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#1: Know the Condition of Your Flock
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Follow the status of your people as well as the status of the work.
• Get to know your flock, one sheep at a time.
• Engage your people on a regular basis.
• Keep your eyes and ears open, question, and follow through.
To be a successful leader, start with a “flock” of nine people and interact with them in much the same way that a shepherd interacts with his sheep. You won’t be promoted into an area where you’ll oversee more people until you do well with the nine you already have. So if you want to learn to be a great leader, learn the Way of the Shepherd.
If you want to be successful, learn how to shepherd people. The first principle of the Way of the Shepherd is to always know the condition of your flock!
A manager can’t manage what he doesn’t know. Make a point of knowing not just the status of the work but also the status of your people. Remember, it’s your people who get the job done. Your people are your greatest competitive advantage. Managers will say they agree with that, but often they merely give lip service to the idea.
When you check out the flock, do it one sheep at a time. They’re individuals, and that’s exactly how they’ll want to be treated. Each person who reports to you will want you to treat him or her not just as an employee but as an individual.
You need to discover their skills and interests. You need to know their goals and dreams, what motivates them when they walk through the door in the morning, what their career ambitions and frustrations are. In other words, make a point of knowing what things are impacting them at the moment.
How am you supposed to learn that? By engaging your people on a regular basis. Circulate among the flock at least twice a day. You’re going to have to get out and get among your people. When you do, keep your eyes and ears open and ask lots of questions. Most importantly, follow through.
You have to really care about your people. You can go through all the right mechanics, but if you don’t genuinely care about the people who report to you, you’ll never be the kind of leader they’ll drop everything to follow.
#2: Discover the Shape of Your Sheep
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Your choice of sheep can make flock management easier or harder.
• Start with healthy sheep, or you’ll inherit someone else’s problems.
• Know the SHAPE of your sheep to make sure they’re in the right fold.
When you consider sheep, to most people, they all look pretty much the same. A shepherd will tell you that you want a straight topline along with firm, straight legs with trim shoulders and a good width across the rib cage and chest. As a shepherd, your choice of sheep can make flock management easier or harder. If you don’t buy right, you’ll inherit someone else’s problems.
Just as each sheep has its own particular shape or makeup, so does each person in the company.
Here are the things to look for:
• S—Strengths: First, make sure each person has the skill set needed to do the job.
• H—Heart: While your strengths reflect your abilities, your heart reflects your passion.
• A—Attitude: You want positive, can-do people. Given a choice between talent and attitude, take attitude every time. People with a good attitude are usually team players. For another, they usually have a teachable spirit. People with negative attitudes tend to be lone rangers. (Check out my post entitled “Are you a lone ranger leader?”) You can’t teach them a thing. Star performers with an attitude put a constant drag on everyone else. The price you pay for their performance is constant agitation. People with negative attitudes can’t help but stir the pot. If you compromise with negative people for the sake of their abilities, your other people will learn their bad habits. One person’s bad attitude can spread like a cancer through an entire office.
• P—Personality: Change has become more and more part of everyday life, so be very careful about hiring anyone who has a low tolerance for change.
• E—Experiences: Note that Leman doesn’t use the word experience, but experiences. This last point is the most vague, but it’s important to mention. Each person you meet is a product of their life experiences. Often the key to understanding an individual and the key to knowing where to place him or her on your team is to learn something about the person’s various experiences.
If you want to find your calling in life, if, at the very least, you want to make sure you’re working in an area where you have the greatest potential for success, then take a look at your SHAPE and make sure that you’re a good fit for your job.
#3: Help Your Sheep Identify with You
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Build trust with your followers by modeling authenticity, integrity, and compassion.
• Set high standards of performance.
• Relentlessly communicate your values and sense of mission.
• Define the cause for your people and tell them where they fit in.
• Remember that great leadership isn’t just professional; it’s personal.
When you’re in a position of leadership, there are going to come times when you have to inflict pain on the people you oversee. There’ll be reprimands, poor performance reviews, and times when you have to let people go. You won’t want to do those things either, but you will if you’re a good shepherd.
You might ask, “How do you turn a collection of individual sheep, bordered by the same fence, into a flock?” One of the marks of a good leader is he doesn’t do the thinking for his people.
In your first leadership role, the nine people on your team are all going to ask themselves two questions. First, “Does he know what he’s doing?” And second, “Can I trust him?:
People long to follow a leader who is a person of integrity, authenticity, and compassion. That person will have the loyal following and trust of his people. Great leaders leave their mark by constantly communicating their values and sense of mission. They tirelessly call their people to engage in the cause. They know people are easily distracted by the many pulls of life, so they’re continually calling them back to the mission, back to their purpose for being.
