TrainingForum Feature: Kirk Miller

Total Quality Management has the potential of leading companies to business nirvana: exceeding customers' expectations, having happy and productive employees and managers, and achieving low employee turnover and high employee loyalty, not to mention maximizing profits.

Unfortunately, few companies achieve Total Quality Management. I have witnessed more than one fail in its efforts to establish a quality culture because its leaders were unable or unwilling to deal with the diverse values of their employees and their subsequent behaviors. Quality efforts fizzle when leadership is not prepared to deal with basic people issues.

Leadership’s ability to deal with the different values that are brought into the workplace is central to an organization's success in drawing excellence from its people. A culture that encourages employees to learn about and share the values that shape their behavior is a culture with the potential to excel.

One that does not is destined to stumble over and over again as it comes into contact with the usual stumbling blocks: managers who don't "get" why their employees behave the way they do; employees who know just how far they can trust their managers—not far at all; employees who jockey with one another for opportunities to advance, knowing that only a few can succeed at their game; managers who grapple with getting the job done and covering their flanks at the same time; employee turnover that puts the skids on getting the job done; and other obstacles to success.

Our values, beliefs, and self-concepts frequently lock us into rigid, repetitive, and often self-defeating patterns. This is as true for corporations as it is for individuals. For example, how many times have you seen someone repeat the same pattern of mistakes in relationships? How many times have you seen a corporation repeat its mistakes in how it deals with its employees? Neither the individuals nor the companies realize they have the choice to recreate themselves and their ways of doing business.

Gaining self-knowledge and understanding the limitations we place on ourselves leads to openness and empathy with others, collaboration and team spirit, and creative problem solving. It works for the individual and for the corporation. But to work for the corporation it must first work for the leaders in that corporation.

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, developed the theory that everyone has a shadowy side that mirrors his or her positive side. He stressed the importance of recognizing the existence of this dark side so it could not easily trip up the individual. Everyone can become familiar with his or her own dark side and deal with it in positive, productive ways.

The same is true of leadership. It is clear that effective leadership can be instrumental in promoting organizational good. What should be equally clear is that leadership can also be instrumental in promoting organizational disasters such as bad decision-making, employee frustration, poor communication, unintended consequences, wasted resources, and scores of other negatives.

Effective leaders must identify and deal with the "shadow" aspects of leadership, such as:

Executives in many organizations are realizing that their organizations can't change unless they do. They are learning that people rise to leadership in our society by a tendency toward extroversion, which too often means ignoring what's going on inside themselves. Too often leaders focus on the development of skills to manipulate the external world at the expense of those skills necessary to go within and see how their personal values and beliefs impact them and their leadership styles.

Once executives understand and accept how their personal beliefs and values impact them, they are able to make more realistic and healthy decisions in both their personal and corporate arenas. They are better able to understand how the values their employees bring to the organization impact its success, and how to discover those values and harness them to work for the company, not against it.

So how can leaders identify their shadow and avoid the organizational disasters that the shadow self can cause?

Leaders must take responsibility for what's happening on an unconscious level. They must examine themselves for ways they might be projecting more shadow than light and sabotaging their ability to lead in the process.

Leaders can identify their shadows by looking at what they project onto others. "If you spot it, you got it" is a truism that can help leaders identify their own shadowy aspects. It means that whatever traits you find particularly obnoxious in others reflect your own shadowy side. We may even react irrationally to these traits in someone else, blowing things out of proportion. Look at those things that annoy you most in others, and you begin to identify your shadow.

For example, I once encountered an executive who was known to be openly critical of negativity. In others. She decried each and every "negative" statement by a colleague or employee, yet was completely unaware that she doused those around her with negative pronounce-ments daily, destroying employee morale. She thought of others' statements as "negative," and hers as "realistic."

Leaders can learn to face their own shadows and embrace their own humanness. Doing so will not only empower the leaders but the followers as well. Quality initiatives can work if we face the shadow.

Kirk Miller is president of Kirk Miller & Associates, Inc., a management development and training company in Decatur, Georgia, and author of The Supervisor's Guidebook: How to Inspire Performance in Your People. To order this publication or to schedule a workshop call 404 687-8856. kirkmiller@mindspring.com.

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