# [[Why should the Boss Listen to You - The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor]] Author:: [[James E. Lukaszewski]] Related-To:: [[coaching]] [[lukaszewskiWhyShouldBoss2008]] Copyright:: 2008 Start-Date:: [[2023-02-10]] ## Summary: The book is designed as a practical handbook for leaders and those who advise leaders. The book is easy to read and full of practical advice, although missing some vital elements such as a clear distinction between title based CEOs and CEOs who are actual leaders. Lukaszewski devotes no attention to the difference between the two or even to clearly defining his definition of leadership even though he appears to use "Boss" and "Leader" interchangeably - to the detriment of the overall message of the book. For example, in Chapter 2 "What Leaders Expect" he lays out the prime directive of the Strategic Advisor - "alwas ot look at the questions, issues, oppportunities, and vulnerabilities from the boss's perspective." This misses the fact that generations of workers today want to work for and with a leader and the word boss often doesn't define those who truly lead in organizations. Constantly mixing the words leader and boss without ever defining them hurts Lukaszewski's overall message. The structure is two parts - the first part is overview and background with the second part being a look at each of the seven disciplines which are: 1) Be trustworthy; 2) Be verbal visionaries; 3) Develop a management perspective; 4) Think strategically; 5) Be a window to tomorrow; 6) Advise constructively; 7) Show the boss how to use your advice. In the author's own words, he wrote this book for people who "are not being heard. You want to be, but you cannot be heard. You need to find some way to be noticed, or they hear you but ignore you, or someone is blocking your way to influencing events and individuals." Part 1 was a bit overwritten and full of question prompts and bullet lists - many of which were redundant. This could very likely have been written as a single well edited chapter. Part 2 broke down each of the disciplines. While Lukaszewski never states this directly, I think these are built foundationally with trust at the bottom of a pyramid moving up as you progress through the levels to showing the boss how to use your advice as the pinnacle of the triangle. If you aren't trustworthy, no one will listen to you. If you can't express yourself clearly in words, you can't express your perspective, strategy, or vision ## The Disciplines - [[Be Trustworthy]] - [[Be verbal visionaries]] - the ability to express yourself clearly in spoken word is a critical skill for leaders - [[Develop a management perspective]] - I would restate this as develop a systems perspective - see the whole picture, not just your own perspective - [[Think strategically]] - [[Be a window to tomorrow]] - he analogizes this to pattern analysis - In 2008 when the book was published that was adequate - looking beyond pattern is now required - [[Advise constructively]] - [[Show the boss how to use your advice]] Throughout the book, he describes the management mindset which includes things like studying leadership and people who are identified as leaders. You also have to have tangible expertise in the business area you're advising, and you need to care about the senior folks on the team. He also says you need to care about the CEO, be willing to set aside your own issues and problems to put the CEO first - including setting aside your ego, and make what he calls the Counselor's Commitment. ## Notes - He opens the book with an "ode" of sorts - "*On becoming the number one Number Two*". It's his version of a "man in the arena" speech but it is also thought provoking that if you aren't the President you are always competing for the number 2 spot except in the smallest of organizations and/or the most hierarchical of organizations. - You don't need to report to a C-level advisor to use these tips. Anyone who reports to another person can use these. That said, you also want to make sure that you as the second are not overrelying on an advocate. #### Preface - He offers the following test for your "current level of influence in your organization: (p. xv)" - Do people hold up meetings, waiting for you to arrive to make important contributions or interpretations of current events? - Do people remember what you say and perhaps quote you in other places and venues? - Do people tell your stories and share your lessons as though those stories belonged to them? - Do people learn things from you that they acknowledge to you and remark about to others? - Do others seek out your opinion and ideas or share their agendas and beliefes with you in the hope of influencing you to influence the behaviors of others