Archive for the ‘Management’ Category

Team Leadership - Lead Your Team, Don’t Manage It

Posted in Leadership, Management, Strategies, Team on 11/18/2009 03:09 pm by Kairology

Introduction by Ian Williams

Here’s a good article that has some good, simple hints and tips in leading teams. What often causes leadership to fail is allowing teamwork to go stale. It needs constant rejuvenation to keep motivation alive, and new thinking and ideas flowing.

Ian

Team Leadership -  Lead Your Team, Don’t Manage It by Andrew Gowans

Team management in the context of setting tasks, prioritizing, monitoring progress, agreeing and setting performance measures is all relatively straightforward.

If you don’t agree - get help now!

Let’s talk about your true value added, let’s talk about Leadership, Development, Empowerment and Having Fun

Being responsible for a team, large or small, is a serious business. Getting the best out of people takes creativity, guidance and perseverance.  If our team members lose focus, fail to achieve the group’s goals and objectives, we should be held accountable.  What am I saying?  You knew that when you took on the job.  Didn’t you?

Only you know your team (Or at least you should).

This article cannot comment on a special team situation you may have.  However, what it can do is focus on maximizing the benefit you get every time you get together with your team(s).

Examples of Spending Time Together:

Departmental Meetings

Task Force Special Project Team Training Session Workshops Team Briefing Product Review Customer Visits Focused Improvement Group

I’m sure you can add more.  However, you’ve guessed it - any setting where there is a sense of purpose, common goals, and a desire to achieve success by being part of your particular team.

Any of the above examples can be highly motivating, rewarding, and productive.  They can also be time consuming and costly.  Have you ever measured how much time you spend in a ‘team setting’?  Have you ever calculated the cost to the business?

Wasting time and resources is definitely one of my pet hates. And, yet, I’m probably as guilty as the next person  - losing focus, digressing, being reactive instead of proactive - even simply just having a bad day.

However, let’s keep things in perspective.

As a team, be single minded in achieving the common goals through that shared sense of Purpose and Direction, through that shared Vision BUT don’t get boring in the process.

For me, a key attribute of good leadership is having team members who

Enjoy being part of your team Have a strong desire to contribute Believe their contribution is valued Want to develop the team not just themselves Are recognized outside the team for their achievement Have fun

All of that isn’t as daunting as it may seem.

So, again, in the context of leadership and maximizing the value and benefit to be gained from a team setting, what are some of the positive things we can do as team leaders?

Suggestions

Publish agendas or session flows in advance with enough time for team members (including yourself) to prepare for that team session.  Why not invite inclusions to the agenda.

If the session is going to be a long one, break it up into manageable sections, take breaks.  Be creative, have some fun, do some exercises.  I personally would not go more than 50 minutes, an hour, before taking a break.

Introduce quick 15-20 minute training sessions any meaningful and contextual topic or theme. e.g. Giving and Receiving Feedback, Brainstorming, Setting S.M.A.R.T. Objectives. Empower team members by a) Have each team member prepare and deliver the training session and b) Have another team member facilitate the training session.

Deliberately have a non-context topic or theme on the agenda but, again, one that will add value and benefit participants - e.g. invite a technical expert or different functional / departmental head to give a 15-20 minute presentation on what and why they do what they do (This can be as good as having an actual break).

Before the formal session starts, get each team member to ‘dump’ - get rid of all the stuff in their head that’s going to prevent them from focusing on the task(s) in hand. Caution team members need to feel safe and comfortable to do this.  It also needs to be carefully led so it does not get out of control.  Most importantly, it needs to comply with the team’s agreed ground rules that were set at the formation of the team.

Continually develop individuals - give others the opportunity to prepare and publish the agenda for the next team session, empower them to lead and facilitate the session and to write the follow-up review afterwards (apart from anything else, it gives you a rest! ).  Further development can be achieved by inviting other team members to provide constructive feedback - with the knowledge that they too will be given the same developmental opportunity and will also be receiving ‘constructive’ feedback.

