Too many managers who aspire to lead and develop others haven't learned how to lead and develop themselves. They are trying to build organizations or provide services that are different from them. These well intentioned managers are trying to improve their teams or organizations without improving themselves.

It just doesn't work. You can't build a team or organization that's different from you. You can't make them into something you're not. But I've watched countless managers and management teams try. There are two major reasons that this disconnected approach doesn't work. First, unless you're a superb actor, you can't be a split personality and teach or lead others to do something that's out of basic alignment with your own habits, skills, and characteristics.

Second, everyone's "phoniness radar" or "BS meters" are getting ever more sensitive (from overuse). We're getting fed up with sanctimonious church leaders charged with sexual abuse, fat doctors telling us to get into shape, politicians giving retractable promises to get elected, executives drawing big salaries and bonuses while their company's financial value declines, municipal transit managers who don't take their own buses to work, training and consulting companies who don't practice what they teach, and the like. I once wrote a scathing note (which was never answered) and quit a speakers association because I kept hearing "the old pros" telling people who wanted to get on speaking platforms and tell others how to be successful to "fake it 'til you make it" (the personal and organization improvement field is full of phonies who haven't earned the right to even be in the same room as the people they're trying to advise). One of those speakers also asked me to provide a jacket quote endorsement for a "motivational book" he bragged he'd written "on a six-hour airplane flight." And that's about how much research and thought the warmed over platitudes, old jokes, and generalities he'd pieced together obviously had. I declined his invitation.

Nobody expects you to be the perfect role model. But they do expect to see a close connection between who you are and the direction you're pointing the team or organization towards. Or they at least need to see that you recognize your shortcomings and you're working hard to improve yourself so you can close the organization-personal performance gap. Otherwise they'll shrug off all your team and organization improvement rhetoric and planning with a sense that this is just "kidney stone management" — it will hurt for awhile, but this too shall pass. "Watch out, (your name here) has been off to another seminar (or read another book). If we lay low long enough, he/she will move on to the next fad."

Here are some examples of these all too common disconnects between organization and personal performance:

• Managers with stunted personal growth set strategies to build a "learning organization."
• Managers produce team and organization vision, values, and mission statements without having clarified and aligned their own personal preferred future, principles, and purpose.
• A major program to improve customer service is initiated by managers who boss, direct, and control rather than serve their organization's servers.
• Continuous quality improvement programs are implemented by managers with weak levels of continuous personal improvement.
• Management groups comprised of turf protecting departmental managers, fighting like our three kids in the back seat on a long hot drive, try to build a team-based organization.
• Disorganized managers with poor time management habits are setting goals, priorities, and disciplined processes for everyone else.
• Although they have no personal improvement plan, process, or habits, managers develop extensive organization transformation and improvement plans.
• While avoiding (and shooting messengers of) personal feedback, managers construct extensive performance appraisal systems and measurements for everyone else.

Successful team or organization leadership begins with successful self-leadership. The first step in improving your team or organization is improving yourself.