Author: Vineet Nayar

A young manager accosted me the other day. “I’ve been reading all about leadership, have implemented several ideas, and think I’m doing a good job at leading my team. How will I know when I’ve crossed over from being a manager to a leader?” he wanted to know.

I didn’t have a ready answer and it’s a complicated issue, so we decided to talk the next day. I thought long and hard, and came up with three tests that will help you decide if you’ve made the shift from managing people to leading them.

Counting value vs Creating value. You’re probably counting value, not adding it, if you’re managing people. Only managers count value; some even reduce value by disabling those who add value. If a diamond cutter is asked to report every 15 minutes how many stones he has cut, by distracting him, his boss is subtracting value.

By contrast, leaders focuses on creating value, saying: “I’d like you to handle A while I deal with B.” He or she generates value over and above that which the team creates, and is as much a value-creator as his or her followers are. Leading by example and leading by enabling people are the hallmarks of action-based leadership.

Circles of influence vs Circles of power. Just as managers have subordinates and leaders have followers, managers create circles of power while leaders create circles of influence.

The quickest way to figure out which of the two you’re doing is to count the number of people outside your reporting hierarchy who come to you for advice. The more that do, the more likely it is that you are perceived to be a leader.

Leading people vs Managing work. Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control.

In India, M.K. Gandhi inspired millions of people to fight for their rights, and he walked shoulder to shoulder with them so India could achieve independence in 1947. His vision became everyone’s dream and ensured that the country’s push for independence was unstoppable. The world needs leaders like him who can think beyond problems, have a vision, and inspire people to convert challenges into opportunities, a step at a time.

I encouraged my colleague to put this theory to the test by inviting his team-mates for chats. When they stop discussing the tasks at hand — and talk about vision, purpose, and aspirations instead, that’s when you will know you have become a leader.

Agree?

Some of the best advice we have all got — be it while making big personal decisions or making critical business decisions — is the same: Follow your inner voice. Most of us have heeded that counsel, yet if we were asked to list the elements that enable better decision-making, we would cite experience, research, data, even polls — but never our inner voices.

Logic precedes sixth sense because the known outnumber the unknown. When the reverse was true, people counted on extra-sensory cues to lead their lives. As our world enters an age of uncertainty, with economics, politics, and society all undergoing upheavals, the unknowns are beginning to increase in velocity and volume.

I wonder if we should try to re-ignite, particularly at work, the extra-sensory cues that once helped govern our lives. Managers struggle to make the right decisions today as they execute complex projects in short time frames, choosing from a vast number of possibilities, some of which they have never before encountered. No wonder only one in two managerial decisions is estimated to be useful!

Recent data suggests that intuition provides extra sensory artillery that helps integrate thoughts, thereby enabling better decision-making. For instance, Tel Aviv University’s Marius Usher found that when people made choices based only on instinct, they made the right call up to 90% of the time. Other researchers have estimated that 80% of successful CEOs have an intuitive decision-making style.

The question isn’t whether rational reasoning is better than intuitive decision-making; it’s how both can be combined for optimal results. The process of integrating intuition into our work lives starts by asking three questions:

Do you acknowledge your gut feelings? When you look at a situation, the inner voice you hear is your mind’s Big Data-based response. Do you heed it? Or do you brush it away? As Carl Jung argued, intuition isn’t the opposite of rationality, but instead, a sophisticated way of chunking data or connecting dots subconsciously based on experiences or sixth sense. Keep it aside, ruminate on it, and use it only when data leads you to a dead end.

Do you encourage intuitive thinking? At a sales review, I once saw a territory rep say: “I have a feeling this vertical is about to take off…” His manager immediately cut him off with an embarrassed: “No one wants to hear about your feelings. Where is your Excel file?” However, feelings-based statements can provide a wealth of information that spreadsheets won’t, so managers need to be open. They should regularly ask for off the data, off-the-record views, and integrate those inputs into decision-making.

Are you open to the messages that your mind sends out randomly? The unstructured sporadic thoughts that your mind broadcasts can hold useful cues, so you should practice the art of acknowledging them.