more senior than you? - Some questions you need to ask yourself as you read and continue on your leadership journey (these are frome Preface xix): - Why do I want to be heard by my boss? - Why should hte boss listen to me about anything? What's in it for him or her? - What is not working now? Why? - There are clearly some risks if I do punch through and get heard by the boss; am I ready for those? - Am I ready to begin being more brutally honest with myself? - Can I train myself to focus on what really matters? - How willing am I to change myself to have more influence? #### Introduction - Five Imperatives for the Trusted Strategic Advisor - Jettison staff-based assmptions - don't just be "the PR person" or "the IT person". GO beyond the disciplines and skills inherent in your discipline to apply skills from other disciplines as well. Don't only think in the way your discipline thinks or acts in the way your discipline acts. - See the whole board - Tolerate constructive ambiguity, but strive for certainty. - Maximize your prerogatives - Manage at all levels - up, down and side to side - Develop real expertise beyond your staff function. - Assessment: Are You Ready To Be A Strategic Advisor? (p. xliv) - Do I have the personal discipline to prepare myself ot fulfill the five imperatives of the trusted advisor relationship? - Do I have the stomach for the intense, conflict-ridden, and often contruontational environment in which decisions are made at the senior levels of organizations? - Can I dispassionately assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, options, and threats of the organization from a variety of useful perspectives? - What is the real expertise, beyond my area of staff knowledge, that I bring to those who run my organization? - Will I commit to mastering the seven disciplines and harness their power for my success and that of those I advise? - How do I answer the question, "Why should the boss listen to me?" ### Part One: The Realities of Advising Top Executives #### How Leaders Think and Operate: The Pressures, What Matters, the Obstacles, and the Solutions - Chapter Outline - Pressures Leaders are Under - Leaders are having a lot less fun - The limits of leadership - The loneliness of leadership - What Leaders Do - Focus on tomorrow - Make it up as they go - Handle daily intrusions - Why Leaders Fail - How Leaders Succeed - Study Leadership - An Important Suggestion For You To Consider - The author uses the word leader but never defines it. A critical question to ask yourself is, Do I actually work for a leader? If not, it's probably time to go somewhere else ##### Leaders Are Having a Lot less fun - "Fewer than half of involuntarily retired executives regain a comparable position in their lifetime. More and more management litarature is being devoted to these individuals and their inability to recover from sudden, unplanned separation from their top jobs." (p. 5) There is so much assumption in here - do they want to go back? - The author argues that Sarbanes Oxley and "force integrity" have made leadership particularly difficult because the moral leadership falls to the CEO. "These moral mandates are particulalry difficult because they go against the grain of current management theory, which treats anything that is emotional, nonscientific, or not readily measurable as irrelevant and distracting." (p. 6) - This is antagonistic to my own leadership theory. Perhaps it is a male/female issue. ##### The Limits of Leadership - "Deciding on a course of action is one thing, but getting the organization ready, willing,a nd able to move in that direction is an entirely different tasks. Successful leaders and their advisors learn to recognize the limits of CEO effectiveness." p. 7 ##### What Leaders Do - CEO's job is to "look to the future", "find the people power required to achieve the organization's mission", and "to decide, to make choices". CEOs, unlike managers, don't do. They enable doing in the right direction. #### Why Leaders fail p. 15 1. Failure to deliver on what they promised when they got the job. 2. Excessive optimism 3. People problems 4. Distractions 5. Stuck in the mud ##### How Leaders Succeed p. 16 and 17 1. Focus 2. Limit the number of objectives to be achieved 3. Build support and create followers 4. Fix what is broken - fast 5. Finish what you start #### 2: What Leaders Expect - Chapter Outline - The Boss's Special Perspective - The Conselor's Prime Directive - How the Boss Measures Advice - What Bosses Expect from Strategic Advisors - REal-time advice - Candor - Coaching at every encounter - Consequence analysis, insight - Knowledge of what is important - Early warning - What to do next - Talents Advisors Need - Initiative - Inspiration - Intuition (controlled) - Projection - Loyalty - Urgency - Do you fit in the CEO Environment? - Resources ##### The Boss's Special Perspective "David A. Nadler, in his September 2005 *Harvard Business REview* article "Confessions of a Trusted Counselor," illustrated the uniqueness of the top position by identifying five "no one else" factors that dominate the CEO's circumstances.... - Has a greater need for sources of unbiased information - Needs to hear hard truths faster - Is such a lightning rod for criticism - Is the final arbiter in so many vital business decisions - Is the subject of so many statements beginning with "No one else"" ##### The Counselor's Prime Directive "This acceptance and willingness to seek advice and inclusion is one genius of leadership. A part of that genius is the leader's ability to sift, to sort, to distill, to stratify and prioritize the ingredients of hte future, and then combine the chosen ingredients so as to fuel progress." Look at everything through the lens of the "boss" and their perspective - filter everything through that. Useful advice is: 1. Practical - achievable and positive in nature 2. Prgamatic - can it work in the hands of the people who must implement it 3. Purposeful 4. Focused - the path is clear 5. Fair ##### How the boss measures advice Here is your test (p. 25) 1. Does it help the boss achieve his or her objectives and goals? 2. Does it help the organization achieve its goals? 3. If the answers to questions 1 and 2 are yes, is the project truly needed? 4. What aspect of the business will fail or fail to progress if the recommendation is ignored or delayed? 5. How does this suggestions save money, make money, or conserve money? He lays out something called "The Counselor's Commitment" [](https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AIw-1c-3InFYJu0UVsCIvB1WomWUjreGvzIFZgV61cKdwuoh2p20VK0dGNjMVLySI1_VAQ3boNUezTOvcyEvuiLcqwOdzZuFog) ##### Resources #consume/to-read - Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block - The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion by Peter Block - Coaching for Leadership: How the World's Greatest Coaches Help Leaders Learn by Marhsall Goldsmith - Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Noel M. Tichy - Power Vision: How to Unlock the Six Dimensions of Executive Potential by George W. Watts #### 3: Achieving Maximum Impact Chapter Outline - Gain and Keep the Confidence of Senior People - Speak Management's Language - Work Against the Patterns That Bother Bosses - Talk and Write to Time - Give Useful Feedback - Data - Perception Analysis - Gossip - What to do next - People assesssments - What your Leader Expects - Do You Have the Discipline? - Take word count and divide by 150 - this is how long it will take someone to read your document in minutes. ##### What to do next In the section on giving useful feedback, he includes a list of five questions that you'll often get asked after giving an update - and you should be prepared to respond to: (p. 43) - What is your take on this information? - What sorts of new problems, land mines, and pot holes are out there relative to what we knew previously (last week, last month, etc.)? - What kinds of things should we be thinking about working through to resolve some of the issues this feedback indicates? - Are there any immediate actions I need to take, or information I need to develop further, to help us stay ahead of what is coming into the organization or moving through the pipe? - What are the three most crucial answers you need today? ##### What Your Leader Expects (p. 44) "In April 2007, Larry Bossidy, ...wrote a must-read article in the *Harvard Business Review* called "What Your Leader Expects of You, and What You SHould Expect in Return" These are Bossidy's nine expectations of CEO direct reports: - Get involved. In other words, accept and even seek out delegated tasks - Generate ideas - Be willing to collaborate - Be willing to lead initiatives - Develop leaders as you develop - Stay current - Anticipate - Drive your own growth - Be a player for all seasons ##### Do You Have the Discipline? (p. 45) - Where necessary, how will I fill management's blind spots and suggest ways to overcome management's limitations? - How do I separate myself from my own predispositions, assumptions, and antimanagement biases? - What habits do I have that add positive energy to what management has to accomplish? - How skilled am I at moving different constituencies to listen and act? - What is my personal strategy for building management's expectation of strategic contributions from me? - Can I manage my own ego involvement in the circumstances I encounter? ### Part 2: The Seven Disciplines #### Be Trustworthy Chapter Outline - Trust Matters - Trust