“Leadership Matters: Appreciate GE’s Immelt” by Todd Thomas makes the following insightful observations after observing successful leaders such as Jeffrey Immelt CEO of General Electric, John Stumpf CEO of Wells Fargo and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.

Courage: Each of these leaders, and those around them, exhibit the courage to make the decisions they feel they need to make regardless of the immediate and short-term reactions of the market, media or public. They know in their heart-of-hearts that they are making the right decisions for the right reasons based on the information they have available at the time.

Focus: Each of these leaders has also shown an ability to narrow their concern and their attention to a nearly single-minded focus. Whether it is integrating an acquisition, staying true to their roots, or forging a new corporate culture, each of these leaders knows what he is trying to accomplish and is not swayed from the overall future.

Engagement: The other interesting aspect of these leaders, and leaders like them, is that they are not going it alone. All three of the leaders mentioned above are known for their efforts to engage other leaders and employees in the future of their organization. Companies do not magically deliver results –the work of the employees within those companies makes the difference between success and failure. Effective leaders today do not leave out those who are below them in the hierarchy but depend on their involvement, ideas and engagement to make it in the future.

These three attributes of leadership are essential. Courage is necessary to bring about the change necessary to navigate the future, focus ensures that we keep our attention on what’s important for today to shape the future and engagement ensures that the change is sustainable over the long-term.

• Decide what next bold action you need to take today.
• Do you have a narrow focus on the few critical actions you need to take to shape the future?
• Are you taking people on the journey with you?

Related posts:

1. Leaders Focus on Creating, Not Problem Solving
2. Learning from Successful Leaders
3. How Successful People Stay Successful

“Take my 20 best people, and virtually overnight, Microsoft becomes a mediocre company.” – Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates

Great leaders are always of the lookout for talent and recognise the contribution and importance of other people in their success. Talent Management has a great article titled “Taking the Talent Pulse: What Drives High Potentials?” discussing the 2007 Talent Pulse study by global HR consultancy Hewitt Associates. The study surveyed and interviewed nearly 750 high potentials and their managers in seven Fortune 500 companies. The research identified the following six key motivators that drive the performance and engagement of high potentials:

• Motivator No. 1: Job Fulfillment/Challenge: “High potentials are most driven to work on projects they consider challenging, intellectually stimulating or strategically impactful….. Underutilization frustrates them.”
• Motivator No. 2: Total Compensation: “…Hewitt found achievement-driven high potentials place great value on how much money they make…. Talented employees expect their pay to accurately reflect their level of contribution, personal effort and to differentiate them from average performers. For them, total compensation also serves as tangible proof they have accomplished, if not exceeded, their goals.”
• Motivator No. 3: Opportunities for Advancement: “High-potential employees continually feel the need for upward mobility. They recognize that progression goes hand in hand with development, learning new skills and having new experiences, and they expect a steady stream of opportunities in the near term, not years down the road.”
• Motivator No. 4: Good Work-Life Balance: “According to high potentials, a good work-life balance includes much more than simply the number of hours logged at work. It extends to the amount of travel required, the extent of sacrifice of personal life for professional success and the degree of flexibility in terms of how and when their work gets done. There is a constant struggle between maintaining quality of life with the drive to achieve, an aspiration that frequently results in a highly demanding and stressful work schedule…. The message to leadership is: ‘Honor and respect work-life balance; give us a chance to breathe.’”
• Motivator No. 5: Being Linked to Business Results: “Top performers want to play a key role in the organization. They want projects that yield high impact on the business. High potentials yearn to understand how their efforts contribute to the success of the business and its customers.”
• Motivator No. 6: Integrity: “Still affected by the corporate governance scandals that have plagued big business in recent years, high potentials said they want no part of any organization that even hints of acting in an unethical fashion. Their rationale is simple: If they are expected to throw their heads, hearts and souls into their work, the company’s leaders should be willing to be open and transparent about their conduct.”

