Mar
29
How to improve your effectiveness when leading from below
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With organisations under pressure to constantly produce short-term results there is a need to have leaders at all level within an organisation. Leadership today is not about position or authority, it’s about influence and responsibility. And those who are leading from below, rather than from the top of an organisation have a unique set of challenges. Middle and lower management need to deal with the day-to-day operational issues, whilst at the same time focusing on bringing about the necessary strategic change. With this in mind the Wall Street Journal has published a great article with the following insights on improving a leaders effectiveness when leading from below.
- Make the decision to be a leader. “….In every case of successful leadership from below that we have studied, the manager made a conscious decision to move beyond the service and governance roles, without waiting to be told to do so…. [how?] ……. First, they reorganized their group to make themselves less essential to the provision of services or the exercise of governance. This began to free up time and energy for leadership…. Second, the managers we studied opened themselves up to influences from outside the company. In many companies, middle managers have been trained to focus on internal rather than external signals…… To take on a leadership role, managers needed to listen to the signals coming from outside — customers, competitors, suppliers, neighbors, the media. Then they could begin thinking about what those signals meant for action inside the company.“
- Focus on influence, not control. “Every successful case we have found of leadership from below involved a basic shift in thinking: The managers did their job with their colleagues — not to them or for them. People simply react more enthusiastically to being enlisted in a common cause than they do to being ordered around…… [how?] ….Adopt the perspective of the people you’re trying to influence; don’t make them adopt yours….. Expose others to your information; don’t hoard it….. Aim to influence existing work processes; don’t build new ones…… Don’t worry about being proved right….. Keep things clear and simple…… Keep a sharp focus.“
- Work on your “trusted adviser” skills. “You have to earn the right to influence people. People have to want to talk with you, and value what they hear from you. This requires more than being seen as a technical expert. It requires being seen as a trusted adviser…..[how?] ….. The trusted adviser has skills that turn conversations into meaningful discussions that make people want to seek you out. Listen more than you talk; ask questions that broaden people’s perspective, instead of telling them how to think or what to do. Without violating confidences, share what others have seen and done in similar circumstances.”
- Don’t wait for the perfect time, just find a good time. “There is never a perfect time to take the risks of leading from below. When times are good, everyone is too busy and no one seems bothered by the need to do things differently. When times are bad, everyone is too busy (or too scared) and there are too many other demands….. [how?] …. look for situations where the complacency that pervades most companies has been disturbed. In those situations, there will be less resistance to change. There may even be an active desire for new approaches. Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures all break the existing patterns in the way a company operates.“
I think these are really good insights, some of which I already use with effective results….
Technorati Tags: Upward, Management, Leadership, Skills, Business, Influence
Mar
21
The “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni is written as a “leadership fable” a story of a technology company that is struggling in the marketplace to find customers. The new CEO recognises that the company has innovative products and great talent, however the executives are not working together as a team, negating the advantages of the companies innovative products and talented people. The team is struggling with their situation and are unable to come to agreement on an appropriate solution to their problems. The team dynamics erode into naming, blaming and shaming, no one is accepting responsibility, deadlines are being missed and moral is on the decline. The executive team is unable to make important decisions and as a result the company is losing the battle for market share…..
“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
To get the people in a team aligned and rowing in the same direction requires leaders to address the following five dysfunctions of a team.
Dysfunction 1: Absence of Trust
The first dysfunction is the absence of trust amongst team members. The type of trust the author is talking about here is the ability of group members to show their weaknesses, to be vulnerable and open with one another. Trust is never generated in teams when the team members are not prepared to be vulnerable. Instead they feel the need to be right, to be strong and competent, so much that they are unable to be vulnerable and open with one another. Trust requires that team members have confidence in each other intentions, that they are good and therefore have no reason to be protective and careful in the team. The when I ‘m vulnerable it will not be exploited and used against me by the team. The lack of trust amongst teams is a huge waste of time and energy as team members invest their time and energy in defensive behaviours, reluctant to ask for help and to assist others.
The key to overcoming a lack of trust is shared experiences, multiple follow-throughs and integrity. In the fable the team completes a Myers Briggs assessment to get the team talking about one another’s strengths and weaknesses and so become comfortable with one another.
“…teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
The primary role of the leader is to lead my example, be the first one to be vulnerable, and create an environment where it’s safe to be vulnerable. Building trust makes conflict possible!
Dysfunction 2: Fear of Conflict
Trust is the foundation of great teams and it’s trust that makes team conflict possible. Teams become dysfunctional when they are unable to productively deal with conflict. All meaningful relationships require productive conflict for them to grow. Healthy conflict occurs when people talk about the issue at hand avoiding personal attacks, looking for the best solution for the team. Teams tend to avoid conflict often replacing it with an artificial harmony.
“Harmony itself is good, I suppose, if it comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it’s a bad thing.”
We wear masks and focus on being nice to everyone. however, productive conflict is required for teams to become functional. This allows for meaningful dialogue where people are open to share, without feeling fearful of reprisal or criticism. One of the worst team dysfunctions is when you have a team of “yes men”.
Leaders need to encourage debate, support it and keep it productive. Teams who avoid conflict spend much time “off-line” never making decisions that the group can commit to. Healthy and productive teams accept that conflict is a normal part of being in a team to learn to deal with it productively.
“…meetings and movies have a lot in common…A movie, on average, runs anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours in length. Staff meetings are about the same…And yet meetings are interactive, whereas movies are not…And more importantly, movies have no real impact on our lives…. [and]…Every great movie has conflict. Without it, we just don’t care what happens to the characters.”
When working with teams a leaders need to understand the importance of conflict in teams, being careful not to try and steer the team towards premature resolution of conflict with the intention of protecting people. It’s important for leaders to help the team members to learn and develop positive conflict resolution skills. The beast way to do this is for leader to “lead by example”, modelling the appropriate behaviours, rather than trying to smooth over the conflict.
Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment
When teams engage in productive conflict they can confidently commit and buy-in to decisions. Commitment is a function of clarity and buy-in. Productive teams make clear decisions and are confident that they have the support from every team member. A lack of commitment usually arises from not hearing all the teams concerns before making a decision. There can be no commitment without debate. People will not buy into something when their opinions and thoughts on the matter were not included and discussed. “If they don’t weigh in, then they won’t buy in.” This is not as much about seeking consensus as it is about making sure that everyone is heard.
“The point here is that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.”
At the end of the day everyone needs to get to the point where they can say, “I may not agree with your ideas but I understand them and can support them.”
“When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”
Leaders can help to facilitate commitment by reviewing all key decisions made at the end of team meetings, making responsibility and deadlines clear.
Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability
Without team commitment you cannot have accountability. If the team is to be accountable, everyone must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.
“People aren’t going to hold each other accountable if they haven’t clearly bought in to the same plan.”
At the end of the day it’s about each team member being accountable to the team. This means that a team member never lets the team down when is comes to meeting commitments. The team needs to hold their peers responsible for achieving results and working to high standards. It’s the responsibility of each team member to hold one another accountable and accept it when others hold them accountable.
It’s often the case, that when teams are not holding one another accountable it’s usually because they’re not measuring their progress. It’s important to make clear what the team’s standards are, what needs to get done, by who and by when. Ambiguity is the enemy of accountability.
Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results
When teams are not held accountable the team members tend to look out for their own interests, rather than the interests of the team. A healthy team places team results as the most important goal. When all team members place the team’s results first the team becomes results orientated.
“Our job is to make the results that we need to achieve so clear to everyone in this room that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego. Because that would diminish our ability to achieve our collective goals. We would all lose.”
Leaders need to make the teams results clear for all to see, rewarding the behaviours that contribute to the team’s results. It’s the responsibility of the leader to keep the teams focus on results.
Cohesive Teams
By addressing these dysfunctions, what results is a cohesive team….
“…and imagine how members of truly cohesive teams behave:
1. They trust one another.
2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.
3. They commit to decisions and plans of action.
4. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans
5. They focus on the achievement of collective results.”
Summary
The is a really great book on team dynamics and team work, in fact it’s one of the best books on the subject that I’ve read. The book is written as a fable which help one get a really vivid picture of how a healthy team interacts and what is feels like to be part of a successful team. Although written as a fable, the book provides practical advice, which leaders can use in their own teams.
The book is a small and easy to read and the model provided is simple to understand making it a powerful tool for helping teams improve. I highly recommend this book to anyone, who leads a team. This book will help you understand what a successful team looks and feels like.
Patrick Lencioni has also written a follow-up workbook “Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators” written to help teams work through resolving the five dysfunctions together.
Technorati Tags: Teams, Team work, Book, Leadership, Management, Business, Trust, Book Review, Conflict, Execution, Results, Accountability
Mar
19
Ten Rules of Effective Language
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The blog Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms has a great post describing the ten rules of effective language from the book “Words That Work“. The book discusses the power of words to shape our thinking and the following ten rules which will help to get your message across more effectively, the authors ten rules are:
- Simplicity: Use Small Words - Don’t make people stop thinking about your message to figure out what that word meant. Simplicity counts.
- Brevity: Use Short Sentences - Sentences, or better yet - phrases, that are short and to the point are much more memorable than rambling, never-ending ones.
- Credibility is as Important as Philosophy: Your listeners have to be able to believe your message. Don’t say “New and Improved” if it really isn’t.
- Consistency Matters: Repetition leads to credibility plus even though you’ve said it many times before it still may be new to someone in your audience. Stay on message.
- Novelty: Offer Something New - Draw attention to your message and make it memorable by expressing it in a new way.
- Sound and Texture Matter: “A string of words that have the same first letter, the same sound or the same syllabic cadence is more memorable than a random collection of sounds.”
- Speak Aspirationally: “Messages need to say what people want to hear.” You have to speak to their hopes, dreams and fears.
- Visualize: Use language that will help your listeners to see your message in their imagination.
- Ask a Question: A question involves the listener and makes them personalize your message.
- Provide Context and Explain Relevance: You need to explain the “why” as much as the “how” of a message.
These are great tips to help leaders get their message across and improve their communication.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Communication, Writing, Strategy
Mar
17
Adopting a learning attitude
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I have been reflecting on the importance of having a learning attitude after reading the book “Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work
Mindsets
| Judger | Learner |
| Judgemental (of self and/or others) | Accepting (of self and others) |
| Reactive and automatic | Responsive and thoughtful |
| Know-it-already | Values not knowing |
| Inflexible and rigid | Flexible and adaptive |
| Either/or thinking | Both/and thinking |
| Self righteous | Inquisitive |
| Afraid of difference | Values difference |
| Personal perspective only | Considers perspective of others |
| Defends assumptions | Questions assumptions |
| Possibilities see as limited | Possibilities seen as unlimited |
| Primary mood: protective | Primary mood: curious |
“We all have both mindsets, and we have the power to choose where we operate from in any moment.”
I think that this is a great tool for leaders. If we are able to reflect on our thinking style and deliberately choose to operate from a learner when in conversation and during meetings we will be much more effective.
“Accept judger, practice learner…..You’re never going to be pure learner. but you can learn to make choices about where you put your attention.”
The mindsets we operate from is important as our mindsets shape our relationships, communication, behaviour and therefore ultimately our results. In the high pressured lifestyle we live today it’s difficult at times to focus on acting from a learner mindset. This is especially true when things go wrong.
Spend time over the next few weeks and consciously focus on leading from a learner mindset. Reflecting on how much time you’re spending in judger and how much time you spend in learner. Notice to difference it make when you interact with people and run your meetings from the learner mindset.
