Leadership Lessons from Ajax the Seeing Eye Dog #3: The Importance of Basic Skills

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus”
Mark Twain

Ajax is now 13-weeks old and learning his basic skills of leadership for guide dog puppies.  Here is what is doing pretty well in terms of “basic skills”:

• Sitting
• Laying down
• Walking on a leash (with his guide dog bib)
• Sleeping
• Eating Fast

Here is what he isn’t doing really well:

• Coming when called by name
• Ignoring other dogs when he is working (walking with his guide dog bib)
• Not jumping up on things

In order for him to become an effective guide dog, these basic skills are essential and foundations for learning more complicated lessons and behaviors required to help a sight impaired person maneuver in their life. All successful guide dogs learn these basics or early lessons and become so proficient that they become automatic to the point of almost knowing when they need to deploy them.  Of course, like humans young puppies need to practice these behaviors in different environments and with different handlers to become “strengths” and allow them to learn new and more challenging behaviors.  Lack of these “basic skills” will tend to “derail” their leadership potential and future success to become a guide dog.

I see so many “leaders” today who seem to have never learned the basic skills of supervision, management and leadership practices.  Some have been moved from highly successful “specialist” roles where they relied on technical skills and competencies to roles where building teams, developing talent and managing day-today performance just aren’t done very well.  Great leaders also spend a great deal of their life practicing their craft.  In fact, one career anchor labeled by the management guru Ed Schein is actually called a “managerial anchor” which characterizes a cluster of interests, values, motives and skills that help enhance leadership performance, success and optimize satisfaction in that role.

Next week, we go to a big “open house” at Guide Dogs of America where puppies of all ages can “show off their stuff” and we can benchmark Ajax against the best of the best.  At least we will see how far behind or how far ahead he is relative to his own age group.  Again, Ajax has helped me to better understand what leaders really need to know–the “basics” that are just so essential for long term success no matter what culture they are in or whom they supervise.

We have a pretty well known leadership and management assessment called Manager View 360–it measures 20 competencies of leadership and management derived from job analyses of leaders in very diverse industries.  These 20 competencies are grouped into four clusters: 1) Task Management/Leadership; 2) Interpersonal; 3) Communication; and 4) Problem Solving.

We did a quick statistical analysis of over 17,000 managers in our database representing diverse industries to see which competencies were rated as the most effective and which were rated as the least effective from their managers, direct reports and peers.  Here is a list of the “bottom” five competencies which suggests where deficits of basic skills for manager tend to appear:

Manager View 360
Bottom Five Leadership Management Behaviors (N=17,025)

1. Conflict Management (5.22)
2. Active Listening (5.28)
3. Performance Management (5.32)
4. Leadership/Influence (5.33)
5. Involvement Orientation/Participative Management (5.34)

Interestingly, the competencies rated highest included written and oral communication, decision making, interpersonal sensitivity and planning.  These results suggest a “blueprint” for onboarding new supervisors and leaders particularly if they lack experience in the leadership role (e.g., promoted from a specialist or independent contributor position).

Today, talent don’t leave organizations as much as they leave bad bosses.  In my executive coaching practice I tend to find this same list of skill deficits that seem to present themselves when leaders are identified as “having potential” but struggling.  I’ve always wondered why organizations weren’t better prepared to help develop these core and basic competencies early in a leader’s career.  Some, like participative management, might actually run counter to what specialists who morphed into leadership got rewarded for early in their career (e.g., making decisions on their own, taking iniative without gaining consensus from others, using the “two heads are better than one” approach in problem solving).

Talent today also want leaders who can constructively confront poor performance, can manage diversity and differences in the workplace and to address the slackers who demotivate all of us and set a dangerous standard for the bare minimum of what needs to be done in a culture.

The most successful guide dogs tend to have just a streak of stubborness and self-confidence to be able to successfully adjust to what comes up in their environment (e.g., loud noises, traffic, street barriers, etc.).  They need to be decisive and take charge when necessary but do so in a participatory way to ensure that the person they are “guiding” reaches their destination in a safe manner.

Thanks, Ajax, for reminding me that the building blocks of leadership excellence are pretty easy to understand and develop in young and more established leaders…..I’m off with Ajax now to work on his “come” command when he strays!  Stayed tuned for more leadership lessons with Ajax….Be well….

[tags]guide dogs, seeing eye dogs, Guide Dogs of America, leadership, executive coaching, performance, layoff, social support, mastery, expertise, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, envisia, deliberate practice[/tags]

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)