What Makes a Great Leader? By Russ Sandlin Over 120 associates recently participated in a leadership research projectat Julian LeCraw and Company of Atlanta, Georgia. Managing over 1,000 apartments in the Atlanta area, the firm sought to employ techniques that would maximize their portfolio's bottom line. They began with their leadership. Performance was evaluated using The Leader's Edge, a program developed by Dr. Marshall Sashkin. Sashkin, a Ph.D. of George Washington University. Dr. Marshall, a leading authority, has studied leadership for over twenty years. He's developed several programs designed to help organizations, such as JLC, identify the strengths of their leadership and offer insight into areas of improvement. Like many multifamily organizations, JLC is looking to the future with a desire to maximize management's performance, and leadership plays a tremendous role in meeting goals on both a corporate and community level. Michael Tompkins, President of JLC commented, "As we approach the twenty-first century, we realize we must focus more energy on our people in order to maximize our portfolio. Eighteen months ago, we initiated a full-scale training program in order to achieve our growth potential. We continue to look for new ways to use training and outside sources to empower our property supervisors and on-site associates, and to meet the needs of the changing Atlanta market." The Leader's Edge program was headed by The Russ Sandlin Group, also based in Atlanta. The Leader's Edge is a personal study and workshop that not only provides the cutting edge tips and tools to be a high-performance manager, but acts as a personalized case study of one's individual strengths and challenges as a leader in his/her organization. The finely-honed program includes clinically-based questions designed to pinpoint a manager's strengths and areas of challenge. To assure that the study is comprehensive, data is systematically collected from the participant's associates, including peers, site personnel and corporate supervisors, as well as the individuals, themselves. Robyn Lajevardi, JLC's Director of Property Management commented, "We chose The Leader's Edge because we wanted a program which would be interactive. It provided us the most valuable information in the most viable format." Russ Sandlin, President of the Russ Sandlin Group explained, "The Leader's Edge has been used by organizations on an international basis to determine the balance between transactional and transformational leadership skills. A group of "others" within the organization was chosen for each participant to offer feedback regarding their leadership skills." Dr. Sashkin adds, "Using 360 degree feedback, The Leader's Edge provides a reflective measure of yourself, both as a transactional and a transformational leader. It is important to recognize that these two styles of leadership are two separate and necessary dimensions, not the end points on a single leadership continuum. That is, transaction leadership and transformation leadership do not have an either/or relationship. A person might exhibit one, the other, both, or neither. A truly effective leader will typically demonstrate a degree of both transactional and transformational leadership." Using feedback from the Leader's Edge, JLC measured the skill levels of each subject on the following ten scales: Transactional Leadership Capable Management This scale measures how well the leader accomplishes the day-to-day basic administrative or managerial tasks that are necessary for any group or organization to function well in the short term. Capable managers make sure that people have the knowledge, skills and resources they need to get the job done right. Reward Equity Effective managers find out what followers want. They promise followers what they want in exchange for good performance and they deliver on their promises. This scale measures the degree to which transactional leaders make clear and explicit their goals and performance expectations, and how well they deliver on the rewards they promise for good performance and goal accomplishment. Transformational Leadership Behavior Communications Leadership Overall, this scale assesses the ability to manage and direct the attention of others through especially clear and focused interpersonal communication. Transformational leaders listen and pay especially close attention to those with whom they are communicating. They focus on key issues and help followers to understand those issues. At the same time they pay attention to and appreciate follower's feelings. They use metaphors and analogies that make abstract ideas clear and vivid. In this way, they are able to get complicated ideas across clearly. Credible Leadership This scale deals with a leader's perceived integrity. Is the leader reliable, keeping commitments and promises? Are the leader's words consistent with her or his actions? Effective leaders "walk the talk;" that is, they establish trust by taking actions that are consistent both over time and with what they say. Because they trust others they are themselves trusted. Caring Leadership This scale measures the degree to which a leader demonstrates respect and concern for others. Transformational leaders consistently and constantly express concern for others. They respect other people's feelings, which reinforces others' high self regard. Transformational leaders also value people's differences and let people know it; they see how an individuals' unique qualities and abilities can be used to the benefit of the group or organization. Creative Leadership Some would say that effective leadership involves a willingness to take risks. Transformational leaders, however, do not take undue risks, they create opportunities. While their actions might appear to an outsider to be risky, they are actually based on careful thought, including an assessment of the ability of followers to perform and succeed. Transformational leaders empower followers by encouraging and allowing them to accept challenges. However, they don't just leave it at that, they do everything possible to make sure that followers succeed. What they don't do is spend a lot of time and energy worrying about failure. Of course, even effective leaders may at times experience failure. When that happens, they use the experience to learn how to do better next time. Transformational Leadership Characteristics Confident Leadership Transformational leaders have a basic sense of self-assurance, an underlying belief that they can personally make a difference and have an impact on people, events and group achievements. Mark Twain said "If you think you can, or think you can't, you're probably right." Effective leaders believe they control their own fate. This scale measures the extent to which the leader possesses and displays this sort of self-confidence, and the degree to which the leader is able to