and Influence - Trust and Loyalty - Loyalty Has Limits - Set Personal Loyalty Limits - Trust-Appreciation Confusion - Th Ingredients of Trust - Establishing Trust - Busting Trust - Questions to Consider His definition of trust - "the absence of fear" "Politics certainly is a useful analogy at senior levels, because for an advisor to be trusted, especially during times of stress and change, he or she must be able to manage the politics of relationships including those among senior leaders." p. 50 ##### Trust and Influence "Real influence is built incrementaly over time, mostly through the advisor's initiative." p. 52 "Influence always attracts the attention and focus of those further away from the centers of power. Another interesting aspect of working at very high altitudes with access to unique and unlimited information is that you become mindful of the proliferation of agendas being pursued around those who make the most important decisions. Influence and access attract the attention of those who don't have either. A trusted strategic advisor has to be able to manage the internal politics of access that inherently exists at senior levels. And there is always politics up there." p. 53 ##### Trust and loyalty "Trust, influence, and loyalty are linked....Trust and influence in the advisor's relationships create the perception of loyalty in the minds of those being advised." p. 53 "...trust, like loyalty, is fragile and magical. Both are products of good relationships." p. 54 ##### Loyalty has limits He identifies types of loyalty like situational or pathological (e.g. brown nosing) and then goes on to say, "In the case of the trusted strategic advisor, the relationship with the senior leader is less abotu blind loyalty and more about a higher level of objectivity and perspective. By keeping perspective I mean always remaining at some altitude, some constructive distance to ensure that the advice given or taken is truly the most valuable and most helpful. Being objective can, at times, seem less than loyal. ... In giving the best advice or counsel, the trusted individual is willing to take risks based on that trust, including termination of the relationship should that be required." p. 54 - 55 ##### Set Personal Loyalty Limits "The key question for you as the trusted strategic advisor is, what are the indicators that should cause you to question your loyalty or, at a minimum, raise serious questions of those to whom you provide advice?" p. 57 He actually references the Federal Sentencing Guidelines of 1991 and the 15 predicate behaviors ##### The Ingredients of Trust candor, credibility, competence, integrity, loyalty Under integrity he says, "The personal, organizational, or institutional inclincation to do the right or most appropriate thing at the first opportunity or whenever there is a choice or dilemma." (p. 59) - I would replace or with and everywhere it appears in that sentence. ##### Establishing trust 1. Provide advance information - a "heads up" - whenever you can 2. Seek the leader's input 3. Listen carefully 4. Change your approach based on what you hear. 5. Stay engaged 6. Engage others. ##### Busting Trust "People often assume that once a bond of trust is established, it is difficult to break. Experience demonstrates that a bond of trust, once established, generally makes reestablishing a relationships easier, but the bond itself is fragile." p. 61 "Trust does seem a bit mysterious. It is far easier to identify the behaviors and attitudes that damage it." p. 61 Arrogance Broken Promises Chest beating Creating fear Deception Denial Disparagement Disrespect Holding back Minimizing danger or the significance of events ##### Questions to consider p. 63 - 64 - Do I put the interests of those I advise first? - Are my values clear, both to myself and to those I advise? Do I live by them? - Do I have the competence I advertise? - Am I always on the boss's team? - Do I recognize, understand, and care about the boss's goals and aspirations? - How prepared am I to take the actions necessary to repair the damage once trust is broken? - How often does my boss take action on my advice? - How many of the ten trust busters have I witnessed, commited, or condoned (and how often)? Can I think of other behaviors and attitudes to add to this list? - What are some ways I can implement the six elements of establishing and maintaining trust in my professional relationships? - Am I prepared to stand up when improper, unethical, or potentially dangerous decisions are being considered or implemented? - Have I thought through carefully the limits I place on my loyalty to those I advise? Have I put these limits in writing so that I can explain them and share them with others? #### 5: Become a Verbal Visionary