Laser-like Leadership

There is a dizzying amount of information that has been promulgated about leadership. I am always amazed by the number of books, journal articles, white papers, blogs, training programs, seminars, coaching models, and key note addresses that speak to the subject. The volume of material grows each day and it is virtually impossible to stay on top of it. To add to the challenge, much of the information is contradictory, impractical, unproven, outdated, and confusing. It is very noisy and messy out there.

As a leadership development practitioner, and as a person striving to be a thought leader, I am directly mixed up in this noisy mess. Since my profession involves teaching and coaching others, I have a duty to be a voice of rationality, discernment and clarity. My mom taught me to always clean up my messes, even if I was not fully responsible for creating them.

To become useful, the sea of information about leadership needs to be turned into bodies of coherent knowledge. This involves a continuing filtering and consolidation process. Similar to creating a superior beer, developing a credible knowledge base takes high quality ingredients (sound theory and research), careful monitoring (observation, testing and metrics), guidance from master brewers (thought leaders and practitioners), and time to ferment. At some point, even the most revered knowledge may become stale or people’s needs and preferences may change. At that point, the product needs to be refreshed or replaced.

As I consider the bodies of existing knowledge and the emerging ideas about leadership, I am struck by a recurring theme: the best leaders possess the ability to maintain focus for themselves and for their organizations. Focus can be exhibited as a personal quality, performance competency and leadership practice. It is not unique to leaders but without it few leaders are successful. It enables an individual or team to sift through competing options and alternatives, block out “noise” and make decisions with speed and confidence. Leadership focus is manifested through clarity of direction, consistency of action, and purposeful alignment of values, strategies, policies, practices and people. (For more information about organizational alignment, readers are encouraged to review our Leadership Coach publication.)

Much like a laser, leadership focus holds incredible power when applied with purpose and skill. Think about it for a moment; the analogy is incredibly apt. Laser light waves travel in phase and in a single direction. This is different from normal light which travels in overlapping, jumbled, and incoherent waves that spread out in all directions from the source. Laser light tends to remain organized as a concentrated channel over great distances, and can generate vast heat. The energy for laser light is created by the interaction of atoms within a cylinder that has a mirror-type material at both ends. The atoms in the cylinder emit photons when a particular power source is introduced. As each photon of light reaches the next atom in the medium, it stimulates the emission of another photon, which gets passed along in the same direction to the next atom, on so on, until the cylinder is filled. The photons, all traveling in the same direction, bounce off the mirrors and gather strength and number until they pierce the partial silvering at one end of the cylinder and exit as a powerful, coherent beam.

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand this astounding analogy. Leadership is the energy source, i.e., the catalyst, the photons are fully engaged employees and stakeholders, and the mirrors are the transparent and consistently demonstrated values, strategies, policies and practices of the organization. Focus creates alignment and alignment reinforces focus. People unite behind strong and confident leaders who model authenticity and resolve. The result is a powerful concentration of purpose, passion, and talent that can make the difference between those organizations that are managing to survive and those that are boldly leading the way in their respective markets.