instill the same self-confidence in followers. Follower-Centered Leadership Transformational leaders don't seek power and influence because they enjoy exercising power over others. Rather, they realize it is through the positive use of power and influence they see that group and organizational goals are achieved. Transformational leaders use power by sharing it with followers. They empower followers to take an active role in achieving group goals. This scale measures the degree to which the leader sees followers as empowered partners and not as pawns to be manipulated. Visionary Leadership This scale measures a leader's ability, to define and express clearly a future for the group or organization. This vision is derived, at least in part, from followers. Groups and organizations that perform well have leaders who have the perspective needed to deal with ambiguity and complexity. Such leaders know what actions are necessary to achieve the vision. They develop plans that extend beyond the present into the long term future. They also involve followers in the planning process. Principled Leadership An effective transformational leader helps develop and support certain shared values and beliefs among group members; that is what this scale measures. These values and beliefs reflect the important and fundamental issues faced by people in groups and organizations. The elements of principled leadership include: managing change (especially external pressures for change); achieving goals (including how goals are defined and their importance}; developing effective teamwork to get the job done; and creating consensus as to the values and beliefs that are important and should guide their actions. Amanda Pressley, Vice President of Training for JLC remarked, "Based on the results of this survey, each supervisor measured their individual feedback from the instrument and plotted their leadership style, based on their self-analysis and the analysis of the "others" feedback. By making a direct comparison of their self-evaluation and the evaluation of the "others", the supervisors could instantly identify individual strengths and weakness and evaluate the perceptual relationship between how they saw themselves and how "others " in the organization saw them as leaders. Additionally, Sashkin provided group scores for the overall organization." The nine models developed by Sashkin are designed to help the supervisors interpret their results: The Underdeveloped Manager With this balanced profile, no matter which direction one chooses there is a clear path to personal improvement. The Aspiring Leader The person with a profile that is average in each of the three areas of leadership is in an excellent position for growth and development. The Self-Actualizing Leader This ideal profile is unusual; very few people have extremely high scores across the board. Such scores are strong evidence that one is currently acting as an effective leader. The Organizational Architect This profile shows and individual who has both leadership and management skills. This person, however, lacks the ability (or perhaps has not paid much attention to the need) to develop a vision. The Strategic Planner A person with this profile is likely to be self-confident and have a clear vision for the organization. The Inspirational Idealist The person with this profile has a vision and the skills to communicate it to others. What Inspirational Idealist lack is an understanding of how organizations function and how to use their knowledge to manage change. The Pragmatic Manager This profile describes individuals who are good managers. They know the ins and outs of the organization and its politics. The Charismatic Leader This profile suggests that the person is able to engage in specific behaviors that transformational leaders use to get their visions across to followers. The Visionary Thinker A person with this profile has great ideas and may have a clear picture of how those ideas could become real in a group or organization. Sashkin says, "The Leadership Profile information can be used to analyze and modify your own leadership behavior, to further develop those personal characteristics associated with effective transformational leadership, and to consider how you might go about improving your transactional (managerial) leadership. The three overall TLP scores, and an examination of the specific scale scores of which they are composed, can help you develop your own leadership potential. Very few people score exceptionally high on the three overall leadership scores or on most or all of the ten scales. Nonetheless, even effective leaders can learn a great deal by acting on the information provided by the TLP. Moreover, it really is a matter of degree, not of "having it" or "not having it." Low scores are guideposts for action, not signs of failure. It is best to use low scores and especially discrepancies between how you see yourself and how others see you as indicators of areas where improvements can be made." After reviewing the results, Michael Tompkins said, "Often, when there was a difference between one's self and others' ratings, we were tempted to try to determine which was "correct". A more constructive course of action would be to determine why there is a difference and what can be done about it. For some issues, we may know ourselves better than the observers. On other issues the observers' ratings should probably be given more weight. In any case, large differences should be examined, since they can help us identify problems that impede our effectiveness as leaders. We will continue to use the results of this study to move our supervisors and our executive staff toward our combined goals. Through a stronger understanding of both our weaknesses and our strengths we believe we have the ability to communicate more effectively as an organization. The 360 degree nature of this survey has given everyone involved a lot of "food for thought" and "opportunity for growth." JLC group scores for the leadership profile are as follows: Transactional Leadership Self Assessment Other's Assessment Capable Management 55.48 47.49 Reward Equity 56.07 50.44 Transformational Leadership Behavior Communications Leadership 54.28 46.01 Credible Leadership 50.33 44.40 Caring Leadership 52.93 44.51 Creative Leadership 56.27 45.85 Transformational Leadership Characteristics Confident Leadership 55.49 49.43 Follower-Centered Leadership52.26 46.38 Visionary Leadership 52.53 48.02 Principled Leadership57.44 50.21 Russ Sandlin is the president of The Russ Sandlin Group, a nationally-recognized organization specializing in income-focused training and marketing for residential and commercial property. For more information on Resident Retention or other programs, call 800-535-8858. For additional information about the Russ Sandlin Group, visit us on the web: www.russsandlin.com or e-mail: theboss@russsandlin.com