Have fun and celebrate successes.  Take time out, have a bbq, have a picnic, supply the supper when the team session’s a late one.

Lead by example at all times. Show the team that your business, their business is a serious one with specific goals and expected results BUT the best way to achieve success is through ongoing individual and team development, empowering others to succeed and having fun along the way.

*****

Andrew has over 20 years experience providing personal and business coaching specialising in strategic planning, continuous improvement, personal development and lifelong learning.

Providing a focused problem solving approach through our personal and business coaching (especially to small businesses). Our primary theme and overriding goal is to provide you with the right choices that fit your needs, solve your problems.

Want to discuss any of these articles further - no problem.

The quickest way to contact Andrew is to visit his internet marketing website, http://www.youraffiliatecoach.com and click on the “Your Request Form” button on the navbar.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Team-Leadership—-Lead-Your-Team,-Dont-Manage-It&id=223864

 

Developing tomorrow’s leaders

Posted in Leadership, Management, Strategies on 08/14/2009 03:17 pm by Kairology

John Adair is the world’s first professor of leadership. Coming from a military background, and making a huge impact on the private sector in the Britain in the 1980’s, when leadership was crucial for competitive advantage at home at abroad – just as it is now! This article tells that story, which is so relevant right now, and it introduces something of John’s thinking and influence of great leadership. I have the privilege to be John’s representative for New Zealand, and love his work and words of wisdom.

Ian

Developing tomorrow’s leaders by John Adair

From strategy and selection to training and culture, organisations that take a holistic approach to growing leaders will be the most successful.

“Are there any organisations that grow leaders?” they asked me. Two main board directors of ICI were with me in my room at the University of Surrey, where I had recently become the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies.

That year – 1981 – had not been a good year for ICI, the “bellwether of British industry” as the company  was universally known (a bellwether is a ram that leads a flock with a bell around its neck). ICI, they told me, had declared no dividend that year – the first time since 1926. Seven of their nine divisions were loss- makers. ICI was broadly in the wrong markets – bulk chemicals as opposed to speciality ones – and its 60,000 managers and staff were infected by a backward-working and bureaucratic organisational culture.

The leadership growth imperative

“At board level, we have identified six new policies,” they continued. “Top of the list is to develop manager-leaders. Who are the organisations – apart from the armed services, for we have looked at them – who are growing leaders? Who do you recommend we should look at?”

I recall that silence fell as I looked thoughtfully out of the window. About 300 organisations that year were participating in leadership training courses based on my action-centred leadership model. But they didn’t ask me who was training leaders; they asked me who was growing leaders. “No one,” I replied. “Right,”  they said, “ICI will do it. Will you help us?”

At my suggestion, ICI selected 25 young managers from all nine divisions to meet for five days. Our task was to work out a leadership development strategy for ICI, a strategy for growing leaders. It was the first  time any organisation, public or private, had done that. A few days earlier, the appointment of John Harvey-Jones as chairman had been announced and he joined us one evening. He shared with us his new strategic ideas for the group, making it clear that transforming managers into business leaders was a vital part of that strategy. Harvey-Jones added that he was going to start at the top with the main board, and he hoped that we would meet in the middle.

Business leadership and business success

Over the next five years, I worked with all nine divisions, at all levels and in every function. At the end of the five years, ICI was the first British company in history to make a billion pounds profit in one year. Of course, factors other than business leadership, such as favourable exchange rates, were involved in that result, but it nailed to the masthead forever the strong nexus between good leadership and business success.

The armed services were never in doubt about that link. As the Greek poet Euripides put it, “ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.”

In How To Grow Leaders (2005), I have summarised my experience – not just with ICI but many other public and private organisations – of what works in developing leaders.

The Seven Principles is a simple framework for you to apply in your context. Each one is easy to state and  may sound at first like mere common sense. So they are, but common sense is seldom common practice.

