Breakthrough Leadership: How Leaders Unlock the Potential of the People They Lead

By Terry Lee

This book is an introduction to breakthrough leadership. It is a new frontier in leadership because it is concerned not only with what leaders do but also with the impact they have on the people they lead. It is based on a decade of applied research into three key issues:

What is it that leaders do to inspire the people they lead? What are the impediments to the development of potential that these leaders help their people to break through? How can organizations build competitive advantage by unlocking this potential in their workforce?

In essence, breakthrough leadership is the process by which leaders inspire their followers to grow, to perform, and to develop more of their potential. They do this by helping them to remove the impediments to that development. A great deal of the limitations that people experience in their work is self-imposed and related to self-limiting thinking. This book identifies the six distinctive behaviors that leaders adopt, which can help their people to break through this self-limiting thinking.

Organizations today have moved toward performance cultures in their search for growth. Managers globally have been trained in the skills of performance leadership, and as a consequence, there have been great gains in productivity. The next productivity leaps for organizations will come from realizing the untapped talent that exists in the workforce. This book is the culmination of a decade of work with companies such as CSL, Cisco Systems, Wesfarmers, and Fuji Xerox into change and transformational leadership.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490796307

Terry Lee

“Terry Lee is a leadership psychologist and global specialist in breakthrough leadership and the role purpose and inspiration play in unlocking human potential.  In this book he describes how his latest research discovered six key practices that leaders use to breakthrough the self-limiting beliefs that block development in the people they lead. He also explodes the myth that the breakthrough process relies on having sufficient motivation to unlock potential, and shows that it is inspiration that ignites the human spirit and fuels transformational change. The book applies positive psychology and makes the case that most of the limitations that people experience in their development are self-imposed and related to self-limiting thinking; failure to achieve potential is not due to a lack of ability, but rather a lack of belief in ability. Lee outlines six steps, simple in practice, but powerful in combination, that he has seen leaders take as they make the shift to breakthrough leadership.”

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Copyright 2019 Terry Lee.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN 978-1-4907-9627-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9630-7 (e)

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Trafford rev.   07/31/2019

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1.   Trends in Leadership

Chapter 2.   Management and Leadership

Chapter 3.   The Emergence of Transformational Leadership

Chapter 4.   What Transformational Leaders Really Do

Chapter 5.   Breakthrough Leadership

Chapter 6.   The Practices of Breakthrough Leaders

Chapter 7.   The Attributes of Breakthrough Leaders

Chapter 8.   The Breakthrough Process

Chapter 9.   The Nature of Inspiration

Chapter 10.   Redefining Success

Chapter 11.   Developing Breakthrough Leaders

Conclusion    Making the Shift to More Effective Leadership

Postscript

Foreword

In December, 2001, Harvard Business Review devoted a special issue to the challenge of Breakthrough Leadership. It was this issue that inspired me at the time to better integrate my insights from psychology with my practice in leadership development so as to create more relevant, challenging and impactful programs to support managers in their development.

For me the challenge was as it always has been in my professional life.

1. understanding how leaders unlock the potential of the people that they lead

2. finding what they do to remove the barriers to that development.

3. helping to build cultures that grow the leadership potential in all of their people not just the few.

Breakthrough leadership was described as breaking through old habits of thinking to uncover fresh solutions to perennial problems. It also means breaking through interpersonal barriers that we all erect against genuine human contact. It’s leadership that breaks through the cynicism that many people feel about their job and helps them find meaning and purpose in what they do. And it breaks through the limits imposed by our doubts and fears to achieve more than we believed possible.

This book now is the culmination of nearly twenty years work in breakthrough leadership and began in the 1990’s when I was head of the leadership group at Mt Eliza Business School in Melbourne. It subsequently became my passion understanding the distinctive people challenges in the companies that I have had the pleasure to work with since I set up my own consulting group, Leadership Psychology Australia, in 2001.

My interest, which was stimulated by my early training as a psychologist, was brought into sharp focus by the rapid changes taking place in leadership understanding and expectation as organisations sought ways to respond to global change. What started off as culture change programs in most organisations quickly became transformational change programs and the focus shifted from understanding the impact of values on employees to understanding the impact of their mindsets. Being a psychologist and having worked in clinical, counselling and developmental settings prior to work in executive development, I was looking at leadership from a psychological perspective and trying to help managers and executives to develop insight and expertise into the process of mindset change and personal growth.

