Chapter 5 The Three O Model of Leadership

Rule 5: Leading requires a focus on outcomes, others, and ourselves.

The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.

—Ronald Reagan

Connie is a new project manager with a team scattered across the Americas. She’s a leader who is getting the job done but starting to feel the stress of working beyond her comfort zone. Though her project is on time and on budget, she is starting her day earlier in order to accommodate stakeholders in Asia and scheduling meetings after her children’s bedtime. While the team seems to be doing fine, she is tired, cranky, and fears she can’t maintain this pace for long. “If this is what leadership is,” she asked us, “how long can someone keep it up?”

How would you define or describe leadership?

For many years, Kevin has done an exercise with groups that is both instructive and inspirational. He starts by asking people to individually define or describe leadership in exactly six words. Without fail, no matter the location or experience of the groups, two fundamental points come through. The most common understanding is that leadership is about:

outcomes (stated with such words as “goals,” “mission,” “vision,” “objectives,” and “success”)

other people (stated with such words as “influencing,” “coaching,” “communicating,” and “building teams”)

The good news is that people generally agree on what good leadership looks like regardless of where they live and work. Facilitating this exercise over the years has had a profound impact on Kevin and his philosophy about leadership—even though in every case he has been the supposed expert on the topic. It is from his experience, as well as leading this exercise with people from around the world, that we developed the Three O Model of Leadership (figure 6).

Figure 6 The Three O Model of Leadership

As you can see from the figure, the Three O Model of Leadership outlines three areas of focus all leaders must recognize and use to reach their maximum success.

Outcomes—you lead people with the purpose of reaching a desired outcome.

Others—you lead with and through other people to reach those outcomes.

Ourselves—you can’t leave yourself out of this model. While leadership is about outcomes and other people, none of that happens without you whether you like it or not.

In the story at the beginning of this chapter, Connie was very sensitive to the first two O’s. While Outcomes and Others must come first, leaders must also pay attention to the Ourselves part of the model to successfully lead others to the desired outcomes. For all kinds of positive reasons, she was not supporting herself, and that’s where the cracks began to appear in both her confidence and competence.

This model is a more complete picture of the biggest gear in the Remote Leadership Model we shared with you in the last chapter.

Like all models, our Three O Model provides a way to clarify and compartmentalize a far more complex world and allows us to prioritize our thoughts and actions. But we believe this is not just a behavioral model but a mindset.

To lead at your best, you must think of the Outcomes and Others components first. Although the Ourselves component sits in the center of our model, this doesn’t imply that you are the center of leadership, nor the purpose for it. You are at the core, not the center. Leadership doesn’t revolve around you; rather, you bring who you are and how you lead to bear on creating better outcomes for others. This model is meant to show you that while none of this is about you, you can’t be taken out of the equation either. (Many would call this “servant leadership,” and whether you use that language or not, our belief is none of us can lead in a sustainably successful way without being a servant to others and outcomes.) And while leadership isn’t about you, who you are, what you believe, and how you behave are critical to your success.

Now that we have described the model at a high level and put it in proper perspective, let’s dive into each of the O’s.

Figure 7

Focus on Outcomes

At the highest level, organizations exist to reach outcomes of one sort or another. While it is in vogue for many of these “mission statements” to be a bit esoteric and written in corporatese, some of our favorites are more straightforward and make the point here much better:

McDonald’s: McDonald’s brand mission is to be our customers’favorite place and way to eat and drink.

Google: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Of course, we have more than high-level goals. There are all types of goals, objectives, and targets. Sales teams have a quota and product mix that is clearly defined; projects have well-defined metrics for success, including time, budget, and standards.

While some might consider this a management conversation, we disagree. Reaching outcomes is clearly in the overlap between the management and leadership roles. Yes, you must manage the details of the metrics, but you must also attend to the underlying behaviors involved in reaching them.

If we don’t focus on outcomes as a leader, we aren’t doing what we were hired to do.

The Long-Distance Difference in Outcomes

As a Long-Distance Leader, this focus on outcomes is, if possible, even more important and can definitely be harder. We say that for several reasons:

Isolation. When people are working remotely, they are likely alone more of the time. (Even if they are on a small team together but remote from you, what follows is still true.) Where we work forms a bubble around our habits, our thoughts, and the things we focus on. This isolation often leads to silos of the smallest nature—people acting as if they are a team of one, a Lone Ranger solving problems and making things happen from their home office desk. Over time, without guidance, they become focused on individual goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) rather than team goals. Leaders want a proactive, driven person working for them (wherever their desk is) but need to help them see how their outcomes are a part of the larger whole. Our jobs in communicating and clarifying goals can be harder at a distance.

Lack of environmental cues. When you visit many organizational facilities, you will get a variety of messages about goals and priorities. Whether they’re using a slogan like “Quality Comes First,” a reader-board with the latest safety statistics, or a list of the corporate goals in every conference room, a common work location provides very clear clues and cues that reinforce important messages that are missing when you work from a home office.

(Potentially) less repetition of messages. Unless leaders are consistently, and in a variety of ways, communicating and reiterating the goals and outcomes for the team and organization, people may get lost in their own bubble. This is particularly true if you have a matrixed team, where you are the nominal official leader yet the individuals report to others. Part of your role as a Long-Distance Leader is to find as many ways to keep people focused on the outcomes as possible. We can and should use online portals and other fancy tech tools to do this, but we need to do whatever it takes—personal notes, a whisper in the ear, or carrier pigeons even. You must communicate as often and as creatively as possible to keep all team members on board, in sync, and focused on the goals and objectives of team and the organization.

Focus on Others

As a leader, you have a myriad of things that vie for your attention:

Budgets

Projects

Process improvements

New product/service development

Sales

Customer service

Margins

We bet at least part of this list resonates with you, and you could add a bunch more to it. You’re thinking about all these things, and yet you aren’t the one actually doing most of them.

So how do you overcome the conundrum of lots of important things and not knowing what to focus on?

You focus on something different than anything on the list above: you put your focus on others.

Figure 8

For example, you focus on the important things we purposely omitted from the earlier list, including:

Coaching your team

Communicating about priorities and projects

Hiring

Onboarding new team members

Providing support and guidance

Long-Distance Leaders focus on others. Here are seven reasons why:

1. You can’t do it alone anyway. Let’s start with the most obvious of all— even if you tried, you couldn’t do everything that needs doing all by yourself. And if you could, you wouldn’t need a team, so there would be no need to be a leader. Leadership is about the outcomes, but those must be reached through others.

2. You win when they win. If you’re going to focus on others, you must fundamentally believe this. You must believe that when you serve others, your needs will be met, your goals will be reached, and you will be recognized appropriately. True and lasting victory comes from helping others win too.

3. You build trust when you focus on others. Trust is a powerful lever for team and organization success. When trust is high, job satisfaction, productivity, and much more is improved. If you want to build trust with others, focus on them and show you trust them first.

4. You build relationships when you focus on others. There is a direct correlation between the strength of a relationship and the amount of trust that exists in that relationship. As trust increases, so does the strength of the relationship. Solid working relationships create better results. How do you build a relationship? You’re interested in, listen to, and care about others.

5. You are more influential when you focus on others. As leaders, we can’t force or compel people to take any action, or if we can it is for a limited time and there will likely be other unforeseen consequences. We can’t control people; we can only influence them. Think about it: Who is most successful in influencing you? Someone who you know understands your needs and situation. Someone who wants the best for you. Someone who is on your side of the table. So how can you do those things unless you are focused on others? Remember, influence is about helping others choose—you want more than mere compliance, don’t you?

6. Team members are more engaged when you focus on them. This is profoundly true. People want to work with and for people who they know believe and care about them and have their best interests at heart.

7. You succeed at everything on “the list” when you focus on others. Look back at the list of things you “need to focus on” that we mentioned above. If you intentionally and purposefully focus on those around you, will those things all go better? While we’re not saying you should ignore or completely delegate those things, we are saying is that if you focus on others first, the rest will be more successful more of the time.

We could make a longer list of reasons why placing your focus on others is the right choice, but anyone of the above is reason enough. Your role as a leader is to aid, support, guide, and help others reach valuable goals and outcomes. When you remember that and focus on them and their needs, you get better results for the organization, the team, and yes, yourself.

The long-distance difference for others

For reasons discussed throughout this book, maintaining this focus is harder at a distance. Here are some of the reasons why:

Out of sight can be out of mind. Kevin has a tangible example here. Several years ago, Marisa joined our team and worked in an office down the hall from Kevin. This was the context of the working relationship between them, until she got married (to Kevin’s son, but we digress) and moved to South Bend, Indiana—about two and half hours away. She worked remotely nearly every day (she came to the Remarkable House—our office in Indianapolis—about once a month to do certain parts of her job). We held everything else static except her work location, and for Kevin to be equally as effective at helping Marisa succeed, giving her the resources, time, and encouragement she needed, he had to be far more diligent, creative, and disciplined while she was working remotely. The job got done; it just took a little more effort.

Happily, about eight months later, her husband (Kevin’s son, stay with us) got a new job in Indianapolis, and now she is back in the office again. Marisa was doing a great job, regardless of her location. Kevin helped her achieve her goals by clearly defining what had to be done, checking in regularly, and leveraging webcams and other tools, and she stepped up and became much more independent and self-reliant. That said, is it easier for Kevin to be focused on Marisa’s needs and be able to support and coach her from down the hall? Absolutely!

Your assumptions win the battle. As a leader, you make assumptions about your people, consciously or not. If you assume they are doing well, you will “worry” less about them. While this is true regardless of where people work, when you assume all is well and you don’t see them, you don’t communicate with them (as often). Or if you assume they’ll let you know when they need help or support, or that no news is good news, or if you worry they will think you are “checking up” on them if you just want to check in, they may (and likely will) take your lack of communication/attention as a lack of focus on them—whether you mean for it to or not. Long-Distance Leaders must understand that scheduling when and how communication occurs is a conscious decision.

Even if you focus on them, do they know? The battle between perception and reality will always be won by perception. If your team members don’t see the actions that show that you are thinking about them, want them to succeed, trust them, and more, it really doesn’t matter what you are thinking or what your intention is. Kevin has long said “people watch our feet more than our lips,” but when they are remote, they can’t even watch our feet very easily. If you are to be truly Other focused, you must diligently show it to others through your actions.

Figure 9

Focus on Ourselves

The great paradox of leadership is that it isn’t about us at all—as we have just said, fundamentally leadership is about outcomes and other people.

And yet, who you are, what you believe, and how you behave plays a huge role in how effectively you will do the other things. This is where Connie, most of the leaders in our survey, and likely you are encountering the most difficulty.

While this O is arguably the smallest of the three O’s, it also in some ways must come first, even though as the model shows us, we must be last. Or, as we stated above, you are at the core of leadership, but certainly not at the center of your leadership universe.

You might know NFL star Gale Sayers’ autobiography I Am Third. (If you ever saw the inspirational movie Brian’s Song, this book was the impetus for that movie. If you haven’t seen it, it is highly recommended. Bring plenty of tissues.) The title came from a line from his friend Brian Piccolo: “God is first, my family is second, and I am third.” While our context here is different, the point is similar. While who you are and how you lead (Ourselves) can’t be denied or ignored, if you think about Ourselves as third, you will serve both others and outcomes best.

While you may intellectually agree with what you just read, we need to say a bit more. Some would say it is about “how we show up in the world” and that since leaders can be successful in different ways, you should lead as who you are. This is true, but only to a point.

You can all bring who you are to your leadership, and there are many styles that can be successful in leading. And we do believe you need to be authentically you, but that isn’t an excuse to stay where you are without choosing to change some of your behavior, constantly assess your priorities, build your skills, and get better!

At the core of you as a leader are the things you believe in and think about. Those drive your actions, how you engage with your team, how well you influence them, and ultimately how they will respond to and perform with you as their leader.

This book talks a lot about what you can do, and perhaps that is why you bought a copy. Ultimately what you want matters, and it’s important only in the context of the other two O’s—Outcomes and Others.

The long-distance difference for ourselves

Who you are and how you lead is important wherever your people work, but when you are leading at a distance, some of this is less transparent, and your beliefs and assumptions are even more crucial. Here are three reasons why:

Assumptions (again). You have assumptions about what it means to work remotely. We could give you the statistics that show teleworkers are more productive, but if you don’t believe that, or assume people are multitasking on non-work items while they are at work, you will operate based on that belief rather than the facts. Your assumptions about your team members always impact how you lead. When your folks are working at a distance, there is a very remote chance (pardon the pun) that your assumptions will ever be challenged—simply because you don’t see enough evidence to change your mind. You also make assumptions about how much to ask of your people, and how much you’re willing to adjust for things like time zones and meeting times. That’s where Connie got in trouble—she assumed she solved the problem by working more. You must identify your assumptions about both yourself and those you lead, challenge them, and revise them when facts dictate.

Intention is important, but not enough. Throughout this book we talk about being intentional with nearly everything. Here, though, the challenge lies in the gap between what you want and mean to do, and what you actually do. Research shows that as humans we aren’t very good at self-assessment in part because of this gap—we grade ourselves on what we are capable of or mean to do, while others view us based on our actions. As you lead a team remotely, with less frequent interaction, and when much of that interaction is less rich and robust, it is much more likely that your team members won’t see your intention, or will assume the worst, when you aren’t quite meeting their needs. They don’t know how swamped you are, or that you are stuck in the Des Moines airport; they just know you blew off their one-on-one.

Making a decision. This book will give you lots of ideas to apply—many of them could make a big difference in your ability to lead successfully. None of them will work until you decide to act. As a Long-Distance Leader, you must decide to do the unnatural things, you must focus (even) more on your team members, you must be diligent in supporting them and their needs, but you can’t do those things until you decide that you are going to.

Connecting This to Other Models

We will be the first to admit that there are lots of models of leadership—in fact, elsewhere in this book we referenced Kevin’s thirteen competencies of Remarkable Leadership—and all the best models provide a viewpoint into what it means to lead and how to do it well. Humbly, we submit that this Three O Model can sit on top of any of them (or on top of your organization’s competency model) to provide an important perspective to them.

Regardless of the skills or competencies, in the end the best leaders will be effectively managing their focus and activity among their three O’s, which are the things that everything about leadership rests on. This overview sets the table for the rest of this book. There is an entire section for each of the O’s that will dive deeper and give you specific and concrete ways you can more effectively lead at a distance through the lens of each O.