Leadership Lessons Raising Our Guide Dog Puppy Rocco #4: Mastering Leadership Basics

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Abraham Lincoln

Rocco is now 14-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 really really fast

Here is what he isn’t doing really well:

• Climbing up on things (and people he meets)
• Walking on leash and not being distracted by leaves, sticks etc.
• Walking down stairs

In order for him to become an effective guide dog, these core 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 “core skills” will tend to “derail” their leadership potential and future success to become a guide dog.

In my executive coaching assignments I see “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 aren’t done very well. Great leaders also spend a great deal of their life practicing their managerial craft. In fact, one career anchor labeled by the career and organizational 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 specific role.

Next week, we go to Rocco’s first monthly training at Guide Dogs of America where puppies of all ages and their volunteer puppy raisers go for advanced instructions, tips and lessons to help the dogs master the core basics. From a leadership perspective, Rocco 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 competencyclusters based on job analyses of managerial positions in diverse industries: 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 on-boarding 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 basic skills, like participative management, might actually run counter to what specialists who morphed into leadership got rewarded for early in their career (i.e., making decisions on their own, taking initiative without gaining consensus from others, etc.).

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 stubbornness 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, Rocco, for reminding me that the building blocks of leadership excellence are pretty easy to understand and develop in young and even more seasoned leaders…..I’m off with Rocco now to work on his climbing up and down stairs in a controlled manner!….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)