Pick any great leader you can think of. General Patton incessantly demanded that his troops stay on the move.
Jesus relentlessly appealed to his followers to spread the good news of the kingdom. Lincoln constantly declared that the Union must be preserved.
You can’t make your mark on the people you lead unless you get up close and personal.
#4: Make Your Pasture a Safe Place
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Keep your people well informed.
• Infuse every position with importance.
• Cull chronic instigators from the flock.
• Regularly rotate the sheep to fresh pastures.
• Reassure the sheep by staying visible.
• Don’t give problems time to fester.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of people get up and go to work. They work in a neglected pasture, untended by the very people who are responsible for the health and well-being of the flock. At quitting time, they go home having survived another day, but they haven’t thrived. They certainly haven’t flourished. On the outside, they look just fine, but on the inside, they look like poor sheep.
The flock can’t be productive—it can’t produce the best wool and gain the most weight—unless the sheep get the rest and nourishment they need. One of the big reasons sheep look emaciated is because they are completely exhausted.
It’s a fact that sheep will not lie down and rest unless they feel safe from at least three aggravations. Address the three items and you create a safe pasture where your flock can flourish:
1. Fear: The flock must be free from fear. If you don’t feel secure at work, there’s no way you can do your best work. As a leader, you must do everything you can to eliminate uncertainty that’s distracting people. Do that by keeping your people well informed. If there’s bad news, let your people hear it from you first. If they feel confident that you’ll let them know as soon as you know, they’ll be less susceptible to the rumor mill. Keep your sheep individually informed, as well as the flock as a whole regarding their performance.
2. Rivalry: Rivalry gets people working against one another rather than with one another. You’ll often find rivalry at its highest where you find a lot of people fighting over a little. Smart shepherds protect their flocks from this through pasture rotation. They rotate their flock to fresh, greener fields. Rotate opportunities among the different members of your flock. That way they won’t feel a need to fight for them.
3. Pests: A pasture that doesn’t keep the sheep free from pests is not one where they can flourish. The presence of large numbers of flies and gnats is a constant source of irritation for the sheep. They won’t lie down unless they are free from pests. The people who will report to you will sometimes hunger for more responsibility or advancement, at times for more pay. The point of making your pasture a safe place for your flock is that if you don’t—they’ll search for one that is. The greener-grass syndrome not only ties up a tremendous amount of capital, but it puts an inevitable drag on productivity as we wait for newcomers to come up to speed.
#5: The Staff of Direction
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Know where you’re going, get out in front, and keep your flock on the move.
• When directing, use persuasion rather than coercion.
• Give your people freedom of movement, but make sure they know where the fence line is.
• Don’t confuse boundaries with bridles!
• When your people get in trouble, go and get them out.
• Remind your people that failure isn’t fatal.
The staff and rod were forerunners of the scepters used by ancient kings, which is most appropriate, since the rulers were called the shepherds of their people.
The staff is the most important tool the shepherd has to lead his sheep. There are four leadership functions the staff helps the shepherd perform:
1. The staff represents your responsibility to direct your people. A shepherd’s first duty of the day is to lead his flock out of the fold to find fresh pasture. The thing about sheep is they have a tendency to focus on the grass that’s right in front of them. Therefore, someone has to keep an eye on where the flock is going. It works the same way with people. They tend to put their head down to do their work and don’t look up again until the day is over. So someone has to keep an eye on the horizon to see where the green grass is. Know where you’re going, get out in front, and keep your flock on the move. Oftentimes leaders fail to win the loyalty of their people because they lead with the rod rather than the staff. The staff is the gentler instrument of the two. The shepherd uses it to direct his flock with nudges and taps, not heavy-handed swings. As a result, his sheep follow him out of trust rather than fear. When directing your people, use persuasion, not coercion. Instead of making pronouncements, make requests. Offer suggestions and ideas. Don’t dictate and demand; instead, advocate and recommend. Then, point the way by getting out in front of your people and showing them the way. And when people do mess up, rather than pound them into the ground, use the incident as a teaching opportunity.
2. The second function of the staff is to establish boundaries.
3. The staff helps the shepherd to rescue stranded sheep. No matter how hard you try to keep everyone together and headed in the right direction, some people are still going to wander off and get in trouble. It happens without fail.
4. The fourth leadership responsibility the staff represents is the shepherd’s responsibility to encourage his flock. Sometimes the shepherd uses it to separate a sheep from the rest of the flock and pull it in close to him. At other times he uses the staff to gently stroke the side or back of a sheep. It’s a signal to let a sheep know that it’s been noticed by the shepherd.
