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your employees, your shareholders and the
communities in which you do business. If you lose
sight of these obligations, you will be thinking too
much about how to advance your own career and
personal self-interest and not enough on how to
build long-term success. We need leaders today
committed to leaving their organizations in better
shape than they found them.
3
LEADERSHIP IS HARD
WORK. GET TOUGH.
If you’ve been leader for any period of time, you
know it is hard work. You also know you need to
be tough enough to guide your organization through
rough waters. Unfortunately, far too many leaders
retreat when the going gets tough. They become
bystanders or, worse, wimps who are afraid to
tackle the tough work. Leadership involves having
the courage to make difficult decisions about
poor performers, holding people accountable, and
delivering candid feedback. Many leaders often
look to HR to do this hard work for them. That’s not
real leadership.
4
LEADERSHIP IS A
COMMUNITY. CONNECT.
Older concepts of leadership have glorified the
image of the lone wolf leader who endures the trials
and tribulations of the job in isolation. While it may be
necessary to stand alone in some instances, in the
end, it does not make sense to isolate leaders. The
new model is about building a genuine community of
leaders. Imagine being part of an organization where
instead of isolation, you experience trust, support
and mutual aspiration. That is a true community
of leaders.
DRIVING LEADERSHIP
ACCOUNTABILITY
The four terms of The Leadership Contract can
be used by HR professionals to driving greater
leadership accountability in their organizations.
Many organizations use it as a foundation for
onboarding leaders into new roles. It’s better to
catch leaders early and help them be clear on what
they are signing up for.
Other organizations are also creating a company
specific Leadership Contract as a way of setting the
bar high for leaders and ensuring they sign up to
leadership roles for the right reasons.
Whatever your reason, review the four terms of the
leadership contract and think about how you might
be able to use them in your organization to drive
greater leadership accountability
HR
Vince Molinaro is a leadership
adviser, speaker and the Managing
Director of the Talent and Leadership
Practice with Knightsbridge Human
Capital Solutions. His book The
Leadership Contract: The Fine Print
To Becoming a Great Leader is a
New York Times Bestseller. He’s also
the co-author of The Leadership Gap
and Leadership Solutions. Follow
him on Twitter at @VinceMolinaro.
S
horeTel is a company headquartered in
Sunnyvale, California and is a provider of
commercial, closed-source products based
on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology,
targeted to businesses from 10 to 20,000 users. The
company has regional offices in the United Kingdom,
Sydney, Australia and Munich, Germany.
The organization has been on an accountability, trust
and leadership journey over the last couple of years.
At the time, new CEO, Don Jos had just stepped
into his role. One of his first tasks was to bring his
company’s top leaders together for a strategy
meeting. A two-day Leadership Business Review
(LBR) meeting was held in November 2013 that
focused on understanding the operating environment,
the key trends and drivers, and the strategy of the
company. These topics were complemented with a
robust discussion on accountability and trust–issues
that were important to the CEO and senior executives.
“It was an important meeting to setting the right
leadership expectations and getting by in of the
company’s top leaders,” said Jeffrey Mills, Learning
and Development Specialist for ShoreTel.
The company held another LBR event in June 2014.
The number of leaders was expanded to 100, and
the discussion on accountability and trust continued
by focusing on how to drive it within the culture and
among employees. A set of cultural beliefs were
created that became a foundation for the company’s
values and ways of working. Following this meeting
an existing employee peer recognition program call
Shout Out was enhanced based on ShoreTel’s vision
five cultural beliefs. This was an important practice to
reinforce the company vision and cultural beliefs day
to day.
“As we reflected on these events, we realized that
something was missing still. Our leaders were not
feeling connected. We needed to build a stronger
sense of community with all leaders contributing to
ShoreTel’s”, said Mills. So at the November 2014 LBR
addressed this issue head on.
Based on the ideas from the book, The Leadership
Contract, ShoreTel essentially created its very own
Leadership Contract to set clear expectations of
leaders. All leaders signed The ShoreTel Leadership
Contract and identified personal commitments
to building a strong community of leaders across
the company.
Mills concluded by saying, “Our ShoreTel Leadership
Contract was cascaded by leaders to all employees.
It became an important way for leaders to be clear on
what we expect of them, and for each of them to step
up to their leadership accountability.”
HR
A LEADERSHIP CONTRACT IN PRACTICE
Accountability
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