The seven are complementary, and you should expect some added synergy if you apply them as a whole. Together with the body of knowledge about leadership that has become established in the last five years – founded on the three circles model– they form the first coherent and really effective approach for growing leaders. Can you think of a practical and well-tested alternative?

Principle one: develop a strategy for leadership development

Leadership exists on different levels. There is the team level, where the leader is in charge of ten to 15  people. The operational leader is responsible for a significant part of the business, such as a business unit,  division or key functional department. Invariably operational leaders have more than one team leader reporting to them.

At strategic level, the leader – often the CEO – is leading the whole organisation. Strategic leadership – a phrase I coined in 1970 – is actually an expansion of the original, for in Greek “strategy” is made up of two words: stratos, a large body of people; and the -egy ending which means leadership. Strategy is the art of leading a large body of people.

The key to achieving sustainable business success is to have excellence in leadership at all three levels. Strategic, operational and team leaders need to work harmoniously together as the organisation’s leadership team.

The most common and most expensive error that organisations are committing at present is to focus leadership development on their more senior managers, so that becomes their entire “strategy”. In so doing, they completely ignore their team leaders. Yet it is the team leader who is closest to the customer. Make sure that your strategy embraces all three levels.

There is a useful distinction to be made between strategic thinking and strategic planning. You should see your leadership development strategy – evolved and guided by a small steering group – as part of your overall business strategy. It should be longer term (five to ten years). Don’t let the urgent deflect you from the important. Lastly, a strategy should have more than one element to it.

Principle two: selection

“Smith is not a born leader yet.” When those words appeared on a manager’s report in the fifties, nobody thought that the person in question could do anything about it – still less the organisation that employed them. As a saying of the day had it, “leaders are born and not made”.

We don’t think like that now. For in the sixties, a breakthrough occurred at Sandhurst which proved that the proverb was only half-true – leaders can be trained or developed. The other half of the truth, however, is that people do vary in their relative amount of leadership potential. Since it is not easy to develop leaders, why not hire people who are halfway – or more – there already? Or at least make sure that when you recruit from outside, or promote from inside, you know how to select those with a high potential for growing business leaders, for it is leaders that will grow your business rather than just administering it.

There are no psychological questionnaires specifically for assessing leadership that have stood the test of time. But there are some proven group methods that are worth having in your repertoire when selecting team leaders. Most organisations can improve their powers of detecting leadership at more senior levels simply by becoming crystal-clear about the differences between being a leader and a manager, and most would benefit by updating their interviewing and assessment techniques.

As I said in my recent book, a person can be appointed a manager at any level, but he or she is not a leader until their appointment has been ratified in the hearts and minds of those who work with them. If too few managers in your organisation are receiving that kind of accolade, who is to blame? Not the manager in question, I suggest, but those who failed to apply principle two when they appointed the person in question. You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

Principle three: training for leadership

To train implies instruction with a specific end in view; educate implies attempting to bring out latent capabilities. Of course, there is no hard-and-fast line between training and education. Think of it more as a spectrum of combinations between the two poles. For brevity’s sake, I shall refer here to both as training.

As part of your strategic thinking, you should identify your business training needs in the leadership context and assign them priorities. Bear in mind always that training of any kind is going to cost your organisation time and money. You need courses or programmes that are both effective – they produce good leadership – and also cost-effective (in terms of time and money). If you have large numbers (like the NHS) you need high-volume, high-quality and low-cost courses.

The first level to look at is your team leaders, alias first-line managers. Do newly appointed team leaders have training in leadership prior to or shortly after appointment? In my view, it is actually morally wrong to give a person a leadership role without some form of training – wrong for them and wrong for those who work with them. We do not entrust our children to bus drivers who have no training, so why place employees under the direction of untrained leaders?

At this level, don’t try and reinvent the wheel. We do know how to train team leaders. Indeed my own Adair Leadership Foundation now exists to equip trainers in companies with that knowledge.

If you outsource your in-company leadership training education to providers, make sure that you retain “ownership” and overall control, so that the programmes fit in with your strategy and organisational ethos.

