Vince Molinaro - The Leadership Contract: The Fine Print to Becoming a Great Leader

CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013 by Vince Molinaro (of Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions). All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Molinaro, Vince, 1962

The leadership contract : the fine print to becoming a great leader / Vince Molinaro.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9781118635575 (cloth); ISBN 9781118714782 (ebk); ISBN 9781118714744 (ebk)

1. Leadership. 2. Organizational change. I. Title.

HD57.7.M635 2013

658.4092dc23

2013010403

For Liz, Mateo, Tomas, and Alessia

INTRODUCTION

A former industry-leading innovator in the technology sector loses its market dominance in a matter of months and now struggles to survive. The chief executive officer (CEO) of a large retailer is forced to resign after having an inappropriate relationship with a coworker. The founder and chair of the board of the same company is pushed out after its revealed that he knew about the relationship and did nothing to inform the board. It seems that stories of corruption and scandal are now so commonplace that we dont even react anymore. Our sense of trust and confidence in senior leaders has been eroded. Survey after survey finds employee engagement is chronically, cripplingly low. Managers say the new generation of workers is unmotivated and feel entitled, while members of Generation Y say theyre simply not interested in rising through the ranks in the traditional way. Meanwhile, you and your colleagues feel overworked and pulled in about a dozen different directions at once.

These arent separate problems. I believe theyre all part of one crisis, a crisis that companies worldwide are spending an estimated $60 billion trying to solveand getting nowhere.

Its a crisis in leadership.

At a moment when our world is more complicated than ever, is changing faster than ever, and is more radically transparent than ever, we desperately need our leaders to be stronger than ever. And theyre not. Theyre failing us. And were becoming disillusioned.

Ive been studying leadership for 25 years. As an employee Ive worked for some great leaders and some who were not so great. I know firsthand the effect leadership has on employee engagement and organizational performance. As a consultant, Ive worked with thousands of leaders and hundreds of organizations. And Ive held leadership roles, and I currently hold an executive position at Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions. I know at a personal level how challenging leadership can be if you want to do it well on a consistent basis. I also know how great it can be when you get it right.

I talk to leaders every day who know that the world has changed for them. Some feel they are not keeping up. Others believe there is something fundamentally wrong with how we have come to think about leadership. They know their organizations are struggling just to stay abreast of a changing world, and they know that in their desperation theyre settling . When everything on your to-do list is urgent, things such as inspiration and motivation seem like luxuries. You feel like the leadership parts of your role are just that: parts, something separate that you do from the corner of your desk.

But leadership is not a luxury. You cant settle, or you risk becoming lame. Your organization needs great leaders at all levels, now more than ever. You need to be the best leader you can possibly be. The issue is that leadership has changed, and you are now under more pressure than ever before. Lets look at a few of the big ones: