasty e-mails and simple, non-personal conflict resolution through text messages there are ways to be more effective. These ways are found inside this course in ideas, concepts, skills and stories. Assimilate them and live long to prosper.
Theory L Management
The Theory L Management concept is built on an old premise. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It requires sensitivity to the other person, who, though he/she reports to you, is a fellow human being.
Does Love Work Better Than Fear?
We have found that leaders who practice love have greater success over the long run than leaders who practice fear. We have also found that some managers are afraid to practice love. They tend to fear it and its positive motivational power.
Theory L Management is founded on Caring, Respecting, Accepting, Valuing, Encouraging and Understanding. It applies downward, upward, to the side and outside the organization. It is not soft. It is hard-nosed in its application. It does not mean touchy-feely behavior, just common decency and Business Common Sense™. We elaborate on Caring, Respecting, Accepting, Valuing, Encouraging and Understanding in the section on Relationship Excellence™ and how a leader establishes a winning Zone of Commitment™.
The Future Direction of Leadership
There is more than enough fear among people at work as we approach the working world well into the twenty-first century.
Leaders, managers and employees all want to be treated according to Theory L Management. People who are treated in a way that is Caring, Respecting, Accepting, Valuing, Encouraging and Understanding tend to return that same behavior to their leaders.