Delegation never means abdication.

Public leadership programmes should be used selectively. Their chief value is to get managers out of their corporate silos and cross-fertilising with managers from a wide variety of organisations. Recommended programmes in this context include those of the Windsor Leadership Trust, the Whitehall and Industry Group, the Campaign for Leadership and Common Purpose.

Can you save money by giving managers an individual computer-based learning programme? No, because there are none that are quality products. Anyway, in this field, face-to-face meeting is a necessary condition for learning. If you can afford to develop web-based material, it should be used in support of the course or programme – the approach that is now often called “blended learning”.

Principle four: career development

People grow as leaders by the actual practice of leading. There is no substitute for experience. What organisations almost uniquely can do is to give people opportunities to lead. The trick here is to give a person the right job at the right time. It should be the kind of leadership role that is realistic but challenging for the individual concerned. No stretch, no growth.

If your organisation is serious about applying this principle, it will, for example, have a conversation once a year with each leader or would-be leader in which it outlines the two or three options it has in store to offer the individual greater career progression. Equally, the individual should say what they aspire to do. They may, for example, want to move out of a specialist role to a more generalist (leadership) one.

Fitting together this jigsaw of hopes and expectations is the name of the game, and it should be a win-win one. A strategic leader in the making – possibly as your successor – will need experience in more than one functional area of the business and, if you are an international company, in more than one country.

Principle five: line managers as leadership developers

In the midst of the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, Montgomery found time to telephone General Horrocks, one of his top operational leaders and a newly-appointed corps commander, and to give him a tutorial on leading at that level. For Monty had observed that he had been reverting back to being a divisional general. All good leaders are also teachers.

Developing the individual, the third circle in my model of the generic role we call leadership, may include developing the leadership of a particular individual. That entails one-to-one meetings at regular intervals to offer constructive criticism, as well as encouragement or support.

Above team level (and some would say even at team level) all leaders are “leaders of leaders”, as was said about Alexander the Great. Good leaders will use their one-to-one opportunities – formal or informal – to share their knowledge of leadership in a conversational but effective way. It is, if you like, the apprentice approach to learning leadership, and its necessary condition is mutual respect. It is that mutual trust or respect that makes us both eager to learn and ready to teach. You need a system of setting objectives and appraising performance – part of action-centred leadership – but it won’t be complete unless it is seen as a channel for two-way learning.

Principle six: culture

Wellington and Nelson, Slim and Montgomery – yes, the armed services do grow leaders. They select and train for leadership, but their real secret is that since the 18th century they place a high value on leadership. They have a culture where it is valued at all levels. Above all, it is expected from all officers. The motto of Sandhurst expresses the ideal that is expected from  every officer: Serve to Lead.

Values are the stars your organisation steers by and together they define your distinctive ethos. Make sure your culture comes to place a high value on “good leadership and leadership for good”. In the final analysis, it is culture that grows leaders, so it is vital to review it and make changes where necessary.

Corporate culture should also encourage a climate of self-development in leadership, the subject of the next chapter. Organisations only have 50 per cent of the cards in their hands; the other 50 per cent are in the hands of the individual. There may be no leadership courses available to you, but you can still learn leadership. Books are the best method, together with reflection on your own experience.

Perhaps your organisation needs a motto too. How about the motto adopted by the Chartered Institute of Management in 1948? Ducere est Servire - To Lead is To Serve.

Principle seven: the chief executive

In Effective Strategic Leadership (2003), I identified for the first time the seven generic functions of a strategic leader. One of them is: to select and develop leaders for today and tomorrow. In other words, as CEO, you own the problem of growing leaders. Personnel or training specialists are there to advise and help. They can assist you to formulate and to implement your strategy, but you are in the driving seat. If not, don’t expect any forwards movement.

Apart from taking responsibility for the strategy, you should also be leading it from the front yourself. Be known to talk about leadership on occasion – not often but sometimes and always effectively. Visit any internal leadership courses and show your support for them. If you care about leadership, so will the organisation. Incidentally, it is also a chance to get your message across, as well as an opportunity to practise the skill of listening. Organisations today need listening leaders.

