By David Lykken
How Confident Are You? What I find most astounding is that Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, who “unwittingly” contributed to the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at great cost to the American taxpayers, were the same two “leaders” that “engineered” a legislative “solution” and then had the gall to name the solution after themselves … the “Dodd-Frank” Act! What a boondoggle!
“Leadership involves motivating others to their finest efforts and channeling those efforts in a coherent direction. Leaders must believe that they can count on other people to come through.”
1. Ambition Confident leaders are ambitious. They refuse to merely “exist” or “survive.” They see themselves as able to overcome undesirable or unacceptable circumstances.
are not necessarily competitive with others, but push and challenge themselves.
3. Good communicators Confident leaders communicate using good eye contact. They know how to ask for what they want and to hear advice and counsel. It is less important for them to be right than to be effective. They listen more than they speak!
4. Care about people Those who are confident leaders have a good inner self-image from nourishing relationships instead of toxic relationships. They have learned to detach from relationships which do not allow them to be authentic.
5. Good listeners Confident leaders draw people in by genuinely listening to people. They subtly exude their confidence in a way that attracts people to them.
6. Having a confident “can-do” attitude This has to genuinely come from the heart and a positive attitude in times of difficulty. I like what tennis player Stan Smith said, “Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.” But as it relates to leadership, Rosabeth Moss Kanter really brought it in to focus when she said, “Self-confidence is not the real secret of leadership. The more essential ingredient is confidence in other people. Leadership involves motivating others to their finest efforts and channeling those efforts in a coherent direction. Leaders must believe that they can count on other people to come through.”
2. Goal-oriented As I close out this month’s article, I want to share this poem that was given continued on page 22
MAY 2011
Confident leaders seek to challenge themselves by setting and achieving goals that they set for themselves and those who are in their influence. They
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ARIZONA MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE
So, we had a failure of leadership at the federal level, but I ask you: “Where were our industry leaders to challenge these misguided federal misfits?” The residential market is a $10 trillion industry. You would think that any industry of our size would have had leaders that would have been more effective in stemming the tide of legislation such as the Dodd-Frank Act. The harsh reality is that we didn’t! Instead, we, as an industry, became “the villain and reason” for our failed economy. Why? No leadership! Unfortunately, the number one industry leader of that era became the poster child of greed and mismanagement. It is for this reason that in January of this year, I started writing this series of articles on the topic of leadership. In my February 2011 article, I outlined the seven characteristics, “The 7-Cs” of Leadership. In March, I wrote about the first of the 7-Cs which was character, the cornerstone of every great leader. Last month in the April issue, I wrote about the second of the 7-Cs which focused on the importance of having
“conviction” as a leader. This month, I am writing about important it is for a leader to confidently follow his convictions and to communicate in confidence! As I started writing this article and thinking of an example of a leader that operated with confidence, I thought of Gene Kranz, the NASA Flight Director of the Apollo 13 Mission. Throughout the Apollo 13 crisis, he demonstrated amazing character and conviction, all the while, leading with a calm and convincing confidence. He assembled what he called his “White Team,” which was quickly dubbed the “Tiger Team” by the press. They quickly went to work on setting constraints for consumption of the spacecraft’s consumables (oxygen, electricity and water) and carefully managed three course-correcting “burns” that altered the trajectory that allowed the astronauts to successfully return home. Because of his calm and amazingly confident leadership, Kranz, his team, as well as the astronauts, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their heroic roles during this crisis. If you haven’t read Kranz’s book, Failure is Not an Option, I would encourage you to do so. It chronicles the life and events of this great leader. Here are six key characteristics of confident leaders … and the good news is that these six characteristics can be learned. In other words, confidence is a choice!
NationalMortgageProfessional.com
“Houston … we have a problem!” was the famous line from the movie Apollo 13. Tom Hanks, playing the role of Jim Lovell, mission commander, radioed NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston with those infamous words. As you may recall, he was advising Mission Control that they had just experienced a major system failure and they were in serious trouble. The key to a successful conclusion in the Apollo 13 story was that there was strong leadership that organized an amazing collaborative and creative solution to the crisis. They demonstrated amazing character, as well as an intense conviction and confidence that there had to be a solution to the crisis. I find some interesting parallels between the mortgage industry today and the Apollo 13 mission. Between the years of 2001-2006, we as an industry were “going where no man had ever gone before” (excuse yet another line from another space odyssey). As an industry, we were using experimental loan products never used before to advance homeownership to new levels. Just like the Apollo 13 mission, the mortgage industry experienced major systemic failure across many of our “systems.” This was in part because we were venturing into unexplored realms of “affordable” homeownership, which culminated in the infamous “mortgage meltdown” and housing and economic implosion. However, unlike the team at Mission Control in Houston, who creatively and collaboratively worked around the clock to identify a workable solution to save “the mission,” our “leaders” (and in this case, I am speaking of politicians) worked around the clock to put safeguards in place to make sure we didn’t have another crisis. They failed to recognize that we needed to engineer a way in which we could avert a crisis, figuratively speaking, and safely land the economy.