It’s the responsibility of leaders to create an environment where people can grow and develop to reach their full potential. The growth and development of people does not just happen, it requires focused attention and constant effort. The key drivers listed above provide a great start for those leaders wanting to create an environment to retain their top talent. Consider the above six drivers:

• Rate how well you are doing on each of the drivers on a scale from 1 to 10?
• Ask some of your top performers to do the same.
• Compare the results.
• What changes do you need to make?

Technorati Tags: Talent, Growth, Leadership Development, Engagement, Retention, Research, Leadership, Management, Business

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3. Persistence trumps talent….!

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The need for effective “social architectures” within organisation is critical if we are too ensure that we develop future leaders, to drive innovation and to create an organisation that has a great legacy. If we examine our leadership, I’m sure we’ll find that meetings are where we do much, if not most, of our leading.

Peter Block in his book “The Answer to How is Yes” discusses the importance of the leaders’ role as social architect which he describes as follows:

“Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space….. the role of the social architect is to create service-orientated organisations, businesses, governments, and schools that meet their institutional objectives in a way that gives those involved space to act on what matters to them…. The social architect’s task is to create the space for people to act on what matters to them.”

Social architecture is about leading in a way that creates space for what matters! To focus on creating the necessary conditions for acting on what matters is one of the most urgent needs of organisations today. Peter Block goes on to say that “Acting on what matters is an act of leadership, it is not dependent on the leadership of others.” This means we all need to take responsibility for our choices and our actions. Leadership is a choice, it’s a decision we make to act on what matters. Issues such as integrity, responsibility, and authenticity are all issues that matter.

Five Capabilities of the Social Architect

Peter Block describe the following five capabilities as being necessary for the social architect to be effective. Paradoxically much on these ‘capabilities’ seem to get lost in the organisation we work in today…

1. Convening: “Social architecture is fundamentally, a convening function, giving particular attention to all aspects of how people gather. The future is created as a collective act…… The fundamental tenet of social architecture is that the way people gather is critical to the way the system functions.” In many organisations meetings are seen as a ‘necessary evil’, something to be tolerated, in between more important events. The consideration of how people gather and meet is of secondary importance.
2. Naming the question: “The social architect has an obligation to define the context, or the playing field, and then define the right questions, at least to start with“. Too many people dive into the how, selling solutions and describing best practices. Not enough people lead by taking the time to understand the quest that matters.
3. Initiating new conversations for learning: “To sustain the habitability of a social system we must initiate new conversations and manage the airspace so that all voices stay engaged with each other.” Too many conversations in organisations are initiated to ‘align’ people to lead them towards a predetermined answer, with not enough learning happening.
4. Sticking with strategies of engagement and consent: “…dialogue itself is part of the solution…. Commitment and accountability cannot be sold. They have to be evoked, and evocation comes through conversation.” Organisations change through effective conversation.
5. Designing strategies that support local choice: “If our intent is to create a social system that people want to inhabit then the social architect’s job is to demand that the inhabitants join in designing the system.”

Looking at the above list it seems that organisations are failing in their ability to create social systems that encourage people to act on what matters. Instead organisation are creating systems of compliance. What has been the result of your leadership?

Related posts:

1. Are you a “Push” or “Pull” Leader?
2. Leader as the facilitators of meaning and purpose
3. Leader: Are You Purposely Shaping Your Culture?

I have previously discussed the importance of employee engagement to leadership (here, here, here and here) and was defined in a post 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”

Why is employee engagement important? Because is impacts the bottom line, research on employee engagement has found that:

“Fortune 500 companies in the lowest quartile in company profitability had 50% fewer engaged employees compared to those in the top quartile.”

More importantly low levels of employee engagement are a sign of poor leadership. If you had to ask me for a measurement to gauge the result of your leadership effort than this is the measure I would recommend you use, the percentage of your workforce that is highly engaged.

How engaged are you employees? What does this say about your leadership?

Related posts:

1. Defining Employee Engagement
2. Managment Plays a Crucial Role in Employee Engagement
3. Clarity the Key to Employee Engagement

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I have posted before on the importance of conversation in leadership (here and here). Meaningful strategic conversation is an emotionally draining and difficult leadership task. However without meaningful conversation, buy-in and commitment remains elusive, as was observed by Steven Covey “no involvement, no commitment“. Meaning conversation creates involvement……. which generates the commitment …… and…… it’s commitment that ensures aligned action and an effective end result. Therefore, getting the conversations right is of critical importance.

One of the most frustrating situation which a leader is faced with is one where a team’s conversation becomes stuck. I’m sure we’ve all experienced these  stuck conversations, on these occasions:

• People feel they have not been heard and keep repeating the same points over and over again.
• It feels like everyone in the room has run our of ideas.
• People feel that they have missed some critical aspect of the issue at hand and therefore get stuck in analysis paralysis.
• People are ask themselves, ”why we’re have in this conversation again?”
• People feel that they don’t have all the facts necessary to commit to a course of action.
• There seems to be a hundred different reasons why the ideas resented to solve a problem are doomed to failure and will not work.

Unless stuck conversations are resolved, effective action will remain elusive, additionally any action “agreed” upon in the meeting will fail to be executed. Getting a stuck conversation back on track and productive requires insight into the meeting dynamics. It’s in these situations that I’ve found the ”change formula” (I previously posted on the change formula here) a useful tool. The change formula describes what’s required to bring about change in an organisation or in this case a conversation. The formula shows that change will occur when a dissatisfaction with the current situation, a vision of what is possible, and the first steps toward reaching the vision are greater than the resistance to change, as illustrated below….

The key insight behind this formula is that if the value of dissatisfaction, or vision, or first steps is zero, the resistance to change will not be overcome nor can anyone commit to taking ant action. A critical mass cannot be formed, and any organisational change cannot be sustained. Just as these components are required for meaningful organisational change they;re also necessary for meaningful conversations. So, to use the change formula when you’re next in a stuck conversation, help the meeting through the following steps:

1) Check for a Shared Understanding of Current Reality

• Are the right people in the room?
• Do all the people in the room have access to the evidence, data and facts relating to this problem (or opportunity)? Has this data been shared and discussed?
• Have the people in the room discussed the available data and shared their interpretation(s) of the facts?
• Is there sufficient diversity of opinion and organisational functions for us to have a meaningful discussion?
• Do all the people engaged in the conversation have the same understanding of the problem (or opportunity)?
• Have use used tangible and specific examples, anecdotes and stories to illustrate the impact or the problem (or opportunity)?
• Has the exploration of the facts and data made those in the room dissatisfied with the current situation? If not you may need to stop the meeting and start a programme of collective learning, see my previous post on why this is necessary…

2) Facilitate a Shared Vision of the Future

• Do all the people engaged in the conversation have a common understanding of what a desirable outcome would look like?
• Have we explored various alternative futures?
• Have we considered each alternative future’s advantages and disadvantages?
• Have you answered the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) question?
• Have you engaged people emotionally by creating an inspiring picture of the future?

3) Agree the Next Steps

• Is the gap between the current reality and the future vision small enough to be achievable, but not too large to be overwhelming? If not you’re going to have to chunk the the next steps into tangible short-term tasks that people can relate to (get the minds around)….
• Are the next steps achievable in the short term (6-12 months)?
• Are the actions described in S.M.A.R.T. terms (see my previous post on how to achieve this here) ?
• Has each action have an owner who is responsible for the S.M.A.R.T. outcome?
• Have you agreed to how the progress towards the vision will be tracked and managed?

That’s it, a simple and effective framework to help you resolve a stuck conversation. Any additional thoughts, ideas and suggestions are welcome. Try it, I would be interested in your feedback and experiences in using and improving on this approach….

Related posts:

1. The Power of Conversations