There are now some good role models around, such as Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco, Dr Chai Patel of the Priory Group, or Tim Waygood at MotivAction plc. These three are in organisations that are very different in size. But what they have in common is that they all care passionately about growing business leaders.

Finding greatness in people

In summary, developing future leaders is not a mystery. We know the  “laws of aerodynamics” that undergird successful and sustained leadership development. The Seven Principles identified in this chapter are the foundations you are looking for.

Why do it? The answer is simple. You have great people working in your organisation. Do they not need great leaders? For, as John Buchan once said: “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”

John Adair is the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies and a leading authority on leadership and leadership development. He is author of over 40 books on leadership and management, translated into 26 languages and he is the founder of the Adair Leadership Foundation. He works as adviser and consultant to both public and private organisations, and acts as a mentor to chief executives.

 

Proof Positive

Posted in Leadership, Management on 06/30/2009 11:24 am by Kairology

Introduction by Ian Williams

This CIPD article is well worth a read. Once again it reinforces that developing and supporting leaders is crucial for survival and growth in a difficult business climate. We all consider the ‘employee engagement’ issues, but the another concept I was reminded of here is ‘discretionary effort’ – the extra mile we need to get from people every day when we’re up against the big challenges.

Another important aspect of survival is going beyond survival mode into visionary work, in order to inspire and motivate everyone towards future thinking – beyond present worries and distractions. We’re encouraged here to check out the difference between straplines and core values – are they consistent?

Great stuff for inspiration here!

Ian

Proof positive by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones

Good leadership can help to ensure that the recession doesn’t turn organisations into miserable, creativity-sapping places to be.

As we struggle through the most serious economic crisis since 1929, it’s clear that we do not yet know what the business landscape will look like when we do finally emerge from the recession. What we do know, however, is that leadership is more important than ever and organisations that are well led have much more chance of surviving these turbulent times. This is not the occasion to take your eye off critical processes of leadership development – and smart organisations know this.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of good leadership is the provision of meaning and purpose. As the great – and sadly departed – American writer Studs Terkel famously observed: “Work is about daily meaning as well as daily bread; for recognition as well as cash; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday-through-Friday sort of dying. We have a right to ask of work that it include meaning, recognition, astonishment and life.”

If we are not careful in this downturn, poorly led organisations will become miserable places to be. Creativity and innovation are inextricably linked to energy, edge and fun, but the processes of organisational attrition are in danger of crushing the creative spirit that is essential to drive us out of the current malaise. In the knowledge economy, critical to the future of Western Europe, the challenge is not to follow tradition and attempt to “get more” from your clever employees.

Open any conventional management textbook on organisational behaviour and you will see an obsession with extracting more value from recalcitrant workers through the latest fashionable techniques of “motivation”, “engagement”, pursuit of “discretionary effort” and so on. Our view is almost the opposite - the task is to make organisations more attractive to your already valuable, clever people. So often while researching our new book, Clever – Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People, we have observed talented individuals being turned off by bureaucratic process, by internal politics and - above all – by inadequate leadership.

So what are the essential ingredients of successful leadership in these troubled times? And what are the implications for HR professionals?

The conventional wisdom has it that in uncertain times the role of the leader is to provide certainty but our observations of leaders suggest that the most effective offer not the illusion of certainty but the promise of constant change and adaptability. Leaders cannot see the future but they can and must communicate a compelling picture of what the future might look like. It is an over-used concept but vision remains important. The leader must communicate what the organisation stands for, what its purpose is and which values give it coherence. It is when organisations are in difficulties that their true commitment to core values can be most severely tested. In a world awash with information overload, the leader’s visionary voice must be distinctive in order to excite others to exceptional performance.