Technorati Tags: Attitude, Lifehacks, Management, Mindset, Leadership, Business, Communication, Book
Mar
14
Culture is the shadow of the leader….
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“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a Leader” - John Quincy Adams
It’s primarily the leaders actions that inspire people to do more, to be more and to learn more. It’s the actions of the leader which leads to an organisations culture. In a nutshell, culture represents “the way we do things around here”. Culture is the shadow of the leader. Looking at your team or organisations culture you see the leaders reflection. The reflection we see can be a difficult for us to handle. If not careful, we respond by trying to defend or to rationalise away why what we see in others is not of our making. In this way, we fail to take responsibility for what has resulted from our actions. Without taking responsibility the first steps require to change the situation becomes impossible….!
As difficult as it may be, we need to face the reality the our team and organisations culture is a reflection of our leadership. Accepting this responsibility is the first step to change and as we all know, change begins ourselves. As Ghandi said many years ago we all need to strive to become the “change we want to see in the world“…. in this case we need to be the change we want to see in others…!
- What are your actions inspiring others to become?
- What are your actions inspiring others to do?
- What are your actions inspiring others to learn?
Technorati Tags: Action, Management, Leadership, Culture, Business, Quote, Responsibility
Mar
11
Why context matters
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The Functioning Form blog has a post Lessons From The Tipping Point that really got me thinking about the leader’s role in setting and shaping the organisational context. The post provides a very good summary of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point“. The post summarises from the book “The Power of Context” as follows:
- The Power of Context says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem.
- Context says you don’t have to solve the big problems to enact change. Little things can make a big difference.
- When people are in a group, responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume someone else will make take action or that no action is needed.
- In smaller groups people are a lot closer. They’re knit together which is important if you want to be successful at community life.
- We are actually profoundly influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us.
- Merely by manipulating the size of a group we can dramatically improve its receptivity to new ideas.
The last thing a fish is likely to discover is the water it’s swimming in. Like the fish, we take context for granted, even though context has a huge impact on our world. Leaders set the organisational context in which action takes place. Like fish many of people in organisation don’t see the context in which they act. Leaders have the role of setting and shapeing a context that encourages initiative and right action by followers.
“Hay Group research has shown up to 30 per cent of variance in business results can be explained by differences in the work climate created by managers. “Managers who are able to create an all-around engaging work climate can have an invaluable effect on an employee’s commitment to a company and the productivity a group of employees can generate” - Management-Issues
Without a proper context people fail to act. Take for example time when an organisation is planning to re-structure. How do the people respond? In my experience, as employees are anticipating structural changes, they become passive, failing to make important decisions resulting in postponed action. In this case passivity is the result of an uncertain context! Context shapes behaviour…
Like fish, People may not consciously be aware of their context, but if you remove it the effects are clear. The bottom line is that people need an appropriate context in which to act. Context matters! So what type of context is being created by your leadership? Are you creating a context that:
- Moves people towards a shared vision?
- Do people know what’s important?
- Is your example guiding people’s behaviour?
- Do your conversations focusing people on what matters?
If you don’t actively shape your organisations context someone else will….!
Technorati Tags: Context, Management, Leadership, Focus, Business, Vision, Conversation
Mar
11
Defining Employee Engagement
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Management-Issues has an interesting post on Employee engagement. The Conference Board published “Employee Engagement, A Review of Current Research and Its Implications” in 2006 which review research conducted by 12 major research companies on employee engagement. Looking across these studies resulted in employee engagement being defined as:
“a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work”
At least four of the studies that they reviewed agreed on the following eight key drivers:
- Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
- Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
- Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?
- Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
- Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
- Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one’s level of engagement
- Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?
- Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?
The interesting finding is that all studies reviewed across all location and all ages…
agreed that the direct relationship with one’s manager is the strongest of all drivers.
The research on employee engagement confirms that leadership makes a huge difference!
Technorati Tags: Engagement, Management, Leadership, Winning, Business, HR, Research
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