Nothing reassures the sheep more than the presence of the trusted shepherd. Good shepherds don’t forget to encourage their people now and again.
#6: The Rod of Correction
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Protect: Stand in the gap and fight for your sheep.
• Correct: Approach discipline as a teaching opportunity.
• Inspect: Regularly inquire about your people’s progress.
This is a necessary part of leadership that’s not so enjoyable. While the staff represents your responsibility to direct your people; the rod represents your responsibility to correct them. This is the part of leadership that leaders, particularly new ones, most commonly err on. If you use the rod too much or incorrectly, you’ll lose the goodwill of your people. Use it too little or not at all, and you’ll lose their respect. You can’t be a shepherd who engenders the loyalty and trust of his people, if you don’t get this right.
The shepherd uses the rod for three things.
1. Protect: He wields the rod to protect his sheep from predators. A good shepherd stands in the gap for his sheep. There’ll be times when your flock feels threatened. Sometimes they will feel endangered by circumstances. More often than not, it will be due to an aggressor. Trust me, there will be times when someone will be screaming for a member of your flock’s head. Let him know, in no uncertain terms, that if he had a problem he couldn’t peacefully resolve with a member of your flock, he is to come to you. Nothing saps esprit de corps more than a namby-pamby leader who tries to play both sides of the fence. Remember that when your people feel attacked, they need to know they have a shepherd they can depend on who will stand in the gap and fight for them. Do that, and your people will love you.
2. Correct: Shepherds often use it to protect the sheep from themselves. When the shepherd notices a sheep about to do something that could jeopardize its safety, or that of the flock, he uses the rod as an instrument of discipline. Some animals require the shepherd to speak in a louder voice. Sheep can be stubborn, rebellious creatures. Every now and then, you’ll find a truly obstinate member of your flock will require you to use a bit more persuasion than the other sheep in your fold. It’s about a course correction. It’s about sitting down with that person privately and saying, “Hey, there’s a bridge out ahead, and I don’t want you to get hurt.” You see: you discipline your people, not to harm them, but to keep them from harm. The key is to guide the person in a course correction without alienating them, and that depends on how you approach the conversation. You approach the conversation as a teaching opportunity. In fact, the Latin word for “discipline” is discipulus—from which we get the word “pupil.”
3. Inspect: The rod represents your responsibility to protect, to correct and to inspect. It’s your duty to regularly inquire about the progress of your people, because you’re responsible for developing them.
#7: The Heart of the Shepherd
THE WAY OF THE SHEPHERD
• Great leadership is a lifestyle, not a technique. Every day you have to decide who’s going to pay for your leadership—you or your people. Most of all, have a heart for your sheep.
• In all your ways acknowledge Him . . .
This approach to leadership comes with a high price tag for the leader. What kind of price tag? Your time, your commitment, your personal energy and involvement. It will ultimately cost you yourself.
More than anything, the Way of the Shepherd is a lifestyle of leadership that places great value on the worth of the flock.
It will cost you to get your people out of trouble when they wander off. It will cost you emotionally to wield the rod and to sometimes inflict pain on your people. You’ll have to do things you won’t particularly feel like doing at the time.
Great leadership is hard work. More than that, it’s unrelenting. Those who do it well do so because they are willing to pay the price. You need to know that going in.
A hireling is a person who tends the flock only because it’s a job. The sheep mean nothing more to someone like that than an opportunity to get paid. If you’re looking for the difference between a great leader and a hireling, look at who is willing to pay a price for excellence, and there it is. A hireling tends sheep for the money. A great leader does it because he loves the sheep, and that makes all the difference.
What makes a shepherd a shepherd isn’t the staff or the rod; it’s the heart. What distinguishes a great leader from a mediocre one is that a great leader has a heart for his people.
How you view your people determines how you lead them. If you don’t have a heart for your people, you’ll look at them differently than someone who does. You’ll see them as expenses and interruptions, and you’ll never invest yourself in them like a shepherd would.
The ultimate test of leadership isn’t setting a direction for your flock. The ultimate test is this: can you get your flock where you want it to go?
If you want your people to return loyalty and trust to you, you first have to invest your loyalty and trust in them. If you give your people halfhearted leadership, you’ll get a halfhearted following. But if you invest yourself in them, if you have a heart for them, your people will return your investment with a heartfelt following.
A company’s competitive advantage is comprised of the skills and knowledge of its people.
Since people today are concerned about quality-of-life issues, they’re careful about choosing which pasture they will graze in. So a key to maintaining your competitive advantage is to retain your talent.
The principles of the Way of the Shepherd still work after thousands of years because the basic needs of people have remained essentially the same.
Great leadership comes at a price that too few are willing to pay.