Barack Obama exhibited exactly that quality of exceptional communication skills in convincing the American electorate that, despite the turmoil, change was possible. He repeatedly resisted the temptation to engage in dirty politics – first with Hillary Clinton and subsequently with John McCain. As organisations contract and inevitably become more political there is a lesson here for business leaders. They must on the one hand understand the political manoeuvring and on the other they must remain - and be seen to remain - above it. It is clear that in his first 100 days as US president, Obama acknowledged problems rather than attempted to deny them.

One preliminary conclusion from these observations is that in turbulent times steadfastness is a leadership virtue. Not in the sense of having a fixed view of what will happen next, but by being true to a set of core values. A naïve reading of this point would suggest that all the leader has to do is to be their authentic self. But that’s not enough. Change will require that they play different roles in different contexts. Effective leadership involves a complex balancing act between using your authentic differences and adapting your behaviours to context. Being authentic is not about being the same all the time. The most effective leaders are authentic chameleons. The chameleon always adapts to context but remains a chameleon.

Effective leadership in these difficult times requires managing a series of inspirational tensions. Three are especially significant in a downturn.

First, since leadership is always contextual - leading in a pharmaceutical company is different from leading in a shipyard – the ability to read and adapt to context is vital. Effective leaders have a real sense of “what’s going on” – they keep one ear firmly to the ground. Remember the old fad of “managing by walking around”- it contained one great truth. You need to be in a position to collect soft data, to know what’s going on before the management information system tells you.

In the current economic climate business leaders are being tested not only by their ability to know what is going on – but also by their capacity to articulate meaning; to make sense of the situation. Andrew Higginson, chairman of Tesco Personal Finance, believes that the unpopularity of the retail banks represents a significant opportunity for the retailer to further apply its popular brand to the financial services business. And the flamboyant boss of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, welcomes the recession. In his view it will kill off poor operators and show what a great business Ryanair really is.

Both of these examples demonstrate that the challenge for leaders is to both read context and rewrite it. In difficult times the danger is that our business leaders become entirely trapped by circumstance. The leadership skill is to not merely react but to proactively and constructively reshape.

Second, it’s obvious that right now strong task focus may be a prerequisite of survival. Leaders will be energetically focused on hard-nosed, tough prioritisation – including cutbacks and cost control – but this should not be at the expense of team or organisational cohesion. If people must leave, they must leave with dignity. Recessions are not an excuse to be nasty. Nor a time to throw away the cultural characteristics which hold organisations together and make some of them special. BMW, for instance, along with many other automobile manufacturers, faces very difficult times. But the task of the leadership is not to lose the passion for great motor cars that characterises the organisation. They must go on believing in and articulating “the ultimate driving experience” – not a strapline but a core value.

Third, it is inevitable that sensing situations and building team cohesion will require social closeness; a degree of intimacy and identification between leaders and followers. A sense that “we are all in this together”. The criticism attracted by some senior business leaders stems from the view that they continue to pay themselves bonuses while others suffer. But “strong identification with the troops” should not limit the ability of leaders to step back and see the bigger picture – indeed, paradoxically, this is a key situation-sensing skill. They will need to make tough decisions and social closeness cannot get in the way.

Leadership is never easy – nor recipe driven. But right now we need it more than ever. As we have argued, it necessarily involves several tensions. Don’t claim to know the future – but articulate a vision. Understand the politics – but remain above them. Respond fast to situational demands – but act to reshape them. Focus relentlessly on task – but build team cohesion. Identify with your followers – but be prepared to be distant. Be your authentic self – but recognise that you have different, and difficult, roles to play.

So what does this all add up to for HR? First, and most immediately, the current turbulence must be seen as an opportunity to provide “crucibles of experience” (to quote US leadership guru Warren Bennis) for existing and potential leaders. Second, we should avoid the trap of assuming that in uncertain times, the only motive is the search for security. There is a mountain of evidence that for some members of your team this is a wonderful opportunity for risk-taking autonomy and personal development. Third, in these difficult times of headcount reduction and cost control, don’t become the Department of Misery. It is vital to keep your eye on the longer-term strategic people issues of your organisation.