Breakthrough leadership is the process by which leaders inspire their followers to grow, to perform and to develop their potential. They do this by understanding and helping to remove the impediments to that development. We know that many of the limitations that people place on themselves and their potential are related to their own self-limiting thinking. What we have found is that breakthrough leaders create a relationship and the support that gives followers the confidence to challenge the status quo and ultimately to challenge themselves and their development.

Breakthrough leaders build the self-confidence of their followers, they develop their capability, they unleash their courage to challenge and they deepen their conviction and belief in what they do. They use the power of purpose to bring deeper meaning to their work and to help people overcome self-doubt and to stimulate personal growth which might have stalled. This is not a quick fix and there is no absolute breakthrough, it is the on-going breakthroughs that we all make in our lives as we move through different stages and transitions. Throughout life we all need the support of teachers, parents and friends to grow and to thrive and it continues in our professional lives and is facilitated, and accelerated, with the understanding and support of thoughtful and caring leaders.

Kahlil Gibran when talking about change in his book The Prophet writes that your pain is the breaking of the shell which encloses your understanding. This is an apt metaphor for the difficulty involved in mindset change. Change is not a painless process. It involves letting go of old ways of thinking before new ways of thinking can be embraced. Sometimes the old ways of thinking are reinforced by a lack of confidence, or a lack of self-belief in one’s ability to meet the challenge of change. Sometimes they are reinforced by fear of uncertainty or of the unknown and sometimes they are rusted on by habit or by being in a comfort zone.

Organisations globally have embraced performance cultures in their search for growth but also in response to rising expectations from a multitude of stakeholders. Managers have been trained in the skills of performance leadership and through processes such as performance management and performance appraisal there is broad acceptance that coaching is a key part of a manager’s repertoire. Through this productivity has improved as people and teams have become more effective at hitting targets and also more efficient by doing so with less people, cost and in less time.

The next significant step in productivity and growth has been unlocking the potential of the people in those teams. Managers who have become very good at giving orders, will now have to become good at tapping talent. The hidden value that lies within organizations is the unrealized potential of the people within. Hiring good people and then making them even better is a distinct competitive advantage for excellent companies – some would suggest that it is the ultimate competitive advantage. Breakthrough leadership is a leadership style which is directed towards this challenge. Once managers have mastered the leadership of performance, the next step is the leadership of potential.

This book is an introduction to the concept of breakthrough leadership. It is a new frontier in leadership because it is concerned, not only with human behavior, but also with human psychology. It extends the role of leaders from a focus on the motivation and performance of the people they lead, to a concern for their mindset and development. The book provides some background to the trends in leadership and in particular to the emergence of transformational and inspirational leadership, it then outlines the research upon which the concept is based, explores the attributes of breakthrough leaders and finally outlines a framework for the development of breakthrough leadership capability.

Chapter One: Trends in Leadership

This chapter reviews the history of management and leadership from the Industrial Revolution. It explores how the theory and practice of leadership has evolved from a hierarchical model, through scientific management on to the humanistic model and then to the leader’s role in inspiring the human spirit. These models all had a focus on behaviour and were in their own way significant milestones in our continuing understanding of the drivers of performance.

Chapter Two: Management and Leadership

This chapter highlights the shift in thinking that occurred as management and leadership began to be defined as discrete concepts. It describes the different roles played by managers and leaders and looks at how the emphasis on leadership eventually led to an appreciation of the leader’s potential to transform people and culture.

Chapter Three: The Emergence of Transformational Leadership

This chapter discusses the theory of transformational leadership and distinguishes it from transactional approaches. The concept of the leader as first and foremost a servant of the people is introduced and there is a discussion about whether the real focus of transformational leadership is based upon the personality of the leader, the emotional connection with the follower or some other variable which essentially produces the inspiration to change. Breakthrough leadership is positioned under the umbrella of transformational leadership.

Chapter Four: What Transformational Leaders Really Do?

This chapter looks at what it is that leaders actually do. It describes the difference between leadership and management and then differentiates between good leadership and transformational leadership. It highlights the work of John Kotter and the research of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner into personal best leadership. It concludes that to understand what makes leaders transformational it is necessary to identify not only what such leaders do, but also to understand the psychological impact of this on the mindset of the followers.

Chapter Five: Breakthrough Leadership

This chapter outlines our research into the nature of breakthrough leadership and specifically into discovering what it is that breakthrough leaders do. Breakthrough leaders are defined as leaders who help people to achieve their potential by breaking through old ways of thinking which are by their very nature self-limiting.

The research involved over 800 hundred managers who were asked to recall specific leaders who had inspired them to achieve more of their potential and in so doing had helped them to progress their careers to a higher level. The research identified six behaviours that were at the heart of the breakthrough experience. The impacts upon followers were identified and explained.

Chapter Six: The Practices of Breakthrough Leaders

This chapter discusses in more depth the six fundamental behaviours that define breakthrough leadership and describes their nature, application and impact. Each is discussed with the implications for leadership practice described.

Chapter Seven: The Attributes of Breakthrough Leaders

This chapter explores the personal characteristics of breakthrough leaders. It identifies eight core capabilities that energise and inspire the followers. Each characteristic is discussed in detail.

Chapter Eight: The Breakthrough Process

This chapter analyses the breakthrough process itself. It relates this process to the work of Edward De Bono and lateral thinking, Howard Gardner and frameworks for thinking and Martin Seligman and positive psychology. It outlines a model which explains the process, then relates the six behaviours to the stages in the model.

Chapter Nine: The Nature of Inspiration

Inspiration is the fuel which ignites the human spirit and powers the breakthrough process. It provides the energy required to break through the impediments to change and also the energy to sustain change over time. Bringing energy and inspiration to the workplace is an important element in creating the conditions for change. Leaders inspire through the relationships that they establish with the people they lead. The example of Bunnings Warehouse, a great Australian success story, is used to describe in a very practical way the development of breakthrough leaders or what they term high involvement leaders.

Chapter Ten: Redefining Success

This chapter outlines how the factors which drive organisational success have changed from the control driven structures of the past, to the people centred processes of the future. It describes how achieving greater discretionary effort has become the basis for sustainable competitive advantage. It concludes that those who excel will be those that secure the greatest discretionary effort by the greatest number, for the greatest time.

Chapter Eleven: Developing Breakthrough Leaders

The ability to develop breakthrough leaders is a strategic necessity in a rapidly changing world and the capacity to deploy them at all levels will be a significant driver of growth. It is well accepted that leadership bench strength is a driver of sustainable success, but it is less well understood how breakthrough leaders bring out the potential in the people they lead. Seven steps are outlined that can be employed to develop breakthrough leaders. It also describes a process whereby leaders can monitor their own development and provides two checklists that can be used to guide this development.

Conclusion: Making the Shift to More Effective Leadership

This chapter makes the final case for change in leadership style and practice. It discusses the mindset shift required and identifies some of the levers that will drive that change. It argues that this shift is not easy, but is inevitable, driven by the pursuit of higher performance in a rapidly changing world and the rising expectations of employees, customers, investors and communities.

Acknowledgments

My interest in this type of leadership and my understanding of the breakthrough process itself has been deepened by working in a very practical and applied way with excellent companies around the world and inspiring leaders throughout Asia, Europe, U.S, and Australia. My school of life has been primarily with, Honda, Fuji Xerox, Cisco Systems, CSL, Fosters, A.N.Z. Bank, Wesfarmers, Tabcorp, Clayton Utz lawyers, PwC and Centre for Creative leadership.

I have great confidence in the capacity of organisations to develop breakthrough leaders because I have seen so many of them in action. There are many unsung heroes around the world doing great work transforming workplaces and inspiring people to develop their full potential. I would like to acknowledge the friendship and contribution to my learning made by the many talented and passionate people I have had the pleasure to work with, and learn from, around the globe

Finally, my gratitude goes to Barbara who is my wife, partner, office manager and chief feedback consultant, for her never-ending support, her tireless work and her constant encouragement. She is truly the spark that ignites my human spirit.

Terry Lee

Sandringham, Australia.

February 2011, Revised April 2019

www.leadership.com.au

Introduction

The beginnings of breakthrough leadership

Globally today we face a significant leadership and management challenge. In many ways it is a challenge unlike that which has been faced before, and one which will determine the future of work and the nature of organisations in the future. It is less a challenge of behaviour and more a challenge of insight and thinking. It is a paradigm shift in the very concept of what it means to be a manager and to manage and lead others.

All organisations, whether they are in a competitive environment or not, whether they are government services or not-for-profits are facing the same reality and that is that the criteria by which their success is judged are shifting. Whereas once success was based around tangible resources or access to finance, today it is seen to be vested in the most intangible of all resources and that is the imagination and potential of people. It is not just who you have that is the key, but your ability to be able to extract more value from those people.

Sustainable success rests not simply with the people employed and the talent they display, but rather more the greater value they can contribute as their potential is developed and released. Growth will not come simply by putting more people on the payroll, nor from making those on the payroll more focussed or