In a recent post, Purnendo Ghosh, a professor of science and religion, made the case for intuition eloquently: “When you consider that we human beings have a history extending 80,000 years, and our present form of rationality and intellect may be only about 2,000 years old, we need to recognize that non-rational elements have also guided our development and destiny.”

I’m curious. Does anyone disagree?

A fellow business leader complained the other day that although he had repeatedly sought feedback, his team had never told him what they really thought about his management style. We’ve been friends for a long time, so I asked: “Do you want feedback so you can do something with it? Or are you asking only because you think that’s the right thing to do?”

The problem, I told him, is that people can perceive your intentions right away; it has nothing to do with what you say or do. There was a long pause, and then he admitted: “Deep inside, I’m probably not ready to hear critical feedback or do anything about it. My plate is full and my team knows that.”

It’s critical to know your intent as a leader and to communicate it clearly.

Let me recount an amazing ritual around intentions that a friend recently described. Apparently, in some parts of Africa, when a mother conceives, she writes a song for her child and sings it to the baby in her womb all through the pregnancy. When the child is born, the village comes together to sing the same song for the child. Any time the baby cries, the mother sings that song to comfort him or her.

When the child grows a little older and the mother has to return to work in the fields, she has to leave the infant behind at home. Even though she may be out of earshot, whenever the mother feels her baby is crying or missing her, she sings that song to soothe the child. Incredible though it may seem, the child seems to sense her intent and stops crying. That’s the power of intent.

A 2007 book, The Intention Experiment, explored the science of intention, drawing on the findings of leading scientists around the world. Author Lynne McTaggart uses cutting-edge research conducted at Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and other universities and laboratories to reveal that intent is capable of profoundly affecting all aspects of our lives. In the book, William A. Tiller, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, argues: “For the last 400 years, an unstated assumption of science is that human intention cannot affect what we call physical reality. Our experimental research of the past decade shows that, for today’s world and under the right conditions, this assumption is no longer correct.”

Understanding and communicating intent is rarely given much importance in business, though. Goals and vision are shared as carefully curated documents, or through great speeches created by well-oiled communications machines. CEOs forget that if the intent of these plans isn’t aligned with the communication, people may be impressed, but deep down inside, they will not believe in those plans or act on them.

There’s little doubt that clarity of intent sheds light on the path ahead even if it isn’t clearly visible. In such scenarios the “I don’t have the right answers for you, but let’s march ahead and discover how can we get to our goals faster” articulation is more powerful than rhetoric. Articulated well, it can help draw the necessary responses from people and catalyze growth.

It’s equally important to understand the intent of competitors — an aspect often overlooked in traditional competitor analysis. Two decades ago, the late C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel referred to that in an award-winning HBR article Strategic Intent. Highlighting the journeys of Canon and Honda to dominance in the mid-1980s, they pointed out that it was intent that made the difference — not resources. Until 1970, both were relatively small companies, and since traditional competitor analysis is like shooting a snapshot of a moving car without a clue about the driver’s intent, nobody viewed them as threats. As Hamel and Prahalad point out, a snapshot by itself yields little information about “whether the driver is out for a quiet Sunday drive or warming up for the Grand Prix.”

Intent continues to be imperative for business success today. Carlos Ghosn, chairman and CEO of Nissan and Renault, is widely credited for leading a dramatic turnaround. Ghosn articulated his intent to return a near-bankrupt Nissan to profitability in 1999, and achieved that within a year. Since then, he has transformed Nissan into one of the world’s most profitable companies. I had the good fortune of talking with Ghosn recently, and found that he continues to forge ahead on the strength of bold intent. Despite the volatile world economy and the damage to the company’s plants caused by the recent earthquake in Japan, he has committed to an ambitious plan: To boost Nissan’s global market share and profits to 8% by 2016.

The lesson is clear: Any CEO or leader who wants to propel a business forward must be certain — and communicate — that the intent is unambiguous. That’s applicable at any stage of a business’s life, be it start-up, growth, transformation, reinvention, or globalization. Indeed, that’s often the first step to success. Don’t you think so?