Lastly, the biggest long-term challenge for UK plc is likely to be a talent drain as our best and brightest reassess their options in a low growth, high debt economy. Collectively, the UK HR community faces a creative challenge to make sure this doesn’t happen.

HR top tips

  • Concentrate on making your organisation attractive to value-creating people
  • Prepare people for change
  • Don’t be the nasty department
  • Hold things together by focusing on the values
  • Guard against negative politics

About the authors

Rob Goffee is professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School. Gareth Jones is a fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School and a visiting professor at IE Business School in Madrid. They are the co-authors of Clever – Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People (Harvard Business School Press, forthcoming) and Why Should Anyone be Led by You? (HBSP, 2006).

Publication date: 18 June 2009

Source: People Management magazine (UK)

 

Leadership in Times of Change - How Can a Manager Protect the Team?

Posted in Leadership, Management, Team on 03/15/2009 03:47 pm by Kairology

By Ken Long

You are in a leadership position in your workplace and a combination of internal and extra pressures demands that your organization changes to remain relevant in your marketplace. What roles do you see for yourself as a manager in leading and managing the required change? If you decide that you need training and education to help your people through the transition time, what should you look for in an effective change management program?

This article will shed light on both of these important issues for you and help guide your initial steps in the process. 

It’s extremely important for managers to support both the change management process in the final form of the change as decided by the organization and its leadership. Hopefully your process for change management will include a lot of input from first-line leaders and your workers because they are in a position to know most about the likely impact of the change. They will also be in a position to find innovative ways to implement the change for best results. That said, your role as a manager is extremely important.

Your role in supporting change should include:

Helping your people to understand and interpret change and the impact on team members.

Encourage them to view change and the anxiety it can cause team members as natural and inevitable.

Be a source of strength and encouragement to assist team members as they adjust to change.

Make sure that your process will involve team members in the process of change.

Be sensitive to your people’s needs in order to help team members make the change.

Make sure that you follow up on the initial meeting to make sure adjustment to the change is going as planned.

Your active participation in the change management process especially as applied to these six areas will ensure that you get the best possible results going forward. Your team relies upon you to ensure that our process as well as our results are a high-quality experience.

Ken Long, Chief of Research, Tortoise Capital Management : www.tortoisecapital.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ken_Long http://EzineArticles.com/?Leadership-in-Times-of-Change—How-Can-a-Manager-Protect-the-Team?&id=1434452

 

Effective Personal Leadership

Posted in Leadership, Management on 02/25/2009 07:54 am by Kairology

By Michael J Beck

When I ask workshop participants about characteristics of both good and bad leaders, the list never includes issues of intelligence, technical skills, or effective decision-making! Instead, the list is full of people-related traits - good listener, respectful, good communicator, develops others…

Effective personal leadership can be summarized as being competent in these skill sets:

  • •Becoming Influential
  • Facilitating Teamwork & Collaboration
  • Being a Catalyst for Change
  • •Managing Conflict
  • Developing Others
  • Having & Communicating a Compelling Vision

Unfortunately, improving one’s competency in these areas is often a challenge. Let me explain why…Unlike factual information, which gets processed in the neo-cortex of the brain, people-related skills are processed in part of the brain called the Amygdala. This portion of the brain regulates emotional insights and responses rather than logical insights and responses. Improving the leadership skills set forth above require one to break old habits/responses and form new ones, and we aren’t able to do this simply by learning and acquiring knowledge. That’s the difference between the neo-cortex and the Amygdala. 

There are a couple of inherent challenges with this process. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that they have room for improvement. The first challenge is knowing which areas to improve. We all have blind spots. We’re aware of some of our shortcomings, but usually not all of them. Secondly, breaking habits and forming new ones requires commitment, persistence, and time. It usually takes support from others - people who can point out when you’ve acted in a way contradictory to your intent. It’s important to use a reliable assessment to identify areas of growth opportunity. From those results, we can develop a plan of development which bolsters weaker areas and leverages stronger areas. The final aspect of a successful personal development plan relies on having one or more people who can support you, give unbiased, non-judgmental feedback, and help you make course corrections.

Organizational Culture

The foundations of a strong organization are:

1. Developing a clear and compelling Purpose

2. Identifying the organization’s Mission to achieve the Purpose

3. Agreeing on a set of Values by which to carry out the Mission

4. Adopting a Servant Leader attitude throughout the organization

An organization’s Purpose is the “Why” of its existence. It’s not what it does as much as what it is striving to accomplish. It is a statement of the greater good it is attempting to achieve. It answers the question: “Why are we here?” and helps give clarity and focus to each person in the organization. It is the yardstick by which decisions are measured.

An organization’s Mission is the “What” of an organization. It is a definition of what the company does to achieve its stated Purpose. It begins to define the core proficiencies of a business and helps keep it focused on achieving its Purpose.

An organization’s set of Values is the “How” of an organization. It defines what an organization most values in the execution of its Mission. It’s not an all encompassing list of possible values as much as a statement of what the organization most values in its people and their conduct. It defines behaviors and culture within an organization. It helps set the guidelines of what is and is not acceptable.

At the core of Servant Leadership is the premise that the customer is the most important person to the organization. As a consequence of that premise, it only follows that the most important people to the customer are the frontline staff. They’re the people who customers interact with on a daily basis. This understanding leads to the philosophy that the job of the manager of the frontline people is to make their jobs as easy and effective as possible so the customer has the best experience possible. The result is an organizational chart that looks like an inverted pyramid. This servant attitude focuses leaders on developing those around them. It leads to people working together in a collaborative, solution-oriented environment.

How does one go about developing Purpose, Mission, and Values? Falling back on our understanding of Servant Leadership and the importance of everyone in the organization, the creation of Purpose, Mission and Values requires input from people in all areas of the company. They (the Purpose, Mission, and Values) need to be relevant to all involved, they need to be consistent with one another, and they need to be used consistently as a yardstick for decisions and policies. There’s nothing worse than developing Values and just paying them lip-service by not living them day-to-day. A practice like that lacks integrity and actually becomes a demoralizer.

In summary, when we combine personal competency in all areas of leadership skills with an organizational culture which supports people, their development, and their success, we end up with exceptional leadership which, in turn, inspires the best effort in others.

Written by Michael Beck, Executive Coach and Trainer.  He can be reached at 866-385-8751 or http://www.clientmonkey.com  Get your free program on Power Recruiting & Prospecting at: http://www.powerrecruitingandprospecting.com

Permission to reprint with full attribution.  © 2008 Exceptional Leadership, Inc.

 

 

Welcome to the new look Kairology

Posted in Ian’s Articles, Leadership, Management, Team on 12/29/2008 09:43 pm by Kairology

This month I’ve selected 3 articles that will be of interest to any leader or manager facing change in what for many are difficult times. The connection here with my own passion for leadership runs across these articles, and is relevant for anyone facing challenges.

What is paramount is staying purpose-centred: it’s easy to be distracted from your key strategies when you go into survival mode. We all need to survive the tough times, but it’s important to stay focused on the overall purpose and plan – otherwise we come out the other side of the downturn and wonder what to do next!

Servant leadership is also important. When the pressure is on, teamwork and ‘mucking in’ is what’s called for. It’s a great opportunity to see who can and will do this and who won’t. That gives you clues for who is engaged in your organisation, who should be getting the rewards long term, and who you might look to promote when the business expands and opportunities arise.

Personal competency is really tested when times are hard. How are you and your people stepping up to the mark, proving their resilience and strength, and getting more from less. That’s the real test of leadership, and of leading change when change is forced rather than chosen.

My own article on leadership in the tough times is also featured this month. Enter into your challenge, whatever it is, with determination and gusto – don’t be defeated! The survivors of tough times make the best organisations for the future. It’s